I would like to focus on The New York Times reading, “The U.S. and Russia Need to Start Talking Before It’s Too Late.” This opinion focuses on both the unknown of Russia’s plans and the armament of Ukraine by the west, specifically the United States. This article was written in July 2022 and clearly things have changed since. I will state that I am not a fan of the half in and half out policy the United States is taking in this war in regards to supplying armament, but not man power.
The United States being a hegemony has become a gift and a curse. It has allowed the country to prosper, but is expected to contribute and assist more with foreign policy. It is clearly displayed in the article where the author states the United States has pledged $24 billion while Europe has pledged $12 billion together. I would argue that Europe is at more of a threat due to their location and should be providing much more assistance than the United States. As of July 2023, the Council on Foreign Relations reports that the United States has given more than $75 billion in assistance. (https://www.cfr.org/article/how-much-aid-has-us-sent-ukraine-here-are-six-charts). This is more than the recent EU plan to provide $18 billion a year to Ukraine through 2027. (https://www.politico.eu/article/eu-plans-e72-billion-of-new-common-debt-to-aid-ukraine/). This is all while the United States is suffering from inflation domestically.
I am concerned with the armament that the United States is also providing. This article discusses Biden’s plans to arm Ukraine to defend and to not escalate the war. The United States has defied that by recently approving their F-16 fighter jets to be sent to Ukraine through Denmark and the Netherlands. These may deter the Russians from air attacks, but as history shows Putin does not back down and these will possibly only escalate the war to another level. The United States has also sent artillery systems, rocket launch systems, anti air missiles, howitzers, mortars, various Unmanned Aerial System platforms, helicopters, javelins and many other small arms. This assistance outweighs all other countries contributions combined.
As I stated above, I do not like the amount of assistance we are giving. First, it is because domestically the United States is not in the best shape and this money can be used to benefit Americans. Second, we have seen this before. When the United States assisted the mujahedeen during the Soviet invasion, they provided Stinger missiles to counter Soviet aircraft. This was advanced technology at the time, something the United States regretted. After that invasion and the build up of the Taliban and Al-Qaddafi, the United States went on a witch hunt to recover the hundreds of stingers in Afghanistan with the fear of them being used against the United States. Hopefully all this armament provided will not repeat this situation whether it ends up in the hands of Ukraine, Russia or another country.
2 replies on “Week 3 – Consalvo”
Justin,
You make a number of important points in this blog post. If the numbers for total military assistance given by the United States and by the EU countries remain accurate, it is pretty shocking. I think you are completely correct that the Europeans have at least as much at stake as we do and they are certainly wealthy enough to afford to do more. But the problem is that they simply do not have the military systems to give–or, to put it another way, if they give Ukraine more of their front-line systems, they fear that they will be left defenseless in the event that Russia were to try to attack them.
This argument is also somewhat bogus, because under Article 5 of the NATO treaty we and the other members of the alliance would have to come to the assistance of any member country that was attacked. But even in the U.S., there are concerns about the draw-down of front-line weaons systems, and the Pentagon is gearing up to produce more missiles, artillery shells, etc. as quickly as possible.
Two other comments regarding your points about whether (a) we are doing too much, and (b) the comparison to giving Stinger missiles to the Mujahadeen in Afghanistan. On the “dloing too much” point, I am convinced that Putin invaded Ukraine because the West did little or nothing (other than rhetorica) after he sent troops into Georgia and later seized Crimea. He only knows and reacts to strength. If we let him prevail in Ukraine, he has a shopping list of countries that he would like to take back into the Russian orbit: Georgia, Moldova, the Baltic states, and Poland. There are important lessons to be drawn from the pre-war experience with Hitler and the failure of the Allies to stop his incrementalism.
On the point about the Afghanistan, the difference is that we put these man-portable missiles into the hands of radicalized, non-governmental forces. It seemed like a good idea at the time, and it DID result in tremendous air losses (helicopters) by the Soviets and contributed to their ultimate withdrawal. But then, as you indicated, we had to try to buy them back, because we feared that terrorists would use them to bring down civilian airliners. Fortunately, that did not happen (though there were some close calls). By contrast, in Ukraine, the military equipment is going directly to the Ukrainian government and military, who presumably will maintain control of all weapons systems when/if their terrible conflict is over. –Professor Wallerstein
The arming of the mujahedeen in Afghanistan should be a lesson learned by the U.S. since those same people became the adversaries of the U.S. and had a long war against them. There has to be a line drawn not to arm countries that could use those weapons for their interests and then in turn there not being work for people in the U.S. and then result in soaring inflation. The same situation is the U.S. providing Iran with nuclear capabilities in the 1970s and now sanction that country as much as possible and consider it an enemy and a threat. The U.S. doesn’t want it to make a nuclear weapon and be a nuclear threat while it provided it with the technology capabilities when it considered it a “friend”.