As the Republican Party’s blockade of aid to Ukraine drags into its fourth month, the U.S. government under Pres. Joe Biden has found a clever new way to give Ukraine’s forces the weapons and ammunition they need to defend their country.
It is, in essence, an American version of Germany’s circular weapons trade—the so-called Ringtausch. The United States is gifting older surplus weapons to Greece with the understanding that Greece donates to Ukraine some of its own surplus weapons.
Greek media broke the news last week. According to the newspaper Kathimerini and other media, the Biden administration offered the Greek government three 87-foot Protector-class patrol boats, two Lockheed Martin C-130H airlifters, 10 Allison T56 turboprop engines for Lockheed P-3 patrol planes plus 60 M-2 Bradley fighting vehicles and a consignment of transport trucks.
All this hardware is U.S. military surplus—and is available to Greece, free of charge, under a U.S. legal authority called “excess defense articles.” Federal law allows an American president to declare military systems surplus to need, assign them a value—potentially zero dollars—and give them away on the condition that the recipient transport them.
This.
It was always a white lie to claim the US was sending Ukraine billions in aid. The Democrats liked to pump up the numbers, because supporting Ukraine was and is politically popular. And the spending bills also contained nice pork for the military industrial complex.
But it has almost exclusively been old stock being sent. Stuff that is very valuable, since no other Ukrainian ally has the huge stockpiles that the USA has, but it was always worth much less than it was being billed for.
Now Biden is following a more boring, but more honest (in accounting terms) procedure.
Similar to what the Germans did.
As for helping Americans, he has also explored every possibility to reduce debt and prescription drug costs and to invest in infrastructure.
For example, much more has been spent on student loan forgiveness than on Ukraine.
For student loan forgiveness, I believe the tally is $137B. And that is real cash. For Ukraine the total is $75B, but a lot of that is pumped up valuations of old military stock. The actual value of what Ukraine received is closer to $40B
And replacing the old stock with newer, better kit will result in equivalent or more being spent inside America.