The U.S. is by far the largest supplier of arms to Ukraine. Yet there’s reason to believe that American and Ukrainian goals are not perfectly aligned. Ukraine’s goals are obvious: to win back as much territory as possible with the minimum loss of casualties. But the U.S. has an additional goal: to “see Russia weakened,” as Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin put it.
For those who might be sceptical of this, here’s what Professor Hal Brands had to say in an article defending Western involvement:
The war in Ukraine isn’t just a conflict between Moscow and Kyiv, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov recently declared. It is a “proxy war” in which the world’s most powerful military alliance, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, is using Ukraine as a battering ram against the Russian state … Lavrov is one of the most reliable mouthpieces for President Vladimir Putin’s baseless propaganda, but in this case he’s not wrong. Russia is the target of one of the most ruthlessly effectively proxy wars in modern history.
Another way in which American and Ukrainian goals are not perfectly aligned concerns appetite for risk. Ukraine’s leaders are more willing to risk a significant escalation of the conflict than America’s leaders. Back in March, Zelensky called on NATO to implement a no-fly zone, but the U.S. refused on the grounds that this would entail a direct confrontation between Russia and NATO.
As Senator Adam Schiff stated in January of 2020, “The United States aids Ukraine and her people so that we can fight Russia over there, and we don’t have to fight Russia here”. Or as Congressman Dan Crenshaw stated more recently, “investing in the destruction of our adversary’s military, without losing a single American troop, strikes me as a good idea.”
Since the U.S. has the additional goal of “seeing Russia weakened”, it stands to benefit from prolonging the war (at least time for a time), regardless of whether this helps Ukraine win back territory. And since the U.S. doesn’t want to risk a significant escalation, it has less incentive to provide the kind of assistance that might be necessary to win back territory.
Now, this analysis is somewhat speculative, but there is evidence to back it up. Several commentators have noted that the West is giving Ukraine enough weapons to continue fighting but not enough to make territorial gains.
Ulrich Speck, a German foreign-policy analyst, was quoted in the New York Times as saying, “Western weapons: Just enough to survive, not enough to regain territory. The idea seems to be that Russia should not win but also not lose.”
And according to the Austrian analyst and Army Colonel Markus Reisner, the scale of Western arms shipments mean that Ukraine’s armed forces have “too much to die and too little to live”.
Likewise, Ukraine’s former defence minister Andriy Zagorodnyuk told the Financial Times, “The US gives us enough to stop the Russians from advancing, to reverse some gains, to shape the operational direction, but absolutely, clearly, not enough for a major counteroffensive.”
In addition, there’s the question of why it took so long for the U.S. to deliver HIMARS rocket launchers. These appear to have made a tangible difference on the battlefield, but might have made even more of difference had they been delivered earlier.
One possible explanation is that the West assumed Ukraine would be fighting an insurgency campaign after a quick Russian victory (hence all the shoulder-mounted rocket launchers). However, the Russians withdrew from Kiev in early April, so this can’t explain why it took another two months to deliver HIMARS rocket launchers. (The units arrived in June, but training took about a month, so they weren’t put into action until July.)
Another possible explanation is bureaucratic inertia. But the U.S. had already sent billions of dollars of weapons by this point, including both vehicles and helicopters. Why was the ‘bureaucratic inertia’ around HIMARS rocket launchers so powerful?
The U.S. may believe that Ukraine is unlikely to win back much territory through military force, given its reluctance to lend the kind of support that could actually make this possible. However, it may refrain from advising Ukraine to negotiate, since prolonging the war serves to degrade Russia’s economy and armed forces – a key U.S. goal.
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This ignores what I suspect is the more likely reason. Like any nation, the help they are willing to extend is limited. When budgets are set you have to be careful and often, will be too careful. That is why we have so many potholes in the roads each winter. We could spend a bit more and get the job done properly (and actually save on future potholes, because a stitch in time saves nine) but we don’t. Ukraine is not the West. Our finances are stretched. The US will have its own equivalents of English potholes to deal with where the electorate want more to be spent. So given Ukraine are a foreign nation and it is not the first duty of the US to defend Ukrainian citizens and it is in the nature of any bureaucracy to provide “just enough” finance for most projects, that is why they are providing just enough for them to survive and too little to prevail. It is precisely the kind of project likely to fall into the “not quite enough finance for solving the potholes” pattern.
