Is Biden falling in a Sunk Cost Trap in Ukraine?
Recent observers of Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine have asserted this Spring that Vladimir Putin’s stalled invasion has forced him to fall into a sunk cost fallacy trap;[1] while literally at the doorstep of Kyiv in the first month of the invasion and holding a sizeable portion of eastern and northern Ukrainian territory, Ukrainian grit and successes (with the help of Western aid) pushed Russian military forces and paramilitary groups like the Wagner Group back eastward beyond the Dnipro River and further east in the north along the Russian border.[2]
Such has been the story since September of last year and now the war has ground down to digging in and taking small tracts of land where the opportunity arises. Neither side can make a strong enough push to gain momentum, and this has caused Putin to increase the size of the military by 170,000 troops,[3] showing that he is willing to add more personnel to the fight to make it a war of attrition while at the same time a possible Pyrrhic victory. Ukraine for its effort still has a sizeable military but population-wise, will have a harder time replacing lost defense forces personnel. As the United States and European nations will not commit troops to the war, all Ukraine can do is ask for more aid and advanced arms and weapon systems to level the playing field. Yet countries that were at once committed to stopping Russian aggression and coming to Ukraine’s aid have now started to shut the aid tap as they see the war becoming more and more of a stalemate
.
Recent events in Gaza and lingering issues concerning illegal migrant crossings the U.S. Southern Border has drawn the attention of House Republicans in Congress who now have the political ammunition to refuse the Biden Administration to provide any more aid to Ukraine provided that Biden start focusing on these other matters with the same urgency. Even more, American sentiment in supporting Ukraine is starting to wane. In a recent Gallup poll[4] 41% of Americans now feel that the United States is doing too much to help Ukraine up from 24% in August 2022. Feeling the pressure of the American Public and House Republicans in Congress to start cutting aid to Ukraine, the Biden Administration sought to convince[5] Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) to find support among other House Republicans to support passing another bill for even more Ukrainian aid. Yet Congressional Republicans are holding the purse strings tight.[6] The impasse is not only causing Biden to start becoming something of a lame duck president going into the final year of his term but also might make other nations around the globe pause to think that the United States may walk away from commitments when return on investment may seem like a foregone conclusion. The White House letter appeared to show that Biden, like Putin, has fell into a similar sunk cost fallacy trap or “pot-committed”[7] in coming this far in support of Ukraine.
Boiled down, a sunk cost fallacy is a position individuals or entities take when they have spent time, money, or other valuable asset into a cause or objective and after the expected return on investment is not realized more money and resources are thrown in the endeavor in an effort to recoup some, if not all of the prior investment or sunk costs in some tangible or intangible way; it’s simply “throwing good money after bad.”[8] An example of people falling in a sunk cost fallacy is often seen at the casino. In an effort to recoup a large amount of losses at the blackjack table in the hope of hitting a streak of luck based on one’s strategy (often another fallacy) undisciplined gamblers will throw even more money on the table to get even 50% back and often bets more than what they originally started out betting. This reckless attitude only raises the stakes of higher losses and ultimately in extreme situations, breaking the bank. How to get out of the sunk cost trap? Note your losses and move on. It might be the toughest pill to swallow, but in the end it may often be the best prescription to save face.
The memo to Johnson from the White House seems to have the classic trappings of an entity or individual committing to remaining in a sunk cost fallacy. Starting off in a gracious manner, the administration has pointed out the benefits that the aid has not only helped Ukraine in their defense of Russian aggression but also humanitarian aid within Ukraine and around the world as a result of the invasion in the form of assisting displaced refugees and helping nations feed their populations due to decreased Ukrainian grain shipments due to the war. The memo also notes the boost the American Defense Industrial Base (DIB) is getting from producing weapons and armaments for delivery to Ukraine. The White House spends three paragraphs running down the numbers of where the aid goes to and how much of the $111 billion provided for the effort has been portioned.
Acknowledgement of being stuck in the sunk cost trap is made by the fact of the perceived sense of urgency that the Biden Administration makes in noting that 1) aid for Ukraine is drying up fast and 2) that failure to secure more funds for Ukraine will only result in a Ukrainian capitulation to Russia and may allow Putin to set his sights in Eastern Europe[9] to the rest of the former Soviet republics if not former Warsaw Pact states. Some may see through the veil of urgency to only see an administration seeking rationales and justifications to continue to aid Ukraine in its defense; Congressional Republicans it appears have also seen this. It appears that they have noticed that the Biden Administration has fallen into this sunk cost fallacy and in an effort to get Biden away from the gambling table are saying, “count your losses and walk away.”
