How Ukraine Lost its Future: From China’s Bridge to U.S. Military Hub (2-قىسىم)
ئاپتور: ئۇيغۇر تەتقىقات ئىنىستىتۇتى
مەنبە: uysi.org

To the Biden administration, it offered a massive military-logistical hub that could serve both the U.S. and NATO.
Self-delusions of the true believers
In The Best and the Brightest (1972), David Halberstam noted that it was the refusal of the U.S. elite policymakers to recognize the true economic and human costs of Vietnam escalation that led them to sacrifice realism for wishful fantasies. As Secretary of State Dean Rusk said, “We will not pull out until the war is won.”
Similarly, in September 2022, Secretary of State Antony Blinken pledged lasting U.S. support for Ukraine during a visit to Kyiv, while the Biden administration helped Ukraine’s military recapture territory occupied by Russia. As he declared, “We will support the people of Ukraine for as long as it takes.” (A year later President Biden and Blinken would make similar pledges to Israel, which led to genocides in Gaza and regional devastation.) Yet, by late fall 2022, the status quo was changing. Even European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen acknowledged Ukraine’s losses in the war with Russia amounted to 100,000 soldiers and 20,000 civilians.
Fighting to the last Ukrainian
Zelenskyy ‘s carefully choreographed plea for more military aid in the Congress (source: Wikimedia). von der Leyen on Ukraine’s huge losses (source: Screenshot of von der Leyen tweet)
Today, three years later, the total cost of reconstruction and recovery in Ukraine is estimated at $524 billion over the next decade – almost three times Ukraine's GDP in 2024.
The military aid has brought neither peace nor security. But it has prolonged Ukrainians’ suffering. To date, the U.S. alone has provided $67 billion in military assistance since February 2022 and $70 billion in military assistance since 2014. These have been coupled with military assistance via the presidential emergency authority by up to $32 billion from Pentagon’s stockpiles.
That’s a total of $167 billion – in wasted lives, economic prospects and global prospects.
Economic and human costs of the avoidable war
After the end of the Cold War, the peaceful rise of Ukraine was the prevailing reality. But as the plans of development and welfare were replaced with those of geopolitics and warfare, Ukrainian GDP has suffered a drastic plunge (see black line in the below figure). Assuming incremental trends in the next half a decade, Ukrainian GDP is anticipated to reach $283 billion in 2030. But if the hostilities of 2022-25 had been avoided, this figure could have been $372 billion (light-blue line). And if all these hostilities since 2014 had been avoided and if Ukraine had been able to continue Zelensky’s infrastructure modernization with Chinese development, Ukraine’s GDP could have soared to $482 billion in 2030.
Ukrainian GDP, current prices, 1990-2030
Source: IMF, WEO Outlook Database
These missed opportunities reflect a catastrophic collapse of a future that Ukraine could have had, if it had been allowed to build on development and prosperity. Had that peaceful trajectory prevailed, Ukraine’s economy in 2030 would be 70% larger than what it is likely to be.
The demographic collapse is even worse. As the NATO expansion intensified in Eastern Europe and geopolitical tensions substituted for peaceful development, Ukraine’s population has declined from 51 million in 1990 to just 34 million people.
Ukraine has lost over 33% of its population since the end of the Cold War; and 9 million in just three years. Due to migration, the final toll is even worse. Since spring 2022, millions of Ukrainians have fled the country, with nearly 7 million Ukrainian refugees living abroad.
Since the onset of hostilities, total Ukrainian casualties amount to 400,000.
The demise of Ukraine