Is Arming Ukraine Our Best Option?
We Need to De-escalate, Not Expand the War
We may not have troops in Ukraine, but we have made ourselves combatants by proxy in an illegal war being waged by Russia against an independent sovereign nation.
The moral and ethical issues driving international response to the Russian invasion are clear. Russia’s invasion is illegal, and it is indiscriminately targeting civilians, especially refugees fleeing the most violent areas. Russian troops with the obvious endorsement of Russian President Vladimir Putin are engaged in war crimes.
But the morality of the response itself — the method of support — is far less clear, as is the strategy behind it.
The Biden administration has rallied much of Europe, first to impose grueling sanctions on Russia and then to support Ukraine with military aid, making the argument that the weaponry is needed so that Ukraine can fend off the Russians and defend its sovereignty. So far, the United States has sent nearly $3.5 billion in military and other aid to Ukraine. Other nations have sent aid and weapons, as well.
The weapons are “defensive,” officials say, meaning they are offered only to allow the Ukrainians to fight back, to repel the illegal invasion, and protect their own sovereignty. Framed this way, the provision of arms would seem ethical.
I don’t think it’s so simple. Putin has argued from the beginning that military aid and arms shipments constitute an aggressive act. He has threatened to widen the conflict and to use his nuclear arsenal — which would be catastrophic not just for Ukraine, but for Europe and the rest of the world. Putin’s arguments are self-serving, of course, but he is not wrong. Under most circumstances, the arming of combatants raises concerns and implicates those who provide weapons in the larger conflict. That has been the case in Yemen, with the Saudis (and by extension, the United States), and in Syria, Libya, and smaller wars in Africa and Central America.
The Biden administration’s rhetoric has not helped. Proclaiming that Putin must go — even if it is something most of us can agree on — or that a weaker Russia is the aim of American policy is unlikely to get Putin to back away. Rather, the language only gives Putin a reason to view American involvement as a threat, allowing him to rationalize his decision to dig in and even to escalate.
This, I think, was where Noam Chomsky was coming from when he told Jeremy Scahill of The Intercept, “support for Ukraine’s effort to defend itself is legitimate,” but that we have to be careful what that support looks like. The goal, he said, was to end the fighting, and anything we do should fit into the larger goal of getting the two sides to the table.
“There are two ways for a war to end,” Chomsky said. “One way is for one side or the other to be basically destroyed. And the Russians are not going to be destroyed. So that means one way is for Ukraine to be destroyed.
The other way is some negotiated settlement. If there’s a third way, no one’s ever figured it out. So what we should be doing is devoting all the things you mentioned, if properly shaped, but primarily moving towards a possible negotiated settlement that will save Ukrainians from further disaster. That should be the prime focus.
Chomsky has been criticized — wrongly — as “sounding like a Putin apologist” for calling for negotiations that ultimately will require some give on the part of both Ukraine and Russia, and likely on the part of the West more broadly. But the alternative is a protracted war of attrition in which Ukraine is bombarded and hundreds of thousands of more lives are lost. Chomsky raises the specter of nuclear weapons — a potential that hangs above this war whether we wish to admit it or not, and needs to be factored in to any discussion of what the West and Ukraine’s allies can do to reverse Russian aggression.
The images from the region are horrifying, and the threat posed by Putin — not just militarily, but through his funding of hard-right and neo-fascist movements around the globe — is real. It is not clear, however, what the ethical and practical responses should be.
Nikolas Gvosdev, a senior fellow at Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs, writes that we any ethical response must “consider both the fate of Ukraine and of the stability of the world order,” especially given the nuclear question. “Any proposed response must be evaluated through the prism not of the morality of intentions but the morality of expected results,” he says, adding that “the tradeoffs for different degrees of action or inaction must be assessed against the likelihood of successful outcomes and the probabilities of catastrophe.”
Given that Putin “has declared that further Western arms shipments to the Ukrainian defenders are a 'legitimate target’ of Russian attack,” Michael T. Klare wrote in The Nation, “We stand on the precipice, then, of a major war in Europe—and one that would entail a significant risk of nuclear escalation. Preventing such an outcome and bringing relief to the suffering people of Ukraine must therefore be the world’s overriding objectives at this critical moment.”
Supporters of arming Ukraine, view this as a “false choice.” Nicholas Grossman, writing in The Daily Beast, declares that it is not a choice only between “serious diplomacy that ends the fighting or military escalation.” Instead, he is calling for an escalation designed to force the Russians to the table, that makes their continued fighting untenable. At the moment, Grossman says, the war continues because “Russia (is) demanding a lot more than Ukraine is willing to give,” and Russia is in the stronger position. That — along with “Russia’s maximalist demands,” its refusal to acknowledge Ukrainian sovereignty, and willingness to engage in a scorched-earth assault — makes negotiations difficult if not downright impossible. “America’s choice is not between diplomacy and war, but between honoring Ukraine’s request for help and telling them they’re on their own.”
For Grossman, “the path to peace is Ukrainian military success,” which in turn “improves Ukraine’s negotiating position, and disincentivizes future international aggression.” This will require a leveling of the playing field, which is where the provision of offensive weapons comes in. If the power imbalance between Ukraine and Russia is part of what is fueling the violence — and it is — then arming Ukraine is one way to try to equalize power, a difficult proposition given the sheer size of the Russian military and the fact that the war is being fought on Ukrainian soil.
Truly equalizing power likely will require far more than the provision of weapons and advisers. It will require shared intelligence and more direct military involvement from the West. This is the argument made by analysts like Fred Kempe, president and chief executive officer of the Atlantic Council, a foreign policy think tank. Kempe says that American efforts — sanctions and military support — are “insufficient as Putin escalates his offensive on Ukraine’s east and south.”
It’s now time for Biden to commit Americans and, to the extent possible, the democratic world more broadly to defending Ukraine’s sovereignty, independence, and freedom. That means not only extending political support and rhetorical common cause, but also sufficient intelligence and military assistance to halt Putin’s ongoing advance. Anything less would be contrary to Biden’s own stated convictions.
He doesn’t come out and say it directly, but what he is arguing for is American and allied “boots on the ground,” which is something the Biden Administration and most Americans do not support and an escalation that would be catastrophic.
Gvosdev of the Carnegie Council, however, questions this kind of thinking, asking “whether providing arms can lead to a speedy end to the violence, or whether it makes the conflict longer and bloodier—increasing the damage done to the country and the number of civilian casualties.”
If providing arms is justified to
bring the hostilities to a swift conclusion, should not stronger powers be prepared to directly intervene? Either by using their militaries to deny air or maritime space to Russian forces, changing the balance of power on the battlefield, or by more direct involvement in the fighting—either through proxies or use of their regular armed forces? The assumption here is that direct involvement would more quickly resolve the conflict, preventing greater losses of life. However, the risk here is that a direct armed clash between nuclear powers could escalate: even a small-scale use of nuclear weapons would produce much worse outcomes—not just for Ukraine but for the world.
There are, as Gvosdev writes, “competing ethical considerations at work” that do not appear to be easily reconciled. On the one hand, he writes, there is the obligation to protect life. On the other, there is the danger of “surrendering sovereignty, surrendering self-determination, and conceding to demands made under the threat and use of force.” Ultimately, it is up to the Ukrainians to determine how best to balance these considerations.
As for the West, our efforts should follow the oath taken by medical professionals: “First, do no harm.”