Posts published in “Russia’s War on Ukraine”

Now increase defense spending, put ‘boots on the ground’ in Ukraine, and move U.S. troops out of Germany and into Poland and the Baltic States.

The New York Times reports that the Pentagon is establishing a new command to arm Ukraine over the long haul. This is a good thing, because arming Ukraine and ensuring that it has all means necessary to defeat Russian aggression is and ought to be an American priority.

As we’ve noted, Ukraine today is at the epicenter of the fight for Western Civilization. This means that their fight is our fight, and their victory will be our victory.

The threat from Russia, moreover, is not going away anytime soon, even after each and every last Russian is expelled from all of Ukraine. Thus American-Ukrainian defense cooperation and engagement will be required for many years and several decades.

The close relationships that the U.S. military has with the militaries of Japan, South Korea, Israel, and Australia is the model we should emulate. And there are other lessons we must heed.

• Robust military aid must be procured and delivered quickly, and American and NATO armories must be replenished pronto through a long-overdue increase in defense spending.

The Times reports that 18 new High Mobility Artillery Rocket System launchers (HIMARS) will be delivered to Ukraine directly from the manufacturer, Lockheed Martin. However, these will take “a few years” to arrive in country.

Sorry, but that isn’t good enough. This delay underscores the Biden administration’s overly timid approach to arming Ukraine. It also underscores the disconcerting lack of available munitions in American and NATO armories.

Defense Spending. The fact remains: the United States and NATO simply are not spending enough on defense. We weren’t spending enough before Russia invaded Ukraine, and we still aren’t spending enough after the fact.

Witness the fact that few NATO countries meet their pre-war pledge to spend a mere two percent of GDP on defense.

The United States spends between three and four percent of its GDP on defense, but that is dramatically less than it spent at the height of the Cold War (roughly 5-10 percent of GDP, according to Brookings Institution defense scholar Michael E. O’Hanlon).

There is no “substitute for military strength,” explains Elliott Abrams, ” and we do not have enough. It should be crystal clear now that a larger percentage of GDP will need to be spent on defense.”

• America and NATO must place “boots on the ground” in (western) Ukraine.

The Times also notes that America and NATO had “boots on the ground” in Ukraine after Russia’s first invasion there in 2014. Western military advisers played a crucial role in strengthening and professionalizing the Ukrainian military.

However, when, earlier this year, Russia threatened to invade Ukraine again, America and NATO meekly and foolishly pulled their military advisers out of the country, and they have not returned since.

To be sure, a relative few Ukrainian soldiers have journeyed to Poland, Germany, Britain and the United States for training. But as the Times observes:

With no U.S. troops currently in Ukraine, providing support by phone or computer has been challenging, American officers say.

“It is much more difficult now to communicate with our allies and partners,” Maj. Gen. Steven G. Edwards, the head of U.S. Special Operations forces in Europe, said at a security forum this month.

“Teleconference is good, but it’s not nearly the same as what we had before.”

The American and NATO phobia about “boots on the ground” must end. In reality, having “boots on the ground” in Ukraine for several years goes a long way toward explaining the surprising success of the Ukrainian military.

Iraq-Afghanistan Distortion. But again, because of the American tendency to see Ukraine through the prism of Iraq and Afghanistan, policymakers feared that, if U.S.  troops remained in Ukraine, they would end up fighting and dying there.

This fear might have made sense early on in the war when Russia was attempting to enter Kyiv. However, it made no sense several weeks into the conflict after the Russians were repulsed and forced to withdraw to eastern Ukraine.

When, in April 2022, the United States sent its diplomatic personnel back into Kyiv, it should have sent back in U.S. military advisers as well. We still should.

“World War III.” The fear that this might “provoke Putin” or cause “World War III,” as President Biden has suggested, is ludicrous. Putin knows America and NATO arm and advise Ukraine. Whether we do so in western Ukraine or Germany is a distinction without a difference in his eyes and meaningful only in Paris and Berlin, not Moscow.

