U.S. President Joe Biden recently requested an additional $33 billion in aid for Ukraine. Congress should approve it immediately. Our material support to Ukraine has so far been enough to prolong the conflict — we have not given them what they need to end the war. It is time to back up our tough talk about rallying around democracy.
More than an insurgency
Before the invasion, Western observers did not like Ukraine’s chances.
Experts from the RAND Corporation wrote an op-ed arguing that the West’s weapons won’t make any difference to Ukraine.” When the invasion began, U.S. government officials said they expected Kyiv to fall in just four days, and the Ukrainian government the week after. As a result, they did not give Ukraine the weapons Kyiv would need to sustain a longer fight against the Russian army. Why send weapons if they would end up in the hands of the Russians?
After it became clear that predictions of Ukraine’s demise were greatly exaggerated, the Free World began an impressive mobilization effort and sent a significant number of weapons. But even so, these weapons — Stingers, Javelins, small arms, and so on — were geared toward waging an insurgency against Russian occupiers after Kyiv inevitably fell. In other words, we treated the Ukrainian military like a guerrilla force preparing for inevitable defeat, rather than an army capable of victory.
This mistake had deadly consequences. While the US delivered $2.5 billion in military aid to Ukraine from 2014 until the invasion began, we never delivered our most powerful tools. Nor did we empower our European allies to do so. Shoulder-fired anti-tank and anti-air missiles are helpful, and Ukrainians have managed to use them to great effect, but what about the anti-ship missiles that could truly punish the Russian fleet and protect southern cities? If two Ukrainian Neptune missiles were able to take down Russia’s flagship in the Black Sea, imagine what more powerful Western missiles could do.
Saving Ukrainian lives
Countries have finally begun sending Ukraine more powerful anti-aircraft systems, but imagine the damage Ukraine could have inflicted had they already been able to hit Russian fighters 17,000 feet into the skies. After stalling othrough two months of war, the Free World is now in a race against time to get heavy weapons to Ukraine before more of the country falls under Russian occupation. If we had committed to helping Kyiv like this months ago, thousands of Ukrainians might still be alive today.
The Biden administration’s fears are reasonable — if we offer more substantive aid, maybe we will provoke a wider conflict. But Putin already believes he is at war with America, and our failure to help Ukraine win a decisive victory only prolongs the crisis. Our attempts at de-escalation are more likely to be perceived as a weakness to be exploited, rather than an off-ramp to be taken.
Only a military solution
We can see with our own eyes that Putin is waging a war of extermination. He is not bombing indiscriminately. His army is leveling entire neighborhoods systematically and with impunity. The revelations of the Bucha massacre have only confirmed our greatest fears. How many more Ukrainians have to die before we realize that there can be no diplomatic resolution to the conflict until there is a military one?
Many observers look at Putin’s actions as a warning. He rattles his nuclear saber and slaughters innocents in order to raise the stakes — even making some Western observers question his sanity. Might he actually push the button? By raising the stakes despite holding a weak hand, he hopes to make his enemy, the Free World, fold. It’s an old Soviet tactic dubbed "escalate to deescalate,” and Putin is a master of it.
That is why when Putin invaded Georgia in 2008, we sat idly by out of fear of provoking a nuclear power. We did little more when Putin invaded Ukraine the first time, in 2014. We did nothing when he started carpet-bombing Aleppo in 2015. Nor did we react when he sent Russian troops to put down protests in Belarus and Kazakhstan. Meanwhile, far from respecting our attempts at de-escalation, Putin has learned that as long as he keeps raising the stakes, he can act with relative impunity on the international stage.
Ending the delicate dance
Our inaction allowed Putin to believe that he could conquer a peaceful neighboring country without having to fear an overwhelming response by the Free World. With the benefit of more than 20 years of hindsight, it should be clear that the most effective way to prevent Putin from escalating this conflict beyond Ukraine’s borders is to stop him from taking Ukraine in the first place. In other words, accommodation and meaningless distinctions between offensive and defensive weapons will not stop Putin’s aggression — but properly arming Ukraine might. As for whether or not Putin might order the use of nuclear weapons, we should recognize that a man who sits 30 feet away from his closest advisors is not someone interested in risking his life.
It is time to end our delicate dance around Putin. The Ukrainians want tanks? Send them. Planes? Those too. Keep sending fresh equipment and ammunition until Russia leaves Ukraine. Putin only answers to force, and he is not about to risk death in a nuclear holocaust just because Ukraine’s military is operating with improved equipment. Our greatest fear should not be what will happen if we act, but what we will enable if we don’t. The bloodletting in Ukraine has gone on long enough. Help Ukraine win this war.
Uriel Epshtein is the executive director of the Renew Democracy Initiative. The views expressed are the author's own.
