The author, the executive vice president of the Quincy Institute and author of Losing an Enemy: Obama, Iran and the Triumph of Diplomacy Trita Parsi, writes:

• “Does the war in Ukraine enable the United States to strategically defeat Russia on the cheap? This has become a central argument for countering pressures to end the war or cut its funding [e.g. Anthony Cordesman and Timothy Ash made such an argument].”
• “The cost of the war thus far is not, contrary to Ash, “peanuts.” The U.S. support for Ukraine in 2022 amounted to $68 billion, and the White House requested another $34 billion. In comparison, the war in Afghanistan cost $23 billion per year in its first two years.
• “Arguing that continuing the war is an affordable way of achieving a major strategic objective is misleading—not least because, prior to February 2022, few in Washington considered Russia a major power whose military needed to be degraded to protect the U.S. … The value of degrading Russia’s military—which clearly was overrated in the first place—may not be that significant, even if it is done on the cheap.”
• “There are other strategic costs. As the war drags on, it contributes to the formation of a Russian-Chinese-Iranian alliance. ... Washington’s objective should be to disrupt any such alliance-building rather than to hasten it. … The war has added to … tensions between the U.S. and rising global south powers, who refuse to choose between the U.S., Russia and China … Rather than boosting efforts to decarbonize the global economy, the war has caused nations to backslide on key environmental goals.”
• “Perhaps most importantly, prolonged war will make it increasingly hard for Europe to find a path back to long-term peace and stability. … Europe may find itself in a state of constant, low-intensity war that cements enmity beyond generations. This, in turn, risks creating a new normal where peace no longer can be imagined, let alone achieved. … These costs don’t show up on the current balance sheets. But it is these costs—rather than the dollar amounts of the military aid—that we will be wrestling with in the years to come.”

Read the full article at The New Republic.

The opinions expressed herein are solely those of the author. Photo shared in the public domain.