Opinion The time for
incrementalism in Ukraine
is over. Send in the tanks.
If this kind of debate sounds familiar, that’s because it is. We have already shipped to Ukraine weapons systems — including antiaircraft missiles, HIMARS rocket artillery and Patriot air defense batteries — that would have been unthinkable a year or even just months ago. Yet no one seems entirely happy with the result. Some worry that the Biden administration has gone too fast, risking Russian escalation as a response to U.S. and NATO support for Ukraine. Still others indict President Biden for excessive caution. Even Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, in his speech of gratitude and solidarity to Congress just before Christmas, couldn’t resist gently chastising Washington with his “honestly, not really” line about whether Western aid to date was adequate
In fact, there has been a method to the West’s apparent madness in sticking with the slow-but-steady approach to arming Ukraine. It’s not perfect, but it has been pretty good, and in broad terms it should continue to inform our assistance to Kyiv.
But there’s an important caveat to be made. What one might call the “the Goldilocks policy” will continue to work only if we recognize its risks — most importantly, that it is fundamentally reactive, thus hindering the development of a strategy to end the war. (And by the way, I’m in favor of sending hundreds of Western tanks as soon as possible — for reasons I will explain below.)
First, though, a defense of “slow but steady.” The need to avoid Russian retaliation or escalation is often cited as the main reason for a step-by-step approach. That is an entirely valid concern. The United States and allies have directly assisted Ukraine in the killing or wounding of more than 100,000 Russian soldiers.Western weapons have provided Kyiv with the necessary lethal capabilities, and U.S. intelligence systems have been part of the kill chain. This is a form of military support that far exceeds what the United States did to help Afghan mujahideen fight the Soviets in the 1980s — or any of its other partners in Cold War-era proxy conflicts against the
So it made sense to wait and see if Russia would shoot at NATO logistics infrastructure, supply convoys, satellites or even NATO military bases in Eastern Europe. So far, caution has paid off. Ukraine has survived as a country and taken back a respectable amount of the land it lost in the war’s early months; the war has not expanded. Moreover, when Putin issued his veiled and not-so-veiled nuclear threats in September and after, they had to be taken seriously. It was better to let him cool down before considering the next escalation of Western military support.
Second, experience has shown that the West was right to take time to assess Ukraine’s most immediate and acute needs as a matter of priority at each stage of the fight. Javelin and Stinger missiles were crucial to stymying Russia’s initial attacks on Kyiv in late February and March 2022. In the next phase of the fighting in the spring and summer, Kyiv needed an ability to punch back against Russia’s bombardments of regions in Ukraine’s east and south. Then, in the late summer and fall, more accurate and longer-range artillery — including HIMARS — gave Ukraine a chance to take back some territory by targeting Russian infrastructure, command posts, troop concentrations, depots and key supply routes. Improved defenses against drones and missiles became crucial when Russia stepped up aerial attacks from September onward.
Third, the West’s “cautiously aggressive” approach also acknowledges another reality: that modern weapons systems are complex to use. Learning how to use Patriot missiles takes months. (The same point applies to the United States’ Abrams main battle tanks, by the way — to say nothing of maintaining them or properly integrating them into a combined-arms operation.) Ukrainian soldiers have demonstrated impressive learning abilities as they adapted to Western weaponry over the past year. Even so, we’ve been right to take into account the long learning curves needed to master these systems.
Yet the debate over tanks has also revealed the biggest weakness of the incrementalist approach — namely, that it is always reacting to events on the battlefield rather than trying to shape them. Going step by step has helped Ukraine patch up vulnerabilities, to be sure, but it hasn’t furthered the goal of formulating a strategy to end the war or defining the capacity that will be ultimately needed to do so. Tactically, we have been very good, but strategically our planning is somewhat lacking.
As for the tanks, I think it’s time we provide them. That’s not because doing so will necessarily help Ukraine win the war decisively. Rather, Kyiv deserves a fair chance to win back as much territory as possible. Until it has that chance, neither Russia nor Ukraine is likely to negotiate with the kind of sober realism needed to end this war on reasonable and sustainable terms. Sending tanks will also show Moscow that American resolve remains firm even with war-skeptical Republicans in charge in the House of Representatives — another factor crucial to productive talks.
If this conflict is to have any chance of ending in 2023, as I hope, there is little time to waste in providing Ukraine with a true combined-arms-maneuver warfare capability and then seeing what it can do with it.
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