What US weapons tell us about the Russia-Ukraine war
The debate around which weapons to send to Ukraine, explained.
"After a rather public discussion about whether the US would send tanks over, the Biden administration changed its position, which led the way to Germany sending Leopard tanks. There was excitement in some quarters of Washington. The head of the usually dispassionate Brookings Institution’s Europe program, Constanze Stelzenmüller, called it “tanksgiving” and tweeted that she would wear leopard print to celebrate.
On March 21, the Pentagon announced a sped-up timeline for their delivery.
Some of this is about symbolism and the image of the US sending its most advanced systems to Ukraine. And some of it is very particularly about how it would shape Ukraine’s defense and prospective counter-offensive likely to unfold in the coming weeks.
Staunch backers of Ukraine resented that it was even a discussion at all. Former military leaders and national security leaders have been pushing for a ramp-up of sending or producing more weapons, like long-range missiles, ASAP. The ideas vary, but generally argue that Ukraine needs the weapons to defeat Russia now to avoid a damaging protracted conflict. And that by taking an incremental approach or not providing the country with weapons like the F-16s urgently, Russia may gain an advantage.
The success of the Biden administration’s relative cautiousness has led some more hawkish experts to invert the chain of events, and argue that the lack of Russian nuclear escalation signals that the US can send anything it wants to Ukraine without risking inadvertent expansion of the conflict.
But Russia still may escalate, says Miranda Priebe, a political scientist at the Rand Corporation. “It’s the wrong lesson to take from what has happened so far that there are no limits,” she told me. “Nuclear escalation isn’t the only thing I worry about. Russia still has a lot of cards to play.” Those may include increased strikes on civilians and Ukrainian infrastructure, or massive cyber attacks.
The US also needs to think about the sustainability of its involvement. Jeremy Shapiro, research director at the European Council on Foreign Relations, says the Biden administration is making good decisions about what to send at each phase of the war. But there are still dangers of a quagmire.
“They’re creating a situation for themselves where they’re inexorably getting drawn in more and more, and that’s why they’re in a place right now that they didn’t want to be 12 months ago,” he says, “which is supplying weapons which are frighteningly escalatory and even more importantly, facing a weapons-supply future that will be extremely difficult to satisfy, and will drain them of the capacity to promote other priorities, such as Asia-Pacific.”
As yet, the Biden administration’s calibrated approach has worked, and it’s forced them to explain to the public what these weapons do and why they matter.
“What I would like the US debate about weapons systems to be is focused on what we’re trying to achieve in the war,” Shapiro, who served in the Obama State Department, told me. “We have to define our own interests, which will be distinct although overlapping with the Ukrainians, and then we have to tailor the weapons systems to what our goals are.”
Could the conversation on weapons lead to a more robust policy debate?
An enduring question is whether the Biden administration is fully in control of the sliding-scale dynamic, because as soon as there’s a big-deal announcement that the US will send a new advanced weapons system, immediately the debate shifts to the next one, and the next one.
When the White House convened one of its regular private Zoom calls with policy experts from outside of government on January 25, many participants applauded the administration for its tank moves. These background briefings for think-tankers have been described as cheerleading sessions.
But, a familiar voice said that the tanks were not enough, according to three attendees who asked to remain anonymous. Alexander Vindman, the retired lieutenant colonel who served as a Trump White House official and was a star of former president’s first impeachment trial, has been a vocal proponent of arming Ukraine to the max. On the January White House call, he asked about what more the US could do for Ukraine.
“They wanted a pat on the back. And, you know, I gave them that,” Vindman told me. But he calls the Biden administration’s caution “reactive” and “non-strategic,” explaining that getting Ukraine air defense systems and fighter jets quickly would hasten Russia’s defeat and thus the war’s end.
“It’s not that it’s been deliberative, it’s been plodding,” he said. “We’re going to eventually provide these long-range systems, it’s a matter of when. Ukraine is going to get jets, too. It’s a matter of when.”
It’s true that much of Ukraine’s battlefield success is dependent on Western military assistance. But there are a lot of other debates and strategic concerns that need to be as prominent as the weapons question.
“I think we too quickly jump to: Should we give them ATACMS, F-16s? What’s the next move?” Charles Kupchan, a former adviser to then-Vice President Biden, recently told the Council on Foreign Relations. “And I think one of the key challenges we face moving forward is keeping American interest in sync with the nature of our commitment.”
Maybe the weapons questions can get us there.
A year into this conflict, with Republican members of Congress, former President Donald Trump, and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis questioning the Biden administration’s policy, it may lead to a more serious conversation about the issues at stake. Republicans are forcing Biden to more clearly articulate the importance of Ukraine to the United States.
It’s not yet clear whether the US or Ukraine would accept a situation in which Ukraine regains much of the territory it had lost since Russia’s invasion started on February 24, 2022, but not the peninsula in the country’s south, Crimea, which Russia has occupied since 2014. “The main issue here to debate, which I think the weapons question deflects from, is what we are satisfied with in terms of Ukraine regaining territory,” says Stephen Wertheim of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
At the same time, there’s a drumbeat for Ukraine to get some form of Western security guarantees that might ultimately include membership in NATO. That deserves as much consideration as the weapons debate.
As we look back two decades later at the feverish support for the US invasion of Iraq and its current devastating impact on the Middle East, the perils of groupthink are on display. We must make space for dissenters. And we may be entering a moment where weapons provisions become so normalized that the US ends up invariably playing a role in ratcheting tensions up further and further without the sort of cautious deliberation that the Biden administration has expressed so far.
Through specific weapons, the Biden administration is showing an increasing commitment to Ukraine. Still, attendees on the White House call in January told me that the White House pushed back against Ukraine’s biggest boosters. It goes to show how US and Ukrainian interests are not identical. There does not seem to be consideration, for example, of giving nuclear weapons to Ukraine.
For now, the sometimes tiresome debates around weapons serve as a proxy for a bigger conversation, one that may ultimately serve to inform Americans about the risks and realities of war.
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