Category Archives: defense policy

Again I Ask

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I asked over the weekend where in the world is President Joe Biden (D).

I ask again on a related matter. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson was in Ukraine again last Friday, this time to meet with Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy regarding, among other things, a proposal to train large numbers of Ukrainian soldiers.

The training operation would instruct up to 10,000 Ukrainian servicemen for three weeks every 120 days “using battle-proven British Army expertise.”
The program is intended to help Kyiv “accelerate their deployment, rebuild their forces, and scale-up their resistance as they continue to defend their nation’s sovereignty against Russian invaders.”
International partners would also be invited to take part in the training program.

It’s true enough we have small numbers of special forces types in eastern Europe training small units of Ukrainian soldiers and others in Poland training Ukrainian soldiers on the equipment we’re sending in dribs and drabs to Ukraine. That’s critical training, too.

But the Brits have gone all in, working with Zelenskyy to set up a training program that will turn out roughly a division of Ukrainian soldiers every four months.

Where is Biden on this sort of large-scale support? Why isn’t he having his SecState and SecDef working with Ukraine’s Defense Minister to set up something like this—together with serious amounts of equipment?

Johnson’s statement:

My visit today, in the depths of this war, is to send a clear and simple message to the Ukrainian people: the UK is with you, and we will be with you until you ultimately prevail. As Ukrainian soldiers fire UK missiles in defense of your nation’s sovereignty, they do so also in defense of the very freedoms we take for granted.

I ask where is Joe Biden? His direct remarks are deafeningly silent, and his remarks through his Press Secretary, his Secretary of State, his Secretary of Defense are just so much wishy-washy word kale.

And again: why isn’t Biden going over there to talk face-to-face with Zelenskyy, walk the streets of Kyiv and Bucha and Novyi and Staryi Bykiv, even as far east as Kharkiv and Kramatorsk to see first hand the destruction being wreaked by the barbarian in Ukraine?

And this, regarding Zelenskyy himself two weeks ago:

Overnight it emerged that Zelenskiy had visited nearby frontlines on Sunday to raise soldiers’ morale. The president revealed he had taken a risky trip to Lysychansk and nearby Soledar that at one point took him a couple of kilometres from Russian positions.

But Biden won’t go anywhere near Ukraine. Why is that?

Shortchanging

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And piecemeal, at that.

Recall that President Joe Biden (D) and his administration has sent to Ukraine Poland for Ukraine four multiple-launch rocket artillery systems. These HIMARS (High Mobility Artillery Rocket System) weapons are shoot and scoot weapons that are capable of launching rockets with very high precision onto targets as far away as 190 miles, but Biden has provided the systems with rockets that only can reach a bit under 45 miles. Biden doesn’t mind that at those ranges, the systems are still outranged by the Russian systems the barbarian is using in Ukraine.

Four of them. They’re in Poland, not Ukraine, because they’re being used to train Ukrainian soldiers. The systems won’t arrive in Ukraine until the end of the month.

Why can’t Ukraine have the longer range rockets for the HIMARS? Because, even though the Ukrainians have promised to use the systems for defense and not to attack targets inside Russia—a promise Biden extracted even for the shorter-range HIMARS—because Biden wants Russia, the invader, to be a sanctuary country, safe against counterattack by the nation the invader has invaded. Even though Russian forces are firing from within Russia as well as from within Ukraine, and even though Russian forces stage troops, weapons, ammunition, fuel, food, and other consumables in Russia a short distance from Ukraine.

Why can’t Ukraine have the longer range rockets? Also because Biden plainly doesn’t trust Ukraine’s President Zelenskyy to keep his word—which gravely insults the leader of the nation whose existence is in the wind and whose nation is fighting so staunchly for survival.

What Ukraine needs: Oleksiy Arestovych, a military advisor on Zelenskyy’s Chief of Staff staff, says Ukraine needs 60 of this sort of weapons system.

If we get 60 of these systems then the Russians will lose all ability to advance anywhere, they will be stopped dead in their tracks. If we get 40 they will advance, albeit very slowly with heavy casualties; with 20 they will continue to advance with higher casualties than now[.]

