TFF Associate
There is only one winner…
Mind-boggling and horrifying as it is, the US House just passed a USD 40 billion military aid package yesterday to buttress Ukraine.
USD 40 billion! Does anyone have an idea what humanity could do with such a huge amount of capital flowing into the Military-Industrial Complex this week?
And by the way, $ 40 billion is “just 5%” of the total annual US military budget for 2022, USD 750-800 billion (not including many related budgets).
In perspective,
– The current $40 billion military aid package would easily erase the $35 billion in debts of the 74 poorest nations of the world. (1)
– The EU spent $40 billion (€34 billion) in total on climate change mitigation in 2020. (2)
– The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) mentions that it would cost $50 billion to vaccinate the whole world against COVID.(3)
– The costs to end poverty in the world would be $175 billion per year for the next 20 years, total $3,500 billion (Jeffrey Sachs). Which is ‘only a 4 to 5 years of US military budgets. (4)
– To end domestic US poverty (US poverty lines; adult USD 12,000, children USD 6,000 per year) can be achieved with $540 billion per year or roughly 70% of the annual US military budget. Official figures from the US census bureau show 37.2 million people under the poverty line in 2020, 3.3 million more than in 2019. And 16% (6 million) are children. (5)
– And then we don’t yet talk about the ‘forgotten’ Afghanistan where half of the population is starving right now or ‘just’ $45 billion per year needed to end the very basic world hunger (not talking about safety, education or a roof above people’s heads). (6)
“Defeating Putin is priceless,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham, the Senate’s top Republican on the spending panel that funds the State Department and foreign aid programs with respect to the $40 billion military aid package.
“Do I think this will be the last round? No, I think we’ll be doing this again,” Graham said. “Who knows where we’re going to be two months from now, three months from now. As long as they’re willing to fight, we need to help.”
As the saying is gradually coming around; the United States/NATO will “fight until the last Ukrainian” for the destruction of Russia. It won’t secure Ukraine or promote a negotiated solution.
And then we must imagine that Washington does not consider Russia the ‘biggest threat’ to the USA in this era. It’s not even coming close….
While there is no excuse for any initiator of war, whether in the Ukraine, Ethiopia, Yemen or Palestine, the one and only benefactor in any war today is the MIC, the Military-Industrial Complex or better called the MIMAC these days, the Military-Industrial-Media-Academic-Complex, fully complicit with no words or hints of a struggle for or even a wish for peace.
All other parties and people will be disastrous victims in one way or another, whether it is Ukraine itself, Russia, Europe, the people of the United States or – most importantly – humanity as a whole.
Sources
(1) https://www.ft.com/content/4b5f4b54-2f80-4bda-9df7-9e74a3c8a66a
(2) https://meansandmatters.bankofthewest.com/article/sustainable-living/taking-action/who-funds-the-fight-against-climate-change/
(3) https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-12-01/vaccinations-key-for-recovery-would-only-cost-50-billion-oecd
(4) https://www.visionofearth.org/economics/ending-poverty/how-much-would-it-cost-to-end-extreme-poverty-in-the-world/
(5) https://www.georgetown.edu/news/less-than-3-percent-of-gdp-could-end-u-s-poverty-new-research-shows/
(6) https://borgenproject.org/cost-to-end-world-hunger/
(7) https://www.state.gov/u-s-security-cooperation-with-ukraine/
Source: https://www.politico.com/news/2022/05/10/congress-ukraine-aid-package-00031366