But is it that easy to walk away from an endeavor that many law makers and the American public only a year earlier staunchly supported? While it may be easy to walk away from the poker table when you have little to no money left in your pocket to gamble on, you have no one to really to answer to (except for your spouse in coming up with a reason why your money was gambled away), for the United States, counting losses and walking away may be a bit harder when your reputation is on the line as a defender of freedom and democracy around the world and that you have someone’s back through the good times…and the bad. Walking away from such commitments like Ukraine may tarnish the image of the U.S. as a country being a deserter when the chips are down or not going entirely in their favor. When return on investment appears to dry up, there is no chance of adding more resources to the cause and to look for other opportunities to engage in.
Thus, we appear to have a dilemma. Do you cut your losses and walk away while at the same time walking away from your commitments and tarnishing your image of statecraft and diplomacy that makes you a fickle partner? Depending on the angle one takes a view from the United States has either cut its losses in Afghanistan opting to concede that it did all it could do there and took pride in small and large strung together successes but falling short of installing a secure democracy for the Afghan people or on the other hand, the United States simply walked away because twenty years in country was just too long to commit to the cause. Either way the U.S. did cut it losses in Afghanistan and likely rather relieved that it has done so. At the same time, it still has provided billions of dollars in aid[10] since the Taliban takeover in the summer of 2021, but it has gone to humanitarian assistance and not to any element seeking to overthrow the Taliban and install a new government.
Those who have said that the U.S. has given too much to the Ukrainian cause point to the bottom-line value of aid[11] committed which through December 7th of this year amounted to 71.38 billion euros (43.85 billion of which went to military commitments) ranking first among countries that have helped Ukraine in this war. Yet there are those who look at the aid committed to Ukraine from another lens based on percentage of GDP. While the United States has indeed committed the most in total value from all the other nations also supporting Ukraine the U.S. ranks 15th in total assistance based on percentage of GDP (16th as it relates to military assistance). The 0.323% of GDP the U.S. provides in assistance to Ukraine is nowhere near the 1.596% GDP of assistance Norway has given in that same time span. This percentage of GDP given to Ukraine nearly matches that amount that Norway spent on its own defense in 2022.[12]
So, who’s in the right? In government, are the Republicans doing Biden a favor in pointing out the sunk cost trap they say his administration appears to be in or is the cause still just and viable for success as the White House has claimed…provided they can get Congress to release more aid to Ukraine? While the American public still appears to support the cause, the number of Americans thinking that we have done too much is only rising absent any momentum from the Ukrainian defense forces and it would appear that time is not on Ukraine’s or the Biden White House’s side; but it may be on Putin’s side.
Can a bipartisan agreement be reached to possibly provide a “Goldilocks” level that the U.S. is not spending so much on Ukraine to make it look like a sunk cost trap while at the same time not appearing to walk away from commitments made at the onset of the war? There are many factors to look at to make that determination; we are now committed to Israel in helping them remove the threat from Hamas (and likely Hezbollah) in Gaza and the West Bank, we also need to focus on our southern border with Mexico as undocumented and illegal migrants continue to cross in unprecedented numbers[13] as government funds must be diverted there to help the unsustainable overflow.[14]
There is also on the horizon a presidential election that may shift policy to whether Ukraine will get any significant amount from the U.S. in the future or whether the tap keeps flowing in some capacity. We also still have the biggest unknown – the unknown itself. Will there be a crisis bigger than Ukraine, Gaza, and the U.S. southern border all put together? And if so do we still have the capacity to confront that crisis let alone continue to support the other endeavors we are currently committed to now without breaking the bank and our reputation. For the United States, sunk costs as it relates to Ukraine not only means monetary costs but also reputational costs. The Biden administration has both to look at and has to find some common ground in which to recoup both without walking from the table with empty pockets.
