If Washington were intentionally to design a formula for Ukraine’s destruction, it might look a lot like the aid package passed by Congress this week.
Of course, that is not the impression one gets from celebratory reactions to the legislation in Ukraine, Congress, and the media. The package “sends a unified message to the entire world: America will always defend democracy in its time of need,” said Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.).
“This support will really strengthen the armed forces of Ukraine,” commented Ukrainian President Zelensky, adding, “and we will have a real chance at victory.”
"We will stand with Ukraine until victory is won," proclaimed House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.).
Such triumphalism is misplaced. The package includes enough military and economic support to sustain Kyiv’s hopes for a few more months, but nowhere near enough to defeat Russian forces. Of the roughly $61 billion it allocates, $14 billion is reserved for procuring weapons for Ukraine, and it includes an additional $8 billion in financial support to help keep the Ukrainian government afloat. The bulk of the package, however, will go toward replenishing America’s own diminished military stockpiles — which will take years to accomplish — and funding its broader operations in the region.
Some of Ukraine’s more sober-minded supporters concede as much. The package “will provide both a materiel and morale boost,” according to Washington Post columnist Max Boot, but “much more needs to be done. To wrest the battlefield advantage from Russia and to convince its dictator that he cannot win his cruel war of conquest … more U.S. aid will be necessary in the future.” Those hailing the package see the new aid as a holding action, staving off a collapse of Ukraine’s lines and buying time for the West to ramp up military production. This would allow Ukraine new opportunities to regain the offensive in 2025 and beyond.
This optimistic view ignores a discouraging reality, however. The package will not bridge the enormous gap between Russia’s artillery, bomb, and missile production and that of Ukraine and its Western supporters, because the West simply lacks the manufacturing capacity to meet Ukraine’s massive needs, and this will be the case for many years to come. Congressional funding can enable procurement orders, but it cannot create machinists and other skilled workers necessary to man new factories. And it cannot address the enormous manpower disparity between Ukraine, whose birth rate has plunged to one the lowest in the world, and Russia, which has almost five times the population and one of the highest birth rates in Europe.
Moreover, one key to the success of such a long-term approach is America’s own ability to provide Ukraine with large aid packages for many years to come. But the controversies in Congress over this package, coupled with trends in opinion polls that show growing American public skepticism about the war, strongly suggest that such largesse is not politically viable for much longer.
Additional aid would be justified — indeed, it would arguably be required — if it were to be used as leverage in a broader diplomatic strategy for negotiating a compromise settlement of the war that would secure Ukraine and allow its reconstruction while addressing Russian security concerns. But it is tied to no such strategy. The fact that the new aid package includes language requiring the Biden administration to articulate a strategy within 45 days after enactment is a testimony to its absence.
Does the White House intend to pursue negotiations after the November elections, when it might have greater political room to deal with Russia? Does it indeed believe that Ukraine can ultimately drive Russian forces off all of its territory, even though its counteroffensive clearly failed in 2023, when it had significantly more troops and weapons? Or does it intend to be Ukraine’s military benefactor for many years to come, keeping fingers crossed that it can maintain a battlefield stalemate or that Russia will break before the much smaller and much poorer Ukraine collapses?
Absent answers to these questions, the new aid is spending that lacks a coherent plan for making it effective. That makes it a formula for prolonging, not ending, the war. It will almost guarantee that Ukraine will continue throwing its dwindling reserves of manpower into a war it cannot win, and which is wreaking ever more havoc on Ukraine’s infrastructure and its prospects for future prosperity. It will amount to both a waste of money and, even more disturbingly, a waste of Ukrainian lives.
