Biden is striving to “contain” the war, Putin’s aiming to win it.
It has become evident the Biden administration has embraced conflict “containment” as its principal objective in dealing with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. According to this theory, while it would be nice if Ukraine survives the war, that is not of fundamental importance. What is critical, as far as the Biden administration is concerned, is that the war not be spread to involve other parties, notably the US and NATO. Thus Biden has ruled out providing NATO air support, a no-fly zone, old Warsaw Pact MiGs, or even Patriot antimissile batteries on the supposition that such aid might sufficiently anger Russian dictator Vladimir Put to the point where he lashes out at the United States or our NATO allies, thereby drawing us into the war.
There are a number of flaws in this strategy. In the first place, it leaves Putin not only with the initiative, but the authority to set the rules as to what the US is permitted or forbidden to do in defense of the free world. In the second place, it is based on the conceit that Putin requires a provocation or legal justification to launch an attack on anyone. This is certainly untrue. If Putin deems something is in his interest he will do it, without any regard to how it might conform to international law, prior treaties, global public opinion or whatever. Thus the dances being conducted concerning under which rubric a particular weapon system might be sent to Ukraine are totally nonsensical. Putin will strike Poland if he thinks it will help him win the war. It obviously won’t, so he hasn’t. We are therefore tying ourselves up in knots for no reason.
But the biggest problem with this strategy is that it fails to look ahead. Let us therefore consider some consequences.
There are three potential outcomes to the war.
- Putin wins and NATO accepts the result, dropping sanctions and returning to business as usual. This is Putin’s preferred outcome. If adopted, it would lead quickly to Russian annexation of the Baltic States, the discrediting of NATO and Russian domination of Europe and Central Asia. While Western leaders have shown themselves remarkably spineless during the current crisis, I doubt they would capitulate to this extent, as the feedback they would receive from their focus groups would preclude it. This leads to the second possible outcome.
- Putin wins, but NATO does not accept the outcome, perpetuating Russian economic ruin. This would preserve NATO, but lead to total Russian economic dependence on China. This is China’s preferred scenario. It would result in Chinese domination of the Eurasian supercontinent, and with it, the world. As this would also be a strategic catastrophe, we must find a way to reach the third alternative.
- Ukraine wins. This is the only scenario that has the potential to lead to a positive outcome for the West. If Ukraine wins, Putin could fall, leading to a new government in Russia tilting to the West. That would be a huge victory that would greatly improve our odds in dealing with the long term challenge from China. But even if Ukraine merely drives the invaders out and Putin remains in power, the beast will have been tamed. We will then have the discretion to maintain sanctions or not, as we deem fit. And we will have set a very powerful example to deter China, Iran, North Korea or anyone else from indulging in such aggression in the future.
In other words, it is in America’s vital interest that Ukraine prevails.
Support for Ukrainian war effort being stymied in Washington
The Biden administration’s strategy of prioritizing containment of the war over winning it does not completely rule out such an outcome, but it is certainly not consistent with it. On the contrary, the Biden administration knew well in advance that the invasion was coming. That being the case, the right move would have been to make use of the three months of advance notice to airlift weapons to Ukraine, as I wrote in January. Arming Ukraine to the teeth in advance might well have deterred the invasion, but letting Putin know it wouldn’t have made for an easy win. But it certainly would have put the Ukrainians in a much better position to repel the attack. But the Biden administration priority is to contain the war, and the best way to assure that would be to have it end quickly. As a result, not only was there no serious effort to deliver arms to Ukraine until public opinion forced it after the invasion began, but the Biden administration made other moves clearly designed to engineer a quick Ukrainian collapse. These included trying to discourage Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky from addressing the Munich conference of Western leaders held immediately before the invasion, publicly predicting that Kyiv would fall within 48 to 72 hours, having our ambassador very publicly flee the capital, and urging Zelensky to do likewise – a cowardly move that, if done, would have taken the heart out of Ukrainian resistance.
Then we come to the issue of the transferring of MiG fighter aircraft from NATO eastern European countries to Ukraine. This deal, it turns out, was blocked by Biden himself. The cover story first issued to rationalize this decision was that the MiGs would not be useful to Ukraine, and that they would be much better off with more anti-aircraft weapons. Then, however, when it was proposed to send the Ukrainians better anti-aircraft weapons, including Patriot missile batteries, it was explained that they would do no good either, because most of the slaughter in Mariupol, Kharkiv, and other Ukrainian cities was being done by the Russians using old fashioned artillery. But MiGs can be used to silence artillery and do many other things as well, such as eliminate traffic jams like the 40 kilometer long convoy currently stalled north of Kyiv.
So the fact of the matter was that the delivery of MiGs was not blocked because they would not be useful. It was blocked because they would be too useful. Furthermore, NATO has many other weapon systems that would be extremely useful to Ukraine that are not being sent. These include not only Patriot anti-missile defense systems, but ATACMS short range mobile ballistic missile launchers. There can throw a 500 pound warhead 200 miles and are GPS-guided so they can’t miss. If we sent these to the Ukrainians, they could turn columns of Russian tanks roaming the country and the batteries of Russian artillery besieging Ukrainian cities into masses of flaming wrecks.
