"They will be unable to react quickly enough to any escalation and to problems": political scientist assessed how the US shutdown could affect Ukraine

After the US federal government suspended its work, Washington may not be able to react quickly enough to any escalation and foreign policy problems, despite the fact that the financing of the military budget and aid programs to allies, including Ukraine, does not depend on the main budget. Oleksandr Kraiev, an expert at the Council on Foreign Policy “Ukrainian Prism”, told UNN about this in a comment.

DetailsAs reported by UNN, the United States government officially announced a shutdown after Congress and the White House failed to reach an agreement on funding. This happened for the first time since 2019, leaving about 750,000 federal employees without pay.

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As Kraiev said, a shutdown is a suspension of the work of the Federal government, its main parts, its main agencies. According to him, this decision was caused by the fact that “Congress did not have time, could not, did not want to, for whatever reason, did not approve either the budget for the next fiscal year, or did not approve the extension of the current fiscal budget.”

That is, this year Americans have a grandiose budget problem. For most of the year, in principle, the US “existed” in the 2024 fiscal year simply with constant extensions. And this created corresponding problems for them, because they constantly had to adopt new and new laws to extend this fiscal year, for new budget appropriations. The only thing that was not a problem was the military budget. It is adopted separately from the federal budget, both by procedure and, in principle. The same applies to aid to foreign partners. This is the one under which aid is provided to Ukraine, Taiwan, Israel, that is, not to NATO partner countries. And now the Democrats have finally decided to start a full-fledged political struggle and did not agree to cut social spending

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He noted that the Democrats did not agree to rewrite parts on education, parts on payments, and most importantly, they did not agree to cut social security for health – Medicaid (an American state medical program for low-income populations – ed.).

This was one of the main positions of the Trump administration, which they pushed through Congress, and accordingly it was one of the main measures of the Republican Party in Congress. The Democrats did not agree to this, and because of this, such a confrontation began. How long it will last, what the final result will be, it is difficult to say yet.

However, according to him, it can be said for sure that, firstly, the US may “drop out” of foreign policy, that is, all support programs that have already begun will continue.

But the problem is how can one actively do something if there is such a big, in fact, the biggest economic and political crisis for the US at home. Secondly, this will now terribly hit the American economy. Not just because there are no salaries for federal employees, no salaries for employees in culture, healthcare, local officials… most of them Trump is now trying to force to work for some time for free, threatening uncontrolled dismissals. But the problem is that the markets will feel it immediately. Already now the New York Stock Exchange is crawling down. A drop in key indices to the level of the end of last year is predicted, which were record highs for the beginning of the 21st century against the background of the 2008-2010 crisis, because there is no confidence in the Federal government, there is no confidence in how it will fulfill its obligations, how it will pay interest on bonds, how it will pay its external loans, internal loans

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In the context of how the shutdown could affect Ukraine, the political scientist said that “the US will not be active.”

That is, budgets for us are a separate component, it does not directly depend on the federal budget, but how will the United States deal with conditional Ukraine, conditional Taiwan, conditional Israel, deterring Russia, deterring China, when they simply do not have money to support the work of their own government. Therefore, I would say that the key problem is precisely this, that the United States will simply not be able to react quickly enough to any escalation and to any problems.

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