Money Won’t Solve Ukraine or Israel’s Problems

Washington, D.C., a city known for gridlock, uncongeniality, and partisan warfare, is basking in celebration this week. After six long months, the House of Representatives passed a series of national security supplemental bills through the chamber. The Senate followed suit days later, and President Joe Biden signed the $95 billion foreign-aid package into law on April 24.

By now, you probably know what’s in the legislation—$61 billion is earmarked for Ukraine, with more than a third of that sum going toward replenishing U.S. defense stockpiles that have been emptied to assist Kyiv’s defense against Russia. Israel will receive more than $26 billion. Washington’s allies in the Indo-Pacific will get about $8 billion, with Taiwan receiving the lion’s share.

Proponents of the legislation are giddy with excitement. Yet as anybody who has ever had a hangover can attest, the next day tends to bring you back to reality.

First thing’s first: There’s no question this substantial sum of cash will help Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan protect their security, interests, and prerogatives. The massive aid will buy each of these U.S. partners a lot of valuable, highly-effective military equipment. In Taiwan’s case, the money will likely go toward purchasing the kinds of military platforms—anti-ship missiles, land-attack cruise missiles, mines, and various munitions—that would reinforce deterrence against a prospective Chinese invasion of the island. Ukraine will use the money to bring as much artillery to the frontline as possible; according to public reports, the Biden administration will send long-range Army Tactical Missile Systems to Ukraine for the first time, broadening Kyiv’s ability to strike Russian targets as far as 190 miles behind the lines. Israel will bolster its stockpile of air defense interceptors, which proved their worth during Iran’s missile and drone barrage several weeks ago.

That’s the good news. The bad news: Money can only do so much.

Money, for instance, is not going to fix the Ukrainian army’s manpower shortages, which continue to be hobbled by a combination of battlefield attrition, ineffective recruitment tactics, and unfavorable demographics. The Russians may not be particularly inept at war-fighting and have failed to make big breakthroughs in the field, but they have one big advantage over Ukraine: more people. Russia’s population is three times the size of Ukraine’s, and Russian President Vladimir Putin doesn’t really have to concern himself with finding men willing to fight and die there. Despite losing about 900 men a day, the U.K. Defense Ministry assesses that Moscow is recruiting about 30,000 personnel a month.

The same thing can’t be said for Ukraine. While Ukrainian lawmakers understood that the army was in desperate need of reinforcements, they spent a year fighting among themselves about how to raise the numbers. This month, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky lowered the draft age from 27 to 25. The Ukrainian parliament also passed new reforms to the registration process, increasing penalties for eligible men who seek to avoid the draft, requiring all men between the ages of 18-60 to provide up-to-date information about their whereabouts, and mandating basic military training for Ukrainians 18-25. But in a sign of just how tenuous Kyiv’s situation is, those same lawmakers also stripped a provision that would demobilize troops who have been fighting since the war began. Ultimately, Ukraine is a prisoner of its own population trends; bullets, air defense systems, and long-range missiles don’t solve it.

Money won’t solve Israel’s problems either. All the U.S. taxpayer funds in the world won’t help alleviate Israel’s questionable war strategy in Gaza, which is undermining its global reputation, causing turmoil in the U.S.-Israel relationship, and probably creating as many terrorists as it’s killing. Sure, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have killed as many as 13,000 Hamas fighters over the last six-plus months but Gaza itself isn’t under Israeli military control. In fact, areas in northern Gaza that were declared cleared by the IDF months ago are again hot-zones. This week, Israeli forces conducting operations in the northern Gaza cities of Beit Hanoun, Beit Lahia, and Gaza City after Palestinian militants launched a small salvo of rockets toward Israel.

Nor does Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu seem to know what he wants in Gaza once the war is declared over. The Israeli premier has been winging it the entire time, trapped between his maximalist and contradictory objectives (Hamas’ total defeat and the freeing of hostages), and an unwillingness to propose any post-Gaza plan that is even half-serious. Instead, what we have are vague declarations about victory and unworkable schemes that call for permanent Israeli security control from the Mediterranean Sea to the Jordan Valley, which the United States, let alone Arab-majority states, wouldn’t support. U.S. aid money won’t do anything to address this.

Taiwan is a slightly different story, if only because war hasn’t broken out in the Taiwan Strait. The Biden administration is hoping that the security assistance package for Taipei will impact China’s strategic calculus toward the self-governed island democracy. But this will depend in large part on what weapons Taiwan chooses to buy. If it’s big-ticket items like fighter jets or tanks, which China’s Air Force would destroy on the ground during the opening hours of hostilities, then Chinese President Xi Jinping’s thought process is unlikely to change.

As the old saying goes, money doesn’t buy happiness. It doesn’t necessarily buy security either.

Daniel R. DePetris is a fellow at Defense Priorities and a syndicated foreign affairs columnist at the Chicago Tribune.

The views expressed in this article are the writer’s own.