The Hill Opinion
Running the numbers: What if the US were to stop supporting Ukraine?
Elaine McCusker, opinion contributor January 30, 2025
Many Americans are understandably concerned about the cost of aid to Ukraine. But they are thinking about the issue the wrong way — we should be considering the cost of Ukraine losing.
Analysis conducted at the American Enterprise Institute has determined that Russia defeating Ukraine would cost American taxpayers an additional $808 billion over what the U.S. has planned to spend on defense in the next five years. This is about seven times more than all the aid appropriated to the Pentagon to help Ukraine since Russia’s 2022 invasion.
This estimate is based on a scenario in which the U.S. stops providing aid and the resulting Russian victory requires us to adapt our military capabilities, capacity and posture in order to maintain our security. The study then uses the Defense Futures Simulator to estimate the spending required to deter and, if necessary, defeat Russia in Europe, while also preventing further conflict by emboldened adversaries in the Pacific and the Middle East.
Without U.S. support, Russia would advance in 2025 as Kyiv runs out of weapons. By 2026, Ukraine would lose effective air defense, allowing Russia to conduct continuous large-scale bombings. Ukraine’s conventional forces would continue to courageously fight but would likely collapse by the end of that year, allowing Russia to seize Kyiv and then drive to the NATO border.
An emboldened Russia would reconstitute its combat units, use Ukraine’s resources to bolster its capabilities, station its forces along the NATO frontier, and be ready to attack beyond Ukraine by 2030.
The notion that America should disengage from Europe and save its forces and money misses the global nature of conflict. While Europe should certainly invest more in its own defense, history has violently shown us the dangers of thinking we can ignore our interests in any given region. Such regional conflict is a thing of the past. Nothing has made that more clear than China, North Korea and Iran’s support of Russia’s war effort.
In order to protect itself — nationally, militarily, economically — the U.S. must remain a global power and invest in the capabilities it needs to protect its partners and itself. A failure of American resolve in Europe will only motivate aggression and threaten our prosperity across the globe.
If Ukraine is allowed to fall, Washington will need a military that is larger, more capable, more responsive, and positioned in more locations. To deter or, if necessary, defeat Russia, the U.S. armed forces would need 14 new brigade combat teams, 18 more battle force ships, eight additional Marine Corps infantry battalions, 555 more Air Force aircraft, and 266,000 more uniform personnel for the increased force structure.
The U.S. would need to fortify its presence in Europe, including prepositioning air defenses, supplies and munitions. Efforts to diversify and expand the industrial base that supports our military would also need to move much more quickly than it does now to fulfill the high demands of modern warfare.
Although a conflict on the European continent would be primarily led by land forces under the cover of air forces, Washington would need to invest in naval capabilities as well. The U.S. Navy would have to discard its plans to shrink its overall number of ships, stabilize its carrier fleet at 12 and buy additional craft — submarines, destroyers, frigates, and logistics and support ships to keep the fleet at sea longer.
The U.S. will also have to maintain a higher state of readiness for home-stationed and deployed forces, which means additional training, improvements to facilities and stockpiles of spare parts. It will need more and better special operations forces, which are essential to intelligence gathering, shaping the battlefield and disrupting the enemy.
Given that Russia is an experienced space and cyber power, the U.S. will also need better architecture and command systems for both domains.
Instead, if America and its allies accelerate assistance, a victorious Ukraine would see Russia retreat behind its own borders with a defeated and diminished military, a struggling economy, weakened partnerships, and a healthy dose of domestic challenges.
Ukraine, in contrast, would be vibrant and free, with a thriving industrial base and a modern military. Washington would be able to scale down its deployments and capabilities in Europe. It would still maintain a presence there, but it would be able to dedicate more resources and attention to the Pacific.
Not only is the U.S. safer when it is engaged, but it also saves money. The U.S. is faced with numerous national challenges. Illegal immigration, financing the national debt and an increasingly unpredictable global security environment all compete for attention and resources. But the stakes are especially high in Ukraine.
Even putting aside the security and moral reasons for supporting a free Kyiv, which are immense, backing Ukraine is a financially sound decision for the United States.
Elaine McCusker is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. She previously served as the Pentagon’s acting undersecretary of defense (comptroller).
