Morning Wire - Ukraine Funding Debate | 3.10.24

Episode Date: March 10, 2024

The debate over whether or not the U.S. should continue sending money and weapons to Ukraine for their fight against Russia. Ohio Senator J.D. Vance and National Review’s Rich Lowry debate the merits and drawbacks of continued U.S. aid for Ukraine. Get the facts first on Morning Wire. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

As the war in Ukraine continues after two years of bloody conflict, a new battle is being waged in Washington. This one to decide whether the United States will continue funding the Ukrainian war effort. In this episode, we'll hear from leading voices on the topic as they make the case for and against further aid to Ukraine. I'm Daily Wire, editor-in-chief John Bickley with Georgia Howe. It's March 10th, and this is a Sunday edition of Morning Wire. Here are the latest on the heated debate over funding for Ukraine as, Daily Wire senior editor, Cabot Phillips. Hey, Cabot, so you interviewed two leading voices on Ukraine, one who supports Ukraine funding

and one who is staunchly opposed. What did you learn? Yeah, so two years ago, a lot of Americans probably couldn't locate Ukraine on a map. But that all changed once Vladimir Putin invaded the eastern European state, launching a bloody war that's resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths, and now a bitter debate at home over the role America should play in supporting Ukraine. While the exact amounts differ based on what you consider. of foreign aid. To this point, Congress and the Biden administration have allocated anywhere from

$75 to $115 billion towards the Ukrainian war effort. That's everything from ammunition and weapons to economic stimulus. Now, early on in the conflict, there really wasn't much debate over whether the U.S. should come to the aid of Ukraine. But as this conflict has dragged on and turned into a war of attrition with little ground being gained by either side, we've seen growing disagreements over just how long America can or should stay involved. With that in mind, I spoke with two leading voices from each side of the debate. Ohio Senator J.D. Vance, who argues that we can no longer afford to continue Ukraine aid, and National Review editor-in-chief Rich Lowry, who says continued funding is in our best interest. To kick things off, I asked each man to give a brief elevator

pitch for their side. Here's Lowry to start. Well, Ukraine was attacked by Russia, an adversary of the United States that hates the United States, hates the West, wants to topple the U.S. and Western supported order and ultimately is a threat to the rest of Europe and potentially frontline NATO states. So it makes sense to try to stop them in their tracks to the extent we can in the far reaches of eastern Ukraine. As Lowry sees it, much of the hesitance from American voters and lawmakers to support funding stems from the prolonged wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. I think the crucial background here is the failure of the Iraq war and the difficulties of the Iraq war, which I think have created kind of an undelayed fuse, a real skepticism about

any involvement overseas. And for me, this seems misguided because we don't have any troops in Ukraine. All we're doing is funding an ally, which is really the ideal situation. If you can fund a proxy force that's directly fighting an enemy of yours, it doesn't get better than that. And this is a very traditional Anglo-American approach. The default has been finding allies and funding them so they can do the fight on the continent of Europe without us. And that's what we have in Ukraine. They're not asking for U.S. troops.

They're not asking for Western forces. All we need to do is continue to provide them the resources and the material to continue on this fight, which is in our interest on their own. So for me, that's a good deal. According to Senator Vance, there are two main problems with continued aid to Ukraine. First, he says it depletes our own military stockpiles, making us not only more vulnerable in a potential conflict with China, but also less able to arm other allies like Taiwan or Israel.

And second, he says that there isn't a clear end goal in sight in Ukraine. Really, for me, it's a question of focus. We have to sort of figure out how to respond in a world of scarce resources. If you look at some of the critical weapons systems that we would need to deter, for example, and invasion by the Chinese of Taiwan, there is a lot of overlap, not just between the weapon systems themselves, but also between the supply chain and components of those weapon systems. So the more that we focus on Ukraine, the more that we're actually depleting critical munitions that would be necessary for Taiwan. Now, the counterargument that I hear from this, from sort of good faith

advocates of further funding in Ukraine is, well, America is the largest economy in the world, and we can walk and chew gum at the same time. And I think that that fundamental misunderstands where we actually are as a country. We don't produce enough of the weapons that we need to support both a Ukrainian war, but also potential contingency in East Asia or anywhere else. And the final point that I'll make just to sort of drive this home is that, you know, the Israelis have been very explicit with us that a number of the artillery that they had in stock that they need to prosecute the war against Hamas were actually shipped to Ukraine. And so, just sort of highlighting it a very real, non-abstract sense, there are weapons, munitions that the Israelis

need and want that they don't have because we sent them to Ukraine. The scarcity here is not an abstraction. It's not just sort of some argument that I'm pulling out of the sky. It is something we're already seeing in a very real sense in our multiple military conflicts that we're either supporting or directly engaged in. Now, one of the main arguments we hear from those who support continued aid is that without it, Putin will seize the country and potentially invade other allies in Eastern Europe. Here's Lowry's take on what would happen if the U.S. were to cut off support. Well, the Russians will win the war in some form if they break through Ukrainian lines and sweep towards Kiev. I'm not sure whether they'll actually be able to take Kiev.

You know, that would require street by street, house by house fighting. But they'll certainly be in a position to impose a punitive peace on Ukraine to make it a failed state and be in a position potentially to threaten other NATO states. If Ukraine comes under de facto Russian control, you get an enormous multiplication of the border between Russia and NATO, with Russia presumably being emboldened by this victory, by the West's failure of nerve, At the end, you know, just quitting after two years when there are no U.S. forces or Western forces directly involved would be an extraordinary sign of weakness and lack of will. And bad things would come of it. At the very least, we would have to pour more resources into Europe. For his part, here's what Senator Vance had to say when I asked if he thought Vladimir Putin was testing the West to see how we'd respond if he invaded one of our non-NATO allies.

