By Reinhard Lauterbach
At first glance, 61 billion US dollars is a lot of money. It is one and a half times as much as the USA has spent on military support for Ukraine in the past two years: 44 billion. In this respect, it is logical that 23 billion of the 61 billion should in fact be used to refinance the defense aid that has already been provided, namely to replenish the USA’s own arsenals. A further eleven billion is to continue to ensure the “financing of American security operations in Europe”; this means that more than half of the “Ukraine package” will not go to Kyiv, but into the USA’s own pockets.
In addition, 14 billion dollars will be used by the US government to order further weapons for Ukraine from the domestic defense industry: almost a quarter of the total package. It is no coincidence that NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg called on the member states of the alliance a few days ago to ensure that, while supporting Ukraine, they shall not plunder their own arsenals to such an extent that their stocks fall below the level that NATO considers necessary for its own war capability. Much of what was announced to the outside world looks much smaller after a few months: For example, the Czech initiative to buy one million artillery shells worldwide for Ukraine. So far, only 300,000 of these have been contractually secured. In plain language, this means that NATO, which is not officially involved in the war between Russia and Ukraine, is now effectively running on empty.
But this should not be publicized any more than the emperor’s nakedness in Andersen’s fairy tale. NATO lives in particular from the nimbus of its supposed invincibility. In a video for the Daily Mail newspaper ahead of the vote in Washington, former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson virtually implored the USA to support Kyiv “more and faster”; at stake was nothing more and nothing less than “global Western hegemony”. These are the words of the man who was instrumental in torpedoing the Russian-Ukrainian peace negotiations two years ago and forcing Ukraine into a proxy war which, as has since been shown, it cannot win.
In the short term, the announcement of additional US military aid will intensify the war in Ukraine, as it creates an incentive for Russia to create further military facts before the announced aid materially arrives in Ukraine. If the package, as Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said, “keeps history on the right track”, then this shows first and foremost what the West’s track consists of: Defending its own supremacy with all the force at its disposal.
The interview was initially published here. Translation from German by UWI.