The Administration Biden has made ambiguity its preferred policy for almost four years. It was seen in Afghanistan, when the Taliban were allowed in early and Western delegations had to be taken out in helicopters for fear of a greater evil; it is being seen in Gaza, where criticism of Benjamin Netanyahu alternate with declarations of military allegiance to Israel while peace meeting after peace meeting is called without any success… and it can also be seen in Ukraine, where The fear of upsetting Russia and the commitment to help the Zelensky regime have been at odds for two and a half years.
Despite public statements of support for kyiv, the truth is that the United States has always been reluctant to cross the red lines that have been set by the United States itself. Putin along the way. The threat of using tactical nuclear weapons in the spring of 2022, with the conflict just beginning, has conditioned all subsequent processes. In Washington, there are those who believe that these threats are serious and that Russia can move from words to deeds (the wing led by Jake SullivanNational Security Advisor) and who believes that they are nothing more than bluffs that in no case will lead to the apocalypse (the Secretary of State Antony Blinken is in this group).
These two sensitivities clash every time Volodymyr Zelensky asks for new help. This happened with the HIMARS, which took months to arrive in Ukraine and represented a drastic change in the balance of forces. This happened with the ATACMS, which did not arrive until March of this year due to the reluctance of the Department of Defense. This even happened with the Patriot anti-aircraft defense systems, which also did not arrive in time or form, or with the F16s, whose sale to Ukraine was not authorized by Washington until June 2023… and we still had to wait more than a year to see the fighters flying over the Donbas.
Each of these steps has been accompanied by the nuclear threat of the moment from Russia. On each occasion, The military shipment has been completed without anything happening at all.. Apparently, the latest debate is over the sale of high-tech JASSM missiles with a range of more than 300 kilometers. According to American media, the White House is on the verge of reaching an agreement with kyiv for the immediate delivery of these weapons. The sad thing is that, in practice, they will serve almost no purpose.
An unequal war
The truth is that as long as Washington maintains a ban on using its weapons on Russian territory, Ukraine is severely limited in its use of these long-range missiles. Ideally, they would be able to be launched against refineries, power plants and weapons factories inside Russia. In other words, the same thing that Ukraine itself suffers from time and time again, since Moscow obviously does not understand limitations.
If Ukraine could attack these centres of Russian military activity, always within the rules of a just war and without harming civilians, it would not only reduce the number of troops and weapons that then reach the Donbas front… but it would also force Russia to change its supply lines with all that this implies. Gerasimov would have to reposition his army’s rearguard hundreds of kilometers back.They could not be in Kursk, Bryansk, Rostov, Belgorod… but beyond the range covered by American missiles. That would cause very important delays on the front line and would seriously harm any attempt at an offensive.
In fact, the only good thing that can be said about the acquisition of these long-range missiles is precisely that they allow Ukraine to place its equipment far from the front line. It can attack Donetsk or Lugansk from, say, Dnipropetrovsk, something that was unthinkable at the beginning of the war. The problem, in turn, is that Dnipropetrovsk is also within range of Russian missiles, so the imbalance would still be palpable.
Another option is to use these missiles to attack Crimea, something Ukraine has been doing for months. Crimea has a peculiar status, as the international community does not recognise the Russian annexation in 2015 and continues to consider it occupied Ukrainian territory. Attacks on Crimea are economically useful, as they hit the favourite holiday destination of Russians and thus destroy the tourist industry. They are useful when it comes to controlling the Black Sea. (the attacks on Sevastopol have forced the Russian fleet to retreat to Novorossiysk and forget its blockade delusions of autumn 2022) and are useful in slowing down supply routes from the peninsula south of Kherson and Zaporizhia.
New nuclear threat
But that is not enough to win the war, and that is why there are still grumblings among the officers and the top politicians in kyiv about Washington’s contradictions. In fact, the Kursk raid was not even discussed with the White House in advance: Both Zelensky and General Syrskyi knew they would be told not to dare. and they would leak the news so that the Russians would find out one way or another.
In Ukraine, they think that there is no political will to end the Russian invasion. Yes, there is the will to wear down its army, of course, and to show a certain strength in the face of unilateral decisions, but without putting global stability in excessive danger either. It is no coincidence that just in these days when the debate on the use of weapons on Russian territory is back in the news, the Kremlin is coming out with a review of its nuclear doctrine. As if that matters. That is, as if Russia could decide not only when to use its atomic weapons, but also the consequences, which we all already know.
But the Kremlin knows that it works and that something inside Joe Biden will tremble when the report arrives. And then the doubts, ambiguity and inconsistencies will return. Arming Ukraine so that it does not use weapons as it should, a curious contradiction. For the moment, what we see every day is what we have: Ukrainian cities devastated by missiles launched from some Russian enclave, while in Moscow life goes on practically as usual. As if it had not been Putin himself who had started all this.
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