Seizing a few yachts from rich Russians is not going to underwrite Ukrainian reconstruction.
Jimmy reports that the Biden administration and Congress’s transnational-progressive legions — mostly Democrats with the occasional, inevitable Lindsey Graham — are crowing that, as “a matter of basic justice,” they are going to seize the riches of Russian oligarchs and use them for Ukraine’s reconstruction (presumably post-war, if we ever get to that point). The confiscations, they say, could “total in the billions.” Really? And the reconstruction could total in the . . . what?
Let’s put aside that, throughout the Russiagate fiasco, no one in Washington could tell the difference between a Russian oligarch and a Ukrainian oligarch (you know, the kind Paul Manafort was suspected of being a Russian agent for taking money from). Is anyone else reminded of the “basic justice” rationale Democrats tout when urging that wealthy Americans must “pay their fair share” in order to reconstruct our own society?
Even the lefties at PolitiFact grudgingly concede that if 100 percent of the wealth of every billionaire in America were confiscated, the U.S. government could run for . . . maybe . . . eight months — and that’s no doubt a high-side estimate given the clip at which budgets and interest rates are rising. Given that Russia is a basket-case economy with far less in the way of assets to confiscate, and given that much of Ukraine has been leveled — well, you can see that the math here is not good.
I don’t agree with everything in MBD’s characteristically insightful column on Ukraine and American interests, but I agree with a lot of it. Especially his broaching of this subject:
What are the limits to U.S. support in Ukraine? What kind of responsibilities for rebuilding Ukraine will the United States have? Given the paucity of European support during the war, it sure looks like rebuilding Ukraine will be left to the U.S. taxpayer.
If the war goes on for another two or five or more years, which is hardly inconceivable, are we in for $100 billion a year, like this year? (By the way, Russia’s entire annual military budget was running to about $65 billion before the war, and probably won’t hit $90 billion next year, even with the war.) And bet on this: If the Europeans know we are picking up that tab, and that the dominant riff in our domestic politics is that to cut Ukrainian aid would be to collude with Putin, the Europeans will be doing even less for Ukraine than they are now.
And then, once the war is over, what does the Ukraine Marshall Plan look like? How many tens or hundreds of billions? For how long?
Like Michael, I am not irrationally exuberant about Kyiv, so I’m skeptical about how deeply enmeshed we should get. I am very anti-Russia, though, and I sense that I am less concerned than Michael is about Moscow’s amour propre and how threatened it feels by NATO encroachments. Which is to say, I am open to a real debate about this. Again, I’m a doubter, but I can listen with an open mind to arguments that lavish Ukrainian aid — at a time when our government is $31 trillion in debt and apparently unconcerned with the catastrophe on our own border — is worth every penny, including its value in persuading China that Xi’s Taiwan ambitions are not worth pursuing.
What I’m not open to, though, is a bunch of BS about how seizing a few yachts from rich Russkies is going to underwrite Ukrainian reconstruction.