“Thirty years ago, on 5 December 1994, at a ceremony in Budapest, Ukraine joined Belarus and Kazakhstan in giving up their nuclear arsenals in return for security guarantees from the United States, the UK, France, China and Russia,” reports the BBC:
Strictly speaking, the missiles belonged to the Soviet Union, not to its newly independent former republics.
But a third of the USSR’s nuclear stockpile was located on Ukrainian soil, and handing over the weapons was regarded as a significant moment, worthy of international recognition.
“The pledges on security assurances that [we] have given these three nations…underscore our commitment to the independence, the sovereignty and the territorial integrity of these states,” then US President Bill Clinton said in Budapest.
Now, Ukrainians worry that the U.S. will stop sending them aid to fight off a brutal, unprovoked Russian invasion, an invasion that would never have occurred if Ukraine had kept its nukes. “Ukraine gave up its nuclear weapons. Now it’s asking why,” the BBC notes.
When Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, the U.S. correctly sent aid to Ukraine, as it was supposed to do, under the security assurances it provided Ukraine in the 1994 Budapest agreement.
Ignoring that solemn pledge would be a mistake that would undermine America’s credibility and encourage aggression against our allies by Russia and China. The reason Russia doesn’t attack our smaller NATO allies — like Finland and the Baltic nations — is because we have a mutual defense treaty with them, as part of NATO. But that deterrent only exists because Russia expects us to live up to those treaty obligations.
Russia will be less likely to think we will live up to those treaty obligations — and more likely to invade the Baltic nations or Finland — if we Americans don’t live up to the assurances we made to Ukraine in 1994, to protect Ukraine’s independence and its territorial integrity.
The only reason China doesn’t attack and seize Taiwan (which America is reliant upon for semiconductors) is because we have made security assurances to Taiwan. But China won’t believe those assurances if we don’t live up to our assurances to Ukraine.
So failing to help Ukraine could lead to future attacks on America’s allies, like Taiwan and the Baltic nations. And if our allies were conquered, one after another, eventually the U.S. itself could be threatened.
The U.S. has spent $120 billion on aid to Ukraine in response to Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, and provided another $62 billion worth of military equipment from its defense stocks, and military training. Europe has spent $139 billion on aid to Ukraine. (Most of Europe’s aid came in the form of loans, while over half of U.S. aid was a gift.)
This U.S. aid sounds like a lot, but it amounts to less than 0.2% of America’s GDP annually. By contrast, after World War II, the U.S. provided foreign aid to Europe worth 5.2% of America’s GDP, known as the Marshall Plan. So U.S. aid to Ukraine has been much less burdensome than past major aid programs like the Marshall Plan.
Moreover, much of the aid given by the U.S. to Ukraine was spent on weapons manufactured in the U.S., boosting U.S. factory production.
Sending aid to Ukraine keeps Russia from taking over Ukraine and then killing tens of thousands of Ukrainian civilians. Russia has killed thousands of civilians in areas of Ukraine it occupies, sometimes in massacres. It has tortured and executed prisoners. If Russia takes over Ukraine, it will be on the border with Poland, America’s NATO ally, which Russian nationalists would like to take over and conquer, because much of Poland was part of Russia until 1918. The Soviet Union seized more than half of Poland from 1939-1941.
Russia has committed atrocities in the areas of Ukraine it controls.For example, in a forest outside the town of Izium, Russian forces dumped the bodies of the 445 civilians they murdered into mass graves.
Sending aid to Ukraine has enabled it to weaken Russia’s ability to make war and attack NATO. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said that “The U.S. navy isn’t prepared to face Russia’s navy.” But as columnist Noah Smith pointed out, with U.S. aid, “Ukraine destroyed much of Russia’s navy, without even having a navy of their own!” Ukraine has “killed or wounded hundreds of thousands of Russian troops, and destroyed large quantities of equipment.” This has weakened Russia, and made it less of a threat to the United States.
