"Recoup the costs"

The sadism of American policy to war-torn Ukraine

The premise of American foreign policy to Ukraine, today, is one of grievance. As the American president, vice-president, and national security advisor constantly repeat, Ukraine, the victim of a large-scale and criminal Russian invasion, must "recoup the costs" to the US taxpayer for aid received under the Biden administration.

It is worth patiently considering this proposition. It reveals little about Ukraine, but much about America in February 2025.

1. The American demand is of an extraordinary scale. In Kyiv and again in Munich, the Americans proposed that Ukraine concede half of the profits from its mineral rights in perpetuity and from other national resources and from its ports in perpetuity with a lien on everything important -- in exchange for essentially nothing. This is not really a monetary proposition, let alone a "deal," but rather the demand that Ukraine become a permanent American colony. It amounts to blackmail enabled by ongoing Russian invasion. In effect, the United States is telling Ukraine to concede its resources to the United States, under the threat that American aid will be otherwise withdrawn, and those resources will be taken by Russia.

2. Ukraine is currently under attack by the Russian Federation, which invaded its south and southeast in 2014 and then began a full-scale invasion in 2022. For three years, Ukraine has resisted the largest offensive in contemporary history. The American demands amount to extremely severe war reparations upon Ukraine, far more severe than was demanded (for example) of Germany after either world war. But this demand is directed against Ukraine, and Ukraine is not the aggressor. Russia is the aggressor. Ukraine is the victim. Until now, the discussion in the United States and elsewhere was the reparations that Russia, as the aggressor state, should pay. That would be the historically normal discussion. It would also be the strategically normal discussion, in that it raises the costs of war to the current aggressor and to future aggressors.

3. The demand that Ukraine pay a huge sum to the United States is contrary to any logic of ending the war. For the war to come to an end, the aggressor, Russia, must be weakened and the defender, Ukraine, must be strengthened. If the United States were to demand the heart of Ukraine's economy in the middle of the war, the opposite would be achieved. Ukraine would be weakened and Russia would be strengthened. This escalates and lengthens the current war, and makes a wider war more likely.

4. Even if we consider the American demand in terms other than as colonialism, reversed war reparations, or warmongering pro-Russian intervention, even if we regard it on its own terms as a repayment of American aid, this would be contrary to usual practice. When one country chooses to aid another country, it is understood that this has its basis in the interests of the first country. In any event, one cannot provide aid and then later claim that it is a loan that has to be paid back.

5. The price that the Americans use to characterize what is owed them -- $500 billion -- is both too low and too high. It is far less than the value of the perpetual claim to Ukrainian resources that they are making right now. And it is far more than the United States has given Ukraine. The US has committed, over three years, about $66 billion in humanitarian aid and about $119 billion in military aid. That second figure has to be examined a bit critically. Most of that money stayed in the United States, financing American factories in America and paying American workers. The rest of it was usually not money at all, but weapons, to which were assigned a dollar amount for accounting purposes. Most of the weapons that were actually sent to Ukraine were obsolescing and would never have been used by the United States in a conflict. Instead, they would have been dismantled and thrown away, at cost to the United States taxpayer. Even if we take the American official price tag, we are looking at $185 billion, not $500 billion. And the true figure would probably be closer to a total $100 billion, spread over three years.

6. It is important to keep these numbers in perspective. $185 billion or $100 billion is a lot of money. But over the course of three years of the largest war fought since 1945, it is not a huge sum. It is far less than the Ukrainians have paid themselves. It is markedly less than the Europeans have granted to Ukraine (and they, of course, are not now demanding that it be paid back). It amounts to about a nickel on the defense department dollar. (And it is, by far, the highest-performing nickel on the defense department dollar). It is about a penny on the US budget dollar. The costs to the United States of the Iraq War were at least twenty times higher. The amount of US aid to Ukraine, a country of forty million people fighting alone the largest war since 1945, is less than half of the personal wealth of a single US taxpayer, Elon Musk. In fact, the increase to Musk's wealth since Trump was elected president three months ago is greater than all of the American aid given to Ukraine over the last three years. Musk could personally pay an annual share of US aid to Ukraine and still be the richest man in the world. As these various comparisons suggest, the United States is a huge economy with a huge governmental budget. We can be generous and make a decisive positive difference in world history at a cost that we do not even notice.

