Ukraine Aid Not Only Central to Geopolitical Strategy, Bulk Goes to US Companies: Warner

Reporters surround Senate Intelligence Committee ranking member Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) on Nov. 2, 2022. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

Efforts by some Republican groups to terminate U.S. security assistance to Ukraine would embolden Russian and Chinese communist aggression, according to one senator.

Attempts by the Republican Freedom Caucus to block or otherwise end U.S. support for Ukraine would harm U.S. national security in the long run, Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) said.

“The Ukrainian military has done what we and NATO were planning to do for 60 years,” he told Punchbowl News on Oct. 3.

“They basically eliminated 50 percent of Russia’s military capacity.

“It’s crazy, if you’re thinking from a national security standpoint, that we would take this moment and potentially walk away.”

To that end, Mr. Warner said the immense damage inflicted on Russian military capacity and capabilities by Ukraine—largely with American-provided armaments—provided a direct geopolitical and strategic benefit to the United States in addition to securing Ukrainian sovereignty.

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That strategic benefit came without cost to American lives, he said.

“In a year and a half, they’ve taken Russia, the second-most powerful military in the world, and maybe made it now the second-most powerful military in Ukraine,” Mr. Warner said.

“They eliminated maybe 50 percent of their capacity without the cost of a single American life or NATO life.”

US Companies Receive Bulk of Ukraine Aid

Continuing U.S. assistance to Ukraine has fairly broad support in Congress, although the exact extent of that aid has been frequently questioned, as has the use of the conflict as a sort of proxy war between the U.S.-led NATO and a growing authoritarian bloc led by China and Russia.

Mr. Warner acknowledged that Congress and the Biden administration needed to do much more to be transparent with how security packages to Ukraine were being spent.

He said it was important for Americans to understand that the majority of U.S. funding for the war in Ukraine doesn’t actually go directly to Ukraine but to American companies.

Much of that funding is being spent to increase U.S. domestic production capacity for key munitions, according to Mr. Warner.

“Of the $62 billion-plus that are on the security side, the vast majority of it is going to American companies and increasing our production lines,” he said.

“The overwhelming majority of this [money] is going to, frankly, the American defense industry.”

As such, Mr. Warner said, challenges to continued support for Ukraine were less likely to result in a total halt of such support and more likely to simply result in more, smaller aid packages.

He said there was agreement among many, but not all, Democrats and Republicans that confronting Russian expansionism was key to deterring Chinese communist aggression against Taiwan and elsewhere in the Indo-Pacific.

“China is our ultimate long-term potential adversary,” Mr. Warner said.

“[Those against funding are] not understanding the connection that if Putin is successful in Ukraine, that is a total green light for Xi [Jinping] in China. If you don’t get that, you flunk Geopolitics 101.”

China–Russia Alliance Growing

Many experts believe that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), which rules China as a single-party state, considers Russia to be its foremost partner in eroding U.S. power and influence internationally.

CCP leader Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin first declared a “no limits” partnership agreement in February 2022, only weeks before Russian troops invaded Ukraine.

Since then, the two have pledged increased economic and strategic cooperation and have signed a joint declaration deepening the nations’ “comprehensive strategic partnership.”

When Mr. Xi visited Moscow in March, he described Mr. Putin as a “dear friend” and hailed their work for creating “change which hasn’t happened in 100 years.”

That statement was accompanied by an open pledge by the two leaders to reshape the international order to their interests, with Mr. Putin saying China and Russia would create a more just “multipolar world order” to replace the “rules” of the current international order.

Likewise, the regime has worked with Russia to increase ties throughout the developing world, where it hopes to erode confidence in the United States and present China-led alternatives to extant international organizations.