The point of not giving enough weapons to Ukraine to settle this quickly is much more nuanced than just "don't anger Putin":
- After previous proxy wars that saw a country flooded with western weapons it was not unheard of for a new regime to turn around and sooner or later use all the weapons they got against western forces in turn (see Afghanistan for the most famous example). Governments do slowly learn the lessons of the past and are hesitant to give out too many weapons.
- Mobilization in Russia has seen hundreds of thousands flee the country and tens of thousands of young men have been killed or wounded. Even after the war ends and sanctions are eventually lifted, the demographic imbalances that Russia will face in the coming future will keep crippling its economy and army for decades. NATO doesn't care all that much about who rules the Donbas, but they do care about reducing the threat of Russia to its member states. Prolonging the war for another few years will see tens of thousands more mobilized Russians being fed into the meat grinder, making the future demographic problems that much worse.
- The Russian state falling apart and former provinces selling their nukes to the highest bidder would be a Bad Thing (tm), so we want to supply the Ukrainians with enough weapons so that they don't lose (and maybe win back the conquered territories) but not with enough weapons that they could conceivably make a big enough counter attack into Russia that it would fracture.
> The Russian state falling apart and former provinces selling their nukes to the highest bidder would be a Bad Thing (tm), so we want to supply the Ukrainians with enough weapons so that they don't lose (and maybe win back the conquered territories) but not with enough weapons that they could conceivably make a big enough counter attack into Russia that it would fracture.
Yeah, because a federal state headquartered in Moscow would never fracture from the cost of a long slow war, only a quick clear defeat. (Please, please don't look at the last time a federal state headquartered in Moscow fractured and the war that set the stage for it.)
So NATO is deliberately prolonging the war at the expense of Ukraine to fulfil some masterplan involving a time-delayed demographic-based attack on Russia to weaken it? Nah, I don't buy it.
Assuming it was possible through increased arms sales/lend-leases/donations to tip the balance (it's not) - wouldn't a quick, comprehensive defeat followed by the accession of Ukraine to NATO and the EU be more of a destabilising black-eye for Russia than a slow-burn demographic time-bomb? Given that they've now seen first-hand the difference between being a NATO member and not, why would Ukraine then go on to burn the possibility of joining by then countering with an invasion of Russia?
If it was possible to end this quickly in Ukraine's favour without starting WW3 then NATO countries would have done so. At the very least so the the EU could go back to buying gas and oil from Russia.
It's more of an attack of opportunity rather than a preconceived masterplan I think. In chess terms: the Russians blundered and NATO is taking advantage of it.
A similar thing happened with the Sweden and Finland situation: NATO would prefer them to be a part of the alliance but had acquiesced to them remaining neutral. However when the war started and they decided they would actually prefer to join NATO now, the current members (except Turkiye, but even they didn't oppose it on military grounds) were more than happy to fast-track their joining procedures. Never waste a good crisis, as the saying goes.
I do think NATO could have done more if they really wanted to end the war quicker. As the original comment mentioned, the western countries have pretty large stockpiles of armored vehicles that could be sent over. There are also plenty of systems like ATACMS and cluster munitions that the USA has but has decided not to supply to Ukraine. The fact that NATO has so far declined to supply these weapons even though they could indeed be used to end the conflict sooner indicates to me that they are not interested in ending the conflict as soon as possible.
Well NATO members like Poland, Slovakia and Czech Republic have been supplying armoured vehicles, and importantly they’ve been of the similar type that the Ukrainian army already trained to use and maintain. It’s been stated elsewhere in this thread that you can’t just do s/T72/M1 Abrams/ on an army.
I agree that we can do more, but I don’t think we can do enough to turn the tides overnight without trucking in brigades of NATO forces and starting WW3.
> be more of a destabilising black-eye for Russia than a slow-burn demographic time-bomb?
In this situation you can't get rid of all the stale weapons, can't have a hundreds of new weapon contracts and can't have a perfect opportunity to sell LNG.
> At the very least so the the EU could go back to buying gas and oil from Russia.
This is not in the interests of one NATO country.
That wasn't a masterplan, but it's a result of decades of meddling in the politics of all states on Russian border. Yep, there was a disastrous blunder which allowed to the current situation to develop, but always remember what Soviets were 10 feet tall.
So I know it doesn't apply everywhere but I'm going to raise Occam's razor here, because either:
1. the war is being deliberately prolonged by US or NATO, despite the economic and political issues it causes domestically in many NATO countries, with the purpose of offloading some military equipment, selling a bit of LNG for a while and triggering a demographic problem some point in the future (one that didn't topple the USSR when it last occurred after WW2)
2. winning a war is hard and there's only so much hardware a country can use, and it's not clear at what point helping one country causes their opponent to turn to nuclear weapons
The first possibility involves nations acting against their own self-interests in service of a combination of small-fry trade and some nefarious bond villain style plan. The second involves some simple and observable facts.
