Lame duck President Joe Biden’s decision to escalate the war between Ukraine and Russia is “morally corrupt,” harms U.S. military and national security interests, and places America on the path to “catastrophic war,” a U.S. congressman has stated.

With the presidential election behind him, Biden has felt free to ratchet up his unpopular commitment to Ukraine in its war against Russia. In recent weeks, Biden authorized Kyiv to strike inside Russia with ATACMS missiles and to use anti-personnel landmines against Russian soldiers — a move that violates Ukrainian international commitments. Ukraine, but not the U.S., signed the Anti-Personnel Mine Ban Convention, which prohibits the use or transfer of landmines. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky now calls the use of such controversial landmines “very important” to Ukraine’s anti-Russian offense.

The Biden-Zelensky escalation has only inflamed tensions and has not apparently set back Russia’s military efforts. Russia responded to Ukraine’s ATACMS strike by lobbing an experimental, hypersonic missile — the intermediate-range Oreshnik missile — into the Ukrainian city of Dnipro. Russian troops conquered an additional 91 square miles of Ukrainian territory in the last week. The Russian military is reportedly advancing through eastern Ukraine at the fastest rate in two years.

“I think it has a lot to do with his mental capability and the people that are advising him. I suspect they’re advising him due to their portfolios, more than they are common sense,” Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.) told “Washington Watch” on Tuesday.

“You would think you wouldn’t want to escalate something and then hand it off to the next president, especially something like this that could lead, some people are saying, to World War III,” Burchett continued. If “somebody infirm ends up shooting a nuclear missile, that could sure put us in a bad position.”

The Biden administration has decided to send a “small number” of U.S. military contractors to “help Ukrainian armed forces rapidly repair and maintain U.S.-provided equipment as needed so it can be quickly returned to the front lines,” a Biden defense official told reporters on condition of anonymity earlier this month.

Military contractors allow U.S. officials to deepen America’s involvement in foreign quagmires with little insight, experts say. “You can bypass Congress,” explained Christopher Kinsey, a professor of international security at King’s College London. “It makes actually engaging in war easier, because you don’t have society to buy in, in this respect, because you don’t need conscription.”

“What they’re able to do is they can escalate up, and they can escalate back down, and they can do that out of sight of the public. Also, there’s this notion of deniability, the American government can’t be blamed if things go wrong, they will blame the contractor,” Kinsey pointed out.

Biden’s lame-duck escalation “just pushes us closer and closer into a more catastrophic war. And I don’t think that does anybody any good, except maybe a few of the people at the Pentagon whose livelihood depends on it and some investors,” explained Burchett.

Administration officials have emphasized that between two-thirds and 90% of Ukraine aid goes to U.S. defense companies. The Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) has declared, “U.S. support for Ukraine thus offers a once-in-a-generation opportunity to sustain a demand signal.” Critics of the war such as HHS Secretary nominee Robert F. Kennedy Jr. have described U.S. military funding for the Ukraine war as an enormous money-laundering operation, transferring money from taxpayers to defense contractors.

“The president kept saying how much money was coming back to this country due to that investment. And I can’t think of any morally more corrupt way to invest your money than at the death of others,” said Burchett. “That’s exactly what’s going on here.”

“It could be devastating to us,” Burchett concluded.

Biden has increased U.S. economic aid to Ukraine in tandem with his more aggressive military maneuvers. Biden forgave $4.65 billion in U.S. taxpayer-funded “loans” to Ukraine last week.

“ENOUGH is ENOUGH I am tired of our money being wasted on endless foreign wars!” exclaimed Rep. Matt Rosendale (R-Mont.). Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.) felt frustrated that the Biden-Harris administration forgave foreign debts while American citizens “are struggling with inflation at an all-time high.”

President Biden’s legal authorization to forgive the debt came in a provision of the $95.3 billion aid package — which included $61 billion for Ukraine, with the remainder earmarked for Israel, Taiwan, and the Pacific theater — which Congress passed in April. The bill allows the president to write off half of the $10 billion “loan” to Ukraine after the 2024 presidential election — a choice Biden opted to take. The president can forgive the rest of the loan after January 1, 2025. Burchett derided the loan as “a joke” at the time of the passage.

“Here we go again with the Ukraine-first, America-last policy,” Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky.) opened his speech on the Senate floor last week, as he introduced a joint congressional resolution of disapproval. “We will not stand idly by while the president elevates the interests of a foreign country above our own.”

