The US Congress finally overcame Trumpist opposition and approved a new aid package for Ukraine. The Biden administration presumably had material ready to be sent, just awaiting authorization from Congress, so the effects of this legislative advance will be rapid.
Like many observers, I am at once relieved, embarrassed, angry and worried about what happened. I am relieved that a beleaguered nation will likely receive help in time to survive, at least for a while, something that was increasingly in doubt due to the overwhelming superiority of Russian artillery. Ashamed that things have come to this, that the United States has come so close to betraying a democracy in danger. I’m angry at the political faction that blocked aid for so many months, not, as I’ll explain below, because of reasonable concerns about the cost, but probably because they want Vladimir Putin to win. And I’m worried because this faction remains powerful – the majority of House Republicans voted against aid to Ukraine – and could still doom Ukraine for years to come.
But I’m going to leave emotions aside and try to do an analysis. In particular, I will address some myths about aid to Ukraine. No, spending on Ukraine is not a huge burden on the United States that comes at the expense of domestic priorities. No, the United States is not bearing this cost alone, without help from our European allies. Yes, U.S. aid is still crucial, in part because Europe can provide money but is not yet in a position to provide enough military equipment.
Flags of the United States and Ukraine in front of the US Congress, Washington, April 23, 2024. Photograph: Mariam Zuhaib/Associated Press
To understand these points, I find it helpful to look at the obvious historical parallel to current aid to Ukraine: Franklin Roosevelt’s Lend-Lease program, which began providing aid to the United Kingdom and China in 1941, before Pearl Harbor officially led the United States into World War II.
It is often forgotten how controversial this aid caused at the time. Many people probably know that there was an “America First” movement that opposed any aid to struggling England, in part because some of its prominent leaders, especially Charles Lindbergh, were racist and openly sympathetic to the Nazis.
I suspect fewer people know that even in Congress, Lend-Lease was a deeply partisan issue. The initial bill, enacted in early 1941, passed the House with very little Republican support. Even more surprisingly, support for Lend-Lease was closely related to economic ideology. Almost all Liberals were in favor of supporting the United Kingdom in its darkest hour; many conservatives were not.
Even so, the aid was approved. Congress appropriated $13 billion before the attack on Pearl Harbor. This was an immense amount at the time – about 10% of the annual Gross Domestic Product of the United States. However, the surprising thing is that most of this total did not consist of armaments. As the American Historical Association noted: “Our munitions industry was still largely in the tooling state. And the flow of ready weapons, at first, was just a trickle.”
In fact. Europe had begun to rearm years before the start of the Second World War, while the isolationist United States had not developed a large defense sector – to cite a famous example, the Sherman tank only went into production in 1942. As a result, most of America’s initial aid took the form of food—in the beginning, we were less democracy’s arsenal than its breadbasket.
How does aid to Ukraine compare to this experience?
First, it is much smaller relative to the size of our economy. The newly approved package will roughly double the cumulative aid we have given to Ukraine, but at about $60 billion, it is less than 0.25% of GDP — about one-fortieth the size of the initial Lend-Lease allocation. Anyone who claims that spending on this scale will break the budget, or that it will seriously interfere with other priorities, is either mathematically illiterate, disingenuous, or both.
What about allegations that the United States is bearing too much of the burden? Last week, Donald Trump accused Europe of not paying its share: “Why is the United States investing more than $100 billion in the Ukraine War than Europe, and we have an ocean between us? Why can’t Europe match the money invested by the United States to help a country in desperate need?”
The answer to Trump’s questions is that his claims are false. As the Kiel Institute reports, “data shows that total European aid has long surpassed US aid – not just in terms of commitments, but also in terms of specific aid allocations sent to Ukraine.” Many, although not all, European nations are spending substantially more in support of Ukraine as a percentage of GDP than we are.
Donald Trump speaks at a campaign event, April 13, 2024. Photograph: Michelle Gustafson/The New York Times
Why? Remember that in the first year of Lend-Lease, the United States could not supply many weapons, despite the immense size of our economy, because years of low military spending left us with an underdeveloped military industrial base. It took a few years to transform the general industrial power of the United States into comparable military power. Right now, Europe is in a similar situation: It has the money to help Ukraine and, for the most part, it has the will, but it does not have the production capacity to meet Ukraine’s military needs.
This is gonna change? Europe is moving toward greater military capability, but more slowly than it should, and American help remains essential.
So, as I said, I’m relieved that the United States has finally released essential aid, but I’m still very worried about the future. At least for now, US support remains crucial to Ukraine’s survival.
