A rchive Date
[ 19-11-2024 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ U.S ]
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[https://slate.com/news - and - politics/2024/11/trump - biden - russia - putin - ukraine - zelensky - missiles.html
Biden Is Making a Big Change to Ukraine Strategy Before Trump Takes Office
That’s no accident.
BY FRED KAPLAN NOV 18, 2024 2:50 PM
In a reversal of a controversial long - held policy, President Joe Biden decided last