107 - Stopping Cruise Missiles and Kamikaze Drones Could Contribute Critically to Peace
Putin is raining supersonic ballistic missiles, slower traveling cruise missiles, and a barrage of lumbering Iranian drones on civilians and vital civilian infrastructural installations throughout Ukraine. How to stop this air assault is now the essential issue, even as Ukrainian ground forces gradually recapture territory in the beleaguered country’s east and south. Unless and until Ukraine can strike the missile launching sites and the drone bases, the Russians will be able to expand their operations of terror even as they seem to be falling back before Ukrainian advances on the ground.
Pummeling Kyiv, Zhytomyr, Mykolaiv, and other cities, and depriving millions of Ukrainians of power and water, certainly helps assuage Putin’s pride, and may satisfy those in Russia that have been shamed by battlefield losses and Ukrainian sabotage of such iconic installations as the Kerch Strait bridge. Thus, in order to bring the conflict between Russia and Ukraine and the West closer to a potential peaceful resolution, it has become absolutely critical for Washington and its Western partners to escalate both offensive and defensive support for Ukraine.
We could ourselves impose a no-fly zone over Ukraine, as we did in Iraqi Kurdistan. We could help Ukraine target launching sites, and even give Ukraine the long-range artillery and air capabilities to do so themselves. Or we could both boost Ukrainian air defense power by supplying increasingly sophisticated anti-aircraft systems, even the Patriot missile batteries that have been effective elsewhere.
Russia has so far attacked 408 civilian population centers and 45 energy installations. Estonia’s minister of defense declares that Russia’s incoming army commissar will surely extend his reputation for ruthlessness by relentlessly bombarding even more Ukrainian towns and cities.
Washington has refrained from direct participation in Ukraine’s war effort. But now may be the critical moment, with Putin’s army weakened, its hapless new recruits untrained, and its morale poor and uncertain, for the U. S. to attempt to contain if not to overwhelm Russia in Ukraine.
The war in Ukraine has reached an asymmetrical tipping point. Ukraine is holding its own if not conceivably winning on the ground. But Russia is retaliating successfully from the air, against civilians. Putin spreads fear into the otherwise unthreatened backcountry of Ukraine. If the West can now upgrade its war assistance to Ukraine, and stop the air assaults, a sustainable peace settlement might be reachable.
President Biden’s carefully and so far successfully calibrated support for Ukraine’s valiant response to Putin’s vanity-driven attacks was designed to defend the very existence of Ukraine without giving Putin reason to escalate his assault to the nuclear level. Biden refused from the beginning to put American boots on the ground or to condone Ukrainian assaults on Russia itself as opposed to Russians in Ukraine. Hence Biden’s unwillingness to permit the U. S. air force to establish a no-fly zone over Ukraine. A re-think of that originally wise policy is now in order.
In addition to sending the anti-aircraft batteries and other weaponry that can down missiles and counter drones, Washington must now consider giving Ukraine the kinds of offensive armaments that could annihilate Russia’s launch sites. Otherwise, Putin’s forces will continue to pound Ukrainian civilians and soft infrastructural targets with impunity.
The risk of nuclearization is real. But so is the existential crisis besetting Ukraine and its inhabitants. That is why offensive capabilities should usefully be supplied to bolster Ukraine’s existing (but limited) ex-Soviet anti-aircraft batteries and similar equipment on its way from neighboring former eastern bloc countries.
The U. S. could also continue to press a hesitant Germany to send its tanks to Ukraine. Chancellor Olaf Scholtz says that he fears German actions that would threaten Putin and possibly invite direct retaliation. But we are really long past that point. Ukraine advantageously can use all kinds of war materiel from friendly allied countries. Moreover, Putin’s ability to strike back, even to pull the nuclear fuse, seems to this untutored and far-from-expert analyst far less than it was – even with his back firmly to the wall.
Washington is also considering supplying Cyprus with modern American war materiel of all kinds so that Nicosia can send its existing Soviet-type equipment to Ukraine. Because the Greek-speaking government of Cyprus only controls the southern two-thirds of the island and an unrecognized (except by Turkey) regime of Turkish-speakers runs the northern third of the island, scrapping our embargo of arms transfers to the Greek-speaking administration would infuriate Turkey as well as North Cyprus. To Greek-side consternation, Turkey has defended North Cyprus from bases on its territory since 1974. Yet Ukraine desperately needs the kinds of weapons that it knows how to use and the more the better, from wherever they come. Cypriot armaments would help.
Another pressure point that Washington and the European Union could use would be to demand that Greek-registered tankers immediately cease transporting Russian oil. Even if a guaranteed price is imposed on oil shipments, since Greek ships are providing nearly two-thirds of Russian petroleum export capacity, reducing Russian income from its main foreign exchange source would help slow the war and contribute to peace. Ending Russia’s ability to export diamonds to Belgium would also assist progress toward peace.
This is the autumn of Ukraine’s massive discontent. There are several ways to harry Russia and to limit its economic and military capacity for continuing to wage war, but surgically opposing its air attack facilities may prove the key blow that brings the conflict’s end closer.