NATO sends tanks
NATO reached a turning point last week both in its relationship with Ukraine and in its posture toward Vladimir Putin’s Russia. Tanks are on the way to Ukraine (Der Spiegel):
In just a few months, 14 Leopard 2A6 tanks from Germany are to be at the front in the war against Russia. Berlin has also granted Poland permission to send its own Leopards. The United States is sending battle tanks, as is Britain. Western support for Ukraine has thus reached yet another new level, both militarily and politically. Pressure on Russian President Vladimir Putin will rise, but so too, perhaps, will the chance of pushing Russia completely out of Ukraine. The move, though, also comes with a higher level of risk – that the West will become even more deeply involved in this war. That the situation could spin out of control.
For Ukraine, such risks are secondary to its ongoing existential struggle. From Kyiv’s perspective, the decision to send Leopard battle tanks was long overdue, particularly given Russia’s apparent preparations for a spring offensive. Ukraine has been demanding the tanks for months, and now, the first of them will soon arrive. “Cheers my dear friends in Germany,” tweeted Andriy Melnyk, the former Ukrainian ambassador to Germany, after DER SPIEGEL announced Scholz’s decision on Tuesday evening. “Today I will get drunk.”
NATO does not exist just so the major powers can reinforce their influence with forces from less well-endowed allies, writes Phillips Payson O’Brien in The Atlantic. Smaller members and partners closer to the Russian border cannot afford their big brothers’ complacency. Their concerns can have leverage with larger allies. And they have.
Basically, Ukraine insisted NATO put up or shut up. Give us the tanks:
Since the start of the war, Germany and the U.S. have tried to give Ukraine enough military aid to perform well on the battlefield, but not so much that the Ukrainians can drive Russian forces out of all of occupied Ukraine—including areas that Russia occupied in 2014. Washington and Berlin have kept sending the same mixed signals: Russia cannot win the war, and Ukraine cannot be allowed to lose, but in the end, the defenders might have to make some significant concessions to the invaders to secure a peace deal.
That message has sounded more and more discordant to states to Germany’s north and east. The longer the war has gone on, and the more grotesque the crimes and destruction that the Russian government has been willing to commit against its neighbor and ostensible “little brother,” Ukraine, the more these states have become convinced that Russia must not only be denied a victory but be defeated outright. During the 20th century, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania were incorporated into the Soviet Union against their will. Poland, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia were ruled as Soviet vassals during the Cold War. These countries’ leaders instinctively understand the threat of Russian imperialism, and take Moscow’s rhetoric about national expansion and greatness as the menace that it is. They want to see Russian power broken.
Putin’s hunger for a new Russian empire has driven reluctant European nations into the NATO alliance. His invasion of Crimea and eastern Ukraine demonstrated that counting on Moscow to stay out of neighbors’ affairs (and borders) was no longer an operative strategy, especially for Finland which shares a long border with Putin’s would-be empire:
It quickly applied for NATO membership—which is almost sure to be granted, regardless of the recent stance of the Turkish and Hungarian governments. Of all world leaders, Finnish Prime Minister Sanna Marin has expressed the need to counter the Russian threat most bluntly. She has regretted European Union weakness in opposing Russian actions in Ukraine since 2014 and said that Ukrainian membership in NATO would have prevented the present crisis. She has openly called for Russia’s defeat, saying that its withdrawal from Ukrainian territory is “the way out of the conflict.” Without hesitation, she recently tied her own country’s security to Ukraine’s. “We don’t know when the war will end, but we have to make sure that the Ukrainians will win,” Marin said. “I don’t think there’s any other choice. If Russia would win the war, then we would only see decades of this kind of behavior ahead of us.”
The decisions to send in tanks is a fraught one. But Poland, Sweden, Estonia and other allies have hardened their resolve to see Russia not just contained but defeated. “In what became known as the Tallinn Pledge, the United Kingdom and the Netherlands joined NATO states in Eastern Europe and Scandinavia in calling for Russia to be pushed out of all Ukrainian territory, including Crimea and other areas occupied before last February 24.”
England has the Channel. The U.S. has the Atlantic. But if NATO is a true partnership, the junior partners want their say. Their butts are not just on the line. In some cases, they are on the front line.
The world is becoming a more dangerous place than it has been for the U.S. in years. It’s easy to tell others to play the hands they are dealt. It’s more unsettling when the cards are yours. For Ukraine, the war is life or death. Putin is not bluffing. NATO may not be all in, but its most vulnerable members are not calling. They insist that NATO raise. And it has.