Britain completed repaying its Lend-Lease obligations to the United States in 2006. There is no such thing as a free lunch. Yet the Lend-Lease program cost the U.S. approximately $50 Billion USD (equivalent to about $680 Billion USD today. No chump change. As monetarist PM Margaret Thatcher opined as she snatched the little milk bottles from children’s hands in 1976: ‘There is no such thing as a free school meal’. The original agreement for Lend-Lease assistance during World War II stated that the goods given would be leased rather than donated, with repayment obligations to be laid out after the war ended. Negotiations continued over the terms of the repayment, and payments were made over several decades, the final payment made in 2006.
The U.S. perceived the loans, as with the Marshall Plan for Germany (repaid in 1971) as existential. That is, Lend-Lease constitutes a type of symbiosis, creates dependencies, and allows the hegemonous power to acquire ‘favors’. This, in Europe, amounted to air bases, diplomatic ties, and influence. The remit after 1945 was to keep the communist wolves from the door. It means the recipient is ‘tied in’ to the economic and political system of its donor. It works in a similar fashion for the Chinese; indebting south Asian nations with initially ‘soft loans’ but embedding their influence; it is ‘Janus faced.’
Fast forward and nothing has changed. The G7 rolls out its ‘game changing’ Lend Lease program for Ukraine in 2022 and has just agreed a new tranche of $50 Billion USD. It is a ‘loan’ secured against the confiscation of Russian assets. Outgoing UK PM Rishi Sunak described the $50 Billion USD loan as ‘game-changing’. Its a ‘win-win’ for the U.S. as the loans are guaranteed against Russian assets. Yet it places Europe in a precarious situation as Russia has 5000 National Archives
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