Moreover, Russia demonstrated early on in this conflict that it is in no position to pick a fight with the United States or any NATO country.

Russian military incompetence and ineptitude is demonstrable and obvious. The West, not Russia, has the whip hand. We should act like it—not to “provoke Putin,” but to defend and liberate all of Ukraine.

• Relocate NATO headquarters out of Brussels and into Warsaw; and, more importantly, redeploy the 38,000 U.S. troops now in Germany into Poland and the Baltic States (Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania).

During the Cold War, it made sense to station hundreds of thousands of U.S. troops in West Germany. A Russian invasion there, after all, was a real possibility. However, this makes zero sense today, when the threat is not to Germany, but to Poland and the Baltic States.

Poland, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania also are geographically much closer to Ukraine. Thus deploying U.S. and NATO troops there will facilitate Western aid to that besieged and battered country.

The bottom line: if NATO is serious about deterring Russia and defending against the Russian threat, then it must reposition its forces accordingly. The Cold War is over and new cold war has begun.

The Biden administration recognizes this, which is why it wisely has established a new command to aid Ukraine. But more can and must be done:

Increase defend spending to meet this new threat; put U.S. military trainers back on the ground in Ukraine; and reposition American and NATO forces eastward where the Russian threat now lies.

Feature photo credit: Wisconsin National Guard “Lt. Col. Clay Salmela, the chaplain with Task Force Juvigny, congratulates a Ukrainian soldier upon completion of initial entry training at Starychi Military Base near Combat Training Center–Yavoriv, Ukraine. Image by Cpl. Jared Saathoff / Wisconsin National Guard Public. Ukraine, 2020,” courtesy of the Pulitzer Center, Feb. 12, 2020.

Pretending otherwise will result in NATO negotiating with itself, appeasing Putin, and abandoning Ukraine.

Washington Post foreign policy columnist David Ignatius thinks the 1962 Cuban missile crisis might offer clues on how President Biden can simultaneously achieve U.S. foreign policy objectives in Ukraine, while also giving Russian dictator Vladimir Putin an “off-ramp,”or some “face-saving way out” of his dire predicament.

Ignatius, of course, is rightly concerned about Putin’s threat to use tactical or battlefield nuclear weapons. However, the historical template that he cites is misplaced and decidedly unhelpful.

Simply put, 2022 Ukraine is not 1962 Cuba, and pretending that it might be will lead President Biden and other policymakers astray.

• For starters, Russian missiles in Cuba were a direct threat to the American homeland. Which means they were an existential threat to the United States. Tactical or battlefield nukes in Ukraine, by contrast, do not threaten the American homeland. Nor do they threaten any NATO country.

Russian tactical nukes do threaten Ukraine, obviously. But pretending that they spell worldwide armageddon is hyperbolic and untrue.

• Second, when Russia deployed nukes in Cuba, the West had reason to believe it was facing a formidable military and economic power. No one has any such illusions about Russia today.

As the Financial Times notes, “the Russian economy is not globally significant, though individual sectors such as oil and gas do matter.” The Russian military, meanwhile, has show itself in Ukraine to be utterly incompetent and incapable of waging war, and it now teeters on the verge of collapse.

Russia does have the world’s largest arsenal of nuclear weapons, and that is, indeed, worrisome. However, Russia never has launched a nuclear strike against a NATO country because it knows that would result in an immediate retaliatory strike against Moscow.

Deterrence worked throughout the Cold War and deterrence will work today—if President Biden and other NATO leaders do not waver and remain resolved and determined.

• Third, in 1962 Cuba, Russian dictator Nikita Khrushchev was looking for an off-ramp. In 2022 Ukraine,  by contrast, Russian dictator Vladimir Putin, clearly is not—something Ignatius himself admits.

