People who feel “forgotten” forget foreign policy. U.S. adversaries bank upon it. Across party lines, 52% of Americans oppose additional Ukraine aid. Another 55% opposed increases in defense spending last fiscal year, even to meet articulated threats.
This follows a generalized slump in favor of American engagement in the world, disdained 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 House Republicans have never once voted for aid to Ukraine, including half of Tennessee’s congressional delegation.
Of these, 93% represent rural districts. Another 53% represent economically “distressed” or “at risk” districts, where opportunities for employment are sparse, employment rates are low, and poverty 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? “Forgotten Americans.” They make up 38% of the population, are poorer, reside mostly in rural America, and often care little for global affairs. After all, theirs are concerns of community decay and economic drought on par with that of the Great Depression.
Drastic economic shifts have decimated American communities
The Rust Belt alone lost approximately 1.6 million manufacturing jobs, 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, now face billions in damage from Hurricane Helene, with employers ravaged and schools indefinitely shuttered.
The same locales saw median household incomes decline more than anywhere else in the nation. That Chinese 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, crimes 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 United States witnessed a decline of between 3.5 million and 5 million 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 Ukraine aid are disproportionately 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 materiel manufactured 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 well-intended bravado, the United States still lacks a “Foreign Policy for the Middle Class,” much less one for its working class.
In an age where hot production lines are the difference between victory and defeat, the American 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.
