The Biden administration on Monday sent Congress an urgent warning about the need to approve tens of billions of dollars in military and economic assistance to Ukraine, saying Kyiv’s war effort to defend itself from Russia’s invasion may grind to a halt without it.
In a letter to House and Senate leaders and also released publicly, Office of Management and Budget Director Shalanda Young warned the U.S. will run out of funding to send weapons and assistance to Ukraine by the end of the year, saying that would “kneecap” Ukraine on the battlefield.
She added that the U.S. already has run out of money that it has used to prop up Ukraine’s economy, and “if Ukraine’s economy collapses, they will not be able to keep fighting, full stop.”
The money spent on Ukraine has been essentially pennies relative to any significant domestic program.
If you instead redistributed all the $113 billion spent since the invasion began in 2022, you could give each American a grand total of $340. A nice chunk of change, to be sure, but spread out over the course of the war, this is literally $15 a month.
Personally, I’m okay having $340 less over the course of nearly two years if the alternative is tens of thousands of dead Ukrainians and Russia successfully re-asserting that violent conquest will not be resisted. Moldova would almost certainly be invaded next as well, since they’re not in NATO. $15 a month is a pretty damn cheap price to pay to protect a democracy and save countless lives (not to mention, the torture and rape the Russian army has been committing as well)
Not to mention getting to neener neener about being on the side of international law and order if only for once at least.
Do you feel the same way about every other conflict in this world or just the one in Europe? What about spending money to prevent the conflict in Africa (Ethiopia) or in Asia (Myanmar)? Will you be willing to pay higher taxes to fight off the drug cartels in Central and South America?
We got all these issues here in the US. Homelessness, gun violence, drug overdoses, overcrowded prisons, massive personal debt (student loans, car, credit card), etc. I don’t care to arm another nation and play proxy war.
Well, we do already fund a ton of foreign aid all over the world, so quite a lot of that is already happening. But to address those particular things: homelessness is not a problem where simply throwing money at it magically solves it; it’s incredibly complex. New York City alone spends 3.5 billion dollars a year just on homelessness. The only financial solution to gun violence is to bribe the SCOTUS to repeal DC v. Heller. Drug policy is largely in the hands of the states, but even then, there’s no simple solution to it, particularly when you have to deal with local politics for things like treatment facilities. Prisons are largely state operated. Personal debt is largely outside the scope of the federal government, but even then, student loan forgiveness was attempted. But to throw a number at it, redirecting all Ukraine aid towards individual credit card debt would pay for only 10% of it.
Are there particular federal programs of comparable financial impact with sufficient political support that you think would pay significant returns if boosted by foreign aid money (ignoring the general decline in global stability that would ensue).
I mean, the economic dividends there are obvious. If it really was as simple as throwing some money at Central and South America in order to make the cartels vanish forever and turn those countries into stable countries that we could do significant trade with, we’d earn far more than we paid. But that price tag doesn’t actually exist, because these problems are more complicated than simply throwing money at them.
I didn’t make my point clear in the previous post so I’ll state my stance. I don’t really care to send money to Ukraine so they can fight their war. I think maybe a good percentage of Americans would feel the same (mostly republicans). I don’t have the same reasons as they have however. When I indicated the money is better spent here I was referring to lowering my taxes. I know that the money to Ukraine won’t even lower my taxes by 0.01% and the real money sink is military and social security but the optics don’t look good in my eyes.
Take the perspective of the other side. “I’m paying all this money in taxes, my roads are bad, crime from the drugs are around my corner, my job ain’t covering all my expenses like it used to. And those people in Washington are giving money to the Europeans so they can fight a war!”
Nobody cares about local sectarian extremists killing each other over nothing. That’s not what’s happening in Ukraine, where the stakes actually matter to the international community.
Explain how the war in Ukraine is so important to the international community because the only ones I see care are the western countries. USA, EU, probably Australia and Canada.
International Grain supply?
Africa in particular heavily depends on Ukrainian grain shipments, without which said countries will likely descend into scarcity induced violence, which will create yet another international migrant crisis for the western right to act like helping with is tantamount to surrendering to an invasion while swearing how totally not racist they are.
And if you think those countries would be fine if either Ukraine or Russia held those fields and ports, no they wouldn’t because Russia has demonstrated it is well willing to exploit market power for political gain, meaning that unless you sign on with whatever Putin wants, you can forget about feeding your people without paying through the nose for it.
This is literally a war to protect the sovereign rights of all smaller nations, first of all to not be invaded, and second of all to chart their paths without being extorted into an expedient lane by a market share superpower holding their ability to have food hostage for political favors.
That’s pretty much the only relevant international community. Those countries pretty much represent most of the world’s economic and military power.
Did you forget that China is the second largest economy in the world? The Middle East and OPEC has a stranglehold over the world energy. Asia is the world manufacturing hub. The west is not the only relevant international community.
Oh no, I was talking about the free world, not autocracies and slave labor states.
No matter what their governments are they are still a part of this world. And my original statement still stands.
I know what you’re saying. I’m suggesting they aren’t world citizens; they aren’t needed to conduct most of the world’s business going forward and are, for the most part, adequately addressed by a policy of isolation and containment. They grow weaker with time, more dependent on one another, and spread increasingly thin. Talking about the “Group of Friends” countries.
Your point was that such countries aren’t supporting Ukraine so it’s technically not accurate when I say the international community is supporting Ukraine.
My point is, of course they don’t support Ukraine, they are sucking the tits of Daddy Russia, or Daddy Iran, Daddy China: such shitholes of oppression and corruption as Cuba, Venezuela, Syria, North Korea, Belarus, Laos, Zimbawe, etc. They are hypocritically united by isolationism, codependency, shared disregard of human and labor rights and legal and international norms. And therefore it is accurate to say they aren’t part of the international community; how can they be part of something they want to burn down?