In his essay from August 4, Andrew E. Busch argues that opponents of providing aid to Ukraine have made a “feeble” case, identifying three arguments in particular that he finds lacking: that we should be focusing on issues at home rather than abroad; that the government of Ukraine is suppressing Russian Orthodox Christianity; and that the conflict is yet another endless war that America has become entangled in. This response will address the first and third points that Busch makes.

Domestic and Foreign Spending

Busch criticizes those who complain about sending billions of dollars to Ukraine while so many American cities have turned into urban disaster zones, arguing that the US—“the wealthiest and most powerful republic in the history of the world”—is capable of “walking and chewing bubblegum at the same time.” He then goes on to criticize proponents of this argument as being in favor of an overbearing federal government that tramples over our federalist system.

Busch is echoing the sentiment that lies at the heart of the 2022 National Security Strategy which makes the bold and obviously false assertion that “There is nothing beyond our capacity.” Scarcity is an undeniable fact of life. It is simply indisputable that resources shipped off to Ukraine—whether it be HIMARS rocket launchers, artillery shells, or cash to pay for all the functions of the Ukrainian state—are resources that by definition cannot be used at home, whether by the federal government or anyone else.

Bradleys and 155mm shells do not miraculously appear like manna from heaven. Not only do they cost money, which is simply created out of thin air via inflation and adds to our mind-boggling national debt, but they cost both physical resources and labor that must be diverted from other potential uses. As Ludwig von Mises observed in a 1918 lecture on wartime financing, “War can be waged only out of present goods. One can only fight with the weapons on hand; all military needs must be met out of existing wealth.”

Eisenhower famously addressed this in his 1963 speech, sometimes known as the “Cross of Iron” speech, where he observes that:

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone.

It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.

The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities…

We pay for a single fighter plane with a half million bushels of wheat.

We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people…

Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.

Simply asserting that the federal government has no role in local affairs, as if siphoning close to a trillion dollars out of the economy has no bearing on the rest of American life, ignores the reality of scarcity. Federalism is indeed an essential aspect of the American system of governance, but one cannot ignore the way in which federal spending ultimately removes resources from the local level and directs them to other ends. Sending an additional HIMAR to Ukraine might not automatically mean there is less bridge maintenance in Pittsburgh, but one cannot deny that they, and indeed the rest of the entire economy, are intricately interrelated. A slab of steel turned into an artillery shell by definition cannot be turned into a bridge girder.

Beyond immediate resource redirection, we must not forget the role of deficit spending. In 2022 alone the US provided over $110 billion in aid to Ukraine. This may seem “cheap,” but for comparison, consider that interest on post-9/11 wars is likely to surpass $6.5 trillion by 2050, nearly doubling the costs of those wars. Federal interest payments on the debt already cost over $400 billion a year, and are estimated to exceed the entire defense budget in less than 10 years. The government is unlikely to choose between defaulting and maintaining military spending, so the result will inevitably be even more resources sucked away from local governments through taxation, inflation, or both, leaving states and localities even more dependent on the federal dole.

If you want to wage a proxy war on the other side of the planet, there will be tradeoffs here at home. Buch fails to acknowledge the way these trade-offs undermine the very federalist principles he espouses.

Logistics of Forever Wars

Busch states that critics of continuing to arm and fund Ukraine are mistaken to label this conflict as a “forever war” pointing out that it has been going on for about “only” 18 months and that the US should not “throw in the towel on their behalf.”

He acknowledges that what many critics mean by an “endless” war is one that has the potential to drag on for years and years, and poses a danger of escalation. But despite the acknowledgment, he then says that this criticism is “a dead end” because the Ukrainian government has declared that it will only accept the total reclamation of pre-2014 borders and if they can’t do so, then they might have to accept some other kind of settlement. We should not force the Ukrainian government to declare its aims in advance, he claims.

Busch’s argument is based on numerous assumptions about the conflict that are incorrect, or at the very least hardly settled questions.

For one thing, the official stance of the US government is that we will support Ukraine’s war effort indefinitely. That is, by definition, a forever war.

However, material reality has made it quite clear that the ability of the US to meaningfully support Ukraine will be difficult to maintain for a few months, let alone indefinitely. The logistical situation is approaching a critical state as Western stockpiles are depleted and we are forced to scrounge around for whatever scraps can be sent.

This conflict has turned into an industrial war of attrition, one that Russia, whose defense industry is “designed to fight World War I,” not to mention its vast stocks of Soviet weaponry, is much more able to wage than the West.

If a full-blown military crisis were to break out, or a nightmare scenario of more than one such crisis, the US would find itself in an extremely dangerous logistical position that would take years to solve.    

The Royal United Services Institute reported earlier this year that Russia fired 12 million artillery shells in 2022, and is on course to fire 7 million in 2023. Most importantly, they are able to produce at least 2.5 million shells a year, in addition to imports from North Korea and Iran.

