EJ Antoni, Peter St Onge
Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine over two years ago, politicians advocating for more U.S. taxpayer assistance to Ukraine have claimed we’re bleeding Russia dry at a comparatively small cost. But when it takes a million-dollar American missile to knock out a thousand-dollar enemy drone, it looks more like we’re the ones bleeding out—suggesting maybe we should quit the world-policeman racket.
That’s doubly true given our most daunting national security challenges are the rise of China and the collapse of security at the border.
Neocons like Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., have called the more than $175 billion we’ve poured into the Ukraine meat-grinder “the best money we’ve ever spent,” despite there being no articulated American goal in the conflict against which to evaluate that claim.
The original Biden-Harris premise of our involvement in the Ukraine was that we must exhaust Russia to get to victory, although it was never clear precisely how or why. The ruthlessness of the Russian strongman Vladimir Putin is not a logical justification given the atrocities committed by countless dictators around the world, and the existence of far worse humanitarian disasters in places like the Democratic Republic of The Congo.
Regardless, it’s never been articulated precisely why the average American family should care who runs the Ukrainian city of Donetsk, especially with existential security issues on our wide-open southern border and a burgeoning Chinese military. Yet even if bleeding out Russia can be established as a national security issue worth over $175 billion, is that what’s actually happening? In a word, no.
What the Ukraine conflict has definitively shown us is that the economics of modern war have changed, perhaps forever.
Footage recently emerged of $35,000 Russian Lancet drones taking out $10-million Abrams tanks and $5 million HIMARS. Similarly, the Houthi drones in Yemen being launched against Western shipping cost $20,000 while the surface-to-air missiles intercepting them cost as much as $4.5 million. » Read More
https://www.heritage.org/defense/commentary/americas-military-death-thousand-drones