Ron DeSantis

That the campaign for the 2024 presidential election was going to be advanced and that it was going to be done using Ukraine as an electoral argument was clear. And that Ron DeSantis was going to be one of the protagonists as well. It was not known, however, where the Florida governor was going to stick his hand in the pre-election pie. If he was going to do it gently, adding to the space of external cohesion that the new competition between powers demands, or if he was going to take a swipe at politics by criticizing American aid to Ukraine as the first combat argument. But by asserting that the Russia-Ukraine war is not a vital U.S. interest on a Fox program, DeSantis has regrettably decided to place himself on the isolationist front. Attempting to strengthen his argument with the vindication of Ronald Reagan's foreign policy, harsh in its essence when he conceived of Soviet communism in the 1980s as the evil empire and multiplied its defense spending, but at the same time conciliatory in understanding the complex reality that the deterioration of the USSR could cause in Eurasia. 
If DeSantis were not so intent on becoming the heir to the votes of Trumpism and bet on strengthening the values of republicanism that Reagan still represents today, he would take his foot out of his mouth and enter into a more elaborate analysis of the parallels between the two situations. Which is not in the personality and historical prestige of Gorbachev versus the discredit of Putin, claimed by the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity, but in the change of international order that was looming in the 1980s and the one that is looming now. 
At that time, a framework of relations with the USSR was built to reduce the risks that the transition of the Soviet regime was multiplying. The nuclear limitation agreements and later the support for the orderly dismemberment of the communist bloc traced a path of trust and stability that only in the former Yugoslavia was reproduced in a terrible war, when it could have been reproduced in the entire Eurasian area. The continuity of Reagan's model of strong muscle and soft hand in the policies of Bush Sr. and the first Clinton administration was the key to success. Not varying bipartisan foreign policy in the face of an event of such magnitude. 
But in the current situation, no territorial bloc led by Russia is at stake, as DeSantis points out, "it is a territorial issue of Europe". Rather, the stakes are in the construction of a competitive order among the great powers that moves the major players, the powers and their allies, to position themselves in an environment open to reconfiguration. The Donbass region is an element of struggle between those who attack an international order that they do not want to accept, certain authoritarianisms such as the Russian or Chinese, and those who defend the reform of an order based on respect for a regulated framework of national sovereignties that cannot be altered by the force of an invading power. The United States and the allied democracies must be prepared to support a negotiation to end the war, when the content of the agreement is based on the rejection of this type of aggression. 
To perceive Europe as something other than a group of allied countries, twinned by different interests and common values, is a consideration that impoverishes not only the allied relationship, but also global stability. Only a political vision as limited as Donald Trump's with respect to his European allies could have served to bake the crust of the geopolitical cake that Putin had ready. By now trying to get his hands on the 2024 electoral cake, DeSantis has transferred to his country and to the world the doubt about his capacity as a statesman. And the certainty about his incapacity as a great statesman, as Ronald Reagan was.