Kateryna Hirnyk16:56, 14.12.24

The defeat of Ukraine would require the United States to spend an additional $808 billion on defense.

Many Americans are concerned about the cost of aid to Ukraine . However, as Foreign Affairs columnist Elaine McCusker writes , if you calculate the approximate costs that the United States would incur if Russia defeated Ukraine and then deployed troops along NATO’s border, the resulting sum is “exorbitant.”

“According to our calculations, a defeat of Ukraine would require the United States to spend $808 billion more on defense than budgeted over the next five years. At the same time, Congress has allocated $112 billion to the Department of Defense to help Kyiv since 2022… In other words, allowing Russia to defeat Ukraine would cost the United States about seven times more than preventing Russia from defeating it,” the article states.

Complete defeat of Ukraine

As the article notes, without US support, Russia will advance in 2025, as Kyiv runs out of weapons. By 2026, Ukraine will lose effective air defense, allowing Russia to conduct constant large-scale bombing of military and civilian infrastructure.

“The country’s army will likely collapse by the end of the same year, allowing Russia to capture Kyiv and then advance towards NATO’s border,” the article states.

After that, journalists note, Russia will most likely restore Russian combat units in Belarus and Western Ukraine, on the border with NATO members Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, and Romania, and by 2030, Russia will again be ready to attack a NATO state.

“Ukraine’s resources will help Moscow threaten the rest of Eastern Europe. With the Ukrainian army under its control, the Kremlin will have hundreds of thousands of additional highly skilled, experienced, and battle-tested soldiers that it can force into service. It can also call into service millions of Ukrainians that Kyiv has not mobilized. In addition, control of Ukraine will give Russia greater defense-industrial potential and economic potential,” the article says.

The US will have to build up its forces

To contain Russia in Europe and defeat it after the fall of Kyiv, the US military would need about 270,000 new troops , an additional cost to the US of almost $88 billion.

Furthermore, if Russia were to invade a NATO country, it would do everything it could to prevent the United States from sending more resources there. This means that Washington would have to undertake a massive fortification construction in Europe, costing an estimated $31 billion.

Overall, the United States will need a total of 683 more aircraft than it plans to buy by 2029, at a cost of about $109 billion, the FA notes.

The war in Ukraine has shown how important drones are to the future of warfare. To achieve parity with Moscow, Washington will need to invest heavily in drone technology and the production and development of platforms, worth $29 billion.

The United States will also need better air defenses , which will cost about $173 billion. The US government will also have to spend an additional $63 billion to increase the capacity of the industrial base.

Washington will also need better naval capabilities . It will have to spend about another $50 billion on building new submarines and ships.

The United States will need to spend about $185 billion on additional training and education for its troops . It will need to improve its spare parts inventory , which will cost almost $33 billion. The United States will also need more sophisticated architecture and control systems in the space and cyberspace spheres, which will cost more than $36 billion:

“Add all those numbers up and it comes to $808 billion. That’s a huge amount – roughly equal to the entire Pentagon budget in 2022. And that may be an underestimate.”

Instead, if Kyiv prevails over Moscow, Washington could scale back its deployments and capabilities in Europe. It would still maintain a presence there, but it would be able to devote more resources and attention to the Pacific Ocean – a desire of many US presidents, including Donald Trump, the article says.

US aid to Ukraine

Earlier, newly elected US President Donald Trump allowed a reduction in military aid to Ukraine after returning to the White House. The American leader assured that he was actively trying to end the war.

At the same time, Ukrainian Finance Minister Serhiy Marchenko expressed his belief that Ukraine will have enough available funds and weapons to resist Russian aggression until mid-2025 , even if US aid stops.

(C)UNIAN 2024