Lessons from costly wars past

Money is often a substitute for strategy in US foreign policy. We spent $2 trillion in Afghanistan, only to lose the country the minute our troops began to pull out. How much will it realistically cost, then, to beat Russia in Ukraine? Will the next $100 or $200 billion do the trick?

This is not a question that supporters of war-spending ask themselves. As in Afghanistan, spending is a way to defer thinking about actually winning — or facing the serious possibility of losing. Our aid buys delay, not results.

Ironically, while the specter of World War Two is invoked every time there’s a conflict, our experience then teaches the same lesson as recent attempts to purchase victory. Franklin Roosevelt wanted to save Britain from Nazi Germany, but Congress was determined to keep America out of another European conflagration. Until Pearl Harbor, the most Roosevelt could do was to give the British arms and aid. That was indispensable to their survival — but lend-lease and other such efforts would never have defeated the Nazis. That required American entry into the war, after the Red Army had already been brought in by Hitler’s invasion of the Soviet Union.

The great counterexample from the end of the last century is not what it seems, either. The mujahideen in Afghanistan did defeat the Soviet Union, and the US supported the mujahideen generously — this surely proves that giving defenders the weapons they need is enough to beat a Russian army. But the Taliban overcame the Western war effort in Afghanistan without any such aid. Was it really CIA arms and dollars that made the difference in the 1980s, or would the Afghan fighters have sooner or later prevailed anyway? We foolishly tested that question with our own war and occupation. This time it was CIA arms and money against the native militants — and this time, too, they won.

American credibility is said to be at stake in Ukraine. This is tragically true. Every ineffective move dispels more of our prestige and teaches our opponents how to resist us. We have pulled every lever to cripple the Russian economy by severing it from the global financial system. What this proved, however, is that SWIFT counts less in the real world than Russia’s massive natural resources. Sanctions have made Russia more self-reliant, and less responsive to outside pressures. Sanctions, too, are a substitute for strategy, amounting finally to a self-delusion that withholding carrots is the same as brandishing a stick.

Beijing takes note. China, the biggest-ever beneficiary of the liberal international order, rose from abject poverty to global prominence by taking advantage of the US-created global economy and security environment. Though prosperity led to some moderation before the rise of Xi Jinping, economic opportunity was never going to transform the communist state into a liberal democracy.

Now the US finds China a much richer and more technologically advanced rival, and reducing its access to world markets seems like a sensible way to curtail Beijing’s power. The Chinese, for their part, must decide whether they prefer to continue to grow globally or whether less prosperity is a price worth paying for greater military and political assertiveness.

Russia provides China with a test case, all the more telling for being so extreme, as America takes economic measures against Moscow that it couldn’t against Beijing. If Russia winds up satisfied with trading SWIFT for a slice of Ukraine, we can expect that the CCP’s case for following a similar path will become stronger. That may or may not tip the decision in favor of assertion over engagement, but it will lend more weight to the argument that America is a paper tiger.

If sanctions on Russia and hundreds of billions — or trillions? — in arms for Ukraine prove inadequate, what would sanctions on China and all the aid we could muster for Taiwan amount to? The difference might be that the United States and its East Asian allies would fight for Taiwan, but short of that, Beijing may find it has little to fear. And again the example of World War Two may teach something that our pundits overlook: the Pacific War was brutal, and the prospect of invading the Japanese home islands even at a point when Japan was exhausted was so daunting that Truman chose nuclear weapons instead. A war nearly 7,000 miles away from our continental shores, and less than eighty miles from China’s, is not geostrategically favorable for us.

Putin, meanwhile, gives every indication that he is more ready to escalate than to negotiate. But the silver lining for the West lies in recognizing that just as America’s wars have often been bitter and destabilizing, Russia’s wars have a way of putting the Kremlin in peril. Putin did not achieve a quick knockout victory in his initial invasion of Ukraine in 2022. And Ukrainians have sunk quite a few vessels of Russia’s precious Black Sea Fleet. Whether Putin wants to rule Ukraine or, more likely, turn it into a smoldering no-man’s land between Russia and Europe, he will face continued resistance of one kind or another even if he “wins,” and his victory will only sow more fear and enmity toward Russia in Europe. As long as Western Europe remains largely passive and dependent on the US, and Eastern Europe talks tough but does little, Russia can imagine itself a great power. But if Putin rouses Europe to defend its own civilization, Russia will find itself facing a moral as well as military power with which it cannot compete.

This article was originally published in The Spectator’s April 2024 World edition.