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Last week, we watched the spectacle of one political party abruptly reversing their position on the combined Border-Israel-Ukraine bill, after saying for months that that was what they wanted.
The most serious casualty of this debacle was the continuing failure to provide desperately needed funding for Ukraine’s fight against the world’s bully, Russia. There are many reasons why supporting Ukraine is in the best interests of the United States.
First, let’s look at who the Ukrainians are fighting – the worst aggressor nation currently on Earth. Within the past decade or so, Russia has invaded or assisted rebel groups in the independent countries of Georgia and Moldova. It invaded Crimea, a part of Ukraine, in 2014. Russia sent troops clandestinely into the Donetsk and Luhansk regions of eastern Ukraine. A Russian anti-aircraft missile shot down Malaysian Airlines Flight 17 in 2014 – 298 passengers and crew were killed. Russia interfered in the UK’s Brexit referendum, in the 2016 and 2020 U.S. presidential elections, and numerous other elections in the west. Russia is engaged in what amounts to a cyber war with us and the western world.
Much of this is because Putin believes in a “Greater Russia. ” He admires Tsars Peter the Great and Catherine the Great, whose imperialist expansion in the Baltic, into Poland and to the Black Sea created the Russian Empire. Putin wants to regain control of or hegemony over the republics that left the Soviet Union in 1991. The Baltic States are particularly worried.
Why should this matter to us, safely separated by two oceans from most of the world? Because an unstable world is dangerous. We and western Europe thought we could remain aloof and isolated from the growing fascist regimes in Germany, Italy and Japan. The British and French vacillated when Hitler moved on Czechoslovakia, when a show of resolve may have backed him down. A stable world is a peaceful, prosperous world, and we can’t pretend that the United States doesn’t need trading and security partners.
The U.S. has sent over $75 billion in humanitarian, financial and military support to Ukraine since the war started. Of that $75 billion, $46 billion was military aid. By comparison, U.S. defense spending in FY 2023 was $858 billion. By spending the equivalent of 8.7 percent of our defense budget, we have helped Ukraine seriously degrade Russia’s military capacity, without one American soldier dying. That’s a pretty good deal for the U.S. Also, much of the military aid actually comes back to us in the form of weapons and ammunition purchased by Ukraine, benefiting U.S. companies and U.S. workers.
By supporting Ukraine and helping them thwart Russian aggression, we signal other autocratic and expansionist regimes like China that their aggression may have serious consequences – think Taiwan.
The U.S. has a checkered history of pulling back support from friends and allies (ask the Kurds in Iraq). We have the opportunity to demonstrate that our pledge of support to allies is dependable.
Supporting Ukraine now is in our direct national interest, and shouldn’t be a political football. Not voting aid to Ukraine would be a shameful and craven act.
