Former National Security Advisor Robert O’Brien put his support behind remarks from Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif) that the U.S. should not sign a “blank check” on Ukraine in an interview with The Hill.
O’Brien, who served as Trump’s national security advisor from 2019 until the end of the administration, said that while he views robust military and economic support for Ukraine as necessary, it should come with strict oversight.
“We should continue to be extraordinarily generous with the Ukrainians, but we need to make sure that the arms we supply Ukraine don’t end up in Russian hands or end up in some other government’s hands. We must ensure that these platforms are used efficiently and properly by the Ukrainian military,” he said, adding that reconstruction aid also needs to be accounted for.
“I don’t see a problem with Leader McCarthy’s statement. Some people have used it to say the GOP does not support Ukraine. That is simply not the case.”
O’Brien’s remarks come as Republicans are preparing to take control of the lower chamber and far-right voices critical of U.S. assistance to Ukraine are finding more support among mainstream GOP lawmakers.
While Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Georgia), a key ally of McCarthy’s in his bid for the speakership, has said Ukraine will not get another penny under a GOP majority, most in the party have focused their calls on a fuller accounting of how American tax dollars are used, particularly amid economic uncertainty at home.
McCarthy said in October he found the fierce blowback to his “blank check” comments rather surprising.
“Wouldn’t you want a check and balance in Congress? Wouldn’t you want this hardworking taxpayers’ money, someone overseeing it? We’ve got to eliminate the wasteful spending in Washington,” he said on CNBC.
O’Brien is the Chairman of the Richard Nixon Library Foundation and Distinguished Senior Fellow at Pepperdine University’s School of Public Policy. Since leaving government, he has offered conservative commentary through appearances on Fox News and on Twitter.
Earlier this month, he spoke at the Council on Foreign Relations, arguing that President Biden failed to deter Russian President Vladimir Putin from further invading Ukraine but commended the administration as showing “prudence” in holding back weapons from Kyiv that could be viewed as a provocation against Moscow.
O’Brien was one of the last senior Trump administration officials to meet with Russian counterparts, at a meeting in Geneva in October 2020. At that time, he told The Hill, he felt he secured commitments on three issues: for the Russians to not interfere in the November elections, agreement on a framework to restart nuclear nonproliferation talks, and the release of American hostages.
That meeting was quickly overshadowed by Trump’s COVID diagnosis at the time and O’Brien said the Russians cut off communication after Joe Biden was declared the next president.
In his interview with The Hill last week, O’Brien echoed concerns from other Republicans that exercising strict oversight on Kyiv is also about ongoing efforts to combat government corruption in the country.
“Leader McCarthy is right, we shouldn’t be giving a blank check to any nation. I wouldn’t give the U.K. or Australia a blank check,” he said. “We must ensure that the aid the American taxpayers give to Ukraine is being used properly and that we eliminate fraud, waste, abuse and corruption.”
He added that “there is corruption in Ukraine, it’s had a history of corruption, it’s trying to do better and it’s been making a lot of progress, especially since the Maidan demonstrations in 2014.”
Independent organizations monitoring good governance have recorded Ukraine as improving its anti-corruption efforts following its popular 2014 revolution, called the Revolution of Dignity, which ousted the pro-Russian president at the time.
That year, the U.S. and other partners helped the Ukrainian government stand up the National Anticorruption Bureau of Ukraine, the Special Anticorruption Prosecutor’s Office, and the High Anticorruption Court.
But NGOs like Transparency International have recorded good governance in Ukraine fluctuating, dipping and peaking between 2019 and 2021.
The NGO Freedom House, in its 2021 Report on World Freedom, wrote that corruption in Ukraine “remains a serious problem, and the political will to fight it is eroding despite strong pressure from civil society.”
Since Russia invaded in February, the U.S. has provided an additional $21 million to Ukraine’s anti-corruption authorities for criminal justice programs and related support, a State Department spokesperson told The Hill.
President Biden has further earmarked $20 million for oversight and accountability “of appropriated resources,” as part of an emergency aid request for Ukraine, totaling $37 billion and which also includes COVID relief funds.
Other oversight efforts include cooperation between the Office of Inspector General’s at the Pentagon, State Department and U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).
The Pentagon has further said it has not seen any credible evidence of the illegal diversion of U.S. weapons to Ukraine and said they have ongoing efforts to prevent such actions from taking place.
Still U.S. officials on the ground in Ukraine are faced with hardships of staffing shortages, security limitations and other challenges of operating in an active war zone.
While most Republicans have spoken in favor of maintaining assistance to Ukraine, some have seized on what they view as gaps in oversight.
Greene is pushing a resolution to audit all U.S. assistance to Ukraine. While the bill was voted down in the Democrat-led House Foreign Affairs Committee, it garnered the support of all Republican panel members.
Further, Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas), the likely next chairman of the panel, joined Senate Foreign Relations Committee ranking member Sen. Jim Risch (R-Idaho) in requesting an audit of assistance for Ukraine through the U.S. Agency for International Development.
A State Department spokesperson told The Hill that they are committed to working with Democrats and Republicans to improve oversight efforts.
“We are acting on behalf of the American people with resources from the American taxpayer. We certainly can appreciate the need for oversight, we have been doing that, and we’re committed to working with members of Congress on both sides of the aisle to do what we can to continually improve our processes.”
Republicans leading the House in 2023 — with a thin margin of nine seats over Democrats — will be under pressure to build support for the party to achieve Republican victories in 2024 in both the presidential race and battle for Congress.
Trump is the first person to announce his candidacy for the GOP nomination.
O’Brien said he last spoke to the former president in July, saying he called him to deliver the news that former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was assassinated, but has not spoken to him since.
Looking ahead to the 2024 presidential election, O’Brien said a potential Republican administration would focus on “peace through strength,” and “about having a military that’s so strong and so effective, that our adversaries wouldn’t dare provoke us or cross red lines,” in particular through support to Ukraine and Taiwan.
That would require laying out an even larger budget for the National Defense Authorization Act, he said. The NDAA for 2023 clocked in at $847 billion, which increased from the previous year’s budget of nearly $778 billion.
“We need to expand and reinvigorate our defense industrial base, forthwith. That priority is going to cost some money and to probably require an NDAA bigger than the current one,” he said. “We have to be able to help our friends.”