As the West escalates its support for Ukraine, the United States and Britain stand out in the weapons they have already provided.
Yet when it comes to their respective risk tolerances, their appetite for risk in aggravating Russia, the two allies take divergent approaches.
The Biden administration has taken repeated and very public steps to outline its concern about avoiding escalation with Russia. To the concern of the U.S. military’s Strategic Command, the White House has even shown significant hesitation in the most critical of deterrent domains: that of nuclear weapons. In contrast, Boris Johnson’s government has reveled in enabling Ukraine’s growing battlefield success. A junior British defense minister evinced as much Tuesday, declaring that the United Kingdom was happy for Ukraine to use British-provided weapons to attack targets inside Russia.
This is the tip of the iceberg when it comes to how the U.S. and U.K. see their role in Ukraine’s defensive war.
Ukraine and U.S. allies in Europe, including but not limited to Britain, the Baltic states, and Poland, are quietly frustrated by what they see as the Biden administration’s slow-rolling of arms supplies to Ukraine. While these deliveries have unquestionably sped up as the war has continued, there is a common perception that President Joe Biden’s National Security Council wishes only to provide what it must when it must, rather than what it can as soon as it can. This was particularly notable in the buildup to Russia’s invasion, when the Biden administration failed to send Stinger anti-aircraft missiles to Ukraine in large quantities or allow the Baltic states to send their own weapons to Ukraine — at least until, that is, the day after the news of that reluctance made its way to the media.
Behind the scenes, it is an unspoken but commonly understood truth that the Ukrainian government views Johnson as its closest Western partner.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky hinted as much when he took Johnson on a guided tour through Kyiv earlier in April. In contrast, albeit partly due to U.S. protective security concerns, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin received only a photo with a stony-faced Zelensky on their visit to Kyiv last weekend. The top line is that Ukraine wants Washington to deliver more lethal weapons on a greater scale and at a faster speed. It wants this not only because the U.S. has an unparalleled ability to make a difference in its war effort but because Kyiv knows Washington’s example would consolidate other European powers to also provide more weapons. Considering Russia’s escalating threats against those supplying weapons to Ukraine, U.S. leadership from the front is a rising concern.
It would be unfair to give the Biden administration anything worse than a C grade on weapons supplies. The scale of U.S. weapons supplies to Ukraine is unmatched, after all. This is not simply a function of the far greater stockpiles of anti-tank, anti-air, and other weapons that the U.S. military possesses, but it is also the result of the U.S. Air Force’s vast airlift capability. The war in Ukraine has proven many things, but one of the most important is its underlining of the absolute failure of nations such as France, Germany, Italy, and, to a lesser but still significant extent, Britain to invest in major airlift capabilities. Troops and missiles aren’t of much use if you can’t get them to the battlefield in short order.
Still, the top line is that while the Biden administration remains reticent to maximize Ukraine’s combat potential, the U.K. has few such qualms. The U.S. has yet to provide anti-ship and vehicle anti-air systems (such as the Avenger series) to Ukraine, for example. It fears doing so may provoke Russian President Vladimir Putin’s escalation elsewhere in Europe. Not so for Johnson’s government. Britain is providing weapons of both types. At tactical levels, also, Ukraine’s taking of the fight into Russia reflects Kyiv’s adoption of the U.K.’s special forces doctrine. This has not gone unnoticed in Moscow, which, while pathological in its anti-American paranoia, is increasingly public in its outrage toward London.
What’s perhaps most shocking about this divergence in U.K. and U.S. attitudes toward supplying Ukraine is that it reflects an inversion of what might have been expected. Consider that while Biden ran for president on a platform of restoring American leadership and countering Putin, Johnson’s Conservative Party has spent the past decade gorging at the London trough of illicit Russian money. What changed?
There is no doubt that the British government sees this as a key test of Britain’s ability to “punch above its weight” in the post-Brexit world. Certainly, Johnson appears to see this as a chance to prove that under his premiership, Britain is, and will remain, a major global actor. But there’s also a personal angle at play. Elements of the British security establishment appear to see the war as a bloody test of wills similar to the mid-19th-century Crimean War. They want to give Russia a bloody nose, especially after incidents such as the 2018 Skripal assassination attempt in which an innocent British woman was killed. Johnson himself seems motivated by the belief that this is his historic moment. With a strong parliamentary majority, if also falling poll numbers, he is willing to roll the dice.
Regardless, as tensions with Russia escalate, we should expect London, not Washington, to take the more hawkish stance.
