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.