<mediadc-video-embed data-state="{"cms.site.owner":{"_ref":"00000161-3486-d333-a9e9-76c6fbf30000","_type":"00000161-3461-dd66-ab67-fd6b93390000"},"cms.content.publishDate":1654277820235,"cms.content.publishUser":{"_ref":"0000017a-8cb2-d416-ad7a-beb7278f0000","_type":"00000161-3461-dd66-ab67-fd6b933a0007"},"cms.content.updateDate":1654277820235,"cms.content.updateUser":{"_ref":"0000017a-8cb2-d416-ad7a-beb7278f0000","_type":"00000161-3461-dd66-ab67-fd6b933a0007"},"rawHtml":"
var _bp = _bp||[]; _bp.push({ "div": "Brid_52990416", "obj": {"id":"27789","width":"16","height":"9","video":"1015843"} }); ","_id":"00000181-2aa4-dedf-ad93-bfe747ee0000","_type":"2f5a8339-a89a-3738-9cd2-3ddf0c8da574"}”>Video EmbedThe United States is right to provide robust support to Ukraine in its defensive war against Russia.
This war will help shape the future of our world. It will help define whether expansionist autocratic regimes such as Russia and China are able to subjugate weaker democracies such as Ukraine and Taiwan. Will democracies show that they can be coerced into compliance? Or will the free world make clear that free peoples will continue to thrive in the 21st century?
Those questions in mind, the Biden administration should be doing more and doing it more quickly to get Ukraine the weapons it needs to thwart Vladimir Putin.
Multiple launch rocket systems, for example, should have been provided to Ukraine in early April rather than only now. And as it deploys those artillery systems, Ukraine should have the long-range munitions to arm them. As of now, the White House has limited munitions for these rocket units to those with a range of approximately 50 miles. Were the U.S. to provide Ukraine with its Army Tactical Missiles, Ukraine’s new rocket units could hit Russian targets up to 200 miles away. That would better protect Ukrainian forces and more effectively limit Russian forces’ freedom of action.
That said, U.S. arms support for Ukraine should not extend to a re-fighting of the Crimean War.
While the U.S. should continue to demand Russia’s return to Ukraine of the Crimean peninsula and the Donbas area of southeastern Ukraine that it has stolen since 2014, Washington should not arm a future Ukrainian effort to retake those areas.
To be clear, Ukraine has every right, perhaps even a responsibility, to recover its stolen territory. But U.S. interests do not justify providing heavy arms for that broader action. The point bears making because President Volodymyr Zelensky has made clear that he wishes to secure the entirety of Ukraine under Kyiv’s democratic governance. Again, however, what is right for Ukraine is not necessarily what is right for the U.S.
If and when Russia is forced to end major offensive operations and abandon territory taken in 2022, U.S. interests should shift to the political track.
This doesn’t mean giving Russia a pass on its bloody mayhem. Nor should it mean pushing Ukraine to agree to a ceasefire that accepts Russian sovereignty over any of its territory. Moscow must pay a cost for its war of aggression that goes beyond its defeat on the battlefield. That means leveraging Western sanctions introduced since the start of this war in order to pressure the Kremlin into a formal, enforced political compromise. A just compromise — unlike the absurd Franco-German-negotiated Minsk accords of the 2014-2015 era, which were heavily in Moscow’s favor.
Crimea is of almost sanctified value to Putin. Not only does the Crimean peninsula offer Russia its centering Black Sea fleet headquarters at Sevastopol, it offers Russia a physical vindication of defining mythology. Russia’s defeat to Britain, France, and the Ottoman Empire during the mid-19th-century Crimean War remains a source of great pain for Russian nationalists. The Russian leader probably could not surrender Crimea to Ukraine without losing power. And that means Putin’s risk tolerance for retaining Crimea would likely be far greater than his risk tolerance in pursuit of the war he has waged since February.
As he ponders his future strategy, Zelensky deserves U.S. commitment to his defensive campaign. But he also deserves American clarity as to where heavier arms supplies might meet their limit.
