Pitching hard for aid to Ukraine included in a $105 billion security supplemental request, State Department officials told the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee that failing to support Ukraine would help Russia and undermine U.S. credibility worldwide.
“It’s clear President [Vladimir] Putin is now playing a waiting game,” said James O’Brien, assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian affairs, Nov. 8. “He thinks if he can wait for our elections, or for Ukraine to get tired,” Russia can prevail.
The House Republican majority has balked on further aid to Ukraine while supporting aid to Israel in its fight against Hamas in Gaza. The Senate hearing focused on non-military aid for Ukraine to shore up its industry so it can continue exporting grain and metal, preserve its first responder capacity and rebuild its energy infrastructure.
“What we need to do are several things at the same time,” O’Brien said. “We need Ukraine to continue fighting and thrive while this war goes on, and to soften Russia’s hold on parts of Ukraine so that, when the decisive battles come, they are able to fight effectively.”
The supplemental request would “set Ukraine up to thrive through 2024,” O’Brien said, and also “set the stage” for Ukraine’s post-war recovery.
Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) said he sees the wars in Ukraine and Gaza and China’s aggression in the South China Sea as “an inflection point that will determine, in my view, what much of the rest of the century is going to look like.” But he also asked witnesses what he should tell constituents who ask “why Ukraine is important,” when compared to thousands crossing the U.S. border illegally, the rising national debt, and the fact that “the real military risk is China.”
Obrien answered that the first element of confronting China is ensuring a solid coalition of partners and allies. Backing Ukraine is helpful there, he noted: With “50-odd countries” supporting Ukraine, “we’re set to compete really effectively.” But if the U.S. were to end its support, he added, America will likely pay “more later…in military spending” than it is spending now in various kinds of aid. The U.S. would also cause some friends to rethink their alliances, he said.
Failure to stop Putin in Ukraine could also embolden him to press on into Poland and the other Baltic states.
The U.S. also benefits from supporting Ukraine in that it “allows us to reinvigorate our own industrial base,” O’Brien said, both in the military and energy sectors, strengthening the U.S. as a credible opponent to China. “All of that’s included in this supplemental, and that’s going to make us better able to defend Taiwan,” he said.
“The final point I’d make is, this is the wrong time to walk away, because Ukraine is winning,” O’Brien declared. “It’s already taken back half the territory Putin seized since February ’22. … You don’t walk away when you’re partway through the job.”
Erin McKee, Assistant Administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development for Europe and Eurasia, added that the U.S. has “unlocked the alliances and mobilization” of dozens of countries in suport of Ukraine. “If we falter in our support, Russia will win,” she said. “And they won’t stop at Ukraine.”
Helping Ukraine defend itself also weakens Russia, noted Geoffrey Pyatt, Assistant Secretary of State for Energy Resources. He noted that U.S. suppliers have benefited from Europe’s shift away from Russian oil and gas, and that even if the war ended now, Russia’s Gross Domestic Product has suffered a 20 percent loss, which should deplete its war chest for future aggression.
Gaza and Russia
Asked by Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Ha.) if there are linkages between the Ukraine war and the war in Gaza, O’Brien said there were.
“Putin sees Hamas as a way to distract us and to weaken the coalition that we have built against him,” O’Brien said. “His unwillingness to vote to condemn what Hamas did October 7, and his unwillingness to use any leverage he might have to get them to, say, move out of Gaza City…is a sign that he prefers to see us distracted by this fight. And he prefers to see Hamas as a sort of second front against us. And that’s the connection that’s most troubling.”
Putin wants “instability around his borders” as well, O’Brien said, and McKee added that Ukraine needs help to remain a functioning society.
“They don’t have any resources to take care of their people and govern, which is as vital to keeping up the unity of purpose and the resilience that we’ve seen from the Ukrainian people because they’re all-in, both on the civilian and the military side,” McKee said. Aid is needed to fund first responders and provide medical care, as well as to keep schools operating so that “they don’t lose a generation as a result of Putin’s attacks on civilians and civilian infrastructure.”
Bottom line, she said: “If their economy collapses, Putin will have won.”
Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) appeared to be the lone committee member present to object to further funding for Ukraine. He suggested the funds only prolong the war and that the put off negotiations to end it. Meanwhile, the U.S. is being asked “to fix the world’s problems” with borrowed money, he said.
“You’re ignoring the rot and ruin you’re creating in your own country, Mr. O’Brien,” Paul said. He warned that a nuclear-armed Russia may soon be “forced to choose between humiliating defeat on the one hand and escalating the level of destruction. There’s every reason to believe he chooses the latter.”
O’Brien stood his ground. “My belief is, if we don’t stand with Ukraine now, we’ll be spending much more on defense in the future.” But when he added that much of the spending actually goes to U.S. providers, Paul called “reprehensible” any explanation that “the war’s really not that bad.”
“Broken windows are not that bad because we pay people to fix them,” he said. “Broken countries are not so bad because hey, look, the armaments industry is gonna get billions of dollars out of this. That’s a terrible argument.”
Asked about a future off-ramp to war in Ukraine, O’Brien said negotiation is inevitable.
“All wars end with a negotiation,” he said. “. We’ve made clear we’ll do that with Ukraine, [and] not [go] over Ukraine’s head. “It takes two parties to negotiate the end of war. President Putin is not serious about negotiating the end of the war. He has said he wants to wait and see what happens in November ‘24,” after the U.S. presidential election.
“I just spent last weekend with 66 countries talking about the basis of a successful peace in in Ukraine,” O’Brien said. “Russia didn’t show up. That again is the problem. You don’t have a willing partner on the other side. So simply saying that there must be talks…you’re asking for a monologue, not…diplomacy.”