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With Republicans in Congress blocking further aid to Ukraine, Russia is gaining ground in its efforts to expand its territory to the very edge of the NATO military alliance’s eastern border. Ukraine lacks critical weapons, while Russia’s economy has mobilized for war, firing more shells than the United States and Europe combined.
The United States may still help Ukraine, but if not, isolationist obstruction by some Republicans in Washington could be a grave mistake that will cost the American people far more than the savings. There is. History is full of examples of penniless decisions that had disastrous consequences. And many analysts believe that if the United States becomes soft on Ukraine, China, North Korea, and Iran could follow Russia’s expansionism, with devastating economic consequences.
To date, the United States has provided Ukraine with approximately $46 billion in military aid and an additional $29 billion in financial aid. Military aid makes up less than 5% of the U.S. defense budget, but that money is also used to counter Russia. President Biden is asking for an additional $60 billion from Ukraine, and a bipartisan group of senators is crafting a bill that would provide much of that aid while also funding immigration reform and other priorities.
The stumbling block is a faction of House Republicans who say they won’t vote for aid to Ukraine unless it’s combined with tougher immigration policies, which Democrats adamantly oppose. They are backed by likely Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, who has signaled a complete end to U.S. aid to Ukraine.
The Republican Party’s withdrawal from the Ukraine issue suggests that Russian President Vladimir Putin’s assumptions were correct. After the Russian army invaded in February 2022, President Putin clearly wanted Ukraine to surrender quickly, but that did not happen. But President Putin’s Plan B is a long war, and the West’s determination to support Ukraine will fade in the face of Russia’s ability to continue the war.
That seems to be happening. Although a majority of Americans still want to help Ukraine, Republican support has fallen from 80% at the start of the war in 2022 to just 50% now, and conservative Republicans in Congress It has been given ample leeway to cut ties with Ukraine. As President Putin well knows, when a minority party controls only one chamber of Congress, as the Republicans in the House of Representatives do, a small opposition party can block U.S. policy. be.
If Republican isolationists have their way, the impact could extend far beyond Europe. As Hal Brands and many other foreign policy experts have argued, America’s abandonment of Ukraine would give China, North Korea, and Iran their own land, assuming they could outrun Western resistance. This could be a green light to attempt a robbery. America is fickle.
China may be the most worrying scenario. President Xi Jinping appears more determined than any Chinese leader in the past 25 years to “reunite” communist China and democratic Taiwan. Given Taiwan’s lack of interest in reuniting, that would require military intervention.
The idea that an isolationist United States can stand idly by and remain unscathed is foolish.
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According to a recent analysis by the Rhodium Group, a blockade of Taiwan by China, without an all-out invasion, could cost the global economy $2 trillion, primarily due to disruption of trade between Taiwan and China. There is. According to a Bloomberg analysis, the cost of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan would rise to $10 trillion, “dwarfing” the economic costs of the Ukraine war, the coronavirus pandemic, and the 2008 financial crisis.
In the invasion scenario, Taiwan and China’s economies would plummet and US GDP would fall by 6.7%, the worst devastation since the Great Depression of the 1930s. Even in a milder lockdown scenario, U.S. GDP would still fall by 3.3%, which is also unprecedented since the Great Depression.
China is likely to seek to seize control of Taiwan’s advanced semiconductor industry, creating severe shortages of electronics, cars and more advanced products, and filling shelves emptied by the coronavirus pandemic. It can look like a period of abundance.
Trade losses with China would also be catastrophic. Donald Trump and other nationalists want to “decouple” the U.S. economy from China’s, but that is naive and naive. Despite efforts by both U.S. political parties to disengage from China, the two countries will reach record levels of trade in 2022, with China still supplying large amounts of pharmaceutical raw materials, auto parts, lithium-ion batteries, and low-cost products. and are deeply intertwined. Computer chips and hundreds of other things. In many cases, there is no other reliable source of information about how much Americans consume. Rebuilding the U.S. supply chain for all these goods could take decades and be prohibitively expensive.
Iran and North Korea are less of an economic problem, given that the United States has no meaningful direct trade with these countries. However, North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un has abandoned the country’s long-standing goal of peaceful reunification with South Korea. Some analysts see unusual signs of war preparations that could endanger the world’s ninth-largest exporter, whose products include Samsung Electronics and Hyundai Motors.
Iran aims to become the dominant power in the Middle East. Its main leverage against its adversaries would be its ability to interdict oil shipments in the Persian Gulf, as well as its nuclear weapons program, which could soon threaten Israel and possibly Europe. Although the United States is less dependent on Middle Eastern oil than it was during the energy crisis of the 1970s, energy shortages could still reignite inflation and cause an economic recession.
In all of these scenarios, the aggressor nation will pay a heavy price in treasure, blood, and, in some cases, prestige. So they may not try it. But the same logic applied to Putin before he ordered an invasion that damaged Russia’s economy and left hundreds of thousands of Russians dead. However, Putin still faces no serious opposition at home. Russia’s economy is doing better than most expected, and Putin appears to be finding the resources to wage the war indefinitely.
History shows that spending billions of dollars on prevention is far better than spending trillions on triage. The United States tried to avoid the mayhem that led to both world wars, but was drawn into it anyway. As a result, 117,000 Americans died in World War I and 407,000 in World War II.
Many historians believe that America’s offer not to defend South Korea after World War II influenced the Communist North’s decision to invade in 1950 – the United States eventually entered the war. 37,000 Americans died. Anyone who is convinced that the United States won’t get involved in a major, far-flung war should probably do a little more research on what happened the last time the United States tried to stay out of a war. Dew.
Rick Newman is Yahoo Finance. Follow him on Twitter @rickjnewman.
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