Supply More Artillery to Ukraine?

I am seeing a whole raft of calls to supply more artillery to Ukraine, presumably in reaction to Russia’s consolidation of its control over the Luhansk Oblast. Consider Josh Rogin’s observations in the Washington Post:

The Biden administration deserves credit for giving Ukraine massive amounts of help and rallying European allies to the cause. At the same time, concerns are rising that President Biden’s risk-averse strategy amounts to giving Kyiv just enough weapons to maintain a violent stalemate but not to win the war. Winter is coming, and if Russia controls large chunks of Ukrainian territory when the Donbas region freezes over, Putin’s gains will become harder, if not impossible, to roll back in the spring.

According to Mr. Rogin the impediment is primarily political:

Privately, several administration officials told me that the delays are not a result of any problem with the actual delivery of weapons. The core problem is the protracted hand-wringing inside the Biden policy team over each weapons decision. Risch said this is caused by a misguided concern that if Putin starts to lose badly, he might escalate further.

“As a result of that [the White House is] taking the middle path. And the middle path is the wrong path here,” he said. “They can win this, but they can’t do it themselves. They will provide the fight if we provide the weapons.”

concluding:

But at the current pace of support, the stalemate is only likely to persist — a recipe for endless war, destruction and human suffering. Zelensky reportedly told the NATO leaders Ukraine needs to push back Russian forces within months, not years. This week, he unveiled a recovery plan that calls for $750 billion in international investment and support. What will that tab be if the war goes on another year, or another five years?

All wars end with a negotiation, when one or both sides are exhausted enough to seek an end to the fighting. What’s clear is that neither Ukraine nor Russia is at this point of exhaustion yet. But the longer the war goes on, the more pressure mounts on Western economies and the greater the devastation and suffering of Ukrainians.

“Urgency is very important,” Risch said. “This has got to be done before the world looks the other way.”

By dragging its feet on giving Zelensky the weapons he is asking for, the United States risks ensuring that the stalemate persists, which ultimately redounds to Putin’s benefit. The Biden administration underestimated Ukrainian forces in the first stage of the war. It must not repeat the same mistake now.

Another in the genre is William A. Galston’s column in the Wall Street Journal:

A Ukrainian counteroffensive may fail, but if we withhold what the Ukrainians need to have a chance of succeeding, we will ensure that they fail. And if they fail, there is no reason to believe that Vladimir Putin, who sees himself as a 21st-century Peter the Great, will stop in Ukraine. As Mr. Putin once instructed a group of geography students, “The borders of Russia do not end.”

The U.S. owes President Volodymyr Zelensky’s government a chance to win this war, on which Ukraine’s survival and the West’s security depend. We must give the Ukrainians what they need, when they need it.

concluding:

To have the best chance of carrying out a successful counteroffensive, Ukraine will need to neutralize Russia’s advantage in long-range artillery, which it has used to devastating effect in the Donbas region. The Himars multiple-rocket mobile launch system is the best option. The U.S. has already sent Ukraine four of these systems, with another four on the way. Early battlefield reports suggest that Ukrainians have proved to be apt students and are using Himars to great effect. We should send Ukraine another 50 systems as soon as possible, while expanding and accelerating the training needed to operate this sophisticated equipment. (Some experts argue that a shortage of appropriate rockets would limit the utility of the additional Himars, at least in the short term.)

In addition, we should send the Ukrainian army advanced drones to bolster its intelligence gathering and its ability to attack Russian command centers. America should intensify its efforts to refill Ukraine’s stocks of ammunition and artillery shells that have been depleted by months of intense fighting. Working with our allies, the U.S. should give Mr. Zelensky’s government the estimated $5 billion a month that his government will need to maintain basic services during the economic collapse the invasion has created.

I see several defects in both columns. The first is that neither makes any mention of any of our NATO allies. Does Germany have no role in supplying the Ukrainians? On Sunday the German chancellor’s reaction to a question along those lines was instructive. It amounted to “we haven’t spent as much as the United States (even relative to our economy) and we don’t intend to”. That’s a pretty phlegmatic response.

The second is logistics which both columns ignores. 50 HIMARs amounts to our entire inventory. It should be obvious we aren’t going to deliver our entire inventory to the Ukrainians. Even should we intend to do that accomplishing it could be difficult. I think that this is a case in which a difference in scale is surely a difference in kind. Producing that quantity of new HIMARs on short order may well be beyond our capability. That’s the cost of offshoring the production of so many strategic materials.

I won’t even touch on the political gamesmanship aspect of the Ukrainians’ ask.