During a recent interview, the former Commanding General of US Army Europe (2014-2017), Lieutenant General (Retired) Ben Hodges, stated that Western commitment is not yet fully geared for Ukraine to win the war and its decision-making and provision of aid to Ukraine was incremental and “drip, drip, drip.”
“Unfortunately…our administration, the German government, and several other governments have not yet fully committed to helping Ukraine win…The priority from the administration seems to be escalation management…that’s why you end up with bad policy decisions or policies that just don’t make any sense, and they’re not connected to an end state. If you have a clearly defined end state, which I think should be to help Ukraine defeat Russia because it’s in our strategic interest, then we would be providing them everything they need to defeat Russia…”
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Several Western countries have clearly not heeded this important message and are projecting a noticeable decrease of military aid to Ukraine.
Indeed, in the US, the Republican Party’s Presidential nominee, Donald Trump, has been critical of the financial aid provided by the US to Ukraine and several political experts are concerned that, if elected, he would considerably reduce this crucial aid.
As for Germany, the country that provides the second most military aid to Ukraine after the US, it is planning to nearly halve such aid from around €8 billion to €4 billion, according to a draft 2025 budget approved by its government.
ISW Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, December, 20, 2024
Canada’s 2024 budget is even worse in that regard, both in real numbers and percentages, as it provides an amount of 1.6 billion CAD over the next five years, which is around 320 million CAD per year or one-fifth of the military aid provided by Canada to Ukraine during each of the first two years of Russia’s all-out war against Ukraine that started on Feb. 24, 2022.
Meanwhile, Ukraine’s input to shield the West from Russia’s insatiable expansionism, which would have otherwise already triggered the Third World War, continues to mount in human sacrifices, while the total cost of reconstruction and recovery of Ukraine was assessed at the end of 2023 at $486 billion over the next decade.
Ukraine has clearly defined strategic objectives which are to stop Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, liberate all the territories occupied by Russia, secure the return of Ukraine’s children and prisoners of war, ensure a lasting peace, namely by becoming a member of both the European Union and NATO, obtain compensation from Russia for all the damages it has inflicted and rebuild Ukraine.
All these strategic objectives comply fully with international law and order, foster global security, and are in the West’s best interests. To ensure that they are attained, the West’s strategic objective must be to help Ukraine win this war.
Once the West recognizes this geopolitical reality and fully commits to this strategic objective, it will provide Ukraine with the appropriate military aid to enable Ukraine to effectively protect its airspace and regain the territories illegally occupied by Russia. The West will then also lift the self-defeating restrictions on how Ukraine can use the weapons supplied by Western countries.
Moreover, the West would not pursue its incremental or, as poignantly stated by Lieutenant General (Retired) Ben Hodges, its “drip, drip, drip” approach with Russia’s frozen assets abroad, as it has done with the provision of military aid to Ukraine since the beginning of Russia’s all-out war. Instead, the West would confiscate and transfer to Ukraine all these assets (and not only the interest derived therefrom) to help Ukraine’s war efforts and subsequent reconstruction.
Ukraine’s victory and real peace are attainable. The West just needs the political will to help make it happen soon.
The views expressed in this opinion article are the author’s and not necessarily those of Kyiv Post.
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