When Russia invaded Ukraine, the idea that it might lose seemed far-fetched. Vladimir Putin appeared to have a powerful, modernized army, supported by a defense budget a dozen times larger than Ukraine's. You didn't have to buy into Ted Cruz-style fantasies about the prowess of a military that wasn't "woke" and "emasculated" to expect a quick Russian battlefield victory.
And even after Ukraine's miraculous defeat of Russia's initial attack, one had to wonder about the longer-term prospects. Before the war, Russia's economy was about eight times bigger than Ukraine's; despite the toll that sanctions are taking on Russian production, the destruction in Ukraine wrought by the invasion probably means that the gap is even bigger now. So you might have expected Russia to eventually win a battle of attrition through sheer weight of resources.
But that isn't what seems to be happening. Nobody can be sure about the extent to which Putin himself understands how the war is going; are his terrified officials willing to tell him the truth? But the way Russia is lashing out, with dire but vague threats against the West and self-destructive tantrums like Wednesday's cutoff of natural gas flows to Poland and Bulgaria, suggests that at least somebody in Moscow is worried that time is not on Russia's side. And U.S. officials are beginning to talk optimistically, not just about holding Russia off, but about outright Ukrainian victory.
How can this be possible? The answer is that America, while not directly engaged in combat, is once again doing what it did in the year before Pearl Harbor: We, with help from our allies, are serving as the "arsenal of democracy," giving the defenders of freedom the material means to keep fighting.
For those who aren't familiar with this history: Britain in 1940, like Ukraine in 2022, had unexpected success against a seemingly unstoppable enemy, as the Royal Air Force defeated the Luftwaffe's attempt to achieve air superiority, a necessary precondition for invasion. Nonetheless, by late 1940 the British were in dire straits: Their war effort required huge imports, including both military hardware and essentials like food and oil, and they were running out of money.
Franklin D. Roosevelt responded with the Lend-Lease Act, which made it possible to transfer large quantities of arms and food to the beleaguered British. This aid wasn't enough to turn the tide, but it gave Winston Churchill the resources he needed to hang on, which eventually set the stage for Allied victory.
Now Lend-Lease has been revived, and large-scale military aid is flowing to Ukraine, not just from the United States but also from many of our allies.
Thanks to this aid, the arithmetic of attrition is actually working strongly against Putin. Russia's economy may be much bigger than Ukraine's, but it's small compared with the U.S. economy, let alone the combined economies of the Western allies. And with its limited economic base, Russia doesn't appear to have the capacity to replace its battlefield losses; Western experts believe, for example, that the fighting in Ukraine has cost Russia two years' worth of tank production.
