Burning down the government to support Russia
Why we need to continue supporting Ukraine
The United States narrowly averted a government shut down this weekend, passing H.R. 5860, which funds the federal government through November 17, 2023.
Essentially, Congress has kicked the can down the road—but we’ve seen that a lot lately with these appropriation bills.
What’s worrying, is that 41% of House Republicans voted against funding the government (along with a single House Democrat). What seems to be largely driving this group of dissenters is opposition to support for Ukraine.
Don’t worry, this isn’t a political post.
It is, however, a post on why Ukraine remains important to the United States.
That we need to even be having this conversation is a bit baffling to me, but here we are.
Let there be no doubt, supporting Ukraine against Russian aggression and restoring Ukraine’s territorial sovereignty is well inside the United States’ national interests.
Let’s start with the arguments that some of our politicians are making for defunding our support to this key partner (which mind you, is not new and has been growing for several months now).
…
That’s right, they’re really not offering much in terms of an argument for cutting support. In fact, what started as incredibly non-partisan support has morphed into something far more partisan, and to be honest, no one really knows how or why.
Some of it is that we’re spending too much as a government—and we are. We have a $33 Trillion national debt. But it’s hard to say that these hardliners are overly concerned about that when we’ve gotten such a great deal on decimating the second most powerful military in the world. Without losing any U.S. service members and at a fraction of the cost of our military budget, we’ve sustained the Ukrainian military and government in blunting Russia’s military and bogging them down in a quagmire.
Former President Ronald Reagan would be proud, were he still alive. This is essentially what he did in Afghanistan in the 1980s. Under Operation Cyclone, the United States provided around $3 billion to the Mujahideen to fight the Soviets. That’s about $8.1 billion in today’s dollars. The return on that modest investment was costing the Soviets billions more in funding their war, killing of ~20,000 Soviet troops, and absolute humiliation when they finally withdrew-under-pressure.
Only through our failure to support Afghanistan in the aftermath of the war, did we sow the seeds which would lead to our own quagmire there beginning in 2001. Anecdotally, Charlie Wilson wanted $500M for reconstruction and believed that it would have prevented the rise of the Taliban.
Of course, we’re spending much more in Ukraine. We’ve provided around $75B in aid to Ukraine, about an order of magnitude greater than what we gave the Mujahideen. Of that, only around $45B has been military aid. That investment has absolutely halted the Russian military, causing the deaths of 45,000-50,000 dead and up to 300,000 wounded Russians.
By spending around 5% of our military budget, we have largely halted the territorial aggression of the most pugnacious state in the world. That’s absolutely money well-spent.
Again, I think we can turn to history to understand what happens if we don’t follow through on our commitment to stopping such aggression. Turning back the clock only 75ish years reveals how well appeasement worked to stop territorial aggression (spoiler: it didn’t, instead it emboldened the aggressor).
Russia would love nothing more than to see a fracturing of NATO and Europe. Ending support to Ukraine will embolden them and they may seek additional objectives further west: Transnistria in Moldova, Narva in Estonia, Daugavpils in Latvia, and others.
An argument can be made that China presents a greater threat than Russia today. That’s true, in part because our commitment to Ukraine has proven so costly to Russia. But, it’s also important to note that ending our support to Ukraine will send a message to China that we don’t honor our commitments and that we’ll only support Taiwan, the Philippines, and other countries that China may choose to attack for a year or so, before we get tired.
Make no doubt about it. War is costly. It is fanciful to imagine that a war can be quick and bloodless. The Gulf War was an aberration, not a new way of winning wars quickly and with minimal investment. The boys did not come home by Christmas in 1914, neither did they in 2022.
The specter of nuclear war cannot be ignored, but some things are worth fighting for, even at great risk. Supporting liberal democracies (classical liberalism here, not “capital ‘L’” Liberals as used in American political discourse) is worth fighting for.
I’d argue that this is war worth fighting, even if it meant sending our troops (which fortunately it doesn’t). All that’s required is pennies on the dollar.
I urge you to turn off political pundits on TV and Social Media (especially Tucker Carlson who some argue started this conservative opposition to supporting Ukraine) and to reach out to your congressional representatives and encourage them to see the value of supporting Ukraine. In fact, send them a link to this article with an email. If you need help crafting an email, let me know and I’ll send a template. And no matter what,
Keep building!
Andrew