And

“The fewer we get, the worse our situation will be. Our troops will continue to die and we will continue to lose ground,” Arestovych said, particularly if countries with dozens of systems only “decide to donate four or five.”

Why can’t Ukraine have more than four HIMARS systems?

Because Biden doesn’t care. He’s satisfied with virtue-signaling.

It’s not just piecemeal. It’s casually destructive.

It’s a Weapon that should only Work Once

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Vladimir Putin is extending his murderously physical war on Ukraine into an economic war against Ukraine’s European nation supporters.

Russia’s state-owned gas giant Gazprom PJSC throttled deliveries via the Nord Stream pipeline to Germany this week….

And

Russian natural gas deliveries through a key pipeline to Europe will drop by around 40% this year, state-controlled energy giant Gazprom said Tuesday….

And

Slovakia’s state-owned gas importer SPP said it expected Thursday’s Russian gas deliveries to be reduced by about 30%, while Czech power utility CEZ said it had seen a similar fall….

And

France’s multinational utility corporation Engie said on Thursday that Russia has reduced gas shipments….

This should be a one-shot effort by Putin, and then his energy production should find no buyers outside of India and the People’s Republic of China—to which there are inadequate delivery routes for several years. The single shot aspect of this, though, requires the European nations to have courage and to move apace to find alternative sources—and there are a plethora of them. And then, Russia, which depends on exports of extractions rather than of manufactured goods would be…stuck. The Indian and PRC markets just aren’t all that.

Where in the World is Joe Biden?

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Last Thursday, French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, and Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi all travelled to Kyiv to meet face-to-face with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in a show of support, even by the three European national leaders who are the most wobbly in their support for Ukraine.

Which once again raises the question: where is the guy who sits in the American leadership chair, Joe Biden?

Not in Ukraine. Not ever in Ukraine. Mostly Biden is laying low in Delaware, with occasional sojourns to the White House Oval Office to sit in the big boy’s chair at the Resolute Desk and to spend the night, like a celebrity tourist in the Lincoln Bedroom, in the Presidential Bedroom Suite.

“Negotiate”

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French President Emmanuel Macron is at it again vis-à-vis Ukraine.

French President Emmanuel Macron said Ukraine would eventually have to hold peace talks with Russia, while Ukrainian troops fought hard to hold back the Russian invasion force in the country’s east.
“At some point, when we will have helped Ukraine as much as possible to resist, when I hope Ukraine will have won and fighting will have stopped, we will have to negotiate,” Mr Macron told reporters while visiting French troops in Romania.

Whose definition of victory, though? Whose definition of what’s possible? Whose definition of fighting will have stopped?

Will the fighting have stopped because the Ukrainians have run out of weapons and ammunition because wobbly (to use a Margaret Thatcher term) nations like France have decided for Ukraine that it’s enough and stopped supporting Ukraine materially and materiel-ly?

Will Macron decide for Ukraine that fighting—or supplying Ukraine—is no longer possible? Will Macron decide for Ukraine when “victory” had been achieved?

Ukraine is in a war for its very existence as a polity and as a society, and it’s fighting a barbarian bent on destroying that polity and society. Macron apparently has forgotten his own nation’s struggles for existence in two wars in the last century, the first of which threatened its existence but for the unalloyed aid of other nations, and the second of which did erase France from the map except for one part that was a satrap of another nation and the other part that was a rump country wholly subsidiary to that other nation, an erasure undone only by the unalloyed aid of other nations.

The only victory possible for Ukraine has already been articulated by Ukraine’s President, Volodymyr Zelenskyy. That victory consists of the Russian barbarian (my term) gone entirely from Ukrainian territory.

I suggest that the only negotiation with the barbarian that is possible once he’s driven from Ukrainian territory is how far back into Russia from the Ukrainian border all roads and railroads must be torn up and plowed over.

“We, Europeans, we share a continent, and geography is stubborn: it turns out that at the end of it, Russia is still there,” [Macron] said.

Macron’s cheap snark, despite itself, puts a premium on victory on Ukrainian terms and on subsequent negotiation on my term. We do, indeed share a continent under stubborn geography. However, France is still there, as I noted above, only because other nations came, without hesitation or reservation, to its aid.

So it must be for Ukraine. France above all owes this debt to Ukraine, owes this debt to Europe.