This is not to say you are wrong, but speculating about motive involves imponderables, at least until years have passed and memoirs written. The reasoning I have laid out above is a universal so though not necessarily the whole of the reason, will be sure to be part of the reason if not most of it.
Why am I thinking about Mr Logic from Viz?
Your choice read to stay abreast of politics?
How long did it take the world’s pre-eminent military powers, with formations already fully trained, equipped, disengaged from conflict, with air supremacy, to prepare an offensive against a third rate tin pot dictator in Iraq?
Errr……that would be six months.
This article, in my view, fails to comprehend the complexity of offensive operations employing mechanised combined arms formations, particularly the logistical organisation, preparation, required.
Add to that a lack of air superiority, constant threat from various surface and air launched munitions, massed field artillery, and the achievements of the Ukrainian Armed Forces so far, in defence and attack, seem admirable.
The Americans then whopped Iraq in a week, if you remember.
The air campaign took four weeks, in fact, which made the rest of the coalition effort straightforward.
But you miss the point.
To put together everything required for a major (Army Corps) mechanised offensive, out of contact, takes six months.
To get the required wherewithal into Ukraine whose forces are in contact under constant air and artillery threat is a great deal more difficult.
Added to that, Britain doesn’t have enough defence equipment or defence production capability to supply Ukraine with much of what it needs.
The U.S. has more but also many more overseas defence commitments.
This is not that complicated. Putin judged his moment well and caught the West napping.
We have form in that regard.
Was the West napping, or was it prancing and preening and thinking a behavioural nudge here, an accounting adjustment there, could remake reality in n it’s favour? I’m fairly sure that it thinks this mindset will bring about the desired outcome in Ukraine.
at the same time, cold calculating minds organise the same deficient response, by well calibrated design.
The West was napping. Britain could barely put a Brigade in the field. Germany’s Army appeared to be largely equipped with broomsticks.
The only militaries properly equipped were in Finland and Sweden, closest to the aggression. And they were neutral. They are not neutral any longer.
That is the best guide of all as to what is going on
Maybe but as usual they just bomb cities “back to the stone age” as I remember. This tends to help. No doubt this lessens collateral damage. Lol.
It seems the Russians have control of the air, and as such could easily destroy Ukrainian cities or to lessen casualties could destroy power stations and other essential infrastructures.
Apparently they have chosen not to do so .Yet.
Thoughts as to why not…
They manifestly don’t have control of the air, not even air superiority let alone supremacy. That is why all of their deep strikes, all of them, are with ballistic & cruise missiles rather than aircraft, and even those are increasingly being shot down.
The notion Russia is showing “restraint” is not supported by the evidence. They are throwing everything they have at Ukraine short of nuclear weapons; having lost so much of their best equipment, they are bringing obsolescent T-62 tanks out of storage.
Re:
“For those who might be sceptical of this, here’s what Professor Hal Brands had to say in an article defending Western involvement:
If only there were a way for Russia to escape from the US and NATO’s ruthless and cunning plan to weaken it by, I don’t know, withdrawing its invasion forces from Ukraine…
This is the voice of someone that thinks the nation state, with its traditions, its physical and economic integrity, is unreal. Crudely, for Russia the war is a necessity. For Europe, a choice. An incredibly bad choice based on green delusion, vanity, hubris, but a choice all the same.
“This is the voice of someone that thinks the nation state, with its traditions, its physical and economic integrity, is unreal.”
Well I’m not quite sure how you deduced that from my very brief response, but I do indeed think that the nation-state is both an entirely artificial political construction, and the greatest source of both internal oppression (the extent of which obviously depends on the nature of the regime with non-democratic systems such as China and Russia itself being the worst offenders) and worldwide hatred, conflict and violence.
The sooner we advance away from this completely unnecessary and destructive type of human organisation the better; and lest this be misunderstood it is quite the opposite of a call for worldwide government, but rather for peaceful and non-sectarian types of administration.
“Crudely, for Russia the war is a necessity.”
