The article, which appeared on the webpage of the US version of Chatham house, Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA), closely related to the US military, is titled “It’s Costing Peanuts for the US to Defeat Russia”. It is worth reading to understand how many influential people in NATO and its member countries are seeing the Ukraine war. The argument goes like this:
If enough military and economic support is provided to Ukraine, they can win the war against Russia. The cost of this support may be high, but as the NATO countries together have a much bigger economy than Russia, it is peanuts compared to their economies and their defence budgets. At the same time, no US soldiers need to risk their lives in Ukraine, so this is the opportunity of the century, as the war will cause big losses for Russia in soldiers and destroyed military hardware, and in the best case the strain on the economy from sanctions and the cost of the war will not only weaken Russia, but even lead to regime change. What is there not to like? “In conclusion, on so many levels, continued US support for Ukraine is a no-brainer from a bang for buck perspective. Ukraine is no Vietnam or Afghanistan for the US, but it is exactly that for Russia. A Russia continually mired in a war it cannot win is a huge strategic win for the US.”
If we disregard for a moment the cynicism in the reasoning that Ukraine will put up the deaths in the tens of thousands, and NATO will provide the military hardware, the training and the financial support, there are some truths in this line of argument.
It is true that the economy of Russia is no match for the NATO+ countries. The economies of US, EU, Japan and Canada combined was in 2021 52 trillion USD (in purchasing power terms), while Russia’s was only 4.8 trillion. So they are more than ten times bigger than Russia. Population wise the same countries are more than six times bigger than Russia. Consequently, there is no doubt that economically NATO has absolutely got the upper hand.
An Ukrainian trench. The war in Ukraine developed in autumn 2022 into a trench war reminding of WWI. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Donbas_(2022%E2%80%93present)
It is also true that if we ignore the nuclear forces, where Russia is close to parity with NATO, the conventional forces of NATO are overwhelmingly bigger than Russia’s. According to the Statista Website, “As of 2022, NATO had approximately 3.37 million active military personnel compared with 1.35 million active military personnel in the Russian military. The collective military capabilities of the 30 countries that make up NATO outnumber Russia in terms of aircraft, at 20,723 to 4,173, and in naval power, with 2,049 military ships, to 605. Russia's ground combat vehicle capacity is more competitive, however, with 12,420 units, to 14,682.”
Well, the line of argument may be cynical, but is it true? Just let the war continue until Russia buckles, then one threat is eliminated and NATO can concentrate on its new, main enemy: China?
I don’t think so.
The first assumption that I doubt is correct is that Ukraine with sufficient support from NATO will be able to defeat Russia and reconquer the breakaway provinces of Donbas and Crimea. Unless, of course, NATO directly intervenes sending troops to Ukraine, e.g. as a “peace-keeping” force to Western and Central Ukraine, but that would be an extremely dangerous escalation and may easily lead to a full-blown war between NATO and Russia, including a nuclear war. Russia, as well as the Ukrainian Government, sees this war as existential, which definitely is not the case for the NATO countries, and the Russian forces, still outnumbered in Ukraine, have a big potential for further mobilisation. It is worth remembering that when Germany in 1942 attacked the Soviet Union, after having defeated all the European nations except for England, they had in their ranks millions of soldiers and “volunteers” from their European allies (Finland, the Baltic Countries, Hungary, Italy, Romania) and conquered or “neutral” nations (Spain, France, Netherlands, Denmark, Croatia, etc.), and even so, the Soviet Union was able to stop and eventually drive back the Germans and their allies (even if at an immense costs in human lives and destruction). So I think it is dangerous to take this lightly.
The second dubious assumption is that the Russian economy will implode under the strain. The Russians are certainly in for a rough time, but I doubt that it will break the country economically. The political fall-out is more difficult to assess. Normally, governments in the time of war have to change and become more sensitive to what common people want. That is exactly what happened in both England and the US during WWII, as documented by e.g. Thomas Piketty (despite Winston Churchill’s aristocratic dislike of working people). In today’s Russia there is ample scope for a redistributive policy, and some measures seem already to have been taken in this sense. The government seems furthermore to be looking for increasing the taxes on the profitable mining sector to finance its social programmes. But more radical measures may be needed, for example starting with abolishing the neoliberal tax system, invented in the roaring nineties, and put in place a progressive tax system, alleviating the tax burden on the lower incomes and increasing it for the higher incomes (and the tycoons). Whether the Russian Government is willing or able to do that, or to take other more far-reaching initiatives favouring common people, remains to be seen, but to my opinion it is crucial for its political survival.
Pro-Russian separatist troops advance towards Lysychansk, June 2022. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Donbas_(2022%E2%80%93present)
Finally, it may also be questioned whether the cost of the war to the US (and the EU) is that negligible. It is difficult to assess the real size of the support given, as pledges are one thing, while actually disbursed funds or delivery of military hardware is another matter. According to the Council on Foreign Relations, as of mid December 2022, the US had sent USD 48 billion to Ukraine in 2022, of which 22.9 billion in military hardware and the rest as financial support. According to the Kiel Institute for the World Economy, which has a Ukraine Support Tracker, the EU and the EU countries had by November last year committed Euro 51.8 billion. Much of this has probably not been paid out or delivered yet. To this comes support from IMF, which is planning a USD 15-20 billion loan to Ukraine (even if the chance that the country will ever be able to pay that back is slim). It may still be argued that this is petty cash. For a comparison, a 2020 study from the Costs of War project at Brown University states that “Nearly 20 years after the United States’ invasion of Afghanistan, the cost of its global war on terror stands at $8 trillion and 900,000 deaths.” So here we have another order of magnitude. Even so, the Ukrainian Government says that it needs a support of USD 5 billion monthly just to keep the Government working. To this comes the military aid. So the support needed will easily reach 100 billion Euro annually to keep the war and the Ukrainian economy going. This is still a lot of money. And with no guarantee of victory, but with the guarantee of tens of thousand more dead soldiers, mostly Ukrainians.
Even so, the basic argument holds: the war in Ukraine makes the Russians suffer at a relatively small cost to the US, compared to the costly and unsuccessful wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Whether Russia finally prevails in Ukraine is not so important. Perhaps for the Ukrainian Government, but really not for the US. The war has brought a lot of benefits for the US: the EU has been brought into an increasingly closer partnership with NATO, the EU countries are increasing their military spending and they are now following the lead of the US without putting any questions, even when it is not in their interest, for example the agressive US China policy. And at the same time US LNG and weapons exports to Europe are booming.
The sad consequence is that it implies that the US has no real incentive to contribute to a peace settlement. The longer the war goes on, the better. Of course, it would be nice if Ukraine eventually succeeds in driving the Russians out of Donbas and Crimea (which few people seriously believe is feasable), but even if they don’t, it really doesn’t matter very much. The US wins anyway. A lovely war, indeed. For the US.