By contrast, the US could only produce 93,000 155 mm shells a year as of January 2023, and has now reached a level of about 24,000 shells a month. For context, Ukraine uses this many shells in three days of heavy fire, whereas Russia usually fires twice this many shells in a single day, if not more. Even if the US reaches the goal of 90,000 shells a month, this would still be less than half of Russia’s yearly production. President Biden openly acknowledged that he authorized cluster munitions to be sent to Ukraine because the West was not capable of providing enough conventional artillery shells.

By April of 2022, barely a few months into the war, the US sent Ukraine a full third of its stockpile of Javelin anti-tank missiles, and a quarter of its remaining stock of Stinger anti-aircraft missiles. Both systems have a production lead time of several years, meaning US stocks are dangerously depleted in the event an unforeseen war breaks out, especially since the Ukraine War has demonstrated that modern warfare is far more resource-intensive than most planners and strategists had foreseen. Quoting one defense official, the Wall Street Journal reported all the way back in October of 2022 that while not yet critical, the stockpile of American 155mm shells had become “uncomfortably low.” The US has pledged over a million more shells to Ukraine since then. The US had to cancel planned drills with HIMAR systems in Japan due to the lack of rockets. If a full-blown military crisis were to break out, or a nightmare scenario of more than one such crisis, the US would find itself in an extremely dangerous logistical position that would take years to solve.    

Meanwhile, our supposed European allies have been freeriding on American defense for so long that they are next to useless. Germany only had 20,000 shells left in June, and the UK is not capable of producing large caliber artillery tubes.

Beyond the shell hunger, which calls to mind the beginning of World War I, numerous other weapon system stockpiles have been extremely depleted and will take years to restore, even at accelerated production rates.

Russian artillery outguns Ukraine somewhere in the range of 5-10 to 1. Russian population outnumbers Ukraine’s somewhere around 5 to 1. Hence, Ukraine is forced to send out impressment gangs to round up 60-year-olds to attempt to man the hundreds-of-miles-long line of contact. Waging an industrial war of attrition with such a lopsided balance of artillery and manpower is a recipe for disaster.  

While the future is radically uncertain, even the biased media has come to recognize that things are not looking good for Ukraine. Ukraine is likely already broken beyond repair, but the longer the war drags on the worse things will get. Somewhere in the range of 8-9 million Ukrainians have left the country, many of them never to return unless they absolutely must. Russian drone and missile strikes continue to reduce Ukrainian infrastructure to rubble, especially now that the West has run out of air defenses to ship Ukraine and even daylight strikes have become common. In addition, the line of contact is littered with anti-personnel mines that will be killing civilians for decades to come.

Busch states that “Ukraine has every right to be given the opportunity to retake” their pre-2014 borders. In a sense this is true, since Ukraine can attempt to do whatever it wants, but it is not clear why Ukraine has a right to continued US assistance, which will likely only serve to further the destruction of the country and inflict even more suffering on its inhabitants in a grinding war of attrition that highly favors an eventual Russian victory.

National Interests

Busch claims that failing to back Ukraine to the hilt in its war with Russia would only invite further aggression from the “global authoritarian axis of Moscow, Beijing, and Teheran” and would lead to the abandonment of our supposed “friends” around the globe.

This argument seems to assume a comic-book-villain motivation behind Russia’s action in this war. Rather than attempting to understand Russian national interest and security concerns, Busch charges Putin with being a Leninist.

In reality, however, the underlying reasons for this war have been known for over a decade before it began. John Mearsheimer laid out the underlying logic to Russian concerns about Western encroachment in his in/famous Foreign Affairs article in 2014, and accurately predicted the Russian approach to the conflict. Before that, in 2008, then Ambassador to Russia and now CIA director William Burns sent a classified cable warning that the plans for eventual NATO membership for Georgia and Ukraine which had been announced at that year’s NATO summit would lead to disaster.

Quite presciently, Burns noted that the question of Ukraine’s geopolitical alignment could lead to civil war, which would eventually require Russia to decide whether to intervene or not. Burns concludes the memo by noting that “While Russian opposition to the first round of NATO enlargement in the mid-1990s was strong, Russia now feels itself able to respond more forcefully to what it perceives as actions contrary to its national interests.”

The fact that someone as sensible as Burns has now joined Biden’s cabinet seems to signal that the administration has begun to see the writing on the wall and the logistical impossibilities that are plaguing Ukraine.

Busch claims that Ukraine is America’s friend, and that abandoning it in a time like this will surely mean the doom of other American friends around the globe. However, America does not have any kind of alliance or obligation to defend Ukraine. Indeed, even if it did, the ultimate question is whether or not upholding such an agreement is in American national interest, a concept that does not make an appearance in Busch’s entire essay.

As the saying goes, states do not have friends, only interests. And it is far from clear what interest America has in facilitating the further destruction of Ukraine in the face of the hard logistical reality that is facing the West and Ukraine itself.