In what way was it necessary for the largest country in the world with over 6000 nuclear weapons and a massive conventional armed force to invade its relatively tiny neighbour?
Also, and to return to your first point, in the case of Ukraine the Russian regime has clearly shown that it certainly does (selectively) believe that the “nation state, with its traditions, its physical and economic integrity, is unreal”;
But for precisely the opposite reasons to my own.
“For Europe, a choice. An incredibly bad choice based on green delusion, vanity, hubris, but a choice all the same.”
I don’t support the use of armed violence but certainly do think that it is quite right for people throughout the world, including in Europe, to oppose Russia’s unilateral and brutal assault on Ukraine and not bow down before its blood-curdling nuclear threats, threats to invade other neighbouring countries etc.
On the Green thing you mentioned, one of the very few good things that might come out of this appalling situation is the dawning realisation that the Climate Change / Net Zero delusion has led to catastrophic energy supply problems and costs which in turn will hopefully lead to ditching the whole misguided project.
No, only for Russian imperialism.
Probably a silly question but why does the west want to weaken Russia? I have never understood why from the moment the old Soviet Empire collapsed, we did not do all we could to make Russia an ally, forge alliances with Russia and include that country in all that we do. Russia has a tradition of art, culture, literature and music much aligned with the rest of Europe, there was and in my view still is, the chance to get Russia inside the tent with us, not outside the tent throwing bricks at us.
Why have we made Russia an enemy when we could and possibly still can, make it a friend?
I fell in love with Russian art, literature, music, architecture etc at an early age, so much so that I visited the country at the turn of the century – the trip of a lifetime! Incidentally Tolstoy was and is one of my greatest literary heroes and as a staunch advocate of non-violence will be spinning like a propeller in his Yasnya Polyana grave at the current situation in Ukraine.
In any case I don’t believe that any significant forces in the West wish to weaken Russia per se but rather to undermine both its current military aggression in Ukraine and ward off any possible future imperial expansionism.
There is also a sympathy for the much oppressed population of that country and quite correct desire for its currently brutally tyrannical regime to be replaced by a multi-party liberal democratic system; of exactly the type that was being established in Ukraine and causing the Putin government so much worry that it might inspire its own population to call for similar constitutional change.
LOL! Russians can sort their own Government out without the ‘help’ of the USA or the UK…or any numpties from the ‘West’..what on earth gives you or anyone outside of that country the right to think about any form of regime change?
Ukraine was being nicely established as an American/CIA proxy state….it will be lucky if it doesn’t end up as a mini-Syria, or Afghanistan, the way any country that America gets involved with ends up.
What a load of twaddle to excuse American Imperialism….
LOL! Russians can sort their own Government out
Anyone in Russia who attempts to challenge the government, promote liberal democratic reforms, campaign for an alternative to President Putin etc faces harassment, beating (see eg Pussy Riot and the Cossack militia), arrest, imprisonment (eg the hugely courageous Alexei Navalny), or murder.
So the word ‘can’ seems somewhat misleading here.
without the ‘help’ of the USA or the UK…
All human beings on this planet have both a right and duty to offer sympathy and moral support, where appropriate asylum etc to those suffering under the jackboot of oppression (eg currently in Russia, China, Iran, Saudi Arabia etc).
what on earth gives you or anyone outside of that country the right to think about any form of regime change?
Please see the above. If I was alive during the 1930s I would also wish to see the similarly brutal and tyrannical Nazi regime replaced with a multi-party liberal democratic one (ditto the USSR, Italy etc).
Incidentally the use of the term ‘regime change’ here can be misleading, I am certainly not encouraging or supporting any sort of violent intervention but rather moral and practical support for peaceful pro-democracy campaigning.
Ukraine was being nicely established as an American/CIA proxy state…
The Ukrainians themselves have made it crystal clear via the ballot box that they wish to move forward to a western-style liberal democratic setup, and were far advanced down that route when President Putin decided to try and put a stop to it.
.it will be lucky if it doesn’t end up as a mini-Syria, or Afghanistan, the way any country that America gets involved with ends up.
There are nearly 200,000 Russian, not US, troops in Ukraine (though I understand the Russian forces have taken heavy casualties, something which I completely regret. My opposition to armed conflict is based on sympathy for all those caught up in it)
What a load of twaddle to excuse American Imperialism….
