To the US? Ukraine, hands down.

More details? Seriously? The question wasn’t rhetorical?

I define politically important as ‘affects real people’. For the majority of people just wanting to be well informed, good citizens that’s the best possible definition. If an issue or event doesn’t affect people or only affects a few, unless you’re one of the few, that thing isn’t politically important enough to spend bandwidth on learning about it.

But it doesn’t serve when talking about most nation state stuff. Nation states usually don’t make the news yelling at each other unless a large number of people are affected. But just because the neighbors are feuding doesn’t mean it is important to you. The US is that one neighbor that gets called to calm down the fussing which complicates things.

One one level, everything is kind of important to the US. Eventually, we end up in most discussions so it’s really helpful to have some idea of what is going on. On another, most things are not important to the US as few international matters directly affect us. The US’ solution is that we pay hoards of analysts to study every podunk country on the planet so we have good information and analysis on that one oddball occasion that Podunk becomes internationally relevant. That way, the Executive can safely ignore Podunk and deal with the ton of other stuff that actually needs his attention.

Neither Ukraine nor Israel are Podunk. Both are important to the US in very different ways. Israel is a longstanding ally and an important partner in the Middle East. The US will not be shelving its relationship with Israel any time in the next several decades. Ukraine is a lynchpin in a much bigger alliance group and international struggle. Russia is a threat to thirty plus allies in Europe and a destabilizing force worldwide.

Israel doesn’t need a whole lot of help here. We’re actually more help on the PR front – or should be. Oh, yes, we sent two aircraft carriers and will send aid but Israel’s needs aren’t all that great – relatively speaking. They don’t want or need American boots on the ground right now. But at the end of the day, Israel simply isn’t as strategically important for the US right now.

I know, disappointing, isn’t it? Well, cheer up – the US does TONS of stuff that isn’t strategically important every day. The question was ‘which is more important’, not ‘which will the US support’. The US is a big nation state and can rub its tummy and pat its head while skipping and chewing gum. But even the US has to prioritize – or try to – and some important things are more important than others.

Let’s deal with the elephant in the room: Russia is not our friend. Russia wants to be the sole superpower and not for a good reason. It’s long and complicated and you can search for Peter Zeihan all by yourself. Suffice it that Russia is not playing nice and Mearsheimer is just wrong about NATO expansion. Ukraine is a very cheap – yes really – bulwark against a host of issues stemming from Russia’s aggression and imperialism.

Yes, imperialism. No, Putin doesn’t seem to think of himself as an emperor but Russia is clearly building an empire. Arguably, it always was an empire of a weird sort. Calling your leader an emperor doesn’t make it a nation state an empire; calling your leader ‘president’ doesn’t make your nation state NOT an empire. Empires are better defined in the modern era as authoritarian and aggressively growth oriented, especially in terms of territory. Empires subjugate in order to incorporate. Russia fits this model frighteningly well.

Look Iran is a pain in the backside but it has no hope of dominating the Middle East at this point. It can and will make life miserable for as much of the Middle East as possible in its pursuit of regional dominance. Iran will use Israel as its scapegoat as it strives to destabilize and reshape the Islamic World, most especially the Middle East.

Ooh, sounds scary. If you are in the Middle East, it is. For Israel it’s a massive problem. It’s an even bigger problem for Saudi Arabia and will get much worse if the US continues to lose interest in the region. If your Dad is glued to the TV, your brother is going to suddenly become a royal in your backside. Same exact thing. Who said nation states were grown up?

But will Iran be able to set off a region wide conflict? Nah. They’d have done that already long since if they could. Syria is screwed. Gaza is doomed. The West Bank will be on its bestest behavior to not get caught in the backlash. The rest of the Middle East will busily find other things to do.

Oh, the people in the region may be really riled up – that’s one of Iran’s goals – but the nation states aren’t democratic at all and none of them see the Palestinian Arab cause as a winning proposition any longer. They are running out of oil and don’t have time for regional wars. They need to normalize trade relations within the region and that includes Israel. They have to build out real economies and incessant warfare prevents that. The folks in power aren’t interested in furthering Iran’s dreams or in destroying Israel. That was their grandfather’s war.

