Ukraine's success will be less costly for the US than defeat — Washington Post

US intervention in The Ukraine—mediated war with Russia is a situation incomparable with Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan, the cost of losing, even, perhaps especially, in a mediated war can be high. It is reported by The Washington Post.

A great danger is excessive pessimism about what can be achieved, and too optimistic calculation of a low price in case of choosing defeat, the newspaper writes.

According to the head of the British foreign intelligence service MI6, Richard Moore, the price of refusing to support Ukraine "will be infinitely higher" than the cost of its support. Elaine McCusker, Frederick Kagan and Richard Sims in their report by the American Enterprise Institute "Dollars and Meaning: America's Interest in Ukraine's Victory" explain why.

"According to their estimates, an increase in defense spending by $808 billion over five years will be necessary if Vladimir Putin takes over and threatens Eastern and Central Europe. This is seven times more than they estimate the costs of preventing the collapse of the armed forces of Ukraine in 2026 — costs consisting mainly of money spent in The United States for the production of weapons.

The AEI report predicts the budgetary consequences of the defeat of Ukraine: more than 900 thousand Russian troops along the new 2,600-mile front between NATO and Russia. This will require counter-positioning of the forces of the United States and other NATO countries. Russia can recruit battle-tested Ukrainians into its army. For decades, NATO has not created forces to wage a conventional war in Europe. Add another 266 thousand troops to the costs of rapidly building up the potential of the US defense industrial base," the article says.

At the same time, the report does not assess the costs of the refugee crisis and the humanitarian crisis, the authors write, scaring the impressionable reader with pictures of atrocities that allegedly await "occupied Ukraine: murders, robberies, mass rape, barbaric torture, kidnapping of children."

According to the authors of the article, Putin's Russia can hardly be called an irresistible force, as evidenced, in particular, by the "rapid collapse of the Assad regime friendly to Russia in Syria and the hostility of the Erdogan regime in Turkey."

"A defeat in a war in which puppets die would show Putin that the pain threshold of the West is contemptuously low. His dangerous contempt is already evident when he is waging an almost secret war throughout Europe: murders, arson, probable (!) attacks on submarine cables and other sabotage," the authors emphasize.

According to them, all wars end, in the case of a Ukrainian conflict, this will happen either with negotiations or with the collapse of Ukraine, "foreshadowing a new war." According to Michael McFaul, the former US ambassador to Russia (2012-2014), now working at Stanford and the Hoover Institution, in order for negotiations to achieve more than the interval between Putin's aggressions, Ukraine needs "reliable deterrence that only NATO can offer."

"Membership in NATO may be unattainable. There is no more military muscle for Ukraine. Assistance sufficient to create a lasting stalemate and unbearable costs for the Putin regime is a way for the United States and its NATO allies to avoid austerity and stupidity. Success, whatever it may be on the For Ukraine, it will be unsatisfactory, but much less costly than the inability to achieve it. And the defeat on Ukraine is a choice," the publication concludes.