Instead, by word and by deed, Putin has demonstrated that he interested in gobbling up as much of Ukraine as he possibly can now, while husbanding his resources for its complete subjugation later.

Given this reality, it is beyond futile to try and give Putin something he clearly does not want. We end up negotiating not with Putin, but with ourselves. This results in more self-defeating self-deterrence and appeasement.

• Fourth, 1962 Cuba was a communist territory firmly ensconced in the Soviet orbit. 2022 Ukraine, by contrast, is a Western democracy valiantly and heroically seeking to free itself of Russian domination or attempted Russian domination.

For this reason, it arguably made sense for President Kennedy to pledge (as he did) that the United States would not invade Cuba or intervene in Cuban internal affairs in exchange for the removal of Russian missiles there.

But given the very different status of Ukraine today, any substantive concession that the United States or NATO pledges to Russia re: Ukraine will result in the unconscionable abandonment of that country and its people. This is and ought to be a nonstarter.

Ukraine’s entry into the EU and NATO, for instance, is more necessary and inevitable now than it was before the Russian invasion.

• Fifth, like many observers, Ignatius laments Ukraine’s determination to defeat Russia on the battlefield and drive Russia out of all of Ukrainian territory. He laments this because Ignatius would like to see Ukraine give Putin something Russian can crow about and call a victory. That, after all, would make a “face-saving compromise” possible.

But the only thing a “face-saving compromise” can possibly mean is giving some Ukrainian territory to Russia and abandoning millions of Ukrainians to the tender mercies of Russian rule and domination.

Given all that we know about Russian rule, this is truly unconscionable and wrong. It also violates a fundamental principle, the territorial integrity of nations, that underlies the international order.

The danger of rewarding Russian military aggression should be obvious. The precedent established will inevitably result in other countries (China perhaps) unilaterally using military might to redraw the world’s national boundaries and territorial claims.

• Sixth, Ignatius suggests that Ukraine is still poised to lose to Russia. He says that Ukraine “needs a reality check about its longer-term battlefield prospects”

This is a remarkable statement. It might have made sense back in February, when Western intelligence estimated that the Ukrainian Army would quickly crumble, Kyiv would fall within days, Zelensky would flee the country, and Russian rule would be established.

In fact, as we now know, nothing of the sort happened. In fact, the opposite has happened. David has heroically beaten back Goliath. And David might well defeat Goliath if America and NATO stop slow-walking their delivery of aid to the Ukrainian military out of an utterly misplaced fear of “provoking” or “cornering” Putin.

“Despite the large quantities [of military aid] flowing to Ukraine,” writes Eliot A. Cohen,

the fact remains that it is not enough, and that the logistical system can handle more…

Some capable countries, [i.e., Germany], are unwilling to give at scale…

Most other countries, including the United States, continue to refrain from the level of industrial mobilization necessary. It is too much business as usual…

Some of the hesitancy, too, has stemmed from a patronizing wariness about Ukrainian capabilities. Yet if we have learned anything in this war, it is that the Ukrainians, smart and driven as they are, can absorb even the most advanced systems fast, and exploit them shrewdly.

At this point, they know more about high-intensity warfare than we do.

Exactly. There is a time and a place to negotiate and to try and offer one’s adversary an “off-ramp” or a “face-saving way out.” That worked in 1962 Cuba. It will not work in 2022 Ukraine. The differences between these two times and places are too stark, and pretending that they’re not will lead President Biden and other policymakers astray.

What America and NATO must now do is accelerate their military aid to Ukraine to ensure Russia’s utter and abject defeat.

At the same time, the West must ensure that Russia is under no illusions. Russian use of nuclear weapons in Ukraine will result in the swift demise of the Russian military there via conventional NATO military means.

Then and only then can a real and lasting peace be achieved.

Feature photo credit: Russian dictators Vladimir Putin (2022) and Nikita Khrushchev (1962), courtesy of the The Telegraph.