The debate over American support for Ukraine and Israel has largely focused on the cost. Politicians argue over billions of dollars appropriated, weapons transferred, and whether American taxpayers are carrying too much of the burden. Far less attention has been paid to the return on that investment.

Since 2022, the United States has authorized roughly $195 billion related to Ukraine and approximately $16–22 billion in supplemental wartime assistance for Israel. Critics see enormous expenditures. Strategically, however, those dollars have enabled two allies to inflict historic damage on two of America’s principal adversaries – Russia and Iran – without the United States deploying large combat formations or suffering the thousands of battlefield casualties that defined Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan.

That comparison matters.

The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan cost the United States more than $5 trillion in direct and related costs, with broader post-9/11 war obligations rising above $8 trillion when future veteran care, interest, and long-term commitments are included. Nearly 7,000 American service members were killed. More than 52,000 were wounded.

And what was the lasting strategic benefit?

Afghanistan ended with the Taliban back in power. Iraq removed Saddam Hussein, but the aftermath empowered Iran, fractured the region, drained American credibility, and produced years of instability. The United States paid in terrible blood and treasure, and the final balance sheet is hard to defend.

Ukraine and Israel present a very different model.

Consider Russia.

More than four years after launching its invasion of Ukraine, Russia has suffered an estimated 1.4 million military casualties, including approximately 450,000 dead. Its armored forces have been severely depleted. The Black Sea Fleet has largely been driven from its historic operating areas. Ukraine has repeatedly demonstrated the ability to strike deep inside Russian territory. The military once regarded as NATO’s greatest conventional threat has been dramatically weakened.

“The number of Russian casualties and fatalities are astonishing. Since World War II, no major power has suffered anywhere near these numbers of casualties or fatalities in any war…. Russia’s economy is in distress, and Russia’s wartime spending may be increasingly untenable.” – Center for Strategic and International Studies July 2026

Now consider Iran.

For four decades the leading state sponsor of terrorism invested billions of dollars constructing what it proudly called the “Axis of Resistance” – a network stretching from Iran through Iraq and Syria to Lebanon and Gaza. Hamas, Hezbollah, Shiite militias, the Houthis, and the Assad regime were components of a single strategy designed to project Iranian power, surround Israel and challenge American influence in the region and threaten much of the global oil supply.

That strategy has suffered a tremendous setback.

Hamas has lost much of its military and infrastructure. Hezbollah has absorbed devastating blows to its command structure and missile capabilities. The Assad regime in Syria – Tehran’s indispensable Arab ally and the geographic bridge connecting Iran to Hezbollah – has fallen, shattering the land corridor that Iran spent decades building. The regional network that once appeared to surround Israel and terrorize America’s Arab allies now is dramatically weakened.

Iran’s nuclear ambitions have suffered major setbacks as well. Israeli and American strikes severely damaged key nuclear facilities, disrupted important elements of Iran’s enrichment infrastructure, and forced Tehran to devote enormous resources simply to rebuilding capabilities it once assumed were secure. Intelligence agencies continue to debate precisely how long the program has been delayed, but there is broad agreement that it suffered one of the most significant setbacks in its history.

None of this diminishes the immense human suffering. Ukraine has endured staggering casualties and destruction. Israel suffered the deadliest attack in its history on October 7 and has paid a heavy military, economic, and emotional price ever since.

But viewed through an American lens of grand strategy, another reality emerges.

Rather than sending hundreds of thousands of American troops to fight Russia or Iran directly as was done in Afghanistan and Iraq, the United States enabled allies already under attack to defend themselves. Those allies have imposed extraordinary military and strategic costs on governments that have spent decades challenging American interests.

This is what is so often missing from the public debate.

The wars are typically discussed separately. Ukraine is presented as a European conflict while Israel is portrayed as a Middle Eastern conflict. Yet both Russia and Iran were strategic partners, cooperating militarily, economically, and diplomatically while sharing an interest in weakening the United States and the Western alliance. Seen together, Ukraine and Israel have not merely been fighting for their own survival, they have been successfully degrading two pillars of a powerful anti-Western axis.

The long-term upside could be enormous. A surviving, Western-aligned Ukraine would become one of Europe’s most battle-tested militaries, a major reconstruction market, an energy and agricultural partner, and a permanent barrier to Russian expansion. A stronger Israel, with Iran weakened and Syria and Lebanon no longer functioning as Tehran’s strategic bridge, could help reshape the Middle East around technology, defense cooperation, energy corridors, trade, and normalization with Arab states that increasingly fear Iran more than they resent Israel.

That is the opportunity Iraq and Afghanistan never produced. Those wars consumed American power and America left no assets behind. These wars, fought by allies, may extend American power with powerful allies at the vanguard.

History may conclude that this period represents one of the most effective uses of American alliance power in generations. For roughly $215 billion – less than one-twentieth of the direct and related cost of Iraq and Afghanistan – the United States helped enable allies to severely weaken Russia’s conventional military, fracture Iran’s regional proxy empire, remove Syria and Lebanon from Tehran’s sphere of influence, and significantly set back Iran’s nuclear program, all without committing large American ground forces or sustaining the massive battlefield casualties that characterized previous generations of U.S. warfare.

America’s greatest military victory in the past 75 years may ultimately be its most subtle.