Again the naked expansionist imperialism being displayed in Europe right now takes a Russian, not American, form.
Imagine all the people, living for today…you hoo.. could say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one……..I hope someday you’ll join us, and the world will live as one!!!
ah, my favourite bit of the banter….the faux-shaming part ..”if you don’t think the same as me you don’t care about these poor people….” Well I also care about the poor starving Syrians, who still have the USA illegally occupying part of their country and stealing their oil and food…I’m sure we are all learning the ‘good democracy’ lesson from that…?…and maybe America’s goading of China is just because they just want to spread that darn democracy so hard!!?
In the latest poll I saw the Ukrainians very clearly blamed their own Government, the USA and NATO in massive percentages for where they find themselves now…I mean we could ask them, but unfortunately all the opposition parties and media who might have told us what they really want (rather than the Elenskyy propaganda) have been banned, so we will never know…I mean no one is allowed to voice the slightest bit of opposition are they?
In fact that doesn’t seem very democratic does it?
I don’t recognise the Russia or China you describe…which isn’t odd because it’s the West’s cartoon version…you’ll be telling us they still have foot binding next…..you are welcome to pretend to believe it…..
ie resistance to its threatened imperialism.
Sucked from your thumb.
You present a load of twaddle to excuse Russian imperialism. Oh yes the Russians are really sorting out their government, eh, with all their democracy, free press, right?.
Ukraine has willingly befriended the West and US, and can sever the link at any time. That that is not imperialism by any stretch of the imagination. Unlike, say, military invasion.
Putin has authorized the use of chemical weapons and murdered British citizens in Britain, demonstrating complete contempt for international treaties, agreements that he has signed.
We know from his own agencies that his expansionist adventurism planned to move on to Moldova after Ukraine.
How far should we let him go?
On that note, so has the British establishment through its ongoing support for clearly damaging vaccines. None are innocent. Putin serves a purpose as the west’s current focus of evil. The Salisbury poisoners were totally inept, bumbling idiots, leaving behind an easily followed trail a mile wide, when it came to doing a relatively simple but horrific job…”All you had to do was one thing…” Actually, it was so inept that I sometimes find myself thinking that it was all a set-up. Who knows what to believe these days…
The British government has destroyed so many British lives over the last two years.
But they have not breached the Chemical Weapons Convention to which they and Russia are both signatories.
The British government are, however, in breach of the Budapest Memorandum guaranteeing Ukraine’s territorial integrity to which they and Russia are also both signatories.
That is why we are helping Ukraine to restore their territorial integrity.
A trail just round the corner from the local chemical weapons place as well. No shortage of relevant specialists on that occasion. That said, much of my interpretation of it all at the time was via BBC News and the G.
It was the same stuff, Novichok, that they used on Navalny’s underwear, which they inadvertently admitted to in a recorded conversation.
Alles klar.
One word: money. I too thought along similar lines of thought to yours and for a brief moment I felt it was happening but then of course the invisible hand of not-god intervenes because you can’t make any serious money out of peace and stability. You need endless crises and conflict because that’s what makes money.
Unadulterated drivel. Making armaments that get blown up only helps the few that make them, everyone else is poorer for it.
It depends what you mean by “the west”. There are quite a few western organisations that do actually co-operate with Russia for some things, such as the GLONASS product as an alternative to the American GPS for satellite navigation. Some products can use either of them. And don’t forget about the International Space Station – at present, Russian rockets are the only mode of transport there and back.
Wholeheartedly agree. After all that the Russian people went through in the Second World War and considering we were on the same side why have we allowed this war to even start?
I detest and utterly despise the deep state yanks for igniting the conflagration and my contempt for the evil that is Bozo is off the scale.
I greatly admire Russia and its people. This ridiculous war saddens me greatly.
There’s a slight misunderstanding here: You were fighting on Stalin’s side in WWII, enabling him to export communist revolutions to all of eastern Europe after large-scale ethnic cleansing and devastation (lasting to this day) of formerly flourishing landscapes in order to fullfill the old Russian political goal of erecting a Russia-dominated empire of all slavic people in this area. He never fought on yours.
