House Republicans’ excuses on Ukraine are empty — we must fund our allies now 

Between the recent death of Alexei Navalny and Ukraine being forced to surrender Avdiivka because they are running out of ammunition, it’s been a bleak time for the cause of freedom and democracy. And yet, despite the Senate having passed a bipartisan bill that provides military assistance to Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan, House Republicans refuse to bring it to the floor for a vote. 

This is extremely dangerous. Every day of delay does real, measurable damage to American interests.  

But it’s also extremely unserious. If you are pro-Russia and want to see Vladimir Putin subsume Ukraine, that’s one thing. But own it. Don’t try to hide behind “concerns” about the United States sending $61 billion of taxpayer money to Ukraine, because that’s nonsense. 

There are three ways that Ukraine can get weapons from the U.S.  

First, they can buy them, either directly from the U.S. government or commercially. The second way is through the Presidential Drawdown Authority (PDA). This is the way Ukraine has gotten most of its American weapons so far and it consists of sending weapons from existing U.S. stocks. Most of the aid in the bill passed by the Senate consists of increasing the annual cap on the PDA so the United States can send additional weaponry. 

The third way is to transfer Excess Defense Articles (EDAs). These are what you might call “Craigslist weapons” that are cluttering up America’s garage, weapons no longer in use by the American armed forces that have been placed in storage. So far, the only EDAs transferred to Ukraine have been 20 Russian Mi-17 helicopters that the U.S. purchased for the Afghan military and had on-hand when the Taliban took over. Mi-17s are about $16 million apiece, but it’s ridiculous to argue that giving those helicopters to Ukraine to fight the Russians somehow “cost” the American taxpayer another $320 million. 

This is a running theme in American military aid to Ukraine.  

For example, Ukraine has received some top-line weapons under the PDA, most notably a Patriot missile system. But Ukraine also received HAWK (“Homing All the Way Killer” – really) air defense missiles. The U.S. stopped using the HAWK system over 20 years ago and has thousands in storage. So giving these Cold War weapons a second life doing what they were originally designed to do — shoot down Russian aircraft — doesn’t actually cost American taxpayers anything at all. 

By the same token, the U.S. has sent Ukraine 300 M113 armored personnel carriers. We have not manufactured these for almost 20 years and were busy stripping them out of the U.S. inventory and replacing them long before Russia invaded Ukraine. Ditto for the more than 500 Mine Resistant Ambush Protected Vehicles (MRAP) we’ve provided. That sounds like a lot, but the U.S. military is so eager to get rid of these things that they hand them out to local police departments for free. As it costs about $12,000 to junk an MRAP, maybe we should be paying Ukraine to take them off our hands. 

In short, American military assistance to Ukraine is the most phenomenal bargain in the history of foreign aid. We are literally re-spending dollars that were appropriated in the ’80s and ’90s when these weapons were originally built. Giving these near-obsolete weapons to Ukraine, which is using them to wreck the Russian military, is about as far from a taxpayer-funded boondoggle as you can get. 

And then there’s the immense strategic payoff. Tanks, armored personnel carriers and artillery sent to Ukraine are being used to hamstring the military of one of the biggest geopolitical threats to American security. Is it really such a bad thing that these tanks are being driven by Ukrainians instead of Americans? Or will House Republicans be happier when Putin swallows Ukraine and invades one of the Baltic states, so it’s American soldiers that are fighting and dying instead? Abandoning Ukraine to Putin would be a strategic blunder on par with abandoning the United Kingdom to Hitler’s tender mercies in 1940. 

Finally — and this is something House Republicans do not seem to care about — standing with Ukraine is just the right thing to do. The people of Ukraine have chosen freedom. Yes, they have problems in their society. Who doesn’t? But in the darkest days of the war, when they were being told to surrender, they made a conscious decision that it was better to die on one’s feet than live on one’s knees. They chose freedom and the West. They’ve paid a steep price in blood, treasure and even stolen children for that decision, but they have also succeeded magnificently. They aren’t asking Americans to fight for them (this isn’t Afghanistan or Iraq). All they are asking is the chance to fight for themselves.  

Would you really deny them that chance? Give them the tools and let them finish the job. 

Chris Truax is an appellate lawyer in San Diego and a member of the Guardrails of Democracy Project.