References
[1]Gloe, D.V. (2023, March 14). Putin Is Trapped in the Sunk-Cost Fallacy of War. Foreign Policy. https://foreignpolicy.com/2023/03/14/putin-ukraine-war-sunk-cost-fallacy/
[2]Institute for the Study of War. (2022, August 19). Interactive Time-lapse: Russia's War in Ukraine. https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/733fe90805894bfc8562d90b106aa895
[3]Putin orders the Russian military to add 170,000 troops for a total of 1.32 million. (2023, December 1). Associated Press. https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-putin-army-expansion-a2bf0b035aabab20c8b120a1c86c9e38
[4]Younis, M. (2023, November 2). American Views on the Ukraine War in 6 Charts. Gallup. https://news.gallup.com/poll/513680/american-views-ukraine-war-charts.aspx
[5]Young, S.D. (2023, December 4). Letter to Congressional Leadership Regarding the Need for Urgent Action to Support Ukraine’s Defense. The White House. https://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/briefing-room/2023/12/04/letter-to-congressional-leadership-regarding-the-need-for-urgent-action-to-support-ukraines-defense/
[6]Groves, S. and Mascaro, L. (2023, December 10). New US aid for Ukraine by year-end seems increasingly out of reach as GOP ties it to border security. Associated Press. https://apnews.com/article/congress-border-immigration-ukraine-6bdcc5dde4dadb48b43ace75b5a55242
[7]Dougherty, M.B. (2022, June 3). Are We ‘Pot-Committed’ in Ukraine? National Review. https://www.nationalreview.com/2022/06/are-we-pot-committed-in-ukraine/
[8]Semick, J. (n.d.). Product Managers: Learn to Let Go. ProductPlan. https://www.productplan.com/blog/product-managers-learn-to-let-go/
[9]Nixey, J. (2023, June 27). How to end Russia’s war on Ukraine. Conclusion: Assuring the future of Europe. Chatham House. https://www.chathamhouse.org/2023/06/how-end-russias-war-ukraine/conclusion-assuring-future-europe
[10]Ott, H. and Yousefzai, S. (2023, April 21). U.S. taxpayers helping fund Afghanistan's Taliban? Aid workers say they're forced "to serve the Taliban first". CBS. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/afghanistan-taliban-tax-dollars-after-withdrawal/
[11]Bomprezzi, P, Kharitonov, I., and Trebesch, C. (Update, 2024, August 6). Ukraine Support Tracker. IFW Kiel Institute for the World Economy. https://www.ifw-kiel.de/topics/war-against-ukraine/ukraine-support-tracker/
[12]World Bank Group. (n.d.). Military Expenditure (% of GDP) - Norway. https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/MS.MIL.XPND.GD.ZS?locations=NO
[13]U.S. Customs and Border Protection. (n.d.). Southwest Land Border Encounters. https://www.cbp.gov/newsroom/stats/southwest-land-border-encounters
[14]Associated Press. (2023, December 10). Smugglers are bringing migrants to a remote Arizona crossing, overwhelming agents. National Public Radio (NPR). https://www.npr.org/2023/12/10/1218428530/smugglers-are-bringing-migrants-to-a-remote-arizona-crossing-overwhelming-agents
Recent observers of Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine have asserted this Spring that Vladimir Putin’s stalled invasion has forced him to fall into a sunk cost fallacy trap;[1] while literally at the doorstep of Kyiv in the first month of the invasion and holding a sizeable portion of eastern and northern Ukrainian territory, Ukrainian grit and successes (with the help of Western aid) pushed Russian military forces and paramilitary groups like the Wagner Group back eastward beyond the Dnipro River and further east in the north along the Russian border.[2]
Such has been the story since September of last year and now the war has ground down to digging in and taking small tracts of land where the opportunity arises. Neither side can make a strong enough push to gain momentum, and this has caused Putin to increase the size of the military by 170,000 troops,[3] showing that he is willing to add more personnel to the fight to make it a war of attrition while at the same time a possible Pyrrhic victory. Ukraine for its effort still has a sizeable military but population-wise, will have a harder time replacing lost defense forces personnel. As the United States and European nations will not commit troops to the war, all Ukraine can do is ask for more aid and advanced arms and weapon systems to level the playing field. Yet countries that were at once committed to stopping Russian aggression and coming to Ukraine’s aid have now started to shut the aid tap as they see the war becoming more and more of a stalemate
.
Recent events in Gaza and lingering issues concerning illegal migrant crossings the U.S. Southern Border has drawn the attention of House Republicans in Congress who now have the political ammunition to refuse the Biden Administration to provide any more aid to Ukraine provided that Biden start focusing on these other matters with the same urgency. Even more, American sentiment in supporting Ukraine is starting to wane. In a recent Gallup poll[4] 41% of Americans now feel that the United States is doing too much to help Ukraine up from 24% in August 2022. Feeling the pressure of the American Public and House Republicans in Congress to start cutting aid to Ukraine, the Biden Administration sought to convince[5] Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) to find support among other House Republicans to support passing another bill for even more Ukrainian aid. Yet Congressional Republicans are holding the purse strings tight.[6] The impasse is not only causing Biden to start becoming something of a lame duck president going into the final year of his term but also might make other nations around the globe pause to think that the United States may walk away from commitments when return on investment may seem like a foregone conclusion. The White House letter appeared to show that Biden, like Putin, has fell into a similar sunk cost fallacy trap or “pot-committed”[7] in coming this far in support of Ukraine.
