The Misguided Opposition to the $40 Billion Ukraine Aid Package

It’s an opportunity to put Russia in its place for the foreseeable future without risk to American troops.

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The foreign policy fissure within the Republican Party was on full display last weekend. While Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell visited Kyiv with several other top-ranking Republicans, Sen. Rand Paul was busy delaying the new $40 billion package aid package for Ukraine that had just passed the House of Representatives with broad bipartisan support.

According to Paul, who frequently echoes America’s libertarian-leaning isolationists, the spending bill “threaten[s] our own national security, and it’s frankly a slap in the face to millions of taxpayers who are struggling to buy gas, groceries, and find baby formula.” Paul kept the bill from passing by unanimous consent, but the Senate voted 81-11 to end debate on Monday, clearing the way for the bill to pass. 

Worryingly, the proposal to double down on aid to Ukraine at a critical time attracted flak not only from usual suspects but also from the Heritage Foundation, the once-venerable bastion of Reaganite thought. Last week, a press release from Heritage’s advocacy twin, Heritage Action, lambasted the proposal for “recklessly [sending] our taxpayer dollars to a foreign nation without any accountability.” It is “fiscally irresponsible and the epitome of everything that is wrong with how Washington works today,” writes James Jay Carafano, Heritage’s vice president of foreign and defense studies.

To their credit, critics at Heritage do not repeat the canards about the aid’s “escalatory” nature. Besides complaining about $9 billion in “foreign bureaucrats’ retirement bills” (read: financial aid to support Ukraine’s public finances in a time of war), the bulk of the argument against the bill is that it adds to the federal deficit because it does not come accompanied with an equivalent cut to spending elsewhere.

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  1. Avatar photo
    Pat Riot

    As I've been saying....

    "MAGA Republicans aren’t isolationist. They’re pro-Putin."

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/05/24/republican-gop-pro-russia-pro-putin-ukraine-war-isolationism/

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  2. Avatar photo
    Ben Connelly

    Good article. I agree 100%.

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  3. Avatar photo
    MatthewRobin

    Although I support the aid, I believe we need to discuss what "Victory" looks like.
    My article from last week discusses this.
    https://infraredline.substack.com/p/warzone-ukraine-defining-victory

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  4. Don Harban

    For starters, I fully support our efforts in this enterprise -- including victory over Russia and the kinds of assistance assist good neighbors recover from this calamity.

    It is my fondest hope that Americans fully understand that this is now a WAR between us and Russia. "US" is the United States and its current putative allies. I think the administration has done an excellent job of rebuilding less than optimum relationships with our allies.

    From the standpoint of doing what is necessary to WIN, I think the administration has said the right things -- specifically telling the Ukraine that we will be with them to victory (whatever that means). While observers are hemming and hawing, we should understand that we have crossed the line (or will very soon cross the threshold) where the Ukraine is our proxy in this war. For humanitarian reasons they CANNOT afford to lose. But as a practical matter, we have pretty well positioned ourselves (whether or not we have our own citizens in the war) to where WE cannot afford to lose.

    This is the fifth rodeo in my lifetime where we have undertaken to implement our country's good intentions and enter into a "good war". None ended up well. Given the loss of our credibility in the disastrous wrap-up in Afghanistan, one has to wonder how we can afford (not economically) one more fiasco. And we have laid this one out as an enterprise that we will WIN.

    Opposition to the war is wrong -- dead wrong -- especially when we consider that our actions to date render is more than a little pregnant. In for a penny in for a pound.

    We have taken action in this war to the point where we can characterize it any way we please -- proxy, police action, whatever. We must win. And we must keep the alliance together. Even if it turns out be messier than we currently imagine.

    I understood what was going on in the three most recent rodeos -- and in their beginnings I supported them -- much like today's "patriots" are supporting our war in Ukraine. Much like the other patriots who supported our other misbegotten wars at their beginnings. It is funny (not) how many of those patriots forgot where they started once failure became inevitable. It is my faint hope, that win, lose or draw, today's patriots will not betray their beliefs before the cock crows three times.

    It will soon become useful for our Leader to face the nation and outline why we are in this war and what our objectives are in plain language. None my life's four rodeos were accompanied with definitions of how we would know we won. "Whatever" is not an honest response.

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    1. Avatar photo
      JohnF

      One major difference in this particular rodeo is that the conflict is between two extant and functioning governments. The way things are going, the eventual outcome of this thing is unlikely to change that. Unlike in Iraq or Afghanistan, there won't be any need for "nation-building" or any kind of effort to introduce a new political system into a country that isn't well suited for it. At some point, Russia will stop lobbing artillery at targets throughout Ukraine and will have to withdraw its armies from at least a portion of the territory it now occupies. The more damage that Ukraine can do to Russia's conventional forces before this happens, the more likely it is that the shooting will stop at some point and the war can be considered to be over.
      Russia will then have to dig its way out of the fiscal, economic, and diplomatic hole that it has dug for itself. That may be under Putin or someone else, but it will still have at least a semi-functional government that will keep most of the country together. Meanwhile, I don't think there's any doubt that Ukraine will unite behind Zelensky and the political situation will stabilize. Their bigger problem will be physically rebuilding their towns and cities while staving off the more corrupt elements of their society.
      Ukraine will likely need considerable help from the US and the EU, but that will be needed for reconstruction, rather than "peacekeeping" activities or battling insurgents.

