Военные поставки Украине как поляризирующий фактор в президентской избирательной кампании США

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The foreign policy agenda in the American presidential campaign, unlike how it was throughout almost the entire U.S. history, turned into a hot topic during the election campaign of 2023–2024. Military assistance to Ukraine became an important part of this pre-election period. The positions of Democratic and Republican parties continued to grow apart on this issue, this split on a foreign policy topic also being quite unpreceded until recently. Though during the current election campaign, almost all presidential candidates, with very rare exceptions, came out in favor of military assistance to Ukraine, yet the majority of the Republican contenders alleged that this conflict ought not be a primary focus, and called upon the administration to identify its strategic goals in Ukraine and limit the weapons deliveries to the realization of these goals. They saw China, not Russia, as the major challenge. Meanwhile, Joe Biden and other Democratic contenders increasingly voiced the argument that the weapons deliveries to Ukraine were important not only for this country, but for the United States itself and for the whole world, and if they did not come in time or in sufficient quantities, Russia would present a threat to its neighboring countries, and Europe could be facing a major war. After the Hamas’s attack on Israel, the resistance of the Republican fraction in Congress to voting in favor of allocating means for military assistance to Ukraine increased, while the White House found itself in a position where it had to distribute its foreign aid between the Ukrainian conflict and the Middle East crisis. Although during the two years of the election campaign, Donald Trump’s popularity grew, and his control over the Republican party expanded, there were some Republicans, and presidential candidates in particular, who criticized Biden not for excessive, but for insufficient support to Ukraine. Yet the political forecasts for a possible second term for Trump were commonly associated with a decrease in U.S. weapons supplies to Ukraine.