Congress is poised to provide an additional $60 billion in aid to Ukraine, on top of the previous $111 billion. President Biden is pushing these bills and is expected to sign them.
This latest figure alone is a staggering sum, enough to build 10 Columbia-class nuclear submarines to augment our exhausted navy. Forty percent of Japan’s existing attack submarines are unable to leave dry dock due to maintenance delays.
This brings to mind the 18th century Scottish historian Alexander Tytler’s aphorism: “Democracy always collapses from profligate fiscal policy.”
Currently, FISC in the US is more lenient than Netflix or a night in Las Vegas.
Asked about funding for Ukraine in December, Secretary of State Antony Blinken told reporters: “There’s no magic money that we can extract.”
Apparently it exists.
For more than a year, the Office of Management and Budget has hesitated to respond to Congress regarding the Ukraine funding. Just last week, Sen. J.D. Vance led 16 Republicans in demanding a full accounting from OMB of the funds given to Ukraine. It turns out that the Biden administration sent $14 billion more than Congress authorized, bringing the total to $125 billion.
Instead of punishing the Biden administration for its stunning incompetence and fiduciary misconduct, Congress is rewarding it, and by next week it looks like Ukraine will have $185 billion in funds.
A Heritage Foundation poll this month found that 56 percent of Americans in battleground states think we’ve already given too much to Ukraine. Only 12 percent of respondents think we are not doing enough.
So what explains Congress’s actions in light of looming voter disgust? There are lingering signs of uncertainty about who will be responsible if Ukraine suffers a major defeat this spring or summer.
To understand this, we need to consider two main arguments against American intervention. The first argument claims that without U.S. money and weapons, Ukraine would be crushed and Vladimir Putin would then re-form the Soviet Union. The second argument has a more Machiavellian ring: Ukraine is supplying the warm body to attach a U.S. warhead to Russia’s forehead. the goal? destabilize Russia; Maybe there will be a change of government.
Does President Putin really want to overthrow Europe? Neoconservatives like former National Security Adviser John Bolton like to quote parts of Putin’s April 2005 speech, in which he called the collapse of the Soviet Union “20 He called it “the greatest geopolitical disaster of the century.” The war hawks omit the part where Putin goes on to lament the mass poverty and social paralysis that has resulted, leading many to believe. system. “
This year, in an interview on February 6, when Tucker Carlson directly asked him if he could imagine a situation in which Russia attacked Poland, Putin replied, “Poland would only attack Russia once.” why? Because we are not interested in Poland or Latvia or anywhere else. Why would we do that? We are not interested at all. ”
But perhaps the strongest evidence that Putin has no plans to advance into NATO comes from the first few countries to return under the Iron Curtain. Polls like this one and this one show that majorities in Romania, Bulgaria, Slovakia, Hungary and Latvia do not fear Russia.
And what about the claims that we are destroying Russia’s military and paralyzing its economy? First of all, nearly $300 billion in Allied aid and nearly half a million deaths make this war one of the costliest and bloodiest in history.
Gen. Christopher G. Cavoli, the top U.S. commander in Europe, testified this month that Russia now has more troops than it did at the start of the war. The Russian economy has increased the production of armored vehicles by 4 times, the supply of tanks by 5 times, and the supply of drones and artillery shells by 17 times. That doesn’t seem like a beleaguered enemy.
Faced with a resurgent Kremlin, the Biden administration offers no path to victory, stalemate, or negotiation. The plan appears to be to keep writing checks.
However, the cold calculation of war is unforgiving. Victory usually goes to the country with a larger population and more industrial capacity. Russian soldiers outnumber Ukrainians by at least five to one, and Moscow outnumbers the United States and Europe combined in artillery, the king of the battlefield.
It’s a fair question for American taxpayers to ask, “Is this $60 billion for Ukraine or for American politicians who say if Russia wins this summer their hands will be clean?” is.
Morgan Murphy is a former Pentagon spokesperson, U.S. Senate National Security Advisor, and Afghanistan veteran.
The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.
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