![Following a largely preordained election, Vladimir Putin was sworn in last week for another six-year term as president of Russia. Putin’s victory has, of course, been met with accusations of fraud and political interference, factors that help explain his 87.3% vote share. If this continuation of Putin’s 24-year-long hold on power makes one thing clear, it’s that he and his regime will not be going anywhere for the foreseeable future. But, as his war in Ukraine continues with no clear end in sight, what is less clear is how Washington plans to deal with this reality. Experts say Washington needs to start projecting a long-term strategy toward Russia and its war in Ukraine, wielding its political leverage to apply pressure on Putin and push for more diplomacy aimed at ending the conflict. Only by looking beyond short-term solutions can Washington realistically move the needle in Ukraine. Since Russia’s full-scale invasion, the U.S. has focused on getting aid to Ukraine to help it win back all of its pre-2014 territory, a goal complicated by Kyiv’s systemic shortages of munitions and manpower. But that response neglects a more strategic approach to the war, according to Andrew Weiss of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, who spoke in a recent panel hosted by Carnegie. “There is a vortex of emergency planning that people have been, unfortunately, sucked into for the better part of two years since the intelligence first arrived in the fall of 2021,” Weiss said. “And so the urgent crowds out the strategic.” Historian Stephen Kotkin, for his part, says preserving Ukraine’s sovereignty is critical. However, the apparent focus on regaining territory, pushed by the U.S., is misguided. “Wars are never about regaining territory. It's about the capacity to fight and the will to fight. And if Russia has the capacity to fight and Ukraine takes back territory, Russia won't stop fighting,” Kotkin said in a podcast on the Wall Street Journal. And it appears Russia does have the capacity. The number of troops and weapons at Russia’s disposal far exceeds Ukraine’s, and Russian leaders spend twice as much on defense as their Ukrainian counterparts. Ukraine will need a continuous supply of aid from the West to continue to match up to Russia. And while aid to Ukraine is important, Kotkin says, so is a clear plan for determining the preferred outcome of the war. The U.S. may be better served by using the significant political leverage it has over Russia to shape a long-term outcome in its favor. George Beebe of the Quincy Institute, which publishes Responsible Statecraft, says that Russia’s primary concerns and interests do not end with Ukraine. Moscow is fundamentally concerned about the NATO alliance and the threat it may pose to Russian internal stability. Negotiations and dialogue about the bounds and limits of NATO and Russia’s powers, therefore, are critical to the broader conflict. This is a process that is not possible without the U.S. and Europe. “That means by definition, we have some leverage,” Beebe says. To this point, Kotkin says the strength of the U.S. and its allies lies in their political influence — where they are much more powerful than Russia — rather than on the battlefield. Leveraging this influence will be a necessary tool in reaching an agreement that is favorable to the West’s interests, “one that protects the United States, protects its allies in Europe, that preserves an independent Ukraine, but also respects Russia's core security interests there.” In Kotkin’s view, this would mean pushing for an armistice that ends the fighting on the ground and preserves Ukrainian sovereignty, meaning not legally acknowledging Russia’s possession of the territory they have taken during the war. Then, negotiations can proceed. Beebe adds that a treaty on how conventional forces can be used in Europe will be important, one that establishes limits on where and how militaries can be deployed. “[Russia] need[s] some understanding with the West about what we're all going to agree to rule out in terms of interference in the other's domestic affairs,” Beebe said. Critical to these objectives is dialogue with Putin, which Beebe says Washington has not done enough to facilitate. U.S. officials have stated publicly that they do not plan to meet with Putin. The U.S. rejected Putin’s most statements of his willingness to negotiate, which he expressed in an interview with Tucker Carlson in February, citing skepticism that Putin has any genuine intentions of ending the war. “Despite Mr. Putin’s words, we have seen no actions to indicate he is interested in ending this war. If he was, he would pull back his forces and stop his ceaseless attacks on Ukraine,” a spokesperson for the White House’s National Security Council said in response. But neither side has been open to serious communication. Biden and Putin haven’t met to engage in meaningful talks about the war since it began, their last meeting taking place before the war began in the summer of 2021 in Geneva. Weiss says the U.S. should make it clear that those lines of communication are open. “Any strategy that involves diplomatic outreach also has to be sort of undergirded by serious resolve and a sense that we're not we're not going anywhere,” Weiss said. An end to the war will be critical to long-term global stability. Russia will remain a significant player on the world stage, Beebe explains, considering it is the world’s largest nuclear power and a leading energy producer. It is therefore ultimately in the U.S. and Europe’s interests to reach a relationship “that combines competitive and cooperative elements, and where we find a way to manage our differences and make sure that they don't spiral into very dangerous military confrontation,” he says. As two major global superpowers, the U.S. and Russia need to find a way to share the world. Only genuine, long-term planning can ensure that Washington will be able to shape that future in its best interests.](https://responsiblestatecraft.org/media-library/following-a-largely-preordained-election-vladimir-putin-was-sworn-in-last-week-for-another-six-year-term-as-president-of-russia.jpg?id=34283894&width=1245&height=700&quality=90&coordinates=0%2C77%2C0%2C77)