7. It was reasonable of the Biden administration and of Democrats and Republicans in Congress these last three years to believe that aid to Ukraine served American interests, no matter how narrowly these interests might be construed. No American soldiers have fought in a war of this scale against an enemy of this kind. Ukrainians have taught Americans a great deal about how modern warfare is fought. And Ukrainians have used American weapons systems to greater and different purposes than their original design. Rather than sitting on shelves in US warehouses and the being thrown away, these weapons systems have undergone an audit on the battlefield, generating extremely valuable information for Americans. Ukrainians have also developed their own weapons systems, items that do not exist in the United States, but which in future (assuming Ukrainian victory and an alliance with the United States) would be shared. In even the narrowest military terms, the investment in Ukraine more than recouped its costs.

8. The security and economic gains for the US from its investment in Ukraine, however, were far broader. Ukraine kept the conflict local, thereby preventing global economic instability and financial losses that would have been incalculably greater than the sums discussed here. Ukrainian resistance to Russia, coming as it did at the end of the covid era, was one of the preconditions for global economic recovery. The Ukrainians have essentially fulfilled the entire NATO mission, absorbing the force of the entire Russian army on their own, and sparing others, including the United States, the far greater costs of a larger war. By holding off Russia, the Ukrainians have also deterred Chinese aggression in the Pacific, by demonstrating just how costly and difficult offensive operations can be. Until 2022, that was the most feared scenario for a global war, the costs of which, in human and financial terms, would have been orders of magnitude greater than US aid to Ukraine. Should the United States continue its policy of weakening Ukraine and strengthening Russia, all of those costs, stupendously greater than the costs of aid to Ukraine, will have to be paid by Americans.

9. It is morally grotesque, during this war, to put imagined American grievances first. The American taxpayer has helped Ukraine tremendously, and has every reason to be proud. A very modest amount of aid has changed the history of the world. Americans have every right to be proud of the humanitarian aid that has allowed Ukrainians to live to and to rebuild, and to be proud of the performance of their weapons systems and of the significant difference that they have made in this war. Ukrainians are grateful, and their officials always make public acknowledgements of the value of U.S. assistance; in Ukraine itself civilians applaud when they catch sight of what they think is a US system. But the costs of this for Americans has been only financial, and that cost has been recouped already a thousand times in economic stability and national security. The costs of the war to Ukrainians, however, are of a completely different nature. They have lost tens of thousands of children, kidnapped by Russia. Hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian soldiers have been injured. Tens of thousands have been killed. People under occupation suffer mass torture. Cities have been totally destroyed. And yet, at the same time, Ukrainians rebuild. And they fight, as best they can, against odds thought to be impossible. Ukrainians rebuild, as I have seen for myself in five trips to the country since the full-scale invade began. They take responsibility during an impossible situation. For this they deserve our respect and our support.

10. This whole business of "costs," I fear, is a carefully designed information operation. It is a fact widely known and exploited that Donald Trump has a personal fear of being "ripped off." This known vulnerability is visible when he speaks about Ukraine with a sense of personal grievance or with other high emotion. This weakness is, one must fear, exploited by Putin and others who wish to direct American policy. Unfortunately, in an oligarchical system in which emotions can have a decisive effect on policy, this approach has been very effective. It is possible that Trump has also been convinced, in some larger sense, that Ukraine is simply a vulnerable colonial territory that can be carved up, as in the redivision of a plot of property in a real estate transaction. The attempt to run the world this way, though it may appeal to Trump's personal worldview, will lead to much less American power overall. Should it lead to Russian victory in Russia's war of aggression against Ukraine, this will be a moment of historical weakness indelibly attached to Trump and others pursuing the current policy of wartime sadism against a loyal and important ally.