The source of Biden’s defeatist policy appears to be a faction of intellectuals typified by Samuel Charap. A high-level Democratic Party Russia/Ukraine policy expert for many years, Charap has served as an advisor to the Obama-Biden administration, whose Ukraine policy, it will be remembered, was not only to deny all arms to Ukraine to repel Russia’s 2014 invasion of Ukraine, but even deny operational intelligence. This proved disastrous in August 2014, when, as Ukrainian forces were pushing into Donetsk, Russia assembled armored forces on the flanks of the city to mount an encirclement operation. These concentrations could not have escaped observation by US reconnaissance satellites. Yet the Obama crowd withheld the necessary warming, with the result being the Ukrainian forces were surrounded and defeated.
The same group continues to undermine US support for Ukraine today. While not currently an official White House advisor, Charap is employed as a top Russia/Ukraine expert by the RAND Corporation, which provides policy analysis and advice to the US government.
In the article “The West’s Weapons Won’t Make Any Difference to Ukraine,” published in Foreign Policy magazine January 22, 2022, Charap argued against providing Ukraine with the means for self-defense.
“Some have made the case that U.S. military assistance to Ukraine can change Russia’s calculus now, possibly deterring Moscow from launching an attack,” wrote Charap. “Others claim that aid to the Ukrainian military can have a real impact on a possible fight with the Russians, making it meaningfully more challenging for the Kremlin to achieve victory and ruling out certain military options Russia might be considering. And there are also voices who call for additional capabilities merely to raise costs for Moscow—that is, to kill more Russian soldiers—so as to create political problems for President Vladimir Putin at home, although without much expectation that Ukraine would prevail.”
“None of these arguments is convincing.”
Arming Ukraine won’t deter invasion, Charap wrote because, “The Ukrainian military has been shaped to fight the conflict in the Donbas and thus poses little deterrent threat to Russia; provision of U.S. weapons can do nothing to change that.”
Moreover Ukrainian resistance is hopeless. As Charap explains:
“Once deterrence fails and a war begins, the Ukrainian armed forces will find themselves in desperate circumstances almost immediately. Ukraine does not have anywhere near enough forces to credibly defend against all the potential avenues of attack, which means it would have to choose between defending a select set of fixed strong points—ceding control of other areas—or maneuvering to engage Russian forces that outnumber them. …… the military balance between Russia and Ukraine is so lopsided in Moscow’s favor that any assistance Washington might provide in coming weeks would be largely irrelevant in determining the outcome of a conflict should it begin. …In normal times, there are many good reasons for the United States to provide military support to Ukraine. But these are not normal times.”
There are, to be sure, voices in the Democratic camp opposing Ukrainian defeat. As Obama administration ambassador to Russia, Michael McFaul, wrote in the Washington Post on March 16 “…more Western military assistance, especially weapons that can shoot down Russian airplanes and rockets, or destroy artillery, is immediately needed for ending the war. Zelensky, in his recent address to Congress, powerfully reminded us of this fundamental point. More fighter jets, more surface-to-air missiles systems and more counter-fire weapons against long-range artillery are needed immediately.” In numerous tweets, McFaul has amplified these points, stating repeatedly that, while he opposes direct US military action, “those of us standing on the sidelines, watching Ukrainians bravely fight invading Russian armed forces alone” have no business picking and choosing what weapons we think the Ukrainians need, denying some and granting others. Jason Crow, the Democratic congressman from ultraliberal Boulder, Colorado, but a former Army ranger, has also called for sending Polish MiGs to Ukraine, and branded a policy of sending Ukraine some of the weapons it needs while embargoing others as “nonsensical.”
Yet, with its counsels torn between those who see a need for Ukraine to survive and those who do not, the Biden administration’s Ukraine policy has been reduced to just that – nonsense. Thus, Biden has decided to send Ukraine missiles that can shoot down Russian planes at low altitudes, but not bombers – like those that massacred a thousand children in the Mariupol theater last week, flying at high altitudes. Biden will send Switchblade drones to Ukraine, but only 100 of them, and only the small 10 km-range Switchblade 300 type that can be used to destroy trucks, rather than the larger 40 km-range Switchblade 600 kind that can knock out tanks. To be sure, we are fine with Russian tanks being destroyed, but only by Javelins, but not by drones, or heaven forbid, by MiGs.
Schizophrenia is a poor mental state with which to conduct a war. We cannot simultaneously defeat Putin and appease him. We cannot simultaneously save Ukraine while denying it the arms it needs to defend itself. If the Biden team wants to win this war they need to clean house.
What Needs to be Done?