Also, the US isn’t disinterested enough. I know everyone thinks the Iraq and Afghanistan wars were a waste – they weren’t. There are no Middle Eastern nation states that want to play with POing the US EVER again. Even if we do eventually go home, the US humiliated Iraq twice and Afghanistan once. In a region where ‘face’ matters, that alone disincentivizes playing chicken with the US. But the whole being invaded and losing massively militarily damages everything rulers care about. No thanks, they don’t wanna play anymore.

Israel has had enough and isn’t using the old playbook. Gaza isn’t going to be occupied – it will probably be depopulated. Calm down, the Israelis don’t need to use bullets. Gaza is a castle with its curtain walls backwards. It can’t do anything important – food, water, energy – on its own. Cutting Gaza in half is sufficient. The Israelis can let the Gazans come to them, provide humanitarian aid and embassy access for people to begin emigrating. Emigrating with an E – it means leaving.

So, there’s not a lot the US needs to do. Supply aid military and humanitarian as well as maintaining that big scary military presence so Hezbollah doesn’t decide to try something stupid and Yemen confines itself to flashy and useless displays. This is relatively low bandwidth for the US.

But Russia and Iran!

Yep, Russia thinks it benefits from the distraction. I’m not so sure. But let’s assume that it does – so what? Gaza isn’t Ukraine and Iran can’t support Hamas sufficiently to keep this conflict hot for very long. Plus all the usual suspects are clamoring for a ceasefire (hint, they ain’t getting it this time) so the shelf life of this crisis is looking pretty short. By March, we won’t be talking about Israel but we will be looking at the Russian elections and the Ukraine conflict.

Winter wars are boring anyway.

As I said earlier, I don’t think this distraction actually benefits Russia so much. Without a lot of attention on the issue in the US the opponents to Ukraine aid will be less visible. They might disrupt some aid but I doubt it. Johnson – the new Speaker – is unlikely to block bills getting the floor because the Republicans that support Ukraine can cost him the speakership exactly as their opponents took down McCarthy. If anything, bills are likely to be more targeted and harder to oppose.

The hard part for the House will be learning how to write bills that can pass again.

Regardless, the opposition isn’t strong enough to shut down aid, nor has Trump made that much of a campaign issue. The US won’t pull out in 2024 as Russia hopes and it just might get more involved. No, not boots on the ground but keeping pressure on Russia hurts the Iranian efforts to hurt Israel. Iran’s economic bandwidth is limited and it can only supply so many drones. Having two customers with bottomless need is going to overwhelm the Iranian production capability fairly quickly. So keeping Iran in the drone business is a cheap way to keep them busy. It has the added benefit of being very likely to become a source of friction with the Russians.

Iran needs the Russians more than it needs Hezbollah. Sanction busting ain’t cheap or easy and Russia is one of Iran’s main behind the scenes partners in that regard. Now remember, nation states are resilient so they aren’t going bust or be at each other’s throats next week but the more grit in the gears the sooner those gears will fail.

But why is there so much bipartisan support for Ukraine? Don’t the Republicans oppose support for Ukraine? Some do but they are the minority of the party. Most old school Republicans are invested differently – stop over reading that. It doesn’t mean they are corrupt just that their interests lie in the international and defense sectors. The ‘foreign aid bad’ crowd isn’t a majority nor do they have a lot of expertise in the international field – and don’t over read that either. They aren’t ignorant, this just isn’t their bailiwick.

Which explains why Mearsheimer is so popular with the anti-Ukraine crowd.

No, I’m not anti Mearsheimer. The guy is just wrong – it happens daily to us human types. He misidentified NATO expansion as the critical issue for Russia when it is in fact a wedge issue. The critical issue is NATO’s existence – and yes, invading Ukraine majorly backfired here – and Russia uses NATO expansion to try to drive a wedge or three into NATO. Or it did until Russia shot itself in the foot invading Ukraine.

You need a little background to spot Mearsheimer’s error and most of the anti-foreign aid crowd lacks that background. It’s not a dig – I guarantee everyone has a blind spot. This happens to be theirs.

So, why do the other Republicans support Ukraine? There’s no one true answer – humans come up with lots of reasons to do the same thing. The main general answer seems to be a combination of being Euro-sympathetic and being more pro-defense. The more specific answer is that a proportion of these guys are just more knowledgeable about international relations and the danger Russia’s invasion poses to both our allies and ultimately to the US. And since most old school Republicans are like me and older than dirt, they remember their parents talking about WWII and some remember or even served in Viet Nam. Wars that had deep. lasting impacts on Americans and that does change the picture for us.

