How Far Should We Go in Aiding Ukraine?

In his New York Times column Charles Blow argues that we have a responsibility to provide military and humanitarian aid to Ukraine. It takes him a while to build up to it but here’s his peroration:

I say that the United States must supply military aid and should supply humanitarian aid. But I also say that we must be more consistent in determining who deserves outpourings of our humanitarian impulses.

Human suffering is human suffering. It has been a constant in the story of mankind. Sometimes it overlaps with our national interests, and sometimes it does not. But our sense of morality must remain constant, and in it we must find a place for equity.

My beliefs are a bit different. I believe that we must provide humanitarian aid and may supply military aid. We have fecklessly created a geopolitical interest in a part of the world in which we had no or next to no interest.

I suspect the reason for our differences of opinion is that I don’t believe in the tikun olam (“heal the world”) theory of human beings’ role in the universe. All too often we make matters worse by trying. I think that we have a moral obligation to help others. My views are largely informed by Jesus of Nazareth’s Sermon on the Mount. While he did say “Blessed are the peacemakers” there was nothing in it about the warmakers or fomenting global nuclear war. I think we’d be better off doing our best at walking back the geopolitical interest we have created in Ukraine.

The editors of the Washington Post praise President Biden’s response to Ukrainian President Zelenskyy’s address to Congress yesterday:

To this wise suggestion, the second president to speak — President Biden — replied by announcing that the United States will indeed step up its military shipments to Ukraine, to include more shoulder-fired antiaircraft missiles and “longer-range systems,” seemingly a reference to the Russian-made S-300 batteries that Mr. Zelensky specifically asked for, and that might be available from Eastern European NATO members. Mr. Biden also offered “cutting edge” drones. All told, the president said, the United States has authorized $1 billion in military aid in just the past week. This is, indeed, a credible alternative to the no-fly zone, the risks of which still outweigh the benefits, and which NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg separately ruled out in a statement between the end of Mr. Zelensky’s remarks and the beginning of Mr. Biden’s.

I found the editors’ of the Wall Street Journal’s reaction wryly amusing. They agreed with President Biden’s response but don’t want to give him credit for it. From their perspective it’s too little and too late:

In response to Mr. Zelensky, Mr. Biden chose Wednesday to announce the U.S. will send $800 million more in military aid to Ukraine. This will help, but it’s also fair to ask why it has taken three weeks of bombing for this to happen. As Nebraska Senator Ben Sasse put it in advance of Mr. Zelensky’s speech “If they can shoot it, we can ship it.” MiGs and Su-25s, S-200s and S-300s, drones.

An example are Switchblade drones that are portable and can destroy a target from a distance. The weapon is ideal for attacking tanks and some of the artillery units that are hitting cities and civilians. The latest U.S. arms package reportedly includes 100 Switchblades. But the Pentagon should have delivered all of the Switchblades in the American arsenal to Ukraine at the start of the war, and then contracted to buy more.

President Biden’s moral condemnation of Russia has been laudable, and he has coordinated well with allies. But throughout this crisis he has also had to be prodded by Congress, allies and public opinion to do more.

The U.S. failed to deter Mr. Putin by merely threatening sanctions, then imposed sanctions only gradually after the invasion. He resisted a ban on Russian oil imports, resisted trade restrictions, and had to be prodded to supply more arms. It’s as if Mr. Biden is so wary of provoking Mr. Putin that he’s afraid what might happen if Ukraine won the war.

I find no evidence that sanctions have ever deterred any major power from anything and, regardless of what you may have heard, Russia remains a major power so I’m not as disappointed as the editors are. While I think that intelligent people may differ on this subject, I think that the risks of direct intervention exceed the likely gains and it is extremely hard to manage the risks of increased military support for Ukraine. What if they lose? What if they win?

I also think there is a major lack of understanding of the Russian way of making war and the likelihood of Russia’s backing down from their invasion of Ukraine as its costs rise but that is a matter for another post.