By Rich Lowry
Tuesday,
February 20, 2024
Millions for
defense, but not one cent for Ukraine.
That’s
the rallying cry of opponents of a new $60 billion tranche of aid for Ukraine,
led by Ohio’s Republican senator, J. D. Vance.
Vance
deserves credit for taking his perspective directly into the belly of the beast
at the Munich Security Conference, where he rowed against the tide by
advocating that we abandon the embattled Western ally.
Vance’s
views are cogent and in no way pro-Putin. Still, they aren’t persuasive.
He’s
right that there will, at some point, be a deal in Ukraine and right that the
Europeans should be spending more on their defense. Otherwise, what he portrays
as realism about the course of the conflict is naïve and unrealistic.
Vance
says that the problem “is that there is no clear end point” in the Ukraine war.
True. Most wars don’t come with clear end points attached. Churchill warned
against believing that war can be easily controlled or predicted, or as he put
it, “that anyone who embarks on the strange voyage can measure the tides and
hurricanes he will encounter.”
It’s
also not unusual that wars become slugfests of attrition, which Ukraine is now.
But
there are two general end points that are possible to imagine: (1) The
Ukrainians continue to hold off the Russians such that Moscow is eventually
exhausted and becomes willing to cut some sort of deal, or (2) the Russians
sweep to victory.
Starving
Ukraine of ammunition is certainly one way to bring the war to an end, just not
on terms favorable to Ukraine, the West, or our interests.
Vance
says the latest aid package “is not going to fundamentally change the reality
on the battlefield.” If he means that it isn’t going to allow Ukraine to break
through Russian lines, he’s correct. But denying the aid to Ukraine could,
indeed, fundamentally change the reality on the battlefield by enabling a broad
Russian advance.
There
is a circularity to the argument of those who oppose more aid — by delaying
further support they have undermined Ukraine’s position on the battlefield,
which they say shows that Ukraine’s cause is hopeless and undeserving of more
U.S. backing.
If
Russia gets the upper hand again, it won’t be the formula for the peace deal
that Vance envisions. According to U.S. estimates, Russia has suffered more
than 300,000 casualties. It has lost 3,000 tanks and 20 ships in the Black Sea.
It has spent more than $200 billion on the war, and it has seen about $1
trillion in anticipated economic growth disappear.
As
of December, it had suffered 13,000 casualties in and around Avdiivka and other
cities alone.
After
this toll, if Russia begins to get a decisive edge, we’re supposed to believe
that it would just call a unilateral halt in the interest of seeking a
negotiated settlement? At the very moment when it wouldn’t need a negotiation
to get what it wants? Why? Putin has made grievous mistakes in Ukraine, but
he’s not an idiot.
It’s
true that if Putin prevails in Ukraine, he’s not immediately going to proceed
to Warsaw. But he might move against Moldova or, with time, the Baltic states,
which would provoke an even more dangerous confrontation with the West since
Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania are NATO members.
It’s
difficult to predict how a Ukrainian defeat would reverberate. Abandoning
allies in a humiliating fashion has unpredictable consequences. When we cut
loose South Vietnam in the 1970s, it catalyzed an anti-Western offensive around
the world, and Joe Biden’s botched pullout from Afghanistan may have tempted
Putin into Ukraine.
The
Ukraine war is expensive, no doubt. But it is being fought exclusively by the
Ukrainians, who just want the resources and matériel to stay in the field. The
conflict is two years old. This isn’t a “forever war,” but a fight that we
would be losing patience for in record time.
It’d
be foolish to precipitate Ukraine’s defeat on grounds that it is inevitable.
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