Arming Ukraine?

Secretary of State John Kerry arrived in Kiev today and he will probably not have any good news if we can believe one of the U.S. president’s own advisers. “We don’t think the answer to the crisis in Ukraine is simply to inject more weapons,” Deputy White House National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes stated Tuesday evening. “We still think that the best way to influence Russia’s calculus is through those economic sanctions that are biting deep into the Russian economy,” he declared on CNN.

The issue here is that Russian President Vladimir Putin is clearly not strategizing the way Westerners are. Not only has Russia had to deal with the sanctions imposed by Europe and North America, but its oil revenues have dropped by 50 percent since prices collapsed. Though the combined effect of these blows to the Russian economy has been harsh, as the new offensive by pro-Russian rebels has demonstrated, Putin continues to resist.

Since then, several former American and European officials have declared that now is the time to increase pressure on Moscow by supplying arms to the government in Kiev. Massive military aid has not been discussed yet. What is being discussed is sending defensive equipment that would help meet military and political objectives.

In an interview with the French daily Libération, France’s former Foreign Affairs Minister Hubert Védrine stated that “helping legal authorities to defend themselves is a conservative measure that can be used to reestablish the balance of power on the ground and force Russia to accept a compromise without humiliating it.”

Western Doubts

Since the beginning of the conflict in 2014, the West has been reluctant about arming Ukraine because it wants to avoid adding fuel to the fire. Europe in particular fears escalating the situation or worse, being considered “indirect co-belligerents” like Védrine hypothesizes. In fact, for the past few years, Putin has regularly accused NATO of wanting to weaken his country by integrating former Soviet republics within the Western military alliance. For him, last year’s Ukrainian “revolution” is nothing but a veiled coup d’état designed to bring Ukraine into the Western sphere of influence.

Arms shipments would reinforce Moscow’s opinion about Western intentions toward Russia, and even more so now that eight former American officials called on NATO, and on Eastern European republics that still possess Soviet weapons particularly, to provide military aid to Ukraine.

Instead of dissuading Putin or even equalizing the balance of power on the ground, arming Ukraine would likely turn the situation into a lengthy conflict. It is a completely plausible scenario. A small amount of arms would arrive. Then once the Ukrainian army found itself incapable of resisting Russia, more arms would be sent and the cycle would quickly perpetuate itself. Within two or three years, the front would expand and Moscow would fan the flames in Baltic countries with minority Russian populations. The West would find itself in an indirect war with Russia. And for what purpose?

Ukraine has the right to defend itself and receive arms from whomever wants to provide them. However, considering the hundreds of thousands of casualties caused by intervening in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and Syria, it would be wise to think carefully about the consequences that arming Ukraine would have in the heart of Europe.