Lethal Aid for Ukraine: Assessing Costs and Benefits
Lethal Aid for Ukraine: Assessing Costs and Benefits
As Russia’s support for separatist forces in Eastern Ukraine and direct involvement in the conflict there continues to escalate, French President François Hollande and German Chancellor Angela Merkel are in Moscow in an effort to negotiate a ceasefire and diplomatic solution with their Russian counterparts. Meanwhile, with Vice President Joe Biden and Secretary of State John Kerry in Europe, there are reports that the United States is considering the provision of defensive arms to Ukraine should diplomacy not be immediately successful. Taking the step of providing arms to Ukraine has garnered increasing support from members of Congress and outside experts. While it is clear that the United States and Europe need to reinforce their response to Russia, policymakers need to be rigorous in considering the costs and benefits of providing lethal aid to Kiev, which would make the United States a co-belligerent in the conflict. While providing arms to Ukraine could help Kiev resist Russian aggression, it also carries serious risks and limitations. Any final decision by Washington should include ways of mitigating or avoiding these risks altogether. Finally, any change in policy should be accompanied by new steps to support Ukraine’s ailing economy to ensure its ability to comprehensively resist Russian aggression.
In responding to greater Russian involvement in Ukraine, the task of formulating a reinforced response that could include the provision of defensive arms to Kiev is a challenging one, calling for careful cost-benefit analysis. Supreme Allied Commander for Europe Gen. Philip Breedlove – who supports providing defensive arms to Ukraine – has made clear the need to consider the Russian response in calibrating any policy, saying “all manner of aid has to be taken in light of what we anticipate would be the Russian reaction” and “could trigger a more strident reaction from Russia.” NSN Board Member Julianne Smith, also of the Center for a New American Security, explains, “We don’t want a new cold war. This isn’t about puffing up our chests and pushing back on Putin…It’s extremely delicate, dangerous, and risky – but for all those reasons people feel like we’ve got to come up with some new play. We’ve got to walk him back to the negotiating table.” [Philip Breedlove via AP, 2/5/15. Julianne Smith viaChristian Science Monitor, 2/3/15]
Providing defensive arms to Ukraine carries a number of risks and limitations that policymakers need to carefully consider in crafting a reinvigorated U.S.-European response to Russia:
Providing arms to Ukraine risks Russian escalation that could complicate the situation for Kiev, Europe, and the United States. Jeremy Shapiro of the Brookings Institution explains how varied levels of interests would play a role in any escalatory cycle: “Ukraine is clearly much more important to Russia than it is to [the] United States. Ukraine is also, unfortunately, located much closer to Russia than to the United States. Russia would appear to have many escalation options and a clear incentive to exercise them.” He adds, “to meet a Russian counter-escalation in Ukraine, the United States would have to either escalate the conflict beyond where it was originally willing to go or be forced into a humiliating retreat. Neither is a very attractive or credibility-enhancing option. U.S. policy should work very hard to avoid confronting that unpalatable choice.” [Jeremy Shapiro, 2/3/15]
Providing arms to Ukraine risks fraying the U.S.-European coalition at a time when transatlantic unity is crucial to countering Russian aggression. Tim Boersma of the Brookings Institution notes “The rather stiff reaction of German Chancellor Angela Merkel to the idea” of arming the Ukrainians and that “The French defense minister dismissed the idea of sending lethal weapons too.” He goes on to explain that, so far, the U.S.-European response to the crisis has “been hailed as a model of transatlantic cooperation and unity. Europe and America have moved together in lock-step on sanctions and not succumbed to the many efforts of the Russian regime to drive a wedge between them. If one would have asked American policymakers in February 2013 whether they would have deemed this possible, the response would most likely have been negative. Transatlantic unity has been the core element of the response thus far and it is broadly acknowledged that continued unity is the ‘conditio sine qua non’ for effectively coercing the Russians.” [Tim Boersma, 2/4/15]
It’s not clear that providing arms to Ukraine would compel Russia to more seriously negotiate – and could induce Russia to harden its position. Sean Kay of Ohio Wesleyan University points out that “Advancing weapons into Ukraine is precisely the kind of evidence that Putin wrongly says justifies his illegal actions.” A more fundamental problem, according to Jeremy Shapiro, is that advocates of sending defensive arms to Ukraine “assert that the secret to getting Russia to back down is to increase Russian ‘costs,’ by which they mean Ukraine could take advantage of Russia’s sensitivity to casualties…The government supposedly fears the ire of Russian mothers whose devotion to the well-being of their soldier-sons can move political mountains even in authoritarian Russia. Rather than face a growing number of aroused and organized Russian mothers, the thinking goes, President Vladimir Putin will avoid escalation in Ukraine. Unfortunately, one of the few more powerful forces than mothers in Russian politics is anti-Americanism. The Russian regime has defined the struggle in Ukraine as part of an existential battle against American imperialism, in which the United States eventually seeks to impose its will on Russia itself. American provision of arms would lend credence to that view and increase the Russian government’s freedom of action at home.” [Sean Kay,2/3/15. Jeremy Shapiro, 2/3/15]
Providing arms to Ukraine may end up providing limited benefits to Kiev without significant operational impact. Michael Kofman of the Wilson Center explains Ukraine’s military disadvantage in the conflict “is not due to technical deficits, although those exist across the board in its armed forces, but because its army as a whole is not a capable force. It lacks logistics, training, commanders with experience at maneuvering brigade- or battalion-sized elements, any coordination between volunteer battalions and regular forces, along with independent military analysis of the problems. There is no intelligence, no mobile reserves, no unified command and a political leadership that often seems disconnected from the facts on the ground. Dumping weapons into this operating environment is unlikely to prove a solution to the problems, all of which are fundamental and structural. The only thing clear in this conflict is that Ukraine stands no chance of defeating Russian forces, or the separatists, and that military escalation is a disproportionately losing proposition for Kyiv.” [Michael Kofman, 2/5/15]
Providing arms to Ukraine could cause fallout in other areas of the U.S.-Russian relationship. The Washington Post reports, “Any move toward arming Ukraine would almost certainly invite a reaction from Moscow, which is otherwise aligned with Washington on such issues as the Iran nuclear talks and the need to stop Islamic State militants in Syria and Iraq. ‘Even if we try to do this covertly, there’s a risk that it will boomerang in other areas of the U.S.-Russia relationship,’ said Andrew C. Kuchins, director of the Russia and Eurasia program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.” [Washington Post, 2/5/15]
Regardless of the decision on defensive arms to Ukraine, what Kiev needs most is financial assistance. Sean Kay explains, “Fundamentally, none of these proposals for military escalation address what Ukraine truly needs – tens of billions of dollars of guaranteed loans to cushion destabilizing but necessary economic reforms. No one, it seems, is lining up to write that check.” The Economist summarized Ukraine’s economic situation, “Ukraine needs all the help it can get. In 2014 GDP shrank by nearly a tenth. The currency, the hryvnia, fell by more than 50%. As the cost of imports rose, inflation jumped, from 1% a year ago to 25%. In a desperate attempt to prop up the hryvnia, the central bank has been throwing cash at the markets: Ukraine’s foreign-exchange reserves have fallen from more than $16 billion in the middle of 2014 to less than $7 billion. Ukraine will probably need $20 billion in external support to survive 2015.” [Sean Kay, 2/3/15. Economist, 2/4/15]
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