This weekend the US Congress approved a $61B aid package for Ukraine. It isn't hard to understand voices that question never-ending US spending in Ukraine during a time of domestic fiscal distress, so I asked Michael Maniaci, a former Russia Deterrence Officer (West Point + 5 years deployed in Europe), about the strategic rationale behind the bipartisan support for extended war support:
(1) Russia has not executed well on the war in Ukraine. The first six months were a flop, and it’s still wobbly. Gains on the battlefield have overall been small, while the cost has been high (lost hundreds of thousands of soldiers, ostracized by most of the international community).
(2) There’s no way can Russia reenter international diplomacy while Putin is in power. It will be a hostile relationship until he’s gone.
(3) So until Putin’s gone, the US should deter and weaken Russia, rather than letting them grow and build to become a bigger threat.
(4) To win a war one needs to sustain access to three critical resources: capital, weapons, and men. Russia will not run out of any of these any time soon.
(5) The case for spending in Ukraine is to quell a relatively small, limited, and cordoned-off threat via a proxy war now instead of dealing with a boldened & bolstered Russia in a few years. This is what you have to believe.
(6) It’s apparently a high ROI versus opportunity cost (analogy: confronting Hitler in the early-mid 1930s versus 1940). Deterrence, not appeasement, is most effective with rogue dictators. Furthermore, other West-hostile world leaders are paying attention to gauge what they can get away with.
(7) Like Xi, hashtag#Putin knows that imperialism fuels nationalism, so that’s his incentive to continue indefinitely - and beyond Ukraine. Conquests distract the population from domestic affairs (human rights violations, economic woes, corruption, prison state, no free speech, fake elections, political assassinations on the likes of Navalnyj).
(8) Yes, it is also true that US weapons manufacturers profit from war and contribute to US exports (and economic activity). Raytheon and Lockheed Martin are among the biggest lobbyists and donors in DC.
