In the history of ideas around war and strategic confrontation, there are strokes of genius, grave mistakes, and everything in between. And then, in a category of its own, there is The Economist’s cover story of 30 October, purporting to explain “Why funding Ukraine is a giant opportunity for Europe”. The argument is a breathtaking window into the final bankruptcy of elite thinking on the big issues of statecraft confronting the continent. In a turn to the positively absurd, the liberal paper – a flagship of the “sophisticated” globalist intelligentsia – urges the Continent’s capitals to commit some $390 billion over the next four years to sustain Kyiv’s beleaguered war effort. The paper admits this is “a lot, but still excellent value” for the European taxpayer.
This marks a nadir in the liberal transatlantic discourse on Ukraine, with the last flickers of realism yielding to a kind of messianic arithmetic. The article frames this prodigious outlay not as a burden, but as a kind of historic bargain in which we get to “corner” (not even defeat) Putin and build out Europe’s “financial and industrial muscle” while boosting its military power and thus reducing the dependency on the US.
It is effectively the old trick of presenting bad debt as prosperity-boosting investment. How bad? Just note that much of the money would be poured directly into the bottomless pit of Ukraine’s budget deficit, with negligible benefits to Europe’s economy. And what’s not sent in cash straight into Kyiv’s coffers would be used to buy European weapons that would then be gifted to Ukraine; this is the “defence investment” bit. It will certainly expand Europe’s defence-industrial base, but defence is one of the least efficient areas for investment: low-productivity, capital-intensive, and prone to low spill overs.
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