The conservative grassroots organization Heritage Action called on Congress to support Paul’s disapproval of Biden’s loan forgiveness. “For the past four years, Americans have suffered under the high prices and rising debt under the Biden-Harris Administration. We cannot afford to shift the burden of billions of dollars of Ukraine funding to the wallets of hardworking Americans. It’s time for our government to prioritize the people they represent,” said Heritage Action Executive Vice President Ryan Walker.

Paul’s resolution failed by a 37-61 vote, with 10 Republicans voting against it: Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.), Susan Collins (R-Maine), Jon Cornyn (R-Texas), Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), Pete Ricketts (R-Neb.), Mitt Romney (R-Utah), Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), Roger Wicker (R-Miss.), and Todd Young (R-Ind.).

After the vote, Paul replied, “Tonight, I forced a vote to block Biden from canceling $4.65B of Ukraine’s debt at the expense of U.S. taxpayers. His plan shifts the burden onto hardworking Americans already struggling with inflation. Sadly, the Ukraine 1st, America Last Caucus defeated my resolution.”

Biden responded to his bipartisan legislative triumph by demanding an additional $24 billion in U.S. aid to Ukraine. The Office of Management and Budget included the aid in a wish list of items the administration would like lawmakers to include in an upcoming spending bill likely to be passed during the lame duck session of Congress. The request asks for $8 billion to Ukraine and $16 billion to replenish the U.S. weapons stock, according to Politico.

“Joe Biden just gave away 4.7 billion in your taxpayer dollars by unilaterally ‘forgiving’ loans to Ukraine. Congress must not give him a free gift to further sabotage President Trump’s peace negotiations on the way out the door,” said Senator Mike Lee (R-Utah). “Any Biden funding demands should be DOA.”

Military Aid to Ukraine Threatens U.S. Military Readiness: Navy Commander

President Joe Biden’s escalation of the Ukraine-Russia war comes even as a top military official admitted America’s military support for Ukraine threatens America’s ability to defeat its greatest strategic rival.

Navy Admiral Samuel Paparo, commander of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, told the Brookings Institution last Tuesday:

“The Russian invasion of Ukraine and the Hamas attack on Israel are depleting stocks the Indo-Pacific might need, Paparo said. He said that until this year the effect on his command by the delivery of systems to Ukraine and Israel was negligible. ‘But now, with some of the Patriots that have been employed, some of the air-to-air missiles that have been employed, it is now eating into stocks, … and to say otherwise would be dishonest,’ he said. …

“‘It imposes costs on the readiness of America to respond in the Indo-Pacific region, which is the most stressing theater for the quantity and quality of munitions, because [China] is the most capable potential adversary in the world,’ Paparo said.”

His statement came as a simulation showed the U.S. military would suffer devastating losses in a war with China. The U.S. military would lose 3,000 troops within the first three weeks, found the simulation operated by CSIS. “There are significant, ongoing challenges with the U.S. defense industrial base,” stated the CSIS results. “China’s defense industrial base is on a wartime footing and the U.S. is losing deterrence.” Reviving America’s rusting industrial base constitutes a major theme of President Donald Trump’s hopes to “Make America Great Again.”

U.S. military support for Ukraine has also harmed Israel’s defense industry. As this author wrote in The Washington Stand more than a year ago, months before Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel, “the Biden administration had weakened Israeli defenses by diverting hundreds of thousands of artillery shells out of Israel to support the war in Ukraine.” 

Yet the greatest victims are the Ukrainian people themselves, as soldiers and civilians continue to die in an effort military experts describe as futile. “Data from UAlosses, a website, suggest that at least 60,435 soldiers have died since 2022,” reported The Economist. “The figures suggest that more than 0.5% of Ukraine’s pre-war population of men of fighting age (18-49-year-olds) have been killed. The data from UAlosses are not comprehensive and not all soldiers’ ages are known.”

Polls increasingly show Americans are weary of providing aid to Ukraine, which is internationally notorious for its corruption, and unconvinced the war is America’s concern. A majority of Americans regardless of political party say Russia’s invasion of Ukraine poses no threat to the United States. America’s political parties agree, with only 42% of Democrats and 19% of Republicans seeing the Eastern European conflict as a concern, according to a Pew Research Center poll released Tuesday.

“President Trump said he wants to get us out of there, and I think that’s a good thing. We need to shut that war down. We need to start pushing peace more than we do war,” said Burchett. “Donald Trump can’t get in the White House soon enough.”