Today’s question is from my long-time friend Sherry, who wrote:
The situation in Ukraine is heavy on my mind. I have no idea how there is never enough money for America, but something like helping Ukraine becomes a global crisis and all of a sudden we have the money to help another country. I can't help thinking what that kind of money would do for the U.S.
I wonder if we will ever get our money back from Russia. We should confiscate the assets we can to help pay for what they have done.
So, my question is… how does the world get Russia out of Ukraine so we can stop funding the war, and so Ukraine can become whole again? I believe in the 10 steps The President of Ukraine laid out...but it seems impossible!
That’s a really good question, and it’s one that comes up in one form or another all the time. I think there are several different aspects to this situation.
The thing that’s probably the most obvious is that there’s only one way to get Russia out of Ukraine without a global, possibly nuclear, war, and that’s funding Ukraine itself. If Western nations can prevent Russia from conquering Ukraine, over time the regime will become so weakened that they will agree to peace terms, or else the Russian dictator “falls out a window”, as so many of his enemies have. Either way, the war will end when Russia has had enough.
There’s no way that Russia will ever pay for its illegal war, and Western governments have (so far) shown very little appetite for penalising big corporations that do business with the Russian regime. The main barrier to cutting Russia off from the global economy is that Europe is still dependant on Russian oil and gas. The European Union is trying to rapidly accelerate their move away from that dependence, but there’s no easy or quick solution, and while it remains, Russia has a source of foreign money to spend on its war, and European nations can’t push too hard without retaliation, as we’ve already seen.
All of which means that the question of cost in a situation like this has to be seen in its larger context, namely, how much higher the cost would be to do nothing—or to do more. The reality is, this isn’t just about saving the Ukrainian people and nation, but about preserving freedom and democracy throughout Europe and beyond. Time was, that sort of statement would have been hyperbole, but now it’s simply the truth.
The Russian dictator is determined to restore the Russian Empire—not merely the Soviet Union, but going back to czarist times. So far, he has relied on installing compliant regimes in former Soviet “republics”. For example, he’s done that in Belarus, which gave him a staging point to use to invade Ukraine when the Ukrainian people had the audacity to depose the Russian regime’s hand-selected despot. It’s obvious now that the Russian dictator really did think that Kyiv would fall in a few days, and the Russians would be able to install an obedient servant to rule what would essentially have been a Russian vassal state. The Russian dictator vastly underestimated the fierce determination of the Ukrainian people and army, and vastly overestimated how good his own army was.
We also know how reliant the dictator is on mercenaries, who are responsible for most of the war crimes, acts of genocide, and brutality—most, but not all. Russia has deliberately targeted civilians in their homes, but they’ve also target hospitals, which itself is a war crime under international law going back the first international convention of 1864. The International Criminal Court and the United Nations have sent war crimes investigators to Ukraine to document Russia’s crimes—and, Russia is obligated by membership in the United Nations to turn over war criminals for prosecution, though no reasonable person could imagine them ever agreeing to do that while the current dictator is in power.
All of that is important to note because it underscores the Russian dictator’s imperial ambitions, ruthlessness, and gleeful brutality. He will never stop with Ukraine: He plans to eventually invade Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, and also—at the very least—the rest of the European nations that were formerly controlled by the Soviet Union. However, that would mean a direct attack on NATO nations, which would cause a global war. He’s trying to avoid that by weakening western resolve so countries in the west give up and don’t resist, and then one day, it would be too late to resist.
The Russian dictator’s giddy embrace of war crimes and genocide, along with more routine brutality, is, like his constant threats of nuclear war, intended to frighten the citizens of nations supporting Ukraine. It’s why, as winter loomed, Russian agents sabotaged a natural gas pipeline leading to Germany. This is also why he courts direct support by far-right politicians in countries around the world, people who would be a sort of “fifth column” to help prevent foreign military opposition as he expands his empire.
It’s obviously far cheaper to fund Ukraine than to wage a global war, but it also drains Russian resources which would make a global war less likely, or less likely to succeed, the longer the current conflict continues. In the short term, that does nothing to help the folks in Ukraine or among its supporters, and the Russian dictator is counting on that fact to dissuade the West from supporting Ukraine long term.
So, funding Ukraine is far cheaper than waging a direct war with Russia or doing nothing and waiting for Russia to further expand its empire. However, no matter how important funding Ukraine is, that doesn’t address the heart of your question, about how much good could be done “at home” with money being spent in Ukraine.
I think it’s important to look at why, precisely, the USA never has enough money for its own needs: Pure, bald, crass, selfish politics. The USA could well afford to look after its own and help with problems around the world, but money is always short by design and on purpose.
We all know that the USA’s rightwing doesn’t much like international cooperation: Some factions hate the United Nations, others hate government funded humanitarian aid, and others adore the Russian dictator and his brutal regime. At the same time, other rightwing factions are concerned only with the needs and desires of the ultra-rich and corporations, and the needs or ordinary people are invisible to that faction.
Imagine an alternative reality where the ultra-rich and corporations paid their fair share in taxes—that doesn’t even have to mean higher taxes, just that they pay their existing tax obligations like ordinary people have to. Imagine if all the loopholes that favor the ultra-rich and corporations were closed—not just the ones that let them avoid paying any income tax, but also the ones that let them claim federal welfare payments, too.
Put another way, it’s not that the USA can’t take care of its own AND be an active participant in the world, it’s that the rightwing in the USA won’t allow it, and the electoral system is sufficiently rigged to allow that to continue being the case.
In my opinion, the problem isn’t that there’s a shortage of money, it’s that there’s an excess of greed. It’s not that there’s not enough money available to deal with problems at home and overseas, it’s that there’s not enough humanity among politicians to find ways to solve problems. Fixing that is up to ordinary people, because despite all the nefarious shenanigans of the politicians working to block change, ordinary people in democratic nations are the most powerful force in their countries. They just have to use the power they already have.
Thanks to Sherry for today’s question!
All posts in this series are tagged “AAA-21”. All previous posts from every “Ask Arthur” series are tagged, appropriately enough, ”Ask Arthur”.
Previously:
A decade-long inquisition
Ask Arthur 2022, Part 1: Speaking in the House
Ask Arthur 2022, Part 2: Indepen-dunce
Ask Arthur 2022, Part 3: Ranking choices
No comments:
Post a Comment