Bringing Ukrainian Corruption Home

C ritics of aid to Ukraine have often focused on Ukraine’s corruption. Not without reason. After the Cold War, Ukraine was notorious for shipping out old Soviet arms to fuel conflict around the globe. And while that kind of gross misdirection remains a concern — the U.S. inspector general found American officials had not properly tracked $1 billion in weapons and equipment that went to Ukraine — a deeper concern is that our affinities for Ukraine cause us to become more like it.

And so it comes to pass.

The Washington Post reports that the Pentagon has found a creative response to Congress’s inability or unwillingness to appropriate more funds for Ukraine. It has gone around shaking up the cushions and emptying out pockets and found an extra $300 million for Ukraine.

The Washington Post:

For the second time in nine months, Defense Department accountants have sharpened their pencils, pored over their books and found a way to send more military aid to Ukraine.

I wish my accountants would be so creative. But $300 million is just pennies. Last June the Pentagon said that an “accounting error” led to its finding $6.2 billion for Ukraine. Originally it was a $3 billion error, but accountants found a way to revise it upward. How lucky for Ukraine and how lucky for us!

Temporary funding measures passed by Congress were supposed to keep federal budgets — military and domestic spending — operating at the same level as the previous year’s. And yet the Defense Department has gone knocking on Congress’s door, not just for more Ukraine aid but to report that our defense budget has a budgetary gap of $10 billion.

Gee. Could this be related to all the errors and spare change found for Ukraine? Why, yes. The special “accounting” trick was dramatically writing down the value of the matériel and weapons sent to Ukraine already, allowing you to send more. The $6.2 billion came from the difference between a lower “book value” — the cost of the weapons systems minus depreciation — and the actual replacement costs, which is a value that may have gone up since they were originally purchased, given inflation, availability, or improvements to the weapons systems themselves.

These are not “accounting errors” but a purposeful end run around Congress and the American people, a form of financial hostage-taking. The result is that we sent more to Ukraine than Congress authorized, and then U.S. taxpayers are asked to pay even more to replenish stocks that the Pentagon emptied via its own “accounting errors.” This is like kids blowing through the allotted pizza money for the weekend and then maxing out the credit card, in the sure knowledge that the parents are too practical to let a debt hang over them for long.

This should be beneath a country of our stature, but it’s not. It’s also a further sign of our endemic problem: Our foreign policy is run by a courtier class around the executive branch that routinely commits the United States to conflicts and outcomes that lie far beyond the willingness of the American people to pay for them, whether in blood or treasure. If the cause were as popular as the self-appointed defenders of the global order insist, they wouldn’t have to rob us with $6.2 — no, $6.5 — billion in accounting tricks.