So I think he is testing the West. but I guess my question is, is he testing the West in terms of our resolve, or is he testing the West in terms of our stupidity? And I'd make the sort of same question when it comes to Xi. If you think about this calculus from China's perspective, a lot of my neoconservative friends will say, well, if we abandon Ukraine, we will send a signal to the Chinese that they can do whatever they want to, and American resolve will be weaker. And my response is, maybe what the Chinese are looking for is not our resolve, but our actual. capabilities. And if we throw every weapon system that we have at Ukraine and we don't have anything

left over for Taiwan, yeah, they've tested us and we've failed the test by sending all of our weapons to a conflict they don't really care about. It doesn't matter what our resolve is if our capabilities are too weak. And I think both the Russians and the Chinese have degraded American capabilities even as they've increased our own. Another key element of this debate is just what sort of impact U.S. funding in Ukraine has on the Russian military. Supporters of AIDS, say it's a good investment because the war has drained Putin of valuable resources and also weakened his ability to threaten the West. But Vance and others argue the conflict has had the exact opposite effect and force Russia to expand their military production and invest more in their

infrastructure, which would actually make them more formidable. I'm not even sure that I buy this argument on its own face. In other words, if we could support the Ukrainians indefinitely, I don't think degrading Russia's military capabilities is the reason to do it because we failed to do that. They're spending, I believe, about 6% of their GDP on defense. They have massively mobilized in both manpower and weapons manufacturing. The Russian army actually is better today than it was two years ago. And I don't think anybody would dispute that. And if we want Russia to be weaker militarily than stronger, then we should be trying to get them out of this weird doom loop where their entire economy is geared towards defense. Because we don't want the Russians making 10 times

the artillery that we make, that means that we either have to ramp up our own production or we're going to be much weaker relative to Russia. And while Lowry did agree that Russia's military has grown stronger since the war began, he says that's no argument for cutting off aid to Ukraine. Well, I think that's true, but this is the case in all military conflicts. People learn from their mistakes and try to produce more and gain advantages. But let's think about that argument. What would be the alternative that would just let a inferior Russian military win at the outset? Would that really be better for our interests? So that one doesn't make a lot of sense to me.

Now, here's what Lowry had to say about the claim that America should not continue funding Ukraine because there does not appear to be an end in sight to the war. Well, it's true that there's no end in sight. There's usually not a clear end in sight in most wars. You know, you open up the door and all is darkness and there you go. But eventually there'll be exhaustion. There'll be exhaustion on both sides, although Russia has more resources. its resources aren't unlimited either. And usually when you're on offense, I don't know, you need

like a three to one advantage. These formulas don't always hold, but that's a basic idea. So at some point, they're going to run out of gas themselves. So what you do, hope to do is frustrate them as much as possible, keep them to the extent possible to their current lines, and then hope to cut some sort of armist or peace deal that is as favorable to Ukraine as possible. I think the problem with J.D.'s argument is he doesn't set out a clear end or end point. So if we just cut off Ukraine and they run out of shells and Russia begins advancing across Ukraine, is Russia just going to stop out of the goodness of their heart because they're really nice people? Because they'll decide, oh, this was a terrible venture. It's immoral. We never should have done it.

No, they're going to take as much as possible. So the question is, eventually there'll be some sort of absent a sweeping Russian victory. There'll be some sort of settlement. And I think it's in our interest to ensure that settlement is as favorable to a Western ally, Ukraine, as possible. Now, in the last year or so, the conflict in Ukraine has largely turned into a war of attrition, with neither side really gaining much ground. The Ukrainians launched a failed counteroffensive in the summer, trying to regain ground they lost in the east, but for the most part, things are at a standstill. So the big question now turns to whether Putin will continue committing resources and men

when his progress is ground to a halt, or whether he'll sit down for a piece, deal in exchange for territory. I asked both men about that possibility and what exactly an agreement to end the war would look like. Here's Senator Vance. Well, look, I think right now it probably looks like the Ukrainians taking very aggressive, defensive posture along the current lines, right? So they lose probably about 20% of their territory. I think that it means they get significant security guarantees. You know, you can't trust that the Russians aren't going to violate any peace. So you need a sort of longer-term commitment for Ukraine to kind of rebuild. The longer the Russians go on with this, the more that they're going to be effectively

committing their entire economy to a military buildup state, they don't want that. That's not good for their population. So I think that both sides have something to gain here. The Russians stop a military mobilization that will eventually destabilize their country. The Ukrainians stop a war that is fundamentally bleeding theirs, and the Americans get to focus on our priorities, which I think, again, is East Asia. And here's Lowry. I think they're going to have to give up territory realistically. I've never been a purist on this question. You know, we've got to keep backing Ukraine until they take everything

back. It's understandable the Ukrainians would want to do that. That's a perfectly understandable expression of Ukrainian nationalism, but I'm not a Ukrainian nationalist. So I just want an end to the war on as favorable terms as possible to Ukraine and to Western interest. I think Crimea is going to be gone. They're not going to get it back. And Russia is going to take its pound of flesh out of Ukrainian territory. And it also will not be, you know, a peace deal that's going to stand forevermore. You know, it's going to be probably a pause, ultimately, in the conflict with Russia. But I think finding a deal that's favorable to our interests is better than one that's more favorable to Russia's interests. So as the debate continues to rage,

all eyes turn to Congress, where the House is expected to soon vote on a foreign aid package that includes $65 billion for Ukraine. Well, both men have made really compelling points, and this debate seems far from over. Cabot, thanks for reporting. Anytime. That was Daily Wire Senior Editor Cabot Phillips, and this was a Sunday edition of Morning Wire.