Recent legislative proposals, including a discussed border security bill, aimed to allocate significant funds for Ukraine, with one package reportedly reaching $60 billion. This figure, when compared directly, indeed surpasses the 2023 budget of the U.S. Marine Corps, which was around $53.8 billion.
- The direct monetary commitments for military aid alone have been substantial, with over $44 billion reported by April 2024.
- The broader aid packages, when including economic and humanitarian support, push the total aid into the $113 billion range by late 2023, with further commitments potentially bringing this total closer to or over $175 billion by mid-2024, incorporating all forms of assistance over the period.
These numbers reflect a combination of direct aid to Ukraine and indirect benefits like defense spending that benefits U.S. manufacturers and replenishment of U.S. military stockpiles, showcasing a multifaceted approach to aid. However, exact figures can vary due to different calculations of what counts as “sent to Ukraine,” whether focusing solely on military aid or including broader economic and humanitarian support.
Rand Paul: "The amount of money going to Ukraine in this Bill is more than we spend on the entire Marine Corps."
— illuminatibot (@iluminatibot) September 12, 2024
Ridiculous! pic.twitter.com/ihfvlCHG7x
In a new report EliotACohen and PhillipsPOBrien reviewed 181 pieces of research and analysis from think tanks, media outlets, and other sources to comprehensively examine the flawed pre-war assessments of the Russia-Ukraine military balance.
Surprise occurs in many forms. Many think of it in terms of a surprise attack, but it occurs in other dimensions. The full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 is a good example: the attack was foreseen, but the immediate outcomes were astonishing. To use an old Soviet phrase, analysts misunderstood in fundamental ways the “correlation of forces.” Their judgments about Russian and Ukrainian military capacity were not merely off—they were wildly at variance with reality. And even more perplexing, leading and widely acknowledged experts misjudged with a degree of certainty that in retrospect is no less remarkable than the analytic failure itself.
Their misjudgment was not a case of normal error or exaggeration. The expert community grossly overestimated Russian military capabilities, dismissed the chances of Ukraine resisting effectively, and presented the likely outcome of the war as quick and decisive. This analytic failure also had policy implications. Pessimism about Ukraine’s chances restricted military support before February 24, 2022. For years, voices in the analytic community argued publicly against providing crucial military aid for Ukraine precisely because Russia was presumably so strong that a war between the two countries, particularly a conventional one, would be over too quickly for the aid to make a significant difference. Once the war began, some of Ukraine’s most important international friends hesitated to supply advanced weapons, in part out of the mistaken belief that Ukraine would prove unable to use them or would be overrun before it could deploy them effectively.
Today, such hesitation remains, with Ukraine still lacking the weapons systems it needs to defeat Russia in its relentless effort to destroy Ukraine as a state. Thorough consideration of why responsible and expert analysts made egregious misjudgments is the best way to avoid a similar outcome in this part of the world or elsewhere. This report documents and explains a large, consequential failure.
Full report here: https://www.csis.org/analysis/russia-ukraine-war-study-analytic-failure