> but it's a result of decades of meddling in the politics of all states on Russian border
I presume you are referring to Russia’s meddling in those states?
> This is not in the interests of one NATO country.
The entire EU would have been delighted if they were able to keep buying Russian gas at the price they did. They’ve just about managed to cobble together supplies to make it through the winter, and have bodged this floating LNG terminal quickly signalling what the future of EU gas imports probably look like. But make no mistake if they had a way to keep buying cheap Russian gas without throwing Ukraine under the bus they would absolutely have taken it. That ship has since sailed.
> I presume you are referring to Russia’s meddling in those states?
I presume you are completely oblivious on what US did in Ukraine in the last 30 years? Or it's a totally different thing, because evil Russkies and democratic Americans?
> But make no mistake if they had a way to keep buying cheap Russian gas without throwing Ukraine under the bus they would absolutely have taken it.
You are stating the reason here yet you are totally ignore it yourself. There is one country what doesn't depend on Russian gas and to which prolonging the crisis only provides benefits without downsides?
> raise Occam's razor
You need to compare comparable things. One thing is a Bond-like master plan. Other one is 'oh things hard' ignoring what this thing were baked for decades.
RE1) Abrams and Leopards would become inoperable within a year or two without spares, much faster if you actually use them in combat (did you know the Abrams runs on a jet engine?)
RE2) fair point, immoral but realpolitik, can't disagree
RE3) I'm talking about something in the order of what Zaluzhnyi recently asked in The Economist, a few battalions. This is definitely not enough to "conquer Russia", even a small part of it. The nazis used something in the order of a thousand battalions and still failed. Not to mention that I really don't see any political will in Ukraine to do that. Plus defensive nukes, Russian nukes are very very serious.
I suspect the point is to let Putin drain his resources into Ukraine. If he's draining it there he's not messing with precious 1st world real estate.
Russia will end up weaker and Ukraine will end up a bombed out shell of a country with rusting hulks from every other 1st world country scattering the countryside.
>I suspect the point is to let Putin drain his resources into Ukraine.
Ukraine isn't a black hole. Russia draining resources in Ukriane comes at the cost of Ukraine's own resources, in money and human lives, both economical, civilian and military.
The longer the war goes on, the more lives Ukraine loses, the more refugees (usually young skilled people) leave the country and the less chance they will return later to rebuild the country.
If Ukraine somehow takes any Russian territory (defined as post 2014)… it is almost guaranteed nuclear weapons would be used to stop the Ukrainian advance
> If Ukraine somehow takes any Russian territory (defined as post 2014)… it is almost guaranteed nuclear weapons would be used to stop the Ukrainian advance
Nuclear weapons haven't even been used when Ukraine has hit Russias actual territory (in Russia) so why would they use nuclear weapons against Ukraine retaking its own territory?.
Russia has “annexed” additional territory post-2014, some of which was subsequently taken by Ukraine (and some of which was already controlled by Ukraine when it was “annexed”.)
I'm not so sure. The whole point of an exercise like this is to demonstrate power, or to acquire resources. Neither tactical nor strategic nuclear weapons would help with those objectives. Ukraine's army isn't isolated to a single spot — tactical nukes wouldn't even be as effective as WW2-era area bombing, and a whole lot more expensive. Strategic weapons would deny resource acquisition to RU. The use of nuclear weapons (of either kind) against civilian centers would be problematic, I think? The US "got away" with its use of nuclear weapons (first use; the US was the only major player left; etc.)
I don't think Putin would attempt to use nuclear weapons to preserve Russian control over the Donbass. Crimea is less clear (after all, Sevastopol is the main Russian Black Sea naval base), but his sham annexation of the four oblasts makes it less likely in my eyes.
It's hard to see a case where the use of nuclear weapons would improve Russia's situation, especially where Ukraine is seeking to recover territory almost everyone other than Russia agrees is rightfully Ukrainian. The story changes a little more if Ukraine were striking at the heart of Russia, but that is not a realistic option.
- After previous proxy wars that saw a country flooded with western weapons it was not unheard of for a new regime to turn around and sooner or later use all the weapons they got against western forces in turn (see Afghanistan for the most famous example). Governments do slowly learn the lessons of the past and are hesitant to give out too many weapons.
- Mobilization in Russia has seen hundreds of thousands flee the country and tens of thousands of young men have been killed or wounded. Even after the war ends and sanctions are eventually lifted, the demographic imbalances that Russia will face in the coming future will keep crippling its economy and army for decades. NATO doesn't care all that much about who rules the Donbas, but they do care about reducing the threat of Russia to its member states. Prolonging the war for another few years will see tens of thousands more mobilized Russians being fed into the meat grinder, making the future demographic problems that much worse.
- The Russian state falling apart and former provinces selling their nukes to the highest bidder would be a Bad Thing (tm), so we want to supply the Ukrainians with enough weapons so that they don't lose (and maybe win back the conquered territories) but not with enough weapons that they could conceivably make a big enough counter attack into Russia that it would fracture.