312 - Giving Ukraine Needed Weapons: Washington Finally Acts

Could Trump Follow?

            At long last, and just possibly at the brink of defeat, President Biden Sunday decreed that Ukraine could receive and employ Army Tactical Missile Systems, or ATACMS, against Russians and North Koreans in the Kursk region of western Russia, just north of Ukraine's border.  Ukraine may be able, soon, to use these longer-range pieces of equipment to fend off Russian advances in Donetsk, also.  The existing U.S. supplied High Mobility Artillery Rocket System, or HIMARS, only sends projectiles fifty miles.

            The ATACMS can blast missiles 190 miles into Russia, farther than the existing Storm Shadow and SCALP -- British and French missile systems -- which can travel 155 miles.  None of this weaponry has been available to Ukraine before now, for fear of provoking escalated responses from Putin. (And the Europeans have been waiting for Biden before approving the use of their own armaments.)

            Biden billed the new authorizations as responses to the deployment of 13,000 or more North Korean soldiers in the Kursk region. The ATACMS will allow Ukraine to fire farther into Russia than ever before, and attack Korean and Russian rear bases, airfields, missile launching sites, ammunition warehouses, logistical hubs, and other high value targets.

            Additionally, the Pentagon and Biden are facing the harsh reality that Ukraine, without the missiles to make Russia (and North Korea) pay heavier prices, is losing both the kinetic war and the information war. Morale may now receive a boost. These new long-range systems should give Ukraine's hard-pressed forces greater ability than now to halt the relentless Russian advances in Kursk, and also in the Donbas. Whether there is still time to slow down Russia's forward march in both theaters of combat, and whether sending this new equipment (and permissions) to Ukraine will make it harder for Trump's incoming people unceremoniously to dump Ukraine and give Putin what he has long wanted, is unknown. Pete Hegseth, nominee for oversight of the Pentagon, and incoming Vice President Vance are both skeptical about defending Ukraine.

            As rightly suggested during the recent presidential campaign, courageous Ukrainian soldiers are fighting and dying to protect the free world, the rule of law, the post-World War II and post-Cold War carefully crafted peace process across all of the globe, and of safeguarding everything that Americans (before Trump and Vance) held dear.  The instincts of the latter two are more America First isolationist than anything we have ever seen before in American high places. What Biden has done is to challenge that isolationism in a manner which may well serve to moderate the reactionary responses of his successor.  Or he may merely have given Zelensky a few more weeks of battle readiness before Trump tries to cut a damaging deal with his buddy, Putin.

            What we don't yet know is the extent to which Trump is prepared to sell Ukraine well down the river.  He may not care at all that Putin seeks most of all to destroy Ukraine as a nation, as a political entity that could conceivably be ushered into Europe and NATO. Putin is determined to demonstrate that Ukraine should not aspire to democracy.  He wants to make null international laws and norms, and override the UN charter and such expressive items as the Geneva conventions. His ultimate goal, says one thoughtful commentator, is to imprison Ukrainians, torture them, keep kidnapping children, and get away with all of these violations of the laws of war.  Czars were above the law. Stalin made his own rules.  Putin wants to do the same. And Trump and Vance threaten to let him do so.

            Putin is intent on demonstrating that the West is weak and indecisive and that his and Xi Jinping's approaches are better for the world and, as Hungary's Prime Minister Viktor Orban always says, that "illiberal" democracies are more effective than the real thing. Putin wants to establish his brutality as a new global standard.

            Will Trump let Putin do so?  Will Trump behave before Putin as a weakling, permitting Russia to run roughshod over Ukraine and the rule of law?  Or will Trump, who likes to pretend that he is macho and strong, give way as cowards always do?

            Biden has now made it harder for Trump to act as a weakling. But, as I have said before, he may well owe Putin something. And his dislike of Zelensky for refusing to do his bidding earlier against Biden may influence his fateful decision making. Or he may feel that it is just too much trouble to resist Putin when it would be so much easier to impose a fake deal -- a capitulation -- on Zelensky.

            A ceasefire imposed by Trump after cutting a deal with Putin that Zelensky is compelled to accept (by shutting off American aid) will not do enough to preserve sustainable peace unless there are hard core security guarantees enforceable by the West. Otherwise, Putin will simply rest his men, rearm and regroup, rebuild the Russian economy, and then invade some more.  Trump may be tempted, however, by short-term seeming successes.  Many Republican lawmakers have support Ukraine's legitimate repulse of the Russians. Will they continue to back Zelensky, or will they turn turtle?

            Biden has another task to complete before he leaves office and leaves the peace of the world to his ham-handed successors.  He and the U.S. Treasury must agree with Europe to transfer both the interest on sequestered Russian bank assets to Kyiv and to find a way to transfer the entire $300 billion amount of Russian captured funds to Ukraine.  Otherwise, Ukraine will soon run out of cash with which to pay for civilian and military supplies. Moreover, although the funds in question are Russian, Putin has already caused untold damage in Ukraine. The sequestered monies would help to defray those costs.

            There is still a very good chance that Trump will sell out Ukraine, "the present order collapsing around him," to quote Prof. Timothy Snyder.  But then he will have demonstrated, for all to see, and for Xi Jinping to applaud, that he is both a coward and a weakling. Nuclear weapons could easily proliferate, the U. S. strategic fortress crumble, and China rejoice. The only way that Trump can make America strong and overcome the creepiness and creepingness of his weaknesses is by doing more for Ukraine than even Biden has done. For the sake of world order, let us hope Biden demonstrates appropriate smart strength for Ukraine so that Trump can but follow.

            At least Biden's acceding to President Volodymyr Zelensky at the eleventh hour may give Zelensky's army some breathing room while Trump gathers what little wits he has and decides whether or not to crumble before Putin.