Boiled down, a sunk cost fallacy is a position individuals or entities take when they have spent time, money, or other valuable asset into a cause or objective and after the expected return on investment is not realized more money and resources are thrown in the endeavor in an effort to recoup some, if not all of the prior investment or sunk costs in some tangible or intangible way; it’s simply “throwing good money after bad.”[8] An example of people falling in a sunk cost fallacy is often seen at the casino. In an effort to recoup a large amount of losses at the blackjack table in the hope of hitting a streak of luck based on one’s strategy (often another fallacy) undisciplined gamblers will throw even more money on the table to get even 50% back and often bets more than what they originally started out betting. This reckless attitude only raises the stakes of higher losses and ultimately in extreme situations, breaking the bank. How to get out of the sunk cost trap? Note your losses and move on. It might be the toughest pill to swallow, but in the end it may often be the best prescription to save face.
The memo to Johnson from the White House seems to have the classic trappings of an entity or individual committing to remaining in a sunk cost fallacy. Starting off in a gracious manner, the administration has pointed out the benefits that the aid has not only helped Ukraine in their defense of Russian aggression but also humanitarian aid within Ukraine and around the world as a result of the invasion in the form of assisting displaced refugees and helping nations feed their populations due to decreased Ukrainian grain shipments due to the war. The memo also notes the boost the American Defense Industrial Base (DIB) is getting from producing weapons and armaments for delivery to Ukraine. The White House spends three paragraphs running down the numbers of where the aid goes to and how much of the $111 billion provided for the effort has been portioned.
Acknowledgement of being stuck in the sunk cost trap is made by the fact of the perceived sense of urgency that the Biden Administration makes in noting that 1) aid for Ukraine is drying up fast and 2) that failure to secure more funds for Ukraine will only result in a Ukrainian capitulation to Russia and may allow Putin to set his sights in Eastern Europe[9] to the rest of the former Soviet republics if not former Warsaw Pact states. Some may see through the veil of urgency to only see an administration seeking rationales and justifications to continue to aid Ukraine in its defense; Congressional Republicans it appears have also seen this. It appears that they have noticed that the Biden Administration has fallen into this sunk cost fallacy and in an effort to get Biden away from the gambling table are saying, “count your losses and walk away.”
But is it that easy to walk away from an endeavor that many law makers and the American public only a year earlier staunchly supported? While it may be easy to walk away from the poker table when you have little to no money left in your pocket to gamble on, you have no one to really to answer to (except for your spouse in coming up with a reason why your money was gambled away), for the United States, counting losses and walking away may be a bit harder when your reputation is on the line as a defender of freedom and democracy around the world and that you have someone’s back through the good times…and the bad. Walking away from such commitments like Ukraine may tarnish the image of the U.S. as a country being a deserter when the chips are down or not going entirely in their favor. When return on investment appears to dry up, there is no chance of adding more resources to the cause and to look for other opportunities to engage in.
Thus, we appear to have a dilemma. Do you cut your losses and walk away while at the same time walking away from your commitments and tarnishing your image of statecraft and diplomacy that makes you a fickle partner? Depending on the angle one takes a view from the United States has either cut its losses in Afghanistan opting to concede that it did all it could do there and took pride in small and large strung together successes but falling short of installing a secure democracy for the Afghan people or on the other hand, the United States simply walked away because twenty years in country was just too long to commit to the cause. Either way the U.S. did cut it losses in Afghanistan and likely rather relieved that it has done so. At the same time, it still has provided billions of dollars in aid[10] since the Taliban takeover in the summer of 2021, but it has gone to humanitarian assistance and not to any element seeking to overthrow the Taliban and install a new government.
Those who have said that the U.S. has given too much to the Ukrainian cause point to the bottom-line value of aid[11] committed which through December 7th of this year amounted to 71.38 billion euros (43.85 billion of which went to military commitments) ranking first among countries that have helped Ukraine in this war. Yet there are those who look at the aid committed to Ukraine from another lens based on percentage of GDP. While the United States has indeed committed the most in total value from all the other nations also supporting Ukraine the U.S. ranks 15th in total assistance based on percentage of GDP (16th as it relates to military assistance). The 0.323% of GDP the U.S. provides in assistance to Ukraine is nowhere near the 1.596% GDP of assistance Norway has given in that same time span. This percentage of GDP given to Ukraine nearly matches that amount that Norway spent on its own defense in 2022.[12]
So, who’s in the right? In government, are the Republicans doing Biden a favor in pointing out the sunk cost trap they say his administration appears to be in or is the cause still just and viable for success as the White House has claimed…provided they can get Congress to release more aid to Ukraine? While the American public still appears to support the cause, the number of Americans thinking that we have done too much is only rising absent any momentum from the Ukrainian defense forces and it would appear that time is not on Ukraine’s or the Biden White House’s side; but it may be on Putin’s side.
