Opinion | Why U.S. military aid is working in Ukraine – By Sébastien Roblin (NBC News) / May 15, 2022
The amount pales in comparison to what America spent in Iraq and Afghanistan. But the results have been spectacular.
The U.S. is poised to send $40 billion in aid to Ukraine after the House approved the assistance package on Tuesday. Though the funds are temporarily stalled in the Senate due to an objection from Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky, the measure is expected to go through in the coming week, with nearly $15 billion for military aid. It will bring total U.S. support to Ukraine since the beginning of the war to more than $53 billion.
These numbers might seem staggering, but they pale in comparison to the amounts Washington spent on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, or in Vietnam for that matter. Yet the result has been vastly more effective.
Despite tens of billions of dollars spent rebuilding militaries from scratch in Iraq and Afghanistan, the latter infamously melted away in 2021 before the U.S. could complete its withdrawal from the country. Meanwhile, Iraq’s military nearly collapsed after the Islamic State militant group emerged in 2013, requiring massive injections of foreign air power, advisers and financial aid to drive ISIS out of Iraqi territory. And after more than a decade of U.S. military support, South Vietnam fell to a North Vietnamese invasion in 1975 two years after the U.S. withdrew.
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