Maybe President Biden was wise to skip that NATO leadership dinner at Vilnius after all? 

One item that was clearly not on the menu was membership for Ukraine anytime soon — something about which Senator Paul, Republican of Kentucky, is increasingly vocal. Mr. Paul’s stance with respect to Ukraine’s relationship to the military alliance not only puts him into rare alignment with President Biden but underscores a growing impatience with President Zelensky’s approach to NATO, perceived in some quarters as injudicious.

That is certainly the view of the outspoken senator, a member of the powerful Foreign Relations Committee and who has previously warned of the danger of Mr. Biden tipping America into what he has called a potential “forever war.” As the NATO parley plays out in Lithuania, Mr. Paul told Fox News’s Martha MacCallum that “in terms of President Zelensky’s criticism of a lack of a timeline for Ukraine’s admission to NATO as ‘absurd,’ there’s an old English adage he might need to become aware of: Never look a gift horse in the mouth.”

It was an extraordinary rebuke of the Ukrainian president, who has seen his international stature elevated to stratospheric levels since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last year. Mr. Paul, with visible agitation, added that “we’ve given them $100 billion and he has the audacity to be so brazen as to tell us ‘we better speed it up’ … I’d say that’s not being very grateful for the $100 billion that we’ve given them so far.”

Almost as surprising was the senator’s admission of common ground with the White House. “I don’t agree with President Biden on a lot, but Biden is right, were we to put [Ukraine] in NATO now, it would guarantee that we would have an active role in the war in Ukraine, more than just supplying arms but actually sending troops and an obligation to do so,” Mr. Paul said. “So I think it would be a huge mistake and I hope that saner minds will prevail.”

Mr. Paul has been a sharp critic of Mr. Biden’s foreign policy fumbles. In January, he admonished the undersecretary of state for political affairs, Victoria Nuland, for jeopardizing the prospects of an eventual settlement of the Ukraine war by, in his view, prematurely accusing President Putin of war crimes. 

“If you’re really thinking that ultimately there might be a peaceful settlement that doesn’t involve unconditional surrender by the Russians or vice versa by the Ukrainians, you might put some thought into the fact that by saying [Putin] is guilty of war crimes and that it’s a possibility that he’s going to the Hague, that makes it … less likely to prosecute a peace.”

Amid the rapidly evolving situation in Ukraine, the senator did not go so far as to brand the Biden administration as incompetent. But President Trump did: “Joe Biden should not be dragging us further toward World War III by sending cluster munitions to Ukraine,” Mr. Trump stated. “He should be trying to end the war and stop the horrific death and destruction being caused by an incompetent administration.”

Mr. Paul told Ms. MacCallum: “One of the things I like about President Trump frankly is that he wanted to keep us out of foreign wars.” He added, “Whether or not we can end it in 24 hours [as Mr. Trump has suggested] is another question, but I think we do have enormous leverage here and we should bring that leverage to bear to try to bring about a solution mainly because I don’t want to see Ukraine further destroyed.”

This is where the positions of senator and president diverge. In Mr. Paul’s view, Mr. Biden is squandering something unique to America’s arsenal: influence. “I see no war that’s going to end with an unconditional surrender. I think ultimately the war ends with a negotiated settlement and as long as we continue to supply unlimited arms to Zelensky I think he sees no reason to have any negotiations,” he said.

He faults Mr. Biden for “putting off negotiations” and said that “ultimately the losers are the Ukrainian people.” 

He also had a message for Secretary Blinken, who arguably even more than the White House press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, is this administration’s exemplar of an individual who parrots talking points without always seeming to realize what they mean: “I would tell [Secretary Blinken] that it’s a lose-lose situation — Ukrainians losing because their people are being injured, killed, maimed, and their country is being destroyed.” He added, “Russia is losing too. It’s probably one of the worst political or foreign policy decisions any leader has ever made in my lifetime, and that was to invade Ukraine. Nobody’s winning.”

That assessment continued with additional criticism of Mr. Zelensky’s approach, which he sees as counterproductive. “Zelensky’s position is he won’t negotiate until the last Russian boots are gone,” he said. “That’s very noble and patriotic of him, for love of his country and to want to get an invader out, but I don’t think it’s realistic,” he added. “If they’re going to wait to negotiate until Russia leaves, it may be a very, very long wait.”

Mr. Paul added, “I think one of the things Trump could help produce would be a ceasefire, or another Republican president to push forward and say ‘we need a ceasefire’ and that would be the beginning of negotiations.” Short of that, he said, “I haven’t seen the Biden administration producing anything positive towards getting a ceasefire.”

The weighty topics of NATO enlargement, cluster munitions, and a protracted war in Europe come as blanket support for providing unlimited military aid to Ukraine can no longer be taken for granted. According to an Associated Press poll in February, 48 percent of Americans said they supported providing weapons to Ukraine, down from 60 percent in May 2022, while 29 percent were opposed. 

Polling in Europe last December showed that 50 percent supported providing Ukraine with arms, down from 56 percent that March, with support dipping to 48 percent in Germany and 36 percent in Italy.

In time Mr. Paul’s comments will likely be construed as less contrarian than realistic. What they do is put him at odds with a president who, despite projecting the image of an old-school Cold Warrior, is still mostly responding to events instead of effectively using America’s unmatched international  leverage to drive them. 

As an election cycle heats up, that approach could be reaching its sell-by date.