This story is pure opinion and speculation.
Something has been bugging me since US funding to Ukraine mostly expired in October without being renewed. Prior to October, I hadn’t been particularly worried. Sure there were the few Putin sycophants in the GOP making noise but I thought we could always count on the greed of the defense industry to keep the GOP in line. I was obviously wrong (I’m used to that ;).
But the question of why has been really sticking with me. The standard response has been that the GOP is desperate to prevent a Ukraine victory being turned into a political victory for Biden. I’m not fully convinced of this. When would the defense industry put the GOP ahead of profits? Nothing gets in the way of profits. Is our defense industry in with Putin? That doesn’t make sense to me either. It’s full of former US military officers and while a few may be all in on Russia (see Michael Flynn), I can’t see a majority being that far gone.
Has the GOP cut loose with the defense industry? Inconceivable! The only government money the GOP ever wants to spend is either to torture immigrants or be funneled to large private corporations. The US defense budget is huge and most of it goes to private industry. No, the money will keep flowing to the defense contractors. Just not money for Ukraine (and Israel and Taiwan, but my hunch is they are collateral damage in this).
So the evil thought kicking around in the back of my mind is, does the US defense industry want Ukraine to lose, or at least not win? If we look at the aid the US has been giving Ukraine it’s mostly 30 year old cast-offs at the end of their shelf life and/or weapon systems slated to be replaced. There’s a few exceptions, but it mostly has come through Presidential Drawdown authorization allowing the President to give Ukraine items already in the US military inventory. Much of what we are giving to Ukraine was profitable for the defense industry 30 years ago, but they aren’t getting much now from it. Again, there are a few exceptions of new equipment, but a lot is surplus.
Even the new expenditures or drawdown of stocks that will result in new profit is a relatively small percentage of US defense spending. Afghanistan and Iraq resulted in a gigantic increase in US defense spending. I doubt Ukraine spending even registers above the noise, particularly when we consider the decrease in spending after finally leaving Afghanistan. Further, unless we break open the bank and start gifting a few hundred F-35s and similar equipment, the type of arms going to Ukraine are relatively individually low cost and bulk items. Increasing artillery production may excite a small group of contractors, but most are left out of that market.
A few might get in on drones, but the whole point of drones is they are insanely low cost relative to effect. Margins per unit are low and there is a lot of international competition. Basic drone tech for FPVs is consumer grade and as they are considered one use, there is little current demand to upgrade component quality. If the up-charge for making them electronic warfare (EW) resistant is too expensive, then either other means of combating EW becomes more valuable or simply creating more cheap drones on the premise that 1 cheap drone out of 10 (each costing $1,000) getting to a target is a better deal than 1 EW resistant drone getting through if it costs $30,000. The expensive drones may still have a niche for highly protected high value targets that no cheap drones could get through, but that currently seems to be a minor niche.
This of course brings out a rather dangerous point for the US defense industry. They thrive on the US being willing to shell out insane amounts of cash for super high quality equipment. Ukraine is currently beating the threat US defense industry has for decades been preparing the US to fight, but at a tiny fraction of the cost without major weapon systems previously thought to be essential. At the moment Ukraine is stalled due to artillery shell shortage and uncertainty of US weapon deliveries, but I don’t think the result of this conflict would be in doubt if the US actually started giving weapons freely and openly. If we put the money into Ukraine to defeat the United States largest enemy that we put into defeating Iraq, a third rate military power defeated in days, there is no question in my mind Ukraine would win and win quickly. That we are not doing so is criminal neglect.
And before you accuse me of Biden bashing, I don’t think Biden is the hold-up here. Early on, before most folks realized Ukraine could win, the US was fantastic at getting Ukraine exactly the right tools needed at the moment. Once it became clear Ukraine might actually win, US aid started to get all wonky. Tanks we were willing to give to Egypt were somehow too much for Ukraine. Rather, look at the defense spending of the US per year on the graph below.
The single biggest calamity for the US defense industry in the past 70 years was the collapse of the Soviet Union. It was only with the help of Osama Bin Laden and a new boogeyman of islamic terrorists that the industry recovered. Well, the US is no longer in Afghanistan and Islamic terrorism is not driving the defense budget as much these days. Just as this collapse of the islamic boogeyman to scare Congress into multi-billion dollar boondoggles happened, the defense industry got the gift of a renewed boogeyman in a renewed Soviet Union Russia. But look at the relative spending on those graphs above. Russia comes nowhere close to the threat of the Soviets, and even with a large Chinese budget the USA budget still dwarfs both. Never mind NATO, Japanese, South Korean and other allied spending.
A defeat of Russia to the smaller Ukraine with the use of consumer grade drones would spell doom to the defense industry as is. China would continue some level of fear, but the defense of Taiwan is a different story than the defense of all of Europe by the rebirth of the Soviet threat in Putin. A significant amount of damage to the US defense industry has already occurred simply by the exposure of the paper tiger and the significant change in weapon focus to dirt cheap drones. A defeat of Russia would cause a massive rethink in US defense spending. A Russian win would allow the boogyman theater to continue.
The US defense industry has far more to gain from a Russian win than a Ukrainian win. The US defense industry wants and needs the Russian Boogeyman. This is what we are fighting against. Straight from Orwell’s 1984, the fascists need the forever war to continue, not to be won. I do not expect the GOP to ever agree to Ukrainian defense funding at the levels needed unless somehow forced to by the Democrats.
For those accusing me of pushing a conspiracy theory: This is no different than looking at the motivations of the oil industry regarding climate change. Speculating that an industry’s motivations may not perfectly line up with the motivations of say Joe Biden, is a healthy question to ask. I don’t care if I’m correct. I wanted the conversation and the community to think about it. I thought I put enough warnings regarding speculation in the title and the start.