The White House has asked Congress for $106 billion in funding to allow Washington to continue supporting its allies in three separate global flashpoints: Ukraine, Israel and Asia. Sputnik reached out to retired US Army Lieutenant Colonel and international geopolitics and military affairs consultant Earl Rasmussen for his take on the situation.
Congress will almost certainly pass President Biden’s massive $106 billion supplemental funding request bundling new assistance for Tel Aviv together with other security spending, because “no one is going to vote against aid to Israel,” Rasmussen told Sputnik.
The supplemental, wrapped up into must-pass national security spending legislation, is widely seen as a means to outmaneuver and placate House Republicans weary of providing more aid to Ukraine, but who have made clear over the past two weeks that they’re more than willing to send additional US financial and military assistance to Israel.
“You may see some adjustments in the figures,” Rasmussen said, predicting “some jockeying back and forth” and possible modifications to spending priorities. The analyst added however that even if anti-Ukraine aid holdouts manage to win some concessions, Biden could still end up using his presidential authority to shift funds back to Kiev once the money is approved.
The spending will “obviously” benefit some people, the observer conceded, reacting to Biden’s comments in his speech Friday about aid to Ukraine and Israel being “a smart investment that’s going to pay dividends for American security for generations.”
Rasmussen stressed that the spending “does not help the average American,” and will actually harm the country’s security overall, because it will ramp up tensions with Russia, potentially escalate the Palestinian-Israeli crisis into a regional conflict, and further increase the risks of war with China.
Emboldened Israel
Rasmussen expects the funding in the supplemental request to “embolden Israel,” giving Tel Aviv “basically a continued green light…to do whatever they want to do in Gaza,” up to and including a ground invasion.
The only consolation, in the retired US Army officer’s perspective, is the fact that US reserves of some weapons are “drained” or at “extremely low” levels, meaning the Pentagon won’t be able to immediately increase military support for Israel, Ukraine and Taiwan even if it wanted to.
“Even with our industries ramping up, and they won’t be ramped up for another two or three years, they still cannot match the production rate that Russia has, let alone if you throw Iran into the mix as well,” Rasmussen said, recalling, for example, how some 300,000 155-mm shells of artillery ammunition in Israel were quietly sent to Ukraine earlier this year, making them unavailable for use by the IDF after the escalation with Hamas earlier this month.

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