Can a bipartisan agreement be reached to possibly provide a “Goldilocks” level that the U.S. is not spending so much on Ukraine to make it look like a sunk cost trap while at the same time not appearing to walk away from commitments made at the onset of the war? There are many factors to look at to make that determination; we are now committed to Israel in helping them remove the threat from Hamas (and likely Hezbollah) in Gaza and the West Bank, we also need to focus on our southern border with Mexico as undocumented and illegal migrants continue to cross in unprecedented numbers[13] as government funds must be diverted there to help the unsustainable overflow.[14]
There is also on the horizon a presidential election that may shift policy to whether Ukraine will get any significant amount from the U.S. in the future or whether the tap keeps flowing in some capacity. We also still have the biggest unknown – the unknown itself. Will there be a crisis bigger than Ukraine, Gaza, and the U.S. southern border all put together? And if so do we still have the capacity to confront that crisis let alone continue to support the other endeavors we are currently committed to now without breaking the bank and our reputation. For the United States, sunk costs as it relates to Ukraine not only means monetary costs but also reputational costs. The Biden administration has both to look at and has to find some common ground in which to recoup both without walking from the table with empty pockets.
References
[1]Gloe, D.V. (2023, March 14). Putin Is Trapped in the Sunk-Cost Fallacy of War. Foreign Policy. https://foreignpolicy.com/2023/03/14/putin-ukraine-war-sunk-cost-fallacy/
[2]Institute for the Study of War. (2022, August 19). Interactive Time-lapse: Russia's War in Ukraine. https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/733fe90805894bfc8562d90b106aa895
[3]Putin orders the Russian military to add 170,000 troops for a total of 1.32 million. (2023, December 1). Associated Press. https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-putin-army-expansion-a2bf0b035aabab20c8b120a1c86c9e38
[4]Younis, M. (2023, November 2). American Views on the Ukraine War in 6 Charts. Gallup. https://news.gallup.com/poll/513680/american-views-ukraine-war-charts.aspx
[5]Young, S.D. (2023, December 4). Letter to Congressional Leadership Regarding the Need for Urgent Action to Support Ukraine’s Defense. The White House. https://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/briefing-room/2023/12/04/letter-to-congressional-leadership-regarding-the-need-for-urgent-action-to-support-ukraines-defense/
[6]Groves, S. and Mascaro, L. (2023, December 10). New US aid for Ukraine by year-end seems increasingly out of reach as GOP ties it to border security. Associated Press. https://apnews.com/article/congress-border-immigration-ukraine-6bdcc5dde4dadb48b43ace75b5a55242
[7]Dougherty, M.B. (2022, June 3). Are We ‘Pot-Committed’ in Ukraine? National Review. https://www.nationalreview.com/2022/06/are-we-pot-committed-in-ukraine/
[8]Semick, J. (n.d.). Product Managers: Learn to Let Go. ProductPlan. https://www.productplan.com/blog/product-managers-learn-to-let-go/
[9]Nixey, J. (2023, June 27). How to end Russia’s war on Ukraine. Conclusion: Assuring the future of Europe. Chatham House. https://www.chathamhouse.org/2023/06/how-end-russias-war-ukraine/conclusion-assuring-future-europe
[10]Ott, H. and Yousefzai, S. (2023, April 21). U.S. taxpayers helping fund Afghanistan's Taliban? Aid workers say they're forced "to serve the Taliban first". CBS. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/afghanistan-taliban-tax-dollars-after-withdrawal/
[11]Bomprezzi, P, Kharitonov, I., and Trebesch, C. (Update, 2024, August 6). Ukraine Support Tracker. IFW Kiel Institute for the World Economy. https://www.ifw-kiel.de/topics/war-against-ukraine/ukraine-support-tracker/
[12]World Bank Group. (n.d.). Military Expenditure (% of GDP) - Norway. https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/MS.MIL.XPND.GD.ZS?locations=NO
[13]U.S. Customs and Border Protection. (n.d.). Southwest Land Border Encounters. https://www.cbp.gov/newsroom/stats/southwest-land-border-encounters
[14]Associated Press. (2023, December 10). Smugglers are bringing migrants to a remote Arizona crossing, overwhelming agents. National Public Radio (NPR). https://www.npr.org/2023/12/10/1218428530/smugglers-are-bringing-migrants-to-a-remote-arizona-crossing-overwhelming-agents