Yes, why did Russia start this ridiculous war ?
Purely because of its rampant imperialism.
We could have when the Soviet Union was dismantled by Gorbachev. I doubt if we could now.
To not try to get Russia on board with the west was one of the most inexplicable foreign policy blunders in my lifetime. We were giving money to everyone at that time (didn’t we bail out a bunch of Asian banks?), and could have helped Russia have a softer landing after their collapse, but we didn’t. The Russians witnessed how we (and by we, I mean the USA) rebuilt Europe after WWII and how Germany was rebuilt and welcomed back into the fold. We did nothing like that for Russia. That enabled despots like Putin to gain power.
I suggest wearing of high-priced Chinese imitations of US medical masks produced with no quality control whatsoever but copying the general shape to counter this horrible threat. And schools must immediately be closed to Protect the Children[tm] until a gene-engineered proxy war vaccine has been developed and widely applied. Nobody’s safe until everyone has been punctured!
Russia has an extremely simple way to stop being battered by this proxy ram which is so ruthlessly efficient that it couldn’t stop Russia from occupying large swathes of Ukrainian territory and that is Cease hostilities and withdraw. This will cause the devious NATO strategy of getting proxy-invaded by means of Russian surprise attack on Ukraine to unravel very quickly.
It’s pretty clear what the goal of the Ukrainian people is:
‘ there are enough sabotage groups in the city and every week they blow up the cars of Russians. We had to remove reg plates from our car and check underneath it every hour, walking in the city alone is strictly not recommended. An open pro-Russian stance in Kherson today requires either real courage or desperate recklessness’
Rusich 05 Sept 22
Britain and the U.S. are both signatories of the Budapest Memorandum guaranteeing Ukraine’s territorial integrity.
It would seem that those goals are in perfect alignment.
What is it with you and the bloody Budapest Memorandum? You cling to it like crap to a blanket!
Unlike article 5 of the NATO charter it does not require a specific response from any of the signatories…..
It is an agreement, not an official treaty..it’s neither legally binding nor does it carry any enforcement mechanism…
So what’s the big deal?
Interestingly though one of the points in the Memorandum that the signatories re-affirmed was the fact that they would refrain from ‘economic coercion’…..??
Since 2014, when America usurped the legally elected President, they have given Ukraine in excess of $12 billion..for various reasons but also…’to improve its interoperability with NATO’ (but it’s no threat to Russia..LOL)
Since 2014 the EU have given over 5 billion pounds to Ukraine….?
Between them Cargill, DuPont and Monsanto own agricultural land in Ukraine the ‘size of Italy’…17 million hectares….(Shareholders include..Blackrock, vanguard and Blackstone!)…..
It might just be me but all that seem pretty much like economic coercion!!?
You advocate Britain joining Putin in reneging on international agreements?
The Chemical Weapons Convention has no ‘enforcement mechanism’ either.
There is a great deal of Putin’s largesse swilling around Europe funding oddballs and their dotty little organisations.
I wonder if any of it funds so many of the crude, hopelessly batty comments on here?
What’s the big deal about agreeing to respect borders?? Nothing wrong with some recreational imperialism eh? You just can’t imagine the similar fuss in 1939 I suppose.
Like military action, refraining from economic coercion was ruled out. So if one side breaks the agreement, the other side must just lie back and welcome the rape? Is that what the Memorandum says?
Neither America nor anyone else ‘usurped’ the Ukrainian president. He fled after widespread popular disgust with him expressed by peaceful demonstrators, many of whose assassinations he and his Russian pals organised.
And Yes it is just you – buying land is not ‘economic coercion’.
It’s a war against Russian imperialism, not Russia. There have been no attacks on Russian soil.
And from the outset the big fear was always a nuclear response by Russia to any decisive fightback.
Russia entirely brought this on itself, and can end the crisis immediately by returning its troops to Russia.
Adam Schiff is a Congressman, not a Senator.
As a congressman Schiff earned a reputation for flat out lying about the Russian collusion hoax by repeatedly promising to have damning evidence against Trump that never actually appeared.
If you can’t get the basics right, there’s not much of a foundation for the remainder of Noah’s arguments.