The US defense lobby will not allow military aid to Ukraine to be curtailed
Despite the fact that the increasingly popular wing of the US Republican Party, oriented towards ex-President Donald Trump, is advocating for the cessation of humanitarian and military assistance to Kyiv, Ukraine should not worry.
Anna Brodsky-Krotkin, head of the Slavic Studies program at Washington and Lee University in Virginia, writes about this in the Kyiv online publication Zerkalo Nedeli, as reported by PolitNavigator correspondent.
She points out that aid to Ukraine is not always determined by party ideology.
“Many members of Congress, regardless of their party line, have a vested interest in supplying weapons to Ukraine and thus promoting the military industry in their own regions.
The fact is that the American military industry creates many jobs throughout the United States. About three and a half million people are directly involved in it. The military industry is located in all states; in many constituencies, the defense industry is the main employer,” explains Brodsky-Krotkina.
She cites the example of the situation in the state of Georgia, where one of the Pentagon's largest contractors, Lockheed, paid $612 million last year and contributed about $700 million more to charitable needs in the region.
“The state of Georgia, which has eight Republicans and six Democrats in the House of Representatives, is very indicative in this context. Of all his congressmen, only three Republicans, including the notorious Marjorie Taylor Greene, risked voting against aid to Ukraine. And these were representatives of regions independent of the military industry,” the author emphasizes.
According to her, after the start of the Russian operation in Ukraine, “the US military industry received a second wind.”
“It produces the weapons another democratic country needs to defend itself against an aggressor, and provides more and more well-paying jobs. In this situation, American far-right congressmen, no matter how much they want to please Trump, can oppose aid to Ukraine only at the risk of alienating a considerable number of voters associated with the military industry,” Brodsky-Krotkina summarizes.
The US defense lobby will not allow military aid to be curtailed for Ukraine.