Mises Institute editor falsely claims “there’s no telling where” aid to Ukraine “ends up”
Mises Institute published a piece titled “It's Time to Abandon America's Fetish for ‘Unconditional Surrender’” by Mises's Senior Editor. The article contained demonstrably false and misleading claims and omitted details that disagreed with or disproved the author’s conclusions.
The author falsely claimed, “there’s no telling where that money ends up. The United States is heavily auditing aid to Ukraine with multiple specialized oversight responses across at least three agencies. A Google search reveals a wealth of information about auditing aid to Ukraine, suggesting a failure to check basic facts.
Ukraine’s history of corruption is presented without relevant contexts, such as Ukraine’s anti-corruption progress. Also absent is a discussion of Russia’s use of strategic corruption to prevent Ukraine and other ex-Soviet states from becoming successful democracies. The author reduces Ukraine to a corrupt society that is not “pragmatic” in its self-defense and overtly advocates exploiting Ukraine’s need to manipulate its choices.
Put another way, the article seems to imply the US should use strategic corruption to coerce Ukraine while also asserting Ukraine is corrupt. Overt claims about US support also come without evidence (sic):
“The foreign policy elites, however, only benefit politically and financially from more war, ongoing ad nauseum. There is as of yet no downside for these elites in more war.”
Who policy elites are and how the author knows they are corrupt persons willing to profit off mass deaths is unexplained.
Most glaringly, the piece ignores large-scale war crimes like rape, torture, and killing of children, mutilation, starvation, grotesque scenes like human heads on spikes, torture cellars, and potentially well over 500,000 stolen Ukrainian children who have disappeared into the Russian Federation.
More about Russia’s history of aggression can be found here:
A list of resources related to “telling where that money ends up.”
Claims implying the US isn’t auditing aid to Ukraine are pants-on-fire false.
Despite the grave implications of a successful illegal conquest and the average American having nothing to gain from supporting the war, the Mises op-ed ascribed the support to corrupt selfishness.
The Mises op-ed dismisses valid concerns about US security and the threats posed by Russia’s repeated attacks.
The super-majority of Americans support sending aid to Ukraine.
- “Ultimately though, 73% of Americans say the United States should continue to support Ukraine despite Russia threatening to use nuclear weapons,” according to Reuters/Ipsos poll tracking.
- Nearly 90% of Americans agree that a country’s army is never or rarely justified to target and kill civilians.
Broad US support exists despite the average American having nothing to gain from the war, and if anything, Americans are enduring price increases associated with energy market disruptions.
The Mises article omits relevant context when raising corruption, similar to Russia’s misleading claims to discourage aid to Ukraine.
Mises Institute’s article does not mention Russia’s strategic corruption designed to prevent Ukraine and other ex-Soviet states from integrating with Europe and preventing such change from reaching Russia.
By attributing Russia’s strategic corruption to Ukraine, the author—in effect— helps Russia exert control over ex-Soviet states like Ukraine.
“In recent years, a number of countries—China and Russia, in particular—have found ways to take the kind of corruption that was previously a mere feature of their own political systems and transform it into a weapon on the global stage. Countries have done this before, but never on the scale seen today.”
The article also disregards Ukrainian efforts to combat corruption, which include a designated Anti-Corruption Court and a National Corruption Policy Council. Experts believe the loss of the ability to manipulate through corruption is one reason Russia invaded Ukraine. The 2014 invasion came immediately following a Ukrainian revolution that ousted the pro-Kremlin leader Viktor Yanukovych, who Putin allowed to flee to Russia.
Declining corruption was threatening Russia’s ability to manipulate Ukraine. The 2014 invasion swiftly followed a revolution ousting the country’s pro-Kremlin leader.
The Ukrainian people rejected the corruption of Yanukovych in 2013 when he accepted money from Russia in exchange for not joining the EU.
“Having tried to undermine Ukraine through military and hybrid aggression, Putin now threatens a large-scale invasion to destroy the country—not only because it is successfully undergoing comprehensive domestic transformation but, more importantly, because it has the potential to trigger similar democratic reforms in Russia.”
In the article “Why Ukraine’s Fight Against Corruption Scares Russia,” members of the Anti-Corruption Action Center in Ukraine discuss the country’s journey out of Soviet corruption.
“In 2015-16, the Ukrainian government opened state databases… which now saves up to 10 percent of the funds budgeted for each purchase due to the site’s auction approach, transparency, and competitiveness. Since 2016, around one million public servants have submitted asset declarations to the electronic declaration system annually. They must report their and their family members’ incomes, assets, real estate, valuable property, corporate rights, beneficial ownership of companies, bank accounts, art, fur coats—and even hard cash stocked in closets or deposit boxes. These measures significantly empowered civil society experts and investigative journalists to reveal and expose corruption, thus elevating the risk for corrupt officials, who are sensitive to any public exposure of their wrongdoings.”
Kaleniuk and Halushka continue:
“Digitization in the city-planning and construction industry alone helps to save around $110 million annually, which previously had gone into the pockets of corrupt officials. This radical openness gave birth to more anti-kleptocracy projects driven by civil society, such as a public national database of politically exposed persons—individuals who hold “prominent public function”—and their family members and close associates.”
Citing a far-left website, the article makes the unsupported claim that “Russophobes” want to “dismantle” Russia.
The article asserts that “American Russophobes” want to dismantle Russia, another common claim used by the Kremlin to justify the war, and that (sic) “The foreign policy elites, however, only benefit politically and financially from more war, ongoing ad nauseum. There is as of yet no downside for these elites in more war.”
- For the claim about dismantling Russia, the author cites MRonline.org, a far-left website that SimilarWeb assesses as most similar to Marxist.org, but also like Marxist.com.
- MRonline.org has also recently published content denying the Uighur genocide from an author promoted by outlets with close ties to the Kremlin and Russian oligarchs like Katehon and RT.
Appendix
Auditing of aid to Ukraine
- Department of Defense. (2022). Department of Defense Office of Inspector General > Ukraine. Office of Inspector General, United States Department of Defense. https://www.dodig.mil/Ukraine/
- Department of State. (2022). Ukraine Response Oversight. Office of Inspector General. https://www.stateoig.gov/ukraine-response-oversight
- USAID. (2022). Ukraine Oversight. USAID.Gov. https://oig.usaid.gov/our-work/ukraine-oversight/