The Covid-19 summer of 2021 might seem like a long time ago now, but the catastrophically mismanaged withdrawal of American forces from Iraq, which was quickly followed by a Taliban takeover that left Americans and our Iraqi allies at the mercy of a terrorist government, was perhaps but a foretaste of a major Biden foreign policy disaster now lurking right around the corner: the military collapse of Ukraine.

Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine in early 2022, the Biden administration has poured billions upon billions of dollars of cash and American military equipment into an effort to defeat the Russians, obviously believing that a sturdy Ukrainian military resistance would bleed them dry and humiliate Vladimir Putin. In addition, President Biden signed off on a series of economic sanctions, ones that he felt certain would be crippling. “Putin’s aggression against Ukraine will end up costing Russia dearly, economically and strategically,” Biden crowed. “We will make sure of that.” He and his team were confident that quick victory lay dead ahead.

It hasn’t turned out that quite way.

To the surprise of no one, dumping boatloads of cash into a country known around the world for its extraordinarily corrupt government has paved the road to yet more corruption—and no victory. The win that the Biden administration was certain could be purchased has turned out to be elusive, and few Ukrainians are now jumping at the chance to be cannon (or drone and missile) fodder in a bloody, grinding war of attrition that the Russians are happy to fight due to their vastly superior manpower.

Moreover, it turned out the economic sanctions were easy enough to evade through third-party transactions, and the global hunger for Russian oil and natural gas has overridden any passing inclination to punish Putin for his military aggression. Many of our supposed allies in Europe, along with a host of multi-national corporations and financial institutions, have been happy to prioritize their own economic health in this regard, and even Ukraine’s staunchest supporters in the Biden administration have recently warned them about attacking Russian energy infrastructure because the higher oil and fuel prices that might result are bad news—during an election year. 

In the final analysis, the ballyhooed Biden sanctions hurt, but they did not, as was advertised, destroy the Russian economy or make the least difference in the military operations against Ukraine.

However, despite the obvious lack of any battlefield success (although occasional drone strikes are touted as major breakthroughs in the mainstream American news media whenever they occur), every possible effort is being made by Biden and the Democrats (as well as some anti-Russian Republicans) to keep the money flowing. Now another $61 billion of America aid is on its way to Ukraine, although many intelligence and military analysts are warning Russia is already on the verge of victory. How much of this money will help the Ukrainian people and military—as opposed to ending up in the pockets of corrupt politicians and businessmen—is anyone’s guess, but the Biden administration seems determined to ensure the cash keeps on coming. 

Whether Ukrainian aid has, from the very beginning, been financial support for a necessary war, the largest money laundering operation in the history of the world—or, most likely, a combination of the two—the result has been a massive drain on the U.S. Treasury and a troubling transfer of our arms and ammunition that will take many, many years to replenish.

It would be insulting to ignore the legitimate aspirations of many Ukrainians to control their own nation. One of the first actions Ukrainians took after the overthrow of the Czarist government by the Bolshevik Communists in 1917 was to declare their independence, although by 1922 they were forced to be one of the original constituent republics of the U.S.S.R., where they remained until the collapse of the Soviet Republic in 1991–when they again declared their independence. 

A free Ukraine has been a dream for well over a century, and this yearning has directly collided with the Russian fear of a western-allied state on their border that could impinge on their own sovereignty. The close ties between American political and economic elites (who can forget the infamous connection of Hunter Biden and the Ukrainian energy company Burisma Holdings?) did not prompt a Russian invasion, but these certainly fueled the paranoia that drove it.

An ultimately successful Biden-orchestrated attempt to withhold foreign aid from the Ukrainian government if they failed to fire a prosecutor attempting to investigate corruption played the central role in the first attempt to impeach President Trump, so perhaps we need to be alert to the machinations that have led to the peculiar importance Ukraine has held for Joe Biden and his advisors. The recent foreign aid bill focuses on the importance of protecting the Ukrainian border but allocates not a penny for securing the U.S. border with Mexico, which has become a superhighway for illegal immigrants, drugs, and violent gang members since Joe Biden became President. Think carefully about the message these two decisions are sending.

Perhaps it is all an unrelated and innocent coincidence, but Ukraine certainly seems to occupy an importance at the current time that is completely out of proportion to its importance to American national security. Allegations of pervasive CIA involvement in Ukraine, which to this point have eluded investigation, raise further questions regarding why Ukraine has been the beneficiary of such extraordinarily generous financial support from the Biden administration. In 2022, for example, Ukraine received over 22 times more aid from the U.S. than any other country in the world, and cutting edge military equipment and technology has flowed out of the American arsenal and into Ukraine at a rate that seems without any reasonable precedent. Either the Russia-Ukraine war is indeed the most important challenge in our nation’s recent history, or something is seriously amiss in the priorities of Joe Biden and his advisors.

One cannot help but wonder if, after the 2021 debacle in Afghanistan began the erosion of his voter support, the Biden team has decided that another signature military humiliation simply cannot be allowed to occur prior to the 2024 Presidential election, so any amount of money necessary to prop up a failing military mission and a corrupt Ukrainian government must be spent. Should this be the underlying motivation (or some other more nefarious game is afoot), the need for both a pointed inquiry into the policies and presumptions behind our incredible investment of resources in Ukraine and a gut check regarding the dwindling chances for any sort of Ukrainian “victory” against Russia could not be more important than they are at the present time. 

Spending more and more money on Ukraine might thrill those partisans who refuse to see that we might be funding a military and humanitarian catastrophe, but we need a better understanding of why we are so invested in a conflict that seems to play no major role in our geopolitical and economic priorities—but might instead be a form of incredibly expensive (and perhaps self-defeating) re-election spending by the Biden administration.