Send Zelensky What He Needs

[babylonsister]

The American Prospect
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Send Zelensky What He Needs
Today on TAP: Otherwise, this is a slow-motion humanitarian catastrophe and a Putin victory.
by Robert Kuttner
April 20, 2022


A month ago, on March 22, I wrote a piece titled “Magical Thinking About Putin’s Invasion.” I criticized Western policy for giving Ukraine’s President Zelensky just enough weaponry to stave off imminent defeat but not enough to prevail. I wrote:

The West, out of fear of wider war, has allowed Putin to define what counts as a NATO war with Russia. Thus, the Biden administration has gotten into hair-splitting exercises, in which supplying the West’s most sophisticated anti-tank and anti-aircraft weapons does not count as a war with Russia, but supplying planes does.

This is dangerous sophistry. It has led to a proxy war between NATO and Russia, in which the West is willing to fight to the last Ukrainian, but in a limited way that doesn’t allow Ukraine to prevail or even to survive. …

Despite Ukraine’s battlefield successes, NATO’s strategy has been behind the curve at every stage of Putin’s escalation. The West has provided Ukraine with just enough defensive weaponry to prevent an outright Russian military victory, but not enough to stave off a humanitarian catastrophe.

Well, every word is even truer today.

After the piece ran, some of my colleagues and readers wondered if I had turned into some kind of warmonger, courting World War III. Now another month has gone by, millions of Ukrainians have fled, thousands more Ukrainian troops and civilians are dead or injured, Putin has reduced the city of Mariupol to rubble, and his troops are about to seize what’s left of it.

Meanwhile, weaponry that seemed like too much of a provocation just a month ago—howitzers, antiaircraft systems, anti-ship missiles, armed drones, helicopters—is being rushed to Ukraine. And the hair-splitting continues. (Why drones and helicopters and not planes?)

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https://prospect.org/blogs-and-newsletters/tap/send-zelensky-what-he-needs/

[RKP5637]

1. K&R !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! n/t

[Grins]

2. Been screaming this for months!

Stop with the token support in the millions. Go all-in with the hundreds of BILLIONS! And, “There’s more where that came from if you need it!”

Biden is getting bad advice. There is FAR more we could be doing.

[HUAJIAO]

3. ABSOLUTELY !! The 'west" is fucking this up big time..

Too much thinking and not enough instinctive intelligence.