John Kasich keeps emphasizing his hawkish views ahead of his expected presidential campaign:

“For the United States not to be giving [the Ukrainians] the weapons they need to defend themselves is a terrible mistake and it frankly borders on outrage,” Kasich told the crowd, adding “we need to help our friends.”

I suppose this is a slight improvement over Kasich’s earlier mistake in claiming that Ukraine is an ally of the U.S., but the bad policy recommendation remains unchanged. Kasich takes for granted that this is something that the U.S. “needs” to do, but doesn’t explain why he thinks it is necessary for the U.S. to add fuel to a foreign conflict. He also assumes that sending arms to Ukraine will help them, when in all likelihood it will simply expose them to additional danger and greater losses.

Like many other hawks, Kasich perceives a U.S. stake in a conflict where none exists, and his answer is to throw more weapons at the problem. A Kasich campaign is going to offer little more than conventional hawkish bromides on foreign policy, and so we will be hearing just one more echo of the same arguments from him. There was admittedly not much reason to expect better from Kasich, but the fact that he has occasionally shown a willingness to break from party orthodoxy on other issues made it possible that he might be prepared to do the same here. Kasich has made it abundantly clear over the last few months that this won’t be happening.