Does Ukraine aid bolster US national security? Biden makes his case.

Since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, President Joe Biden has argued that aiding Ukraine in its war with one of America’s chief adversaries is a bargain enhancing U.S. national security.

And for over a year, to the tune of about $75 billion in military and economic assistance, the national security argument worked – both in public opinion and in Congress.

But no more.

As the war has hit a stalemate, U.S. support for continuing aid to Ukraine has dropped, particularly among Republicans in Congress. One factor in that falling support is that the national security argument appears to have lost its appeal as more Americans decide – as some recent opinion polls indicate – that aiding Ukraine has become too expensive for something they don’t see directly affecting them.

As Sen. James Lankford, Republican of Oklahoma, noted as he addressed continuing aid to Ukraine on CBS’s “Face the Nation” on Sunday, “What you hear from so many people is, why would we deal with other people’s security and ignore American national security?”

Now Mr. Biden is trying to reestablish that link in the national perception between U.S. aid to Ukraine and national security as he prods Congress to approve about $60 billion in additional assistance for Ukraine.

For their part, Republicans are tying any approval of additional aid for Ukraine to tougher measures to secure the southern U.S. border – an issue they insist is much more important to average Americans.

Amid the political controversy, Mr. Biden has stepped up warnings that a failure to continue aiding Ukraine would hand Russian President Vladimir Putin a dangerous victory.

“Putin is banking on the United States failing to deliver for Ukraine,” Mr. Biden said at the White House Tuesday. “We must, we must, we must prove him wrong.”

But he also invokes national security, arguing that a revanchist Russian leader – who happens to control the world’s largest nuclear arsenal – would not stop at Ukraine but would be emboldened to threaten America’s NATO allies, especially states of the former Soviet Union.

On Tuesday he invited Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to the White House to help him make the national security case.

On his third trip to Washington since the war started, Mr. Zelenskyy invoked the memory of former President Ronald Reagan. In a speech Monday, he said it is now his country that is carrying on the fight for European freedom and democracy that Mr. Reagan successfully waged against the former Soviet Union.

“We can show our children, grandchildren what real confidence is, as was shown to us when in Berlin, the great words were spoken: ‘Tear down this wall,’” Mr. Zelenskyy said, citing Mr. Reagan’s 1987 speech. “We need no less confidence now than President Reagan had then.”

The debate over additional aid to Ukraine comes as surveys show an isolationist tug gaining ground in the U.S., one that argues for America to mind its own security while a wealthy Western Europe does more to defend itself. Indeed, one of former President Donald Trump’s draws among Republican voters considering the 2024 election is his call to reevaluate the U.S. role as leader of the NATO alliance.

But many diplomats and trans-Atlantic relations experts say Americans should think twice before concluding that Ukraine’s fight has nothing to do with them – or that a victory for Mr. Putin would not affect them.

“Right now the Ukrainians are holding the line against our chief adversary in Europe, and they are doing it with what amounts to about 5% of our defense spending and with no American boots on the ground,” says William Taylor, a former ambassador to Ukraine who is now vice president, Russia and Europe Center, at the U.S. Institute of Peace in Washington.

“But make no mistake, what President Putin aims to do is reassemble the Soviet Union,” he says.

“And if Ukraine is not successful and is absorbed into Russia,” he adds, “our NATO allies will become the front lines and come under threat – the Poles, the Lithuanians, the Latvians, the Romanians – and then it will be a battle with U.S. boots on the ground.”

Others argue that aid that might appear to be a handout to Ukraine is actually enhancing national security by creating thousands of defense sector jobs and strengthening the U.S. defense industry – which some claim had lost capacity over recent years to respond to multiplying military threats.

“If you look at what the U.S. has spent [on Ukraine], it’s about 50 cents a day per American ... but about half of that 50 cents a day has gone to the U.S. defense industry, creating tens of thousands of jobs,” says Matthew Schmidt, a political scientist with expertise in Russia and Ukraine at the University of New Haven in Connecticut.

“What that tells us is that the money we’re spending is benefiting Americans and Ukrainians economically,” he adds, “and it’s benefiting both Americans and Ukrainians in terms of national security.”

Perhaps most crucially, Professor Schmidt says, continued U.S. aid will “buy time” for Ukraine to hold off Russian advances, perhaps make some additional gains – in particular concerning Russian-occupied Crimea – and secure a stronger position for eventual negotiations.

Still, some say that beyond all of the practical reasons is an overarching argument for the aid based on the international values at stake.

“Yes, there is the national security rationale for aiding Ukraine. But beyond that is a moral argument,” says Ambassador Taylor, “which is that nations should not be able to invade their neighbor, commit atrocities there, and then not be held accountable for their actions.”

That argument is being put to the test in Russia’s war on Ukraine, he says.

“If Ukraine wins, there will be accountability. But if Russia wins,” he adds, “not only will there not be accountability, but autocratic nations around the world will see that you can invade your neighbor without accountability – and they will act on it.”