Let’s break it down – why is Ukraine important to US interests?

1. The US has deep cultural, trade, defense and security ties to Europe. No other region can drag us into a war faster or more intensely.
2. Trade with Europe is massive. While the US is not dependent on trade, $358 Billion in exports ain’t hay (it appears as imports on the linked chart – imports by Europe from the US are exports by the US to Europe). We import even more from Europe – those German cars and Swiss chocolates are just the tip of the iceberg.
3. NATO – the infamous Article Five! Now, Article Five being invoked might not mean going to war but it very likely might. We would rather not test this one as there is no good outcome. We either go to war almost certainly with Russia or NATO collapses and we end up cleaning up the mess.
4. Russia really isn’t our friend. Russia routinely uses propaganda to manipulate the US and sometimes it even works. Not every hair brained piece of idiocy comes from Russian cyberwarriors – we can manage idiocy all by ourselves, thankyouverymuch – but a lot of the crazy things that seem to catch fire are in fact amplified by Russian (and Chinese) trolls and bots. Let Russia win and this, along with other Russian manipulations, will only get worse.
5. Russia may not be able to militarily attack the US but they have enormous capability to attack the US asymmetrically. That means using other means to hurt the US. Sanctions are a familiar asymmetrical attack but there are a lot more. Destroying undersea infrastructure, cyber attacks and propaganda are all possibilities and all can do enormous damage. You’ll note that one already is. The more Russia succeeds by being aggressive, the more emboldened the Russians will be. Eventually, they get cocky enough to attack the US and this doesn’t bode well for anyone.
6. European destabilization has historically led to massively bloody wars. If Russia wins, Eastern Europe is likely to destabilize. It sounds all fancy but it boils down to what happened at the beginning of the invasion in Ukraine repeats all over Eastern Europe in numbers not seen since World War Two. Eastern Europeans have made it very clear that they do not wish to be ruled by Russia. If Western Europe and the US back out on Ukraine, Eastern Europeans will begin to seriously wonder how strong NATO actually is. A trickle of immigrants from Eastern Europe to Western Europe will start and likely become a flood. That can and likely will destabilize all of Europe.

Or we can just keep shoveling useful stuff across the Ukraine border and let Russia bash its own head into that brick wall. The risk of escalation is miniscule – if Russia were going to use nukes they’ d have done a lot more along those lines by now. Saber rattling isn’t a real threat. As long as Ukraine can hold out Russia is going to keep doing enormous damage to itself. For the US this is a win-win. Russia diminishes its strength and influence and the US makes even more money.

Oh, didn’t I mention that? Yeah, we’re benefiting like crazy on this one and best of all, no one begrudges us (well, except France but they begrudge just about everything). How? Well, most of those aid packages get spent in the US. Better yet, a lot of the initial packages were focused on other Eastern European nations – namely those willing to supply Ukraine with their old Russian stuff, which was almost all of them. Those nations didn’t have nifty Western stuff to replace all their military equipment with, so the US backfilled their stockpiles from our own stockpiles.

That, my friends, will reap dividends for at least five decades.

Why? Simple – we sent our old stuff that they could handle as NATO members. That benefits them because F35 has an insanely long logistics tail that even Poland would have difficulty with if we just replaced their entire airframe stock. But older, manageable systems give them the stuff they need now and a way forward to getting the brighter, shinier stuff later. Stuff they will buy from us. In the meantime, they will need software updates and logistics training and training updates and all sorts of spare parts. We are in business, gang, supplying military hard and software that Eastern European NATO members have been drooling over since the Nineties.

Basically, they got their first real Xbox and now they are in the market for all the best games.

Most US foreign aid reaps soft dividends – connections and trust that benefit us but which are hard to define in dollars. Ukraine aid is already yielding hard dividends as well as soft.

Russia takes itself to the cleaners. Eastern Europe becomes much more Western and American aligned. The US makes money in the process. Not seeing the downside for the US.

Would have been a lot better if we could have skipped all the bloodshed, though. For Ukraine, for Europe and for the US, not having real wars is always the best outcome.

Wish it were always a possible outcome.