Myth busting on Ukraine 

“Penny wise, pound foolish.” It’s an apt description of the current the current debate on the proposed $24 billion supplemental appropriation to support Ukraine — a country fighting Russia for its very existence. After one of the authors spent a few days in Ukraine with a delegation of congressional staffers — the first such delegation since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine — it became easier to appreciate the necessity of winning in Ukraine not only for the people of that country but also for U.S. and global security. Yet not all Americans are convinced of this fact.  

Those arguing that Ukraine is not and should not be a U.S. priority any longer usually make several points. Some express concern that the American taxpayer might once again be underwriting a failing state, much like Afghanistan. Others point to concern about pre-war and possibly endemic Ukrainian corruption — the unsurprising byproduct of decades of economic mismanagement by the government and oligarchs. And still others worry that every dime spent on Ukraine is one that is not spent on defending Taiwan — and the broader Indo-Pacific region — from Chinese neoimperial expansion, let alone being spent on struggling American citizens back home.  

Yet these arguments weaken upon closer examination. First off, the comparison with Afghanistan is misguided. We should know; we worked the issue daily when at the Pentagon in the mid 2000s. More than 15 years ago, we participated in U.S. government conversations about funding the development of the Afghan security forces. During our travels to Kabul and meetings with the U.S. military and their Afghan counterparts, we were told that the Afghans wanted to continue their fight against the terrorists in their own land — they just needed the weaponry. This might have been true at some level, but the numbers told a different story. Attrition rates were high; “ghost” soldiers were on the payroll, and the U.S. was spending billions trying to keep the forces from falling apart. This is not to say that there weren’t — and aren’t — incredible Afghans fighting for their country, far from it. Rather, in the view of many Afghans across the country, the government in Kabul was not something worth fighting and dying for. 

The opposite is true in Ukraine. The will to stand and fight is shared across society. Just about every Ukrainian is doing their part — big or small — to help the government in Kyiv win. During the initial invasion, plumbers and landscapers stood their ground against Russian soldiers in Irpin the Kyiv suburb. Today, Ukrainian supreme court judges spend their evenings shooting down drones, while human rights lawyers audit bomb shelters and make sure they are up to standard. Soldiers that lose limbs clamber their way back to the front lines. Put more simply, particularly when it comes to security capacity building, Ukraine is not Afghanistan. 

Some believe that Ukrainian graft and corruption make the disbursal of more monies to Kyiv untenable. And after decades of oligarchs preying on Ukraine’s post-Soviet economy, it’s hardly surprising that corruption is an enduring problem. But it’s a concern that the Zelensky government, and civil society more generally, has heard loud and clear. Civil society groups are developing apps and platforms to transparently monitor publicly funded programs and track their progress. A government anti-corruption bureau was established in 2015 and Volodymyr Zelensky recently fired his own Minister of Defense — and all the deputy defense ministers — due to allegations of corruption in Ukraine’s defense establishment. As one Ukrainian recently stated during the visit of one of the authors to Kyiv, “we see accusations of corruption as a major strategic vulnerability — and we are fixing that.”  

A penultimate argument one hears is that each dollar spent on Ukraine is a dollar that is taken away from building the U.S.’s capabilities to act in the Indo-Pacific in the event of Chinese adventurism. But everyone in the Indo-Pacific is watching what happens in Ukraine, and whether the U.S. is really committed to Ukrainian battlefield victory. What happens in Ukraine will directly impact Chinese perceptions of whether the costs of taking Taiwan are worth the risks, and will directly impact allied perceptions as to whether the U.S. is a credible partner. In the view of many in Asia, waffling on Ukraine might actually make war with China more likely.  

Finally, congressional leaders, pundits, and experts often inject into the Ukraine funding debate that America has real needs at home, whether it be the opioid crisis, lack of affordable housing, inflation or illegal immigration. America needs to address its problems within its borders, but the United States is capable of doing more than one thing at a time. Ensuring Ukraine wins, Russia is defeated on the battlefield, and China understands what freedom-defending allies and partners can do to support an invaded, sovereign nation are the messages this administration and congressional leaders of both parties need to convey. 

Sure, there’s sticker shock. The latest supplemental request is for $24 billion in new taxpayer dollars. But displacing Russia — one of the most powerful militaries in the world — from its entrenched positions doesn’t come cheap. And all things considered, the whole operation could be considerably more expensive: the U.S. is able to counter Russian neoimperial ambitions without putting any of its own, incredibly costly, boots on the ground.  

Ultimately we have to ask ourselves: what kind of world do we want to live in? In Irpin, a suburb of Kyiv, a mass casualty event was created when Russian soldiers strapped a grenade to a dead mother and placed her screaming baby on top of it. This is just one of thousands upon thousands of stories of Russian atrocities during the Ukraine conflict. Russia is trying to create a world where it is okay to use state force to eliminate a population — in other words, genocide. Failure to support Ukraine at this critical moment is a strategy that comes with its own significant risks to U.S. and global security.  

Dr. Kathleen J. McInnis is a former DoD Country Director for Afghanistan. She is the Director of Smart Women, Smart Power at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C. and just recently returned from a CSIS-led congressional staff delegation to Ukraine. Daniel Fata is a former Republican House and Senate leadership staffer as well as the former U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Europe and NATO Policy (2005-2008). He is a senior advisor (non-resident) at CSIS in Washington, D.C.