According to a classic axiom in war, the defender has the advantage over the attacker. Russia learned that in its attack on Ukraine, and now Ukraine is learning that in its current counter-offensive against Russian entrenched positions.
So now our support for Ukraine is escalating, with no end in sight. For all of our political polarization, both Democrats and Republicans are mostly all in for the war, but the American people don’t seem to be discussing it much. So let’s do that here.
Just to bring you up to speed, 46 American foreign policy experts are calling for Ukraine to be admitted to NATO “as soon as possible.” Article 4 of the NATO treaty states that an attack on any member of NATO would be considered an attack on all the others. That is to say, war on one member would mean war with all of them, the kind of mutual-defense treaty that gave us World War I. Yes, “as soon as possible” means as soon as the war with Russia is over. But even with a Ukraine victory in the current conflict, Russia is likely to remain a threat for generations. If Ukraine is in NATO, a new Russian incursion would mean the United States and most of Europe would be at war with Russia.
Now a conservative think tanker is saying that we should give Ukraine nuclear weapons. If, that is, Russia uses tactical nukes against Ukraine. Let the Ukrainians decide how to retaliate. If Russia knows that we will do that, so the reasoning goes, it will be a deterrent that will prevent Putin from using them. Either that or a nuclear exchange that will devastate the world.
Now the United States is giving Ukraine cluster munitions, artillery rounds that scatter 88 “bomblets” over an area the size of several football fields. Such shells are prodigiously lethal. Furthermore, the bomblets are programmed to explode at different times, rendering the targeted area impossible for the enemy to use. In addition, though, some of the grenades are inevitably duds, which, however, can explode long after the battle, endangering civilian populations in the same way land mines do.
This weapon has been banned by 123 countries. But the United States, Ukraine, and Russia–which has been using them against Ukraine–have not signed the treaty.
The United States, however, does have a law prohibiting the production, use, and transfer of cluster bombs and munitions with a “failure rate”–that is, the percentage of duds–over 1%. But the law has a loophole: It can be waived if doing so “is vital to U.S. national security.”
President Biden has invoked that loophole. The cluster munitions he is sending to Ukraine have a failure rate of less than 2.5%. His administration says that the ones the Russians use have a failure rate of 40%, so we can claim the moral high ground.
But 2.5% is more than twice as much as the legal limit. Isn’t the very production of these things against the law? And is sending them to Ukraine really” vital to U.S. national security”?
President Biden gave another answer to why he is sending them that should also be concerning. He told CNN’s Fareed Zakaria that he did so because both the Ukrainians and the United States are running out of ammunition for the 155 mm howitzers that we have given them:
Biden told Zakaria that the cluster munitions were being sent as a “transition period” until the US is able to produce more 155mm artillery.
“This is a war relating to munitions. And they’re running out of that ammunition, and we’re low on it,” Biden said. “And so, what I finally did, I took the recommendation of the Defense Department to – not permanently – but to allow for this transition period, while we get more 155 weapons, these shells, for the Ukrainians.”
So we have given the Ukrainians so many of our regular 155 mm shells that we don’t have enough to give them any more? So, in order to continue giving them ammo, we are breaking into our supply of illegal shells?
But where does that leave us? How can we defend our own country if we are giving Ukraine so much of our arsenal, to the point of drawing down our own supply of ammunition?
Judge Andrew Napolitano, in a blistering critique, argues that American involvement in the Ukraine war–including simply supplying weapons (though he believes that U.S. personnel are on the ground, being necessary to operate some of those weapon systems) is illegal.
As I have said before, I am on Ukraine’s side and I cheer them on in their resistance to the Russian invasion. I also hoped that South Vietnam would repel the communist invasion from the North, that Saddam Hussein would be replaced by a democratic government in Iraq, and that the Taliban would no longer rule in Afghanistan.
But the question remains, did any of these good causes justify what happened with America’s involvement? Were any of these America’s fight?
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