Vivek Ramaswamy's Attacks on Ukraine are Ridiculous
It leads only to one place. More dead Ukrainians.
The Republican Party has finally started its primary in all of its chaotic passion, with the first primary debate. The debate, which took place on Wednesday of this week, had many tense moments involving the various candidates, but perhaps one of the most frustrating moments came from candidate Vivek Ramaswamy.
During the debate, moderators brought up the American response to Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine. When asked whether or not he would be willing to send more aid to Ukraine, Ramaswamy said that he would be a hard no for further aid, arguing that America should be using the military equipment that was sent to Ukraine to defend against what he sees as “an invasion” of the southern border.
In his arguments, Ramaswamy went further, saying, “I find it offensive that we have professional politicians on this stage that will make a pilgrimage to Kyiv to their pope Zelenskyy without doing the same thing for people in Maui or the south side of Chicago…”
Such sentiments are far from a one-off when it comes to Ramaswamy’s ridiculous politics. He has repeatedly asserted that supporting Ukraine will lead Russia further into China’s arms, creating a stronger and more dangerous alliance between the two totalitarian regimes.
The alternative, he argues, is to allow some Ukrainian territory to remain in Russian hands despite said annexations being illegal under international law. More specifically, Ramaswamy has admitted that he would leave sections of the Donbas region under Russian occupation.
When pressed by Brian Kilmeade on the issue, he argued that he would force Putin to comply with their agreement through “hard conditions.” What those conditions would be is a bit sparsely stated, save for a claim that he would prioritize a visit to Moscow within the first term of his presidency.
Sparse and faulty planning aside, Vivek’s politics on Ukraine aren’t just shortsighted, as fellow presidential hopeful Nikki Haley pointed out, but it is also ignorant and amoral.
From the beginning of his argument, there is an underlying assumption of overwhelming military and economic support for Ukraine that comes at the expense of the American people. This assumption, which Ramaswamy hit on in his “Pope Zelenskyy” comments, is at best misleading and, at worst, an outright lie.
As a total of global aid, the United States is by far the largest provider of aid to the Ukrainian war effort. A July 10th analysis by the Council on Foreign Relations showed that between January 24th, 2022, and May 31st of this year, an estimated $76.8 billion in aid.
By contrast, the next comparable institution or state power, the EU, has provided just under $30 billion in aid within that same period, with an estimated $27.8 billion coming in financial aid compared to the U.S. military aid of $46.6 billion.
However, that tells us very little about the significance of the aid relative to the American economy and the other countries that are providing aid. If someone were to only look at these graphics, they could easily come away with the understanding that the U.S. is providing extreme amounts of aid that it can’t afford.
That is false.
When looking at the aid as a percentage of the Gross Domestic Product, the reality becomes a lot more complicated and flies in the face of Ramaswamy’s view of the aid issue.
Far from being the largest aid producer to Ukraine as a percentage of GPD, the United States is not even in the top ten countries providing aid within the aforementioned period. During the same period mentioned above, the percentage of American GPD sent to Ukraine was just under .4 percent, compared to Estonia’s 1.2 percent.
By and large, Eastern European countries such as Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland are giving much more money in terms of their GPD than the United States. Western countries, such as the United Kingdom, also give slightly more than the United States.
As a matter of the national defense budget, it is also comparatively small. A United States Senate Committee on Armed Services report found that the Defense spending in 2023 for the Department of Defense alone was an estimated $816.7 billion. The Defense topline spending totaled around $857.9 billion.
In context, the amount of aid provided to Ukraine accounts for .094 percent of the Department of Defense’s budget. Of the National Defense Topline, the aid to Ukraine accounts for .089 percent. It is a tiny amount of our defense spending to help a Democratic government from the kleptocratic autocracy that is the Russian Federation.
We can afford to help the Ukrainians.
As for using military equipment along the southern border, I sincerely can’t think of anything more absurd and dangerous to relations with Mexico. Nor are the issues even remotely comparable.
The aid given to Ukraine is an attempt to help protect a nation suffering from an illegal war of aggression. It is helping to defend Ukrainians from a head of state who views their national identity as nonexistent and who currently has a warrant out for his arrest for the forcible deportation and kidnapping of thousands of Ukrainian children.
Not to mention the allegations of genocide that have been leveled against the Russian Federation after several mass graves were discovered in territories previously occupied by the Russian Federation, which I covered for the UIS Observer.
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Mexico, by contrast, has a corruption and drug problem that has contributed to the death of 107,622 drug deaths in 2021, with two-thirds of deaths coming from fentanyl. Not all of the said fentanyl has come from Mexico, though it is the main source of fentanyl confiscations. Simply put, the amount of death by fentanyl is extremely concerning, but it is not solely a border issue.
As The Washington Post points out:
Fentanyl’s catastrophic surge came after the Drug Enforcement Administration cracked down on the excesses of the U.S. opioid industry. Millions of Americans who had become addicted to prescription pain pills suddenly found them difficult or impossible to get.
Mexican cartels stepped in to fill the vacuum. Traffickers, who relied for decades on plant-based drugs such as heroin, cocaine and marijuana, are now using chemicals in clandestine laboratories to manufacture fentanyl powder and pills to meet the ever-increasing demand in the United States.
The original source of the problem of fentanyl was a failure by the DEA to adequately prepare for the vacuum that was created by the crackdown on the opioid industry as Americans, addicted thanks to the failure of the pharmaceutical industry, sought other sources to satiate their addictions. Military equipment will not address the root issue as it would in Ukraine.
Criminal activity by non-citizens at the border also doesn’t merit using military equipment, as Vivek would suggest. In 2022, the total amount of arrests of non-citizens with criminal convictions amounted to 12,028.
To put that into perspective, the amount of casualties in the Russo-Ukrainian war between 2022 and 2023 is rising to nearly half a million. Russian troops alone account for nearly 120,000 deaths and between 170,000 wounded, which is almost certainly an undercount. Ukraine, by contrast, has lost an estimated 70,000 troops and suffered an estimated 120,000 wounded.
Civilian casualties are also high, with an estimated 26,384 civilian casualties in the country. Broken down, this includes 9,444 killed and 16,940 injured since February 24th of last year.
Simply put, the suffering in Ukraine is some of the largest we have seen since World War 2, and reactionary appeals to border security will not change anything. It is one thing to be concerned about the suffering of Americans at home, but that does not excuse Ramaswami’s willful ignorance about the Russo-Ukrainian war. Unless he wants to be seen as just another Chamberlain, he should change his tune quickly.