Yesterday, Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) exemplified the old adage, “In the land of the blind, the one-eyed is king.” During the Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing (on the 2023 State Department budget), Paul cited the hysteria in the Senate, where Ukrainians were “being pushed and goaded by half the members of the Senate who want them in NATO.” Without that, he suggested that Ukraine might have simply agreed to neutrality, as Moscow had asked. He then posed the question to Secretary of State Antony Blinken, whether the U.S. would even accept Ukraine becoming a neutral state.
Blinken refrained from his language of recent days about winning wars, and danced around: “We, Senator, are not going to be more Ukrainian than the Ukrainians. These are decisions for them to make.” The purpose of the current U.S. military aid to Ukraine is to give Kiev the ability to “repel the Russian aggression” and “strengthen their hand at an eventual negotiating table.” But the simple question had been posed.
