The ‘No Blank Check for Ukraine’ Fallacy

T he Republican Party is now split between two camps: those, such as Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.), House Foreign Affairs Committee chairman Michael McCaul (R., Texas), and presidential candidate Nikki Haley, who have called for giving Ukraine all the weapons it needs to repel the Russian invasion; and those, such as Representatives Marjorie Taylor Greene (R., Ga.) and Matt Gaetz (R., Fla.), as well as former president Donald Trump, who have called for cutting off arms shipments to Ukraine, thereby letting the Russians win.

This divide is intractable. Nevertheless, some Republican politicians and writers have attempted to finesse it with a compromise strategy. According to this faction, we should continue to support Ukraine with arms for a while, but set an upper limit to our support. There should be “no blank check.” Instead, once our limit is reached, they say, we should inform Ukraine that our patience is at an end, so it should take whatever terms Vladimir Putin is willing to give them.

There are three reasons why this is not a good strategy.

First, it is a bad strategy because it guarantees defeat, whereas a good military strategy is one that maximizes the chance for victory. It guarantees defeat because if we set a limit on the size or time duration of our commitment, all Putin has to do to win is to wait us out — and he will have been given every incentive to do so. This is precisely the strategy that the Trump and Biden administrations employed to respectively set up and then implement America’s defeat in Afghanistan.

Second, it is a bad strategy because Ukraine is not the only nation that would suffer as a result of a Russian victory. Russia’s war on Ukraine has been conceived of as part of a plan to cripple America and the West on the world stage. This is immediately apparent to anyone who takes the trouble to read what the Kremlin leadership and its propagandists are saying. See, for example, this charming video depicting the Volgograd (formerly Stalingrad) “Motherland Calls” statue beheading the Statue of Liberty.

The Kremlin’s repeated statements that it is at war with America are not just a matter of propaganda. Russian victory over Ukraine would eliminate the million-man Ukrainian army from the West’s order of battle, cure Russia’s critical strategic weakness along its southwest border, and advance Russian forces to the borders of NATO allies Poland and Romania. It would also discredit the U.S. as an ally, thereby disrupting the Western alliance in both Europe and Asia. As part of the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, the U.S. (in concert with other nations) agreed to guarantee Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity in exchange for Ukraine’s giving up its nuclear arsenal. If we break this pledge and allow Ukraine to be destroyed, no one will ever trust us to protect them again and a worldwide race to acquire nuclear weapons will be unleashed. Furthermore, if we show we are not even willing to accept the modest sacrifice of providing Ukraine with an adequate amount of our second-string arms, there would be no reason for China to believe that we would be willing to risk our entire Pacific fleet to defend Taiwan. War in Asia would ensue accordingly.

Third, it is a bad strategy because defeat in this war is completely unnecessary. Winning a war requires two things: sufficient arms and enough men willing to put their lives at risk to fight. We have plenty of the former, and Ukraine has plenty of the latter. The only reason this war is dragging on is that the Biden administration has embraced an absurd strategy of dribbling out arms deliveries to Ukraine as slowly as possible.

The U.S. has over 6,000 M1 Abrams tanks. President Biden himself has said “Ukraine needs tanks.” Nevertheless, with decisive combat pending this spring, the administration has decided to send all of thirty Abrams tanks to Ukraine — but not even take them out of the thousands we have stationed right now in the continental U.S. Instead, new ones will be built, with delivery scheduled for next year. The U.S. has sent mobile-rocket-artillery platforms to Ukraine, but only 38 of the thousands of MLRS units have been provided to Ukraine so far, and without their most effective ammunition. The administration could readily meet Ukraine’s desperate need for long-range missiles by sending 300 km range ATACMS, which pack a 500-pound warhead punch, some 4,000 of which are available now. But instead, the administration has decided to send inferior GLSDB missiles, which offer half the punch and half the range. Additionally, and most critically, these missiles have not yet been produced in quantity, and consequently are unlikely to be available in time for the action. The administration has stalled on delivering anti-aircraft defenses, and is still refusing to provide Ukraine with the F-16 fighters it vitally needs.

We have over 6,000 tanks, 2,000 MLRS-type units, 3,700 ATACMS, and 2,000 F-16s. Were we to send 10 percent of each to Ukraine, the war could be won by summer. Equipped with such arms, the Ukrainians could launch a counteroffensive to the south, cutting Russia’s land bridge to Crimea. Using the ATACMS, the Kerch Strait bridge could be finished off as well. That would leave the Russian forces in Crimea trapped in a peninsula cut off from supply, just as Cornwallis was at Yorktown. Sooner or later, they would be forced to surrender, a humiliating defeat that would force Russia to terms.

With Russia’s army largely destroyed and the Kremlin gang humbled, deterrence would be restored. This would eliminate the need to station massive amounts of American troops in Europe and allow us to concentrate our forces in the far East, thereby forestalling any threat from China.

Biden’s Ukraine policy has been imbecilic, giving Ukraine enough arms to avoid defeat but not enough to win. The Republican Party should not be searching for one that is even worse.

Instead of seeking to guarantee defeat, we should seek to guarantee victory.