If the US supplies weapons to Ukraine, what’s next?
Should the US arm Ukraine for its fight against Russian President Vladimir Putin? Before you say “Duh”, consider this: Arms shipments alone are almost never enough to enable a smaller, weaker actor to defeat a big-time power. If the US commits itself to sending arms to Ukraine, it’s signing up for more than military aid. When Ukraine needs more help, America’s credibility will be on the line — and pressure will be high to escalate aid to the point of air support.
On the surface, this analysis might seem extreme. Currently, nobody on the American political spectrum thinks the US should prepare to fight an air war with Russia. That this idea is unthinkable, however, is a good reason to hypothesise the various scenarios associated with sending arms to Ukraine.
Begin with the most basic question: Can arms shipments alone enable Ukraine to fight off Russian military encroachments? To answer that question, ask yourself: Can you think of any examples in which weapons alone were enough for a weaker actor to stave off continued attacks from a much bigger neighbour?
During the Cold War, such arms shipments were commonplace, and used by both the US and the Soviet Union to contain the other and expand mutual spheres of influence. For the most part, however, arms didn’t suffice to resolve conflicts.
In Central America, support from both sides led to stalemates punctuated by occasional moments in which one side would get the upper hand. If you ask Guatemalans, Salvadorans or Nicaraguans about the influence of outside weapons, you’re unlikely to get a very enthusiastic answer.
In both Northwest and Southeast Asia, the provision of arms led to a commitment of outside ground forces. The Korean War pitted Americans against Chinese — alongside the hundreds of thousands of North and South Koreans who fought and died. In Vietnam, the Soviets managed to send only advisers. But the US sent some 2.5 million troops.
One salient Cold War example when arms alone worked was US military support for the Afghan mujahedeen against the Soviet occupation. But given that every empire has failed to hold Afghanistan, from Alexander’s Greece to the British and now the Americans, it may be time to re-evaluate the confident assumption that surface-toair stingers were really what defeated the Soviets. The stingers may have accelerated the process. But the difficulties suppressing the Afghan population for an extended period of time surely played a determining factor.
Since the end of the Cold War, the limitations of an “arms alone” policy haven’t disappeared. Libyan rebels had arms galore — and couldn’t defeat Col Moammar Gaddafi until Western air support was added.
Syrian freedom fighters have received weapons almost from the start, but even with air support they haven’t succeeded in defeating president Bashar al-Assad.
Admittedly, Ukraine may be in a better position to take advantage of US weapons than some of these other actors. Ukraine is a sovereign state with its own military, albeit overmatched by the Russians. It’s conceivable that, with greater resources in hand, Ukraine could hold the line against the Russians.
But it seems highly unlikely that, even with US military resources, Ukraine could fundamentally change Russia’s strategic calculus and deter Mr Putin from further incursions. The pith of Mr Putin’s Ukraine strategy has been to keep up slow and sporadic military pressure, reminding Ukraine both that much of its population is Russian speaking and sympathetic to Moscow, and that Moscow is big and strong and not going away.
The results haven’t backfired against Mr Putin domestically, even though the Russian economy has suffered from the combination of drastically lower oil prices and Western sanctions. It’s hard to see Mr Putin showing weakness and backing down just because Ukraine’s arsenal gets bigger.
That requires us to ask what would happen if a US-armed Ukraine continued to lose ground to Russia. At present, the US pays a modest price for Mr Putin’s gains: decreased credibility with regional or global actors with US security guarantees akin to those given to Ukraine in the Budapest memorandum of 1994. But if the US actively aids Ukraine, and the aid seems inadequate, the costs of US failure will rise. President Barack Obama will be perceived as trying and failing to alter the balance of power in central Europe. This would substantially weaken American prestige and capabilities, much as the US has already been enfeebled by the failure to degrade or eliminate the Islamic State movement.
Under circumstances of continued failure, Mr Obama — or the next president — would come under enormous pressure to give further assistance to Ukraine. If military aid failed, the natural next step would be air support.
The prospect of direct war against Russian troops would be off-putting, to say the least. But US prestige would be on the line. Hawks would be sure to say that inaction would be capitulation, and the spectre of former UK prime minister Neville Chamberlain would walk again.
The possibility that arms shipments might lead to greater military escalation isn’t a definitive reason not to stand up to Mr Putin, of course. Russia’s Ukraine encroachment may already be a definitive test of American strength in the Cool War era, in which case strong resistance is crucial. The key is to be honest and clear-eyed about where arms shipments may lead — and not to pretend that there’s a cheap or easy way to confront aggressive, expansionist power.