Is escalation in Ukraine part of the US strategy? | Adam Tooze

Congress's extraordinary new Lend-Lease plan commits billions of dollars to the war effort, echoing a second world war strategy

In the spring of Russia's war on Ukraine, Washington DC seems haunted by the ghosts of history. The US Congress has passed the Ukraine Democracy Defense Lend-Lease Act of 2022 to expedite aid to Ukraine - just as Franklin D Roosevelt did, under the Lend-Lease Act, to the British empire, China and Greece in March 1941.

The sums of money being contemplated in Washington are enormous - a total of $47bn, the equivalent of one third of Ukraine's prewar GDP. If it is approved by Congress, on top of other western aid, it will mean that we are financing nothing less than a total war.

Adam Tooze is a professor of history at Columbia University