A Blog by Jonathan Low

 

Apr 16, 2022

Why the US Is Embracing Effort To Supply Ukraine With More Offensive Weapons

The stated reason is that the US and NATO believe the massacres of civilians in Ukraine are policy, not accident, and may be an element of a plan to commit genocide - the elimination of an entire population - in this case, Ukrainians resistant to Russian culture. 

But the other reason may be that NATO now believes Ukraine is capable of beating Russia's military so severely as to eliminate it as a threat and wants Ukraine to have the tools to do so. JL 

Courtney McBride reports in the Wall Street Journal, image Valentyn Ogirenko, Reuters:

As Ukraine prepares to resist a new Russian military assault in the east, it will be doing so with weapons and equipment the U.S. once considered too risky to provide to Kyiv. It follows President Biden’s allegation that Russia was conducting “genocide” in Ukraine. Given the current state of conflict in Ukraine, “there’s no distinction to be made between offensive and defensive weapons.” The new package includes heavier weaponry than the U.S. previously provided and—for the first time—American-made artillery pieces. “We need to give them the tools to finish the job.”

As Ukraine prepares to resist a new Russian military assault in the east, it likely will be doing so with weapons and equipment the U.S. once considered too risky to provide to Kyiv, highlighting how the line between offensive and defensive assistance has blurred in recent weeks.

The shift in weaponry comes as Kyiv has made increasing pleas for military assistance in recent days, warning of potential Russian escalation and the potential for mass civilian casualties amid Russia’s expected offensive in the Donbas area. It also follows President Biden’s allegation that Russia was conducting “genocide” in Ukraine.

Mr. Biden on Wednesday announced $800 million in additional security assistance for Ukraine, including artillery, armored personnel carriers, and Humvees, bringing total military aid committed to Ukraine since he took office to more than $3 billion. The new package includes heavier weaponry than the U.S. previously had provided and—for the first time—American-made artillery pieces.

While U.S. officials in the past have debated whether the U.S. government should limit itself to providing Kyiv with weapons designed to defend the country from attack, that distinction appears to have grown fuzzier as Russia moved its forces deeper into Ukraine. Any weapons designed to push Moscow’s forces out of the country arguably could be considered defensive, so long as it doesn’t involve hitting targets inside Russia, say U.S. officials and outside experts.

William Taylor, vice president for Russia and Europe at the United States Institute of Peace, said that given the current state of conflict in Ukraine, “there’s no distinction to be made between offensive and defensive weapons.”

After failing to take Kyiv, Russian forces in recent days have pulled back from the Ukrainian capital and other northern cities and begun redeploying to southern and eastern Ukraine, where Moscow made early gains in the first weeks of the invasion. The latest arms package, which comes in parallel with greater intelligence sharing, is meant to help Ukrainian forces in the expected battle there.

Mr. Taylor, a former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, welcomed the decision to send additional weapons to Ukraine. While the anti-armor and antiaircraft missiles provided to date have proved effective at repelling Russian forces near Kyiv, Mr. Taylor said “the big battle that’s coming in the east is on different terrain” and will require longer-range systems.

As with weapons, when it comes to intelligence, the distinction between “offensive” and “defensive” intelligence is an artificial one, says Jeffrey Edmonds, a Russia specialist who served at the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Security Council. He argues it would make little sense to withhold detailed information—such as the position of Russian artillery—as the U.S. is shipping hundreds of millions of dollars in advanced weaponry to the Ukrainian government.

“That’s no different in my mind from providing Javelins,” he said, referring to anti-tank missiles the U.S. has sent to Ukraine.

Mr. Edmonds, who was in government during Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea and is now at CNA, a Virginia-based nonprofit research group, said there is little risk that wider intelligence-sharing would escalate the conflict. “The Russians assume we’re providing all the intelligence we can,” he said.


The argument about the lack of distinction between offensive and defensive assistance amid an invasion is one Ukrainian officials have been making since the invasion started. Speaking last week in Brussels, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba blasted what he called the hypocrisy of those countries that would provide only what they labeled defensive weapons.

“When it comes to Ukraine, there should be no such difference as between defensive weapons and offensive weapons,” he said. “Because every weapon used in the territory of Ukraine, by the Ukrainian army, against a foreign aggressor is defensive by definition.”

That said, the administration still appears to be drawing the line at certain types of support, such as a no-fly zone, which could draw the North Atlantic Treaty Organization directly into an armed conflict with Russia. Fears of escalation into a full-scale war between Russia and NATO members were key to U.S. rejection of a plan to provide Polish MiG-29 jet fighters to Ukraine.

It isn’t just conventional weapons that still face limits. While the Biden administration has been open about the kind of defensive cybersecurity assistance it has provided Kyiv—deploying technical teams to Ukraine to help identify and patch vulnerabilities Russian hackers could exploit, for example—it continues to draw lines on the kind of cyber operations against Moscow it is willing to engage in, officials and experts have said.

Some of those hesitations are rooted in a longstanding policy doctrine in Washington to not engage in destructive hacking that could prompt escalatory retaliation from an adversary, especially because the U.S. is highly digitized and therefore vulnerable to counterattack.

Pentagon press secretary John Kirby on Wednesday challenged the notion that Washington’s provision of new equipment and plans to train Ukrainian forces on their use amount to escalatory moves, though he declined to speculate how Moscow might interpret them.

“We committed from the very beginning, even before the invasion, to helping Ukraine be able to defend itself,” he said. “This is a piece of that, and this is representative of the kinds of capabilities that the Ukrainians themselves have asked for and said they need as this fighting now gets focused on the eastern part of the country.

The United Kingdom also has taken the position that providing an increasingly sophisticated complement of weapons to Ukraine isn’t escalatory, because those weapons are being deployed in defense of the country.

James Cleverly, U.K. minister of state for European and North America, said Monday that from his government’s perspective, providing Ukraine with the means to defend itself against Russia isn’t escalatory.

“I totally understand the concerns about escalation, and they are meaningful and we need to be conscious of those,” he said, but the Ukrainians should have the equipment required “to fight effectively.”

“We need to give them the tools to finish the job,” he added.

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