Why Aiding Ukraine Makes Sense

Recently, President Biden signed a bill that will provide forty billion dollars to the nation of Ukraine. The same week Biden did this, he also authorized one hundred million dollars worth of military aid to Ukraine. This is on top of the thirteen billion dollars Biden gave to Ukraine in a bill to keep the government funded back in March. Overall, the United States has spent fifty four billion dollars on aid to Ukraine since they were invaded by Russia earlier this year.

Of course, the federal government gave nearly six trillion dollars in subsidies — both directly and indirectly — in 2020. In fact, Ukraine has barley gotten ten percent of what Somalia — the country the United States gives the tenth most foreign aid to — is getting from the federal government in 2022. Meanwhile, the United States spent three hundred billion dollars on foreign aid last year — yet Ukraine getting a sixth of that is a massive scandal.

While expressing his dislike towards aid for Ukraine, Senator Hawley said the following on Twitter on 5/16/2022:

Spending $40 billion on Ukraine aid — more than three times what all of Europe has spent combined — is not in America’s interests. It neglects priorities at home (the border), allows Europe to freeload, short changes critical interests abroad and comes [with] no meaningful oversight.

Of course, this idea that we cannot spend money both at home and abroad is utterly nonsensical. The United States government spent nearly seven trillion dollars over the course of 2021, if Senator Hawley truly believes that forty billion dollars to Ukraine would make it impossible for us to spend money at home, he has no understanding of how politics actually works.

For that matter, how is stopping Russia — a country that is not our ally under any definition — from taking over another country not in our interest? Even if Ukraine is not an ally, Russia is even less so — and stopping Putin from gaining even more power on the global scale is certainly in the best interest of the United States. (Of course, Republicans like Hawley want Russia to be our ally, so maybe this is more about his personal goals as opposed to what is in the best interest of the United States as it stands.)

During an interview with Fox News, Senator Hawley expanded on his views by saying:

My biggest concern is that I don’t think this represents a nationalist foreign policy. I mean, it seems to me to be part of this unfocused globalism that unfortunately many in my party have embraced in the last couple of decades.

So according to Hawley, the United States attempting to keep Ukraine an independent nation is anti-nationalist, and therefore they cannot stop Russia as it invades and attempts to conquer another country. Once again, one has to wonder how Senator Hawley can call his worldview nationalist when it allows imperialist forces — much more forcefully globalist than anything NATO has ever done — to act unopposed. If Hawley truly does not think Russian imperialism is a big deal, he is free to argue that. However, even as a firm critic of the ideology of nationalism, even I have to admit that nothing like this can be called nationalistic.

Here is my question to all of those who oppose foreign aid to Ukraine: Why should the United States allow a country to lose its right to govern itself, especially when the country attempting to take it over is currently attempting to become a globalist superpower? Why should a country with the power to stop a future empire run by an oligarchic autocrat from forming not do everything in its power to stop the imperialist? Once again, this is not even an issue of nationalism or globalism — although, if it was, Putin would be firmly on the side of the globalists — this is an issue of if the United States is going to sit by and allow an invasion on this scale to take place.