Struggling Americans are not thinking about Ukraine and China

[Pelican Press 0]

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

Struggling Americans are not thinking about Ukraine and China

People who feel “forgotten” forget foreign policy. U.S. adversaries bank upon it. Across party lines, 52% of Americans

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

. Another

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

spending last fiscal year, even to meet articulated threats.

This follows a generalized slump in favor of ********* engagement in the world,

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

by over a third of the country. Parsed along partisan and socioeconomic lines, the gulf of antipathy only grows.

When authorizing the FY2024 National Defense Authorization Act, 93 House Republicans (or 42% of the conference) voted to discontinue aid to Ukraine. Over a quarter of

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

for aid to Ukraine, including half of Tennessee’s congressional delegation.

Of these, 93% represent rural districts. Another 53% represent economically

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

, where opportunities for

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

, employment rates are low, and ******** rates are high. Save for Rep. Tim Burchett’s Knox County, Tennessee representatives who vote against aid to Ukraine come from districts that mirror this trend.

Their core constituency?

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

They make up

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

, reside mostly in rural America, and often care little for global affairs. After all, theirs are concerns of community

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

on par with that of the Great Depression.

Drastic economic shifts have decimated ********* communities

The

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

, a decline of 35% from 2000 to 2010. The Appalachian story is similar – and getting worse. Already flagging communities in East Tennessee, North Carolina, and North Georgia,

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

from Hurricane Helene, with

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

and

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

.

China’s President Xi Jinping leaves the podium following his speech during the opening ceremony of the third Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on October 18, 2023. (Photo by Pedro PARDO / AFP) (Photo by PEDRO PARDO/AFP via Getty Images)

The same locales saw

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

more than anywhere else in the nation. That ******** President Xi Jinping helms the supply chains which sustain them is but a stale factoid.

A valiant Ukrainian defense, supported by their tax dollars, is only momentarily inspiring. Genocide, ******* against humanity, unjust wars, abandoned allies – each becomes a trite reality of an international anarchy in which the U.S. should play no major part.

These districts have experienced dramatic economic shifts. In 1940, the leading industry in each district was manufacturing or mining. By 2000, this was only true for over a third of the same districts.

Through a mixture of automation and offshoring, the ******* States witnessed a

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

manufacturing jobs in the last two decades, alongside 70,000 shuttered manufacturing plants. Such losses were most acutely felt in districts which had been reliant on manufacturing – and in which no new industry filled its void.

Middle class wants its local issues addressed by their government

Their voting patterns are illuminating. Opposition for aid to Ukraine is already geographically and demographically clustered. Districts which vote against

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

rural and poor. Put differently, ‘forgotten Americans’ are voting against Ukraine aid.

This need not be the case. Most dollars appropriated to provision military aid to Ukraine flow to U.S. coffers.

Dollars purchase arms and

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

across 65 (mostly urban) congressional districts, including two in Tennessee. Yet only five stridently anti-Ukraine districts also host factories in this beneficent supply chain. The other 52 anti-Ukraine districts play little part – and see little benefit – in the arsenal of democracy.

Despite White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan’s

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

, the ******* States still lacks a “Foreign Policy for the Middle Class,” much less one for its working class.

Zacarias Negron

In an age

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

are the difference between victory and defeat, the ********* military industrial base and its allies would do well to actually “Build Back Better” by marrying cash-strapped, unemployment-rich regions with essential defense production sites. We can no longer afford to divorce guns and butter. Too much is at stake.

Zacarias Negron, a Knoxville native, is a chancellor’s scholar and research assistant at Vanderbilt University, where he also serves as President of the Alexander Hamilton Society. He is a former Hamilton fellow and RRI-AHS National Defense Fellow.

This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean:

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

#Struggling #Americans #thinking #Ukraine #China

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up