Sen. Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., marked the 80th anniversary of D-Day on Thursday by warning of repeating the mistakes of the 1930s in an opinion piece published by The New York Times.

McConnell wrote of how “the liberation of Western Europe began” on June 6, 1944, “with immense sacrifice,” as more than 150,000 Allied troops invaded France by sea and air to drive out Nazi Germany’s forces.

“In a tribute delivered 40 years later from a Normandy cliff, President Ronald Reagan reminded us that ‘the boys of Pointe du Hoc’ were ‘heroes who helped end a war,’” McConnell said. “That last detail is worth some reflection because we are in danger of forgetting why it matters.”

“American soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines joined allies and took the fight to the Axis powers not as a first instinct, but as a last resort. They ended a war that the free world’s inaction had left them no choice but to fight.”

While “generations have taken pride in the triumph of the West’s wartime bravery and ingenuity,” McConnell said Americans “reflect less often on the fact that the world was plunged into war, and millions of innocents died, because European powers and the United States met the rise of a militant authoritarian with appeasement or naïve neglect in the first place.”

“We forget how influential isolationists persuaded millions of Americans that the fate of allies and partners mattered little to our own security and prosperity,” he wrote. “We gloss over the powerful political forces that downplayed growing danger, resisted providing assistance to allies and partners, and tried to limit America’s ability to defend its national interests.”

The United States and allied nations today “face some of the gravest threats to our security since Axis forces marched across Europe and the Pacific,” McConnell said, arguing that “some of the same forces that hampered our response in the 1930s have re-emerged.”

Germany, one of the aggressors during World War II, “is now a close ally and trading partner” of the U.S. as well as an integral member of the European Union.

“But it was caught flat-footed by the rise of a new axis of authoritarians made up of Russia, China, North Korea and Iran,” McConnell wrote. “So, too, were the advanced European powers who once united to defeat the Nazis.”

“Like the United States, they responded to Russia’s aggression in Ukraine in 2014 with wishful thinking,” he said. “The disrepair of their militaries and defense industrial bases, and their overreliance on foreign energy and technology, were further exposed by Russia’s dramatic escalation in 2022.”

By contrast, McConnell said, Japan did not need as many reminders “about threats from aggressive neighbors or about the growing links between Russia and China.”

“Increasingly, America’s allies and partners in the Indo-Pacific are taking seriously the urgent requirements of self-defense,” he wrote in the piece.

The Senate GOP leader then warned of “[s]ome vocal corners of the American right,” which he claimed are “trying to resurrect the discredited brand of prewar isolationism and deny the basic value of the alliance system that has kept the postwar peace.”

“It should not take another catastrophic attack like Pearl Harbor to wake today’s isolationists from the delusion that regional conflicts have no consequences for the world’s most powerful and prosperous nation,” he said. “With global power comes global interests and global responsibilities.”

Last week, Mississippi Republican Sen. Roger Wicker, ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, outlined actions the president and congressional colleagues “should take to prepare America for long-term strategic competition.”

“I hope my colleague’s work prompts overdue action to address shortcomings in shipbuilding and the production of long-range munitions and missile defenses,” McConnell wrote. “Rebuilding the arsenal of democracy would demonstrate to America’s allies and adversaries alike that our commitment to the stable order of international peace and prosperity is rock-solid.”

“Nothing else will suffice,” he continued. “Not a desperate pursuit of nuclear diplomacy with Iran, the world’s most active state sponsor of terrorism. Not cabinet junkets to Beijing in pursuit of common ground on climate policy. The way to prove that America means what it says is to show what we’re willing to fight for.”

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