Senator Ted Cruz spoke to the media on April 28 to provide his views on the war in Ukraine. Cruz laid the blame for the conflict squarely on the Biden administration, calling Biden a “weak” and “ineffective” leader while claiming that the invasion was entirely avoidable were it not for decisions made by the administration.
The senator’s speech featured nods to ‘America First,’ a concept initially popularized before World War II by advocates of non-interventionist foreign policy in the U.S. The idea behind the movement was for U.S. leaders to prioritize the needs of their own nation before others’, and avoid involving the American military in outside conflicts.
“The most powerful tool in foreign policy is the voice of the President of the United States,” Cruz said before illustrating the primary means by which America avoids military conflict.
Cruz listed diplomacy and economic sanctions among the most useful methods that the U.S. can use to advance the nation’s goals. The final strategy, Cruz said, is military force, the use of which should only be implemented when all other avenues have failed.
“We are today in the first major land war in Europe since 1945, since World War Two,” Cruz said. “What is maddening about that is that it was utterly preventable. This did not have to happen, and it was caused by two specific mistakes from Joe Biden and his team.”
Cruz said the first mistake that led to the conflict was the U.S.’s withdrawal from Afghanistan.
“The surrender to the Taliban, the incompetence of doing so, abandoning Bagram Airfield before we evacuated, leaving Americans behind, the chaos and weakness and incompetence,” Cruz said. “When that happened, all across the globe, America’s enemies looked to Washington, and they took the measure of the man in the Oval Office, and sadly, they concluded that President Biden was weak and feckless and ineffective. And a weak president is dangerous.”
Cruz pointed out comments he made at the time of the American withdrawal from Afghanistan, in which he stated that the chances of Russia invading Ukraine had risen tenfold. He also predicted that China would be encouraged to invade Taiwan due to the troops’ removal.
The second mistake made by the Biden administration that led to the Russian invasion, according to Cruz, was the decision to restart Nord Stream 2, a gas pipeline that was initially planned to ferry natural gas from Russia to Germany and beyond. The Trump administration had effectively killed the project, but it was resumed after Biden took office.
“Putin didn’t wake up yesterday and decide that he wanted to invade Ukraine,” Cruz said. “Putin has wanted to invade Ukraine for decades. Putin is a KGB thug with megalomaniac ambitions, and he yearns to reassemble the old Soviet Union. And if you read the speech he gave just before the invasion, his ambitions are broader than that. He desires to reassemble the Russian Empire of 1922. He looks back fondly at what he sees as days of Russian glory.”
Cruz also explained that despite the problems he has with the Biden administration and his view that the administration is complicit in the invasion of Ukraine, he does not support the idea of U.S. military engagement in the country. He emphasized that a U.S.-enforced no-fly zone is off the table.
Ultimately, Cruz said he supports supplying Ukraine with the weapons they need to defend their country, including fighter aircraft, but does not believe that sending troops will solve the crisis.
“The same reason we needed Putin to lose is the same reason we needed to win the Cold War,” Cruz said. “It is to protect America’s national security interests; it is to focus on America first.”