For humanitarian reasons, the United States was right to send aid to Ukraine to repel Russian forces. We have been more than generous. The time to recognize that we have hit our spending limit is here. Europe needs to increase their aid; this is their fight, not ours.
President Biden announced another aid package to Ukraine earlier this week. That brings the total US commitment to $8 billion. That’s more than enough of a contribution, especially since the Russian-Ukrainian border is of little interest to our national security. Any concerns of Putin being the next Hitler who will walk over the rest of Europe after easily doing away with Ukraine are no longer valid. Putin and his army stalled over a much smaller foe, showing the world they are not ready for any grander goals.
Further involvement in this war is not in the United States’ national security interests. Before this unjust Russian aggression turned us into Ukrainian supporters, Ukraine was a corrupt kleptocracy of little interest to our country. Russia being the obvious bad guys in the war, and false outrage from sore losers of the 2016 presidential election, made Russia an enemy it was easy to mobilize against. And America did mobilize to the tune of $8 billion in aid.
Moving forward, Europe, especially Germany, must take the lead. This is their war. Another European war.
The Economist writes, “Though Germany has sent money, others have sent more, especially when measured as a share of GDP. In Ukraine, there have been complaints that Germany was slow to get going and the long list of goodies it has given is dominated by obviously surplus and hand-me-down kit.”
But that’s not the problem. Germany is still too dependent on Russia for natural gas. This is a result of Germany’s own green energy policies that crippled domestic energy production. Fracking was banned and nuclear power left to quietly expire. The demand has not been adequately filled by solar and wind power. Germany’s answer to the undersupply they created was import energy from elsewhere. Foolish politicians at home can claim they helped the environment by shutting down local energy supplies, but never mind where the imported gas comes from.
Germany’s poor energy policy, The Economist continues, “has left Germany in the embarrassing, indeed tragic, situation of funding Mr Putin’s aggression. Germany’s payments for fossil fuels have put some €18bn into Mr Putin’s pocket since his tanks rolled into fresh parts of Ukraine on February 24th, according to the Helsinki-based Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air.“
The answer for Germany is easy. They need to reopen nuclear power plants so they don’t have to give Putin so much money. With increased aid from Germany and the rest of Europe, and with less money going into Russia for energy bills, then Ukraine will have enough firepower to at least bring a stalemate ending to a prolonged war.