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Granderson: Aiding Ukraine has been cheap. Caving to Russia would be far more costly
The Los Angeles Times – Opinion
LZ Granderson – November 22, 2024
After 20 years and $2.3 trillion spent, after more than 100,000 American and Afghan lives lost, one would think our war in Afghanistan would be more of a reference point today. Yet, outside of a few jabs from conservatives regarding President Biden’s handling of the exit, the war was hardly brought up at all this election cycle — despite having ended just three years earlier.
A reminder of how fast society moves and perhaps a glimpse into the future.
When was the last time you heard someone mention Ukraine in casual conversation? Back in February 2022, when Russia invaded, there were vigils in our streets. Now, more than 1,000 days later, after Congress has approved $175 billion in aid, it’s likely to fade into distant memory. President-elect Donald Trump, who has repeatedly questioned funding Ukraine, has vowed to end the war quickly. Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, said he would like to do so through “diplomatic means” next year.
Read more: Opinion: Western aid isn’t prolonging the war in Ukraine. This is
While the average American probably hadn’t thought much about Ukraine before the 2022 invasion, Russian President Vladimir Putin has been thinking about the country for more than 30 years.
“The breakup of the Soviet Union was the collapse of a historic Russia,” he said in a documentary that aired on Russia’s airwaves. Putin has also referred to his country’s 1991 fall as “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century.” For those keeping score at home, he’s ranking the end of the U.S.S.R. as worse than both world wars and the 20 years in Vietnam. “We lost 40% of the territory, production capacities and population. We became a different country. What had been built over a millennium was lost to a large extent.”
Read more: Biden for the first time OKs Ukraine’s use of U.S.-supplied long-range missiles in Russia
Make Russia Great Again may not lend itself to a pronounceable acronym, but it does clearly define Putin’s foreign policy agenda. It’s one predicated on a worldview that sees Ukraine as a rebellious commonwealth and not an independent democracy.
“Throwing off oppression” is a story we know well in this country. It’s a story we teach our children and base our exceptionalism on. It’s a story of freedom. But as we all know, freedom isn’t free.
Under the Biden administration, America was willing to help Ukraine pay to keep its freedom. The incoming Trump administration has signaled this will likely not continue. Other nations will go on to help Ukraine in its fight, but without America’s military and economic power, this coalition will struggle to hold together against Russia’s might.
The gamble in not providing aid to Ukraine is that should that country fall, it won’t satisfy Putin. His desire to restore his country’s glory has been burning for three decades. Why would he stop just as resistance crumbles?
The phrase “elections have consequences” isn’t just about domestic politics. There are consequences abroad as well. When most voters supported Trump’s candidacy, did they fully understand what walking away from Ukraine would mean?
As former Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) told me: “Ukraine gave up its nukes, in exchange for peace. The fact that Russia is attacking now means that only nukes work as a deterrent, so you can expect nuclear proliferation throughout the world.”
Read more: Column: Trump talks tough on Russia now, but as president he bowed to Putin
As president, Trump was slow to respond after Russia fired on and captured Ukrainian vessels and sailors back in 2018. Based on that lukewarm response, and his comments about helping Ukraine, it does make one wonder if Trump has any “red line” for Putin, and if so, what it is and what he is prepared to do to defend it. Unfortunately, there weren’t many opportunities to have these conversations during this election cycle. If there had been, perhaps voters would have a better understanding about the money for Ukraine. According to Kinzinger, a member of the Air National Guard and an Air Force veteran who served in Afghanistan and Iraq, “the money spent on weapons is actually produced here in the United States and we send our old [weapons] to Ukraine. So, we’re actually building jobs and refreshing our own weapons.”
Normally the U.S. pays to have old weapons destroyed, Kinzinger said.
None of this rose above the noise that surrounded a campaign season saturated with misinformation. Trump’s pitch for isolationism, or his willingness to ignore Ukraine, apparently resonated with many voters. And given our habit of quickly moving on from talking about war, it’s doubtful many of us would even remember just how much supporting Ukraine cost us.
On the other hand, we might find abandoning Ukraine and caving to Russia has a far steeper cost — one that will be impossible for us to forget.
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