That’s the size of the aid package for the Ukraine that the US Congress has finally approved after six months of dithering.
It would be easy to ascribe the dithering to bad faith, and the change of mind to subsequent pangs of conscience, but this explanation isn’t so much simple as simplistic. This isn’t to suggest that congressmen are incapable of bad faith or have no conscience, only that the mechanisms involved are more complex.
Politicians are driven above all, not to say exclusively, by political considerations. That truism applies tenfold to any election year, such as this one, when politics easily trumps geopolitics.
The two parties are busily trying to score points off each other, and if whole nations suffer collateral damage, politicians aren’t especially bothered. They have their day job to worry about.
The Republicans held up the aid bill not because they root for Putin to win this war, although I’m sure some do. But most of them simply wanted to show the Biden crowd in a bad light.
To that end they insisted for months on encumbering the aid bill with the unrelated ballast of border controls. The stratagem worked because the electorate is more concerned about the hordes of migrants crossing the Rio Grande than about the hordes of Russians fording the Dnieper.
Eventually the two parts of the bill were separated, but even then the Republican Speaker Mike Johnson (whose own position on Putin’s aggression is rather ambivalent) did his utmost to delay the vote. Again discounting the possible but unproven accusations of a pro-Putin stance, he and his idol Trump must have felt they’d win either way.
If the Ukraine ran out of ammunition and sued for peace on Biden’s watch, the Republicans would have screamed about the Democrats betraying America’s allies and promoting evil in the world. If Trump then went on to win in November, and the Ukrainians held on until, say, December, he’d get the praise befitting a peacemaker able to mediate a ceasefire.
The last US president to receive such accolades was Bill Clinton, for his part in the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, supposedly delivering peace in Northern Ireland. Both that travesty and any treaty America would be willing to underwrite in the Ukraine prove yet again that the easiest way to secure peace is to capitulate. Britain capitulated to IRA terrorists then, the Ukraine would capitulate to Russian fascists now, and in both cases American presidents would emerge smelling like roses.
Biden and his people put up token resistance to such tactics, invoking the image of a schoolgirl in the back of her beau’s car. But they had their own reasons not to fight too hard.
For one thing, they are scared stiff of that dread E-word, escalation. They fear – or pretend to fear – that, if the Ukrainians start pushing the invaders back where they came from, the Russians would respond by nuking Warsaw and Vilnius or possibly even London and New York.
Even barring such cataclysms, Putin might force NATO, and therefore America, to take more of a hands-on part in the conflict. The upshot would be that Biden would face the unsavoury choice of going into the election with the reputation of either a warmonger or a heartless betrayer of everything good in God’s creation.
This explains America’s demands that the Ukrainians refrain from striking deep into Russian territory and her refusal to provide the long-range missile capable of doing just that. The Biden administration has even managed to describe as a possible factor of escalation the purely defensive systems capable of protecting Ukrainian cities from annihilation.
At the same time, the Democrats blamed the Republicans in Congress for torpedoing military assistance to the Ukraine, and not without reason. Yet the Biden administration itself refused to use the discretionary funds already cleared by Congress. Thus several billion sat idle in banks instead of being converted into several months’ worth of ordnance for Ukrainian guns.
Neither side, and this should go without saying, was unduly concerned about thousands of Ukrainian civilians being buried under the rubble with their whole families. No one has ever accused modern politicians of being too empathetic, although some people have dared to accuse American politicians of only ever being driven by parochial interests.
So much for the dithering. But why this sudden change of heart?
I’d suggest that the Russians themselves forced America’s hand. Just look at the situation from their perspective and imagine yourself in Putin’s shoes.
The Russians have finally begun to make noticeable advances on the front. These proceed inch by inch rather than mile by mile, but the balance is shifting. The Ukrainians, outgunned 10 artillery rounds to one, are finding it increasingly hard to keep the Russians at bay.
Zelensky’s principal hope is that the US will replenish his dwindling arsenal, with his heroic troops doing the rest. Conversely, Putin’s principal hope is to prevent such a development.
Hence one would expect him to reassure the Americans, through official and other channels, that America has everything to gain and nothing to lose by withholding armaments from the Ukraine. If I were his diplomatic adviser, I’d suggest this is what he should be communicating to Biden:
“Joe, we love and respect America. We understand that political necessity made you help the Ukraine out at first. We’d do the same in your place. By the same token, you must understand why our propaganda has been hostile to America. But we don’t really mean it. You have my personal assurance that, if you block any further aid, Russia will remain your grateful friend forever, and we’ll show our gratitude. Just name your, well, America’s, price.”
(I’d also advise Putin not to use Foreign Minister Lavrov as a messenger. Old Sergei doesn’t mind using the foulest obscenities in public. The other day, when he was asked an awkward question at a press conference, Lavrov laughingly impugned the sexual morality of the reporter’s mother. Since in the past he has shown his ability to do the same thing in English, Putin really ought to find a diplomat who’s more, well, diplomatic.)
That would be the way for Putin to exploit America’s indecisiveness to his full advantage. So what has he done instead? Exactly the opposite.
When a month ago Moscow’s Crocus theatre was shot up and burned by terrorists, Putin’s propaganda instantly held the US responsible. That’s par for the course, and the media din could have been dismissed as simply ruckus for internal consumption.
But then Putin instructed the Russian courts to charge several top US congressmen with sponsoring and financing that terrorist act. Now, unlike Russians, Americans take legal charges, even those in absentia, seriously. Since anyone in his right mind realises how risible those charges are, US legislators were put in a position where they had to respond to what was a blatantly hostile act.
And respond they did, by swiftly pushing the $61 billion aid package through and also confiscating Russian assets held in America and transferring them to the Ukraine. Now Biden has run out of excuses not to send armaments to that beleaguered country, although he may still try to sabotage the aid.
For example, Biden may use his executive powers to declare that sending over some weapons, such as long-range missiles, would run contrary to America’s national interests. But then the Democrats will no longer be able to blame the Republicans for being Putin’s stooges, and Biden will be made to suffer in November.
So hope lives on now, where just a few days ago it was beginning to look moribund. Using their new kit, Ukrainian troops may be able to check the Russian advance and then start pushing back.
Alas, I have to talk about hope, not certainty. God only knows how much time will elapse between congressional approval and the arrival of actual physical crates in the Ukraine. One can only hope it won’t be too long.
I am embarrassed by my country’s lack of support for Ukraine. I think we can all assume that China is watching and biding (Bidening?) her time for an attack on Taiwan.
Hiding behind the threat of escalation just shows how dangerous is the threat from Russia. How does that reconcile with the rhetoric that Russia is only acting out in fear of an attack by NATO? What offensive first-strike attack has NATO ever carried out (or even planned)? Russia may feel threatened, but that is only because she knows she is a threat to the rest of the world and she expects other nations to see it and feel threatened enough to launch an attack. The poor bully. It’s all society’s fault.
Two of the most dangerous flaws in our current government are lack of term limits and riders to bills. Each bill should contain a subject and no language outside that subject should be allowed to be added. This bill should have the subject, “Funds for Ukraine defense against Russia” and no section on border security should have been allowed to be discussed, much less added. Another cause for embarrassment. Politics has become all about re-election and not to “insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty”.