Ukraine And The Big Money

In yesterday's post, I noted that the US has an open-ended commitment to aid Ukraine based not just on a goal of securing its pre-2014 borders, but on a vaguely expressed additional objective that embraces preventing Russia from being able to re-invade in the future -- although this must also imply changing Russia itself in some fundamental way, which Anne Applebaum, an ally of Secretary Blinken, explains. This will inevitably involve remaking the global political and military order in a way comparable to the Congress of Vienna, Versailles, or Yalta/Potsdam.

In fact, looking at circumstances from that perspective, it appears that Russia's decline as a major power has already rendered Potsdam and its consequences obsolete. Resolving the dilemma will be expensive, and expensive at a world war level. I assume that Secretaries Blinken and Austin see the problem from specific diplomatic and military perspectives, but I would also guess that if pressed, they would say that evaluating the overall national priority, especaily from a budgetary perspective, is above their paygrade.

But that means kicking the decisions up to the White House, where they aren't being made now and are likely not to be made in the near future. Instead, we're getting ad hoc expenditures every few weeks, $500 million here, $30 billion there, with no plan and in particular no budget. Only a few people are starting to recognize this.

On Wednesday’s broadcast of Fox News Radio’s “Brian Kilmeade Show,” author, Washington Post columnist, and CNN political analyst Josh Rogin argued that while it’s important for the U.S. to keep up its support for Ukraine, the Biden administration “hasn’t done enough, to be honest, to keep Congress in the loop. They won’t tell them exactly what the money’s going for. There’s not a clear strategy to end this thing.”

“[T]here are a lot of people in both parties that have real concerns about this money. I mean, $54 billion so far. Now, the President’s asking for another $38 billion. That’s a lot of U.S. taxpayer money.

It's probably more accurate to say that the president has been induced by his handlers to ask for another $38 billion. Even if there isn't a medical condition involved, I don't think it's in his nature to concentrate on plans or objectives of any complexity, and what evidence we have is that Ukraine simply tests his limited patience:

​President Biden lost his temper and raised his voice on the phone with​ Volodymyr Zelensky when the Ukrainian president continued to press for more aid even after Biden signed off on $1 billion worth of military assistance earlier this year, according to a report Monday. ​

The phone call in June, one of many between the two leaders, turned testy when Zelensky began listing what else Kyiv needed and wasn’t getting​ shortly after Biden announced the aid package, NBC News reported.​

The commander-in-chief reportedly blew his stack ​and, with his voice rising, reminded Zelensky of the generosity of the American people, stressing that his administration​ and ​the US military w​ere doing all ​they could to help Ukraine in its war with Russia.

He got testy in June over $1 billion; now he's signing off on $38 billion, with no end in sight. I would guess that Secretaries Blinken and Austin are delighted to see him in Delaware as often as possible and have worked out a means with his handlers to get his signatures on these things when he's preoccupied. Nevertheless, with the Republicans in control of the House, this won't go on forever:

‼️#Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives demand an audit of the funds allocated to support #Ukraine.

The bill stipulates that Congress must receive, within 14 days of its passage, all documents on aid provided to Ukraine, signed by Joe #Biden. pic.twitter.com/eQ5J4Rhw5i

— NEXTA (@nexta_tv) November 18, 2022

My own view continues to be that Zelensky is an honest dealer, but he's working at the level of a real-world Victor Laszlo whose responsibility is primarily to his own small country's interests, while he makes effective appeals to universal principles in doing this. If he can get the attention of the US and the EU, fine, but as Churchill understood about Roosevelt, it's important to have as an ally a US president who's enough of a statesman on his own part to get the support of the US public behind major sacrifice.

In general, the US political process has yet to grasp the scope of this whole project and begin a serious discussion of priorities. At this point, neither Trump nor Biden is enough of a statesman -- even at the Zelensky level -- to start or effectively influence this process.