36 - Thinking Big: Taking the War to Russia
Even with the European and American re-supplying Ukrainian forces valiantly battling Russian invaders, battered eastern Ukraine is beginning to succumb to all-out day and night bombardments. Mariupol looks finished. But it would be a terrible mistake for Western supporters of Ukraine to concede even an inch of contested territory to Putin’s Russia. Nothing should be contemplated to legitimize his conquests, even in realistic minds. To do so would enable might to triumph over right, and for claims against human freedom to be made that weaken global commitments to the rule of law in international, as in domestic, relations.
Ukrainians are fighting to avoid subjugation to an alien dictator and to alien ideas of how large nations respect smaller states. They are fighting for themselves. But as has become ever more apparent as the weeks of war become months of relentless atrocities and suffering, the Ukrainians are defending us as well. Their struggle is fundamentally existential and thus has become a fierce struggle against tyranny, against unbridled greed, against ambition, and against a big power led by a small man who seeks to impose his personal will on neighbors who disdain his pretensions and his rationalizations.
If Putin succeeds in destroying eastern and southern Ukraine and establishing by unbridled brutality a land bridge from the borders of Russia to the borders of Moldova, even the “self-evident” truths of American independence and the total basis of comity among nations will have been destroyed.
We all breathed a sigh of relief when brave Ukrainians, under-equipped as they were, beat back Russians from the gates of Kyiv. But the fact that – temporarily at least – Putin’s oppressors are not attacking central or western Ukraine should give us only cold comfort. That is why conceding in strategic minds even an inch of stolen territory must be resisted. And that is way, further and again, Americans, Canadians, and Europeans must redouble their assistance to Ukraine’s warriors even beyond the nearly $4 billions worth of materiel that have been promised.
Washington is sending more and more potent weapons directly to Ukraine’s army. So are arms coming from various capitals of Europe. There is no end of meaningful promises. But there is much more in terms of heavy weapons to be transferred quickly to
Ukraine. More powerful drones, and more self-propelled artillery, are essential items that have so far been delivered too parsimoniously. Washington is sending armored transport vehicles, but Ukraine’s mechanized battalions should also be receiving modern tanks, the more numerous the better. Ukraine’s brave President Volodymyr Zelensky has a long list of his country’s war needs that he has shared over and over with powerful prime ministers and defense ministers. He reiterated them once again, and with determination, when he met U. S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and U. S. Minister of Defense Lloyd Austin yesterday.
To repulse the Russians broadly, or even to halt the prospective loss to Russia of vast swathes of its territory, however, Ukraine needs even more war goods of the kind that would enable Ukraine to take the combat into Russia. It needs to control or at least to have force credibility in the air so that Russians will cease bombing with impunity and cease raining missiles on Ukrainian cities and towns.
It is both torture sustaining and morale busting to let the fate of the free world depend on embattled defenders in cities and towns already destroyed by Russia. Zelensky’s troops must instead go on the offensive, hitting Russia as decisively as possible where it is weak. To turn the tide, the nations of NATO should help Ukraine take to the air, flatten missile launching sites in Russia and on ships in the Black Sea, and attack airfields from which bombers depart,
Washington, Berlin, and Brussels have been very reluctant openly and officially to join the war against Russia. No one in a Western leadership position wants a World War III. But that is exactly what is unfolding. Indeed, preventing Putin from capturing the territorial overland linkage to Crimea and Odesa, and from cutting Ukraine off from its ports on the Sea of Azov and the Black Sea, are essential.
Europe and America have been too afraid of a nuclear response and of acknowledging that Ukraine’s war was our war, too. Destroying Mariupol and preventing citizens from escaping, should be this war’s Pearl Harbor. Will we not more thoroughly defend Ukraine’s right to exist by engaging European and American experience and personnel? Should we not do much more than at present to engage more directly in the war?
As a retired American commander in Europe said last week, we have been too cautious – too deterred “out of an exaggerated fear or what possibly could happen.” Europeans worry too much, he believes, of “escalation.” So does Washington, but not necessarily correctly, considering how much tactically uninspired the Russians have been on the battlefield.
“We are still not thinking big,” the same general declared. “We are still not thinking of Ukraine winning.” So the tasks now for Europe and the U. S. are to shift strategic decision-makers from defending to attacking. If the West assists with robust deliveries of essential howitzers, tanks, aircraft, and more, Ukraine can stop Russia from striking cities, towns, and villages with abandon. Then President Zelensky can truly claim the victory that he prophesied Saturday.
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The nuclear threat from Russia is obviously relevant to this discussion of how best to combat Putin’s invasion and his determination to destroy as much of the cities and towns of Ukraine as possible. I commend to readers the best discussion I have seen on the nuclear issue: Robin Wright, “The New Nuclear Reality,” New Yorker, April 23, 2022;
https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/the-new-nuclear-reality?utm_source=nl&utm_brand=tny&utm_mailing=TNY_Daily_042322&utm_ca