The deception behind America's support for Ukraine - UnHerd

#geopolitics #war #USA #collapse

For America, this made it possible to send huge quantities of Nato weapons to Ukraine, while merely guesstimating the real cost of those weapons. And unsurprisingly, this has massively incentivised making optimistic estimates: the less you say the shells and rockets are worth, the more of them you can send within your allotted replacement budget. Of course, if you lowball your cost estimates, or inflation and labour scarcity mean that it is no longer profitable for the defence industry to produce at that price, the end result is a form of budgetary looting. Something has been taken away, money has in theory been allocated to replace it, but either due to naivete, corruption or malice, that money is not sufficient to actually pay for replacements. Ultimately, you’re left with a big hole in your budget, and a big hole in your military readiness. Whether costs are intentionally lowballed or simply underestimated doesn’t matter; the result is the same. The US political class, having long believed that their country can go anywhere and do anything, are simply not in the mood to take no for an answer.

https://unherd.com/2024/03/the-deception-behind-americas-support-for-ukraine/