The best way to end the war would be for NATO to intervene directly with its air power to provide air cover and close air support to the Ukrainian armed forces, enabling them to drive out the invaders. There is no need to strike targets in Russia. That threat can be held in abeyance as potential retaliation in the event that Putin strikes targets in NATO counties – which he won’t, because he is having enough trouble fighting the Ukrainians in Ukraine. The last thing he needs is to draw the full power of NATO into the fight.
But Biden has ruled that US forces won’t fight. We will only send arms. In that case, we must send aircraft. Fighter aircraft are the Queen of battle. They cannot only take out enemy bombers and cruise missiles they can strike any targets on land or sea, including the artillery bombarding Mariupol, the mobile Russian forces roaming the south, the convoy stalled north of Kyiv, and the invasion fleet hovering off the coast of Odessa. The US itself would not consider engaging in any conflict without them. They should therefore not be denied to Ukraine on the totally disingenuous argument that Ukraine doesn’t really need them.
So, fighters must be sent, starting with the MiGs Poland has put on offer. But there is no reason to limit the aircraft we send Ukraine to Soviet-era MiGs. The US and its allies have over 4000 F-16s. While these are no longer the best fighters we have they are pretty good, certainly much better than those legacy Soviet MiGs. The United States has delivered F-16s to many non-NATO countries around the world, including such questionable nations as Pakistan and Venezuela. I know a number of fighter pilots, and they tell me the F-16 is a very easy plane to learn to fly. Ukrainian fighter pilots could be rapidly trained to fly them. The top scoring squadron on either side during the Battle of Britain was Squadron 303, consisting of exiled Polish pilots flying Hurricanes. While Hurricanes were inferior to Britain’s famed Spitfires, the Poles flew them to greater effect, not only because they were used to flying worse junk back home, but because more than anyone else, they understood the existential nature of the evil they were fighting. The same is likely to prove true of Ukrainians flying F-16s, which are already showing themselves brilliantly proficient at fighting with the limited aircraft they have. A gift of a hundred F-16s would almost certainly decide the war.
There are those who say that it takes many months to train a fighter pilot to be top drawer on a new plane. Providing such extended training would certainly be ideal, but the situation requires moving faster. In any case, if there really is any question about the need for F-16 trained pilots, that deficiency could be readily remedied by Ukraine forming an international squadron manned by volunteers drawn from the many thousands of F-16-trained pilots from around the world. In the tradition of the Lafayette Escadrille manned by Americans who came to France’s aid in its hour of need in World War I, I propose it be named the Kosciusko Escadrille.
Tadeusz Kosciuszko was a Polish revolutionary with Ukrainian and Belarusian roots who, like Lafayette, came to America to aid our fight for liberty. In Kosciusko’s case, the critical aid he supplied was his expertise in military engineering, which won the decisive Battle of Saratoga for America. Kosciusko was also responsible for developing the American fortifications at West Point, the key defensive position created to stop the British from sailing up the Hudson. Kosciusko’s fort was later converted to the US Miliary Academy. His statue still stands there today.
Statue of Tadeusz Kosciuszko at the US Military Academy at West Point
When the Americans arrived in France in World War I, their commander proclaimed, “Lafayette, we are here!” We owe an equal debt for our independence to the freedom fighters of Eastern Europe who came to aid our cause in its hour of need. There is no better way to acknowledge it than to create and equip a volunteer fighter pilot squadron named after the first among them.
Do We Want to Win or Don’t We?
We have the means, readily at hand, that would provide victory. What then is holding us back? The line being offered is that we must not do anything that makes Putin too unhappy, because then he supposedly might start a nuclear war. But there is no getting around the fact that losing in Ukraine would make Putin unhappy, regardless of whether defeat is inflicted on him by Ukrainians using American-made Javelin antitank missiles, or Ukrainians using American-made F-16s. Is our boundary condition therefore that we must not do anything which might cause Russia to lose?
This cannot be. It is in the vital interest of the entire free world that Ukraine defeat Putin’s invasion. I use the term “free world” advisedly. This is a term that was once widely used and needs to come back into play. It was once understood that there is something called the “free world,” which is composed of all those who subscribe to the belief that people have intrinsic rights, as opposed to those who hold to the idea that human beings are just so much livestock, owned and operated by their governments, or those who own their governments. It was understood that this free world – which looks to America for leadership – needs to be defended, because the people that compose it are not something separate from us. They are us.
This is a key distinction, more important in fact than whether a country has a formal alliance or other commitment of support from the USA. We’ve bugged out of plenty of those, including, since the 2014 invasion, our commitment to defend Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity made in the 1994 Budapest memorandum. But while Ukraine is not a part of NATO, it is very much part of the free world. In letting them be defeated, we are letting ourselves be defeated.
This is no small matter. The Biden policy embraces defeat. That needs to change.
Dr. Robert Zubrin @robert_zubrin is an American aerospace engineer. His latest book, The Case for Space, was recently published by Prometheus books.
The opinions expressed in this Op Ed are those of the authors. They do not necessarily reflect the opinions or views of the Kyiv Post.
