Perhaps, but these two things are very very different, and while I think your observation is apt it only exists at the margins (i.e. on twitter).
You can steelman an argument for supporting Ukraine in their war that goes something like "bleeding Russia dry means they won't be able to enter into the Pacific as a co-belligerent with China in a potential WWIII scenario".
Similarly, you can steelman an argument for banning TikTok that goes something like "this algorithm can nudge people into believing certain things in a measurable way, and it's bad that an adversary (PLA) has the ability to do this in our country, so we should stop that".
GOP skepticism of support of Ukraine is linked to that aforementioned goal, which we've probably achieved at this point. Why continue to print money and weapons and send them to a place 99% of America couldn't find on a map without googling, especially when this adversary has been shown to be a paper tiger?
Democratic skepticism of the TikTok calamity is, yes, linked to Trump Syndrome to a certain extent, but I think its also an adherence to boilerplate neoliberalism where you let companies compete in a globalized way, and banning TikTok because its Chinese has a tinge of racism (not me saying that, I'm outlining why the Democrats would be skeptical of a ban).
I think the steelman for supporting Ukraine in the war is stronger than that.
1. It provides security for Europe, which benefits us.
2. Our military expenditures are massive in general, we have sent roughly $50B in aid thus far which is around 3% of our 2022 DoD budget. If you consider the military a tool to destroy specific enemies, of which there are two main candidates, spending a marginal 3% (or more!) to destroy one of them is incredibly cheap. Personally I would invest 3-5x as much without blinking. The returns look great.
3. War is bad, starting wars is bad, and invading smaller neighbors to set up puppet regimes or annex them is bad. The best way to prevent this in general is to make starting wars look like an extremely bad idea which will definitely destroy your country.
4. Showing that we will doggedly defend countries to which we owe no special allegiance is an extremely good deterrent and raises the expected costs of invading (for example) Taiwan. China might see a more limited investment in the defense of Ukraine and say “ok, well Russia couldn’t afford to match that but I can. Expensive but on the table” whereas open ended support till Russia collapses is substantially scarier.
And this is only reasoning from an America-first perspective. Considering only how these are good for us, I would expect conservative support to be more full-throated. That said, it is true that mainstream conservatives are definitely much more normal on this front.
1. This is true if and only if the United States signs up, completely, for security of the entire European Continent. The armies of Germany, Poland, and Great Britain are just too small to do this (France isn't even worth mentioning)[1]. And, as the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan made painfully clear, the rest of NATO is unable to conduct air operations without direct support and coordination from the United States. There's a high cost to this, and we should go into it eyes wide open if this is the security responsibility we are assuming. To top it all off, the US Army is facing a serious recruiting crisis. We may need to consider a draft if we are going to shoulder the burden of securing all of Europe (again).
2. Aid to Ukraine is over $100B at this point, but I agree that there is some significant return on investment here if the aim was to degrade Russian military power via a proxy war. While we're sending some high-end stuff (HIMARS, rumors of MIM-104s) that would be useful in the pacific theater and are hard to replace, doing so has ground Russia down so bad that they're stuck in the defensive for the foreseeable future.
3. I don't really care about this. I'm interested in what makes sense for the security of the United States and what makes American citizens better off - economically or otherwise. It's like saying "murder is bad, we should punish murderers really hard so that other people don't murder". Sure, I agree.
4. I think this is mostly fantasy, or an insane game of chicken. If we're in Ukraine until the Kremlin collapses, that would catastrophically reduce security for an entire hemisphere because of the ensuing chaos a fractured and broken Russian Federation would represent. Many, mostly on the Left, seem to think this is actually a good idea but it isn't. I doubt this is actually the goal of the State Department, and since China isn't stupid they likely doubt it as well. So on balance, whatever the US does in Ukraine I'd judge to have very little impact to PLA's calculus on a Taiwan invasion.
[1] It is worth mentioning that Poland has plans to double the size of it's ground forces. But until this actually happens, this remains a plan and not existing combat power.
It sounds like we're mostly on the same page, but to argue the 3 point a little harder- war is bad for business and I don't like gas prices going up. Everyone should sit down and chill the fuck out and it is good (for us) to ensure that's in their best interest too.
Yeah the gas thing is a whole different dimension to this, that involves absurd domestic politics in Germany. It's actually a little surprising that the State Department let Germany go as far down that path as it did, and didn't stop the pipeline in its tracks back in 2010-2011. Maybe we were still in the "Russia Reset" fever, and were okay with letting Germany spread its wings a bit and build it's own energy policy.
Of course, this admits that these other NATO members are client states of the Americans, which is an ugly (but mostly true!) thing to say out loud.
You can steelman an argument for supporting Ukraine in their war that goes something like "bleeding Russia dry means they won't be able to enter into the Pacific as a co-belligerent with China in a potential WWIII scenario".
Similarly, you can steelman an argument for banning TikTok that goes something like "this algorithm can nudge people into believing certain things in a measurable way, and it's bad that an adversary (PLA) has the ability to do this in our country, so we should stop that".
GOP skepticism of support of Ukraine is linked to that aforementioned goal, which we've probably achieved at this point. Why continue to print money and weapons and send them to a place 99% of America couldn't find on a map without googling, especially when this adversary has been shown to be a paper tiger?
Democratic skepticism of the TikTok calamity is, yes, linked to Trump Syndrome to a certain extent, but I think its also an adherence to boilerplate neoliberalism where you let companies compete in a globalized way, and banning TikTok because its Chinese has a tinge of racism (not me saying that, I'm outlining why the Democrats would be skeptical of a ban).