President Biden’s request for more than $60 billion is more than twice the US Coast Guard’s annual budget.
As Congress wrestles with another supplemental funding request for Ukraine, it’s worth assessing why Kyiv deserves our continued support.
America is facing mounting deficits and debts, and President Biden’s request for more than $60 billion is more than twice the US Coast Guard’s annual budget.
We should not allow the sticker shock to deter us, however.
Support for Ukraine remains a bargain for American national security.
For about 5% of total US defense spending over the past 20 months, Ukraine has badly degraded Russia, one of the United States’ top adversaries, without shedding a single drop of American blood.
Ukraine has inflicted an estimated 300,000 casualties on the Russian military and destroyed or damaged huge amounts of expensive Russian armor, fixed- and rotary-wing aircraft and surface combatants and submarines, even forcing part of Russia’s famed Black Sea Fleet to relocate from Sevastopol to Novorossiysk.
Although Russia can conscript more soldiers and build more weapons, it takes years to train and grow an effective fighting force.
And Ukraine isn’t done yet — when Russia takes the offensive next year, Moscow’s losses will grow rapidly again.
US spending on the war in Ukraine is also revitalizing the US defense-industrial base, which has atrophied since the Cold War’s end.
As Sen. Mitch McConnell has pointed out, the overwhelming majority of funds Congress has approved for Ukraine have gone directly to American manufacturers, totaling some $70 billion across 38 states.
As obsolete US weapons are shipped to Ukraine, they’re replaced by modern systems made in the USA.
Our allies are buying American, too.
As they’ve donated their weapons to Ukraine, Europeans have placed big orders with US suppliers to refill their arsenals or upgrade their capabilities — to the tune of $90 billion to date.