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      1. Don Harban

        I wish I. had your prescience as to how this conflict is going to play out. While the two governments are more "more extant and functioning" than our previous failures, it is not at all clear that either government will be as "extant and functioning" as may be necessary to end and unwind this thing.

        As to the end of fighting, the end of fighting does not necessarily mean the end of the war. Surely our sanctions will have an impact on Russia, but Russia is not without a few cards of its own. For all practical purposes it can end its natural gas shipments to the Ukraine and, given Ukraine's nearly landlocked situation, it can probably embargo the Ukraine's grain shipments. These things can be implemented with a minimum of military resources.

        It is not clear that Russia's "extant and functioning" government will be willing and/or capable of acting in accordance with your assumptions. And, no matter how impressed with Zelenski, one person does not make a government and wartime governments seldom transition to efficiently productive civilian governments. Financially, the Ukraine will probably have to rely almost entirely of external support. I would place a fairly high probability that whatever transition government follows the current wartime government will have different views on how how to allocate the foreign money that will be available to help it rebuild.

        This is not to suggest that we shouldn't assure victory followed by rebuilding -- even if the successing government is not entirely pleasing to us. It does suggest that we have fairly consistently exhibited a deficiency in attention span related to long term undertakings. I will be surprised if some of today's American patriots don't forget the sympathy they have right now for the beleaguered Ukrainians.

        And like our patriots for wars in the recent past, we may likely see a case of convenient amnesia as the full burden of this enterprise becomes obvious.

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        1. Avatar photo
          JohnF

          I'm trying to be more optimistic these days. 😏
          Looking at this from an admittedly simplistic level, there are a few possible ways this plays out:
          1. Russia sweeps through Ukraine and takes over the country (highly unlikely at this point).
          2. Ukraine triumphs, Russia withdraws completely, and Putin is either replaced or substantially reduced (not quite as unlikely, but still possible. I fully admit the possibility that anyone who replaces him will be just as bad.
          3. The Russian and Ukrainian armies pound the stuffing out of each other for the next few months. Russia absorbs huge casualties in both troops and equipment and loses the ability to go on the offensive. Meanwhile sanctions make it extremely difficult for them to resupply their military. Two possibilities result:
          a: Once both parties are exhausted and it's clear to the Russians that the whole thing has become pointless, a negotiated settlement is reached that cedes back all territories taken to date with a few exceptions. The Russian army goes home and Russia tries to figure out how to dig itself out of the hole it created.
          b: Russia digs in and tries to hold on to the gains that it's made, trying to hold on to Kherson and Mariupol and the "land bridge" to Crimea that it's created. This leads to a situation similar to the pre-invasion conflict that has been going on in the Donbas for the past eight years. The Russians will not only have to hold defensive positions indefinitely while facing various insurgent operations, but they'll also have to come to terms with the fact that they've pretty much destroyed the places that they've "conquered" and they don't have the resources to restore them.
          I understand what you're saying about the post-conflict governments. The point I was trying to make was that the situation will still be very different than it was in Afghanistan and Iraq, where one of the first things the US did was completely destroy the existing government and then try to replace it with "democratic institutions." While Mariupol may be rubble at this point, the structure of the Ukrainian government is not.
          Just one point on the Natural Gas situation. Unless the Germans decide to allow Nord Stream 2 to be completed and begin operating, most of the Natural Gas that Russia exports to the rest of Europe will still have to go 𝒕𝒉𝒓𝒐𝒖𝒈𝒉 Ukraine (Russia doesn't really have the option of just cutting off Ukraine if they actually want to keep their economy going). I would expect that these access routes and rights-of-way would be part of any eventual negotiation.

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          1. Don Harban

            Concerning Russian termination of natural gas deliveries to the Ukraine: I spent most of my career in energy and extractive industries including pipelines and renewable energy. I was president of an interstate pipeline and an intrastate pipeline system. Russia has sole control and custody of the gas that transits the Ukraine. Russia has, on occasion, interrupted deliveries to the Ukraine without interrupting downstream customers.

            I suppose the Ukraine could destroy pipeline facilities to affect deliveries to everyone, but short of that they do not have the capability to divert gas to themselves.

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  5. Avatar photo
    Pat Riot

    It's wrong to call it "misguided" when these same traitors would approve of aid to any other country not fighting *Russia*: it's *traitorous*.

    What is "misguided" is taking *Russia's* side in the war because you want to further your political career.

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  6. Raincheck

    $40 billion to stop WW III (in the form of more Russian invasions in Europe) is a bargain. Where do we sign up?

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  7. Avatar photo
    Rjosephpaquette

    When your neighbors house is on fire, you don't quibble over the cost of garden hoses he wants to borrow.

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  8. Pohl

    One quibble. I think it’s worth saying that an even better bargain is ending the war on decent terms, and the talk of what a great geopolitical boon this is for us, and then ramping up aid to Ukraine’s military when men and equipment are not being shot at. But, yes, I want them to do as well as they can first, without becoming bitter-enders. We still have to exercise caution ourselves.

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  9. Lane.Patterson

    Great article. I think that, regardless of the wallpaper about deficit spending, a large part of the reason 11 Republicans voted against proceeding is that a Dem is president. And a contingent of Dems would do the same if an R we're president. Thankfully, there are enough semi-non-crazies to push the bill through, but people of America, are we not bored of this partisan hackery?

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