Week 115

Note: This is Part 2 of a brief two-part response to the passage of the United States’s new Ukraine aid bill. This week’s piece deals with the grim situation the bill represents.

From the start, the Kremlin has telegraphed a clear strategy: pour blood and metal into Ukraine in the hope that the larger, richer, and better-armed West eventually tires of the enormous burden that is spending a fraction of a fraction of its collective wealth on defending the security of a fellow democracy located on its own borders.

It is a stupid strategy. It is also a working strategy. Two years have passed, yet the West has hardly moved past the starting line, slow-rolling or failing entirely to provide even a majority of what is required to see Ukraine win. No threats have been issued, no red lines drawn, no great efforts made to refound the long-decrepit “Arsenal of Democracy.” Our enemies are emboldened, our allies dismayed, and Ukraine weakened by every mumbled excuse we give for failing to do more.

For all the complaints about price-tags and hand-wringing about finances, it is blatantly obvious that the cost of helping Ukraine is entirely political. Since the war began, the West has collectively generated over $100 trillion in economic output; in that same time, less than 0.4% of that amount has been sent to Ukraine, the vast majority of it in the form of old stockpiles and aging systems bought and paid for decades ago whose monetary value is entirely theoretical.

Two years ago, we were provided with the opportunity to make difficult decisions for noble reasons, to arm a friend while gutting an enemy, buttressed by a visible threat that made the justification for quick and decisive action self-evident. Instead, we have chosen – again and again – to kick the can down the road in the hopes that the problem solves itself, as if the exigencies of war can be ignored until they simply… go away.

Failure to act is free only in the short term. In the long term, the interest paid upon inaction compounds until the debt owed is catastrophic. An unfixed leak weakens the foundation, an unattended wound festers, an unmaintained engine breaks. What is cheap and easy to ignore today will be expensive and difficult to fix tomorrow. Every useless debate, every pointless delay, every decision made after months of hesitation only increases the due. If we think we cannot afford to pay our bill today, then we will be stunned by the price that it demands tomorrow.

“It is common sense to take a method and try it. If it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above all, try something… We need enthusiasm, imagination, and the ability to face facts, even unpleasant ones, bravely. We need to correct, by drastic means if necessary, the faults… from which we now suffer.”

— President Franklin Roosevelt