By Michael F. Duggan
We round out January with another round of dangerous escalation in the Russo-Ukrainian War, or at least an escalatory IOU. In terms of military hardware promised, the war is starting to look like an updated version of the one that the United States and Soviet Union successfully avoided fighting during 1945-91.
War is fundamentally unpredictable, and the war in Ukraine has too many moving parts and too many unknowns to make precise adumbrate possible. That said, when one considers the bigger Clausewitzian picture of relative resources that may be brought to bear (as opposed to individual Jominian facts, like the Russian reverses, or consolidations, in the northeast and in the south around Kherson), it appears that the Russians could win the war within a matter of months.
To date, the war has been characterized by a series of continuing rounds of escalation. Over the summer the U.S. and Britain gave the Ukrainians M142 HIMARS and M270 MLRS rocket systems, and in the fall, began training them in the use of Patriot missiles. There was the Russian announcement on September 21, 2022 of a partial mobilization and the annexation of the eastern Ukrainian oblasts of Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk, and Zaporizhia. Then there is the persisting Russian drone and missile offensive designed to degrade Ukrainian infrastructure and power grids and the Ukrainian retaliatory strikes against Russian airbase near Engels that houses a part of their TU-95 and TU-160 nuclear bomber fleet. After that came the announcement that the U.S. would be providing the Ukrainians with Bradley Fighting Vehicles (BFV) and Stryker Infantry Carrying Vehicles (ICV). There were the recent Russian advances around Bakhmut and Soledar and ongoing speculation of a Russian winter or spring offensive possibly beginning this month (February). Escalations continue and the danger is that things that are easily ratcheted up may not be as easily brought down again.
The latest escalation was last week’s announcement by the U.S. and Germany to supply the Ukrainian Army with 31 Abrams (M1A2) and 14 Leopard II tanks (and this week Canada, France, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Spain and the UK have also pledged tanks, possibly bringing the total to 321, or the heavy armor compliment of two tank divisions). The Russians responded to this with a particularly heavy barrage of drones and cruise missiles on January 26 that reportedly killed 11 Ukrainian civilians. Until this week, President Zelensky’s lobbying campaign for modern heavy armor had been a mostly tankless effort. No more, apparently.
But if providing main battle tanks (MBT) had previously been taboo, then why now (besides the obvious answer that it is the next logical step in a protracted, escalating war)?
One answer might be that Western politicians and war planners realize that motorized infantry hardware like BFVs and ICVs would be of limited use in a modern combined arms campaign without heavy armor. Perhaps they believe that Western tanks might be Ukraine’s only hope for repelling a Russian offensive.
Of course the real answer might be the opposite of this, cynicism, for instance. Given that the Leopards will not be arriving for two or more months and the Abrams—which will be built for the Ukrainians rather than taken from existing U.S. stockpiles—will probably be coming in six months to a year, they may be as about as relevant as reinforcements for the defenders of Bataan, Wake Island, or the Alamo shipping on a similar schedule. But their effects may be felt immediately and not in the way that is intended. With the 321 tanks now in the offing, their practical value will be as a signal of determination and a desire to up the ante: i.e. a provocation for further escalation. When they do arrive—assuming that Ukrainians can be trained to use and repair these highly complex machines in a reasonable amount of time—their other practical effect will likely be to lengthen and intensify the war, therefore increasing casualties and prolonging the suffering on both sides.
Of course, the most obvious answer to “why tanks, why now?” is an assertion of NATO solidarity—an encouragement for others to send heavy armor—a reaffirmation of U.S. leadership and cover for European nations to follow suite, which they now have. But this also suggests a dangerous lack of concern over the possibility of Russia reacting disproportionately. The all-important question for policymakers about assumptions of provocative escalatory measures in a game of nuclear-backed brinksmanship is: what if you are wrong? After all, another way of interpreting the pledge for tanks would be to say that the West is willing to send heavy weapons built in the United States, Germany, and the UK to a nation on Russia’s western border to kill Russian troops. If the situation was reversed, how would NATO respond? How would the U.S. react if the Russians were supplying their latest tanks to anti-American forces in Canada?
The lesson the Russians take away from this gesture could be quite different from the intended one, and it may force unintended consequences. Although a Russian offensive in the near future is likely, the scheduling of German armor for arrival in the spring (?) may compel them to invade well before arrival of the tanks, sooner rather than later. Thus the pledge may actually provoke the attack. And if the Russian attack is successful in decisively defeating the Ukrainian Ground Forces, then a far more dangerous escalation on the part of the West may be inevitable.
Ever since the 1990s, the U.S. foreign policy apparatus (“The Blob”) has been dominated by Neocons and other genera of interventionists. Their self image is heavily invested in the eastward expansion of NATO. And the front lines are now in Ukraine. Victory in Ukraine (whatever that might mean) means everything to them, and if hawks like Antony Blinken and zealots like Victoria Nuland have anything to say about it, Ukrainian defeat will not be an option.
If Russia defeats the Ukrainian Army in the coming months, thus forcing the collapse or decapitation of the Zelensky government, would the U.S. and Poland just stand by? In rational terms there would be little they could do in a conventional military sense, short of committing the West to an all-out war with Russia and its allies.
But given that a Ukrainian defeat, or anything perceived as a weak Western response to it, would spell disaster for the Democrats in 2024—and given the Trotskyite fervor of The Blob and the considerable, perhaps irresistible, political pressure that would be brought to bear on the administration—would the U.S. and its allies be compelled to enter directly into the fighting? If they did, it would mark the start of the Third World War, a war that would likely have a nuclear ending.
Given the insufficient numbers of promised tanks and the unrealistic timetable of training Ukrainian tank crews and mechanics and actually delivering the weapons, the final possibility is that the promise to send tanks is all just window dressing in a war that may soon be lost—a preemptive political fig leaf. The purpose would be to show that the West is doing all it can, albeit for domestic consumption. This way the administration can point to the tank promise as proof that the United States did everything it could to win the war short of intervention. Let’s hope that this is the real purpose for the tank pledge. Otherwise it is just one more step toward Armageddon.
Like other complex chaotic phenomena, wars are fundamentally unpredictable. As Justice Holmes reminds us, “…I accept no prophecy with confidence. The unforeseen is generally what happens.” On the other hand, The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists just moved the Doomsday Clock up to 90 seconds to midnight. By comparison, it was at 7 minutes (420 seconds) to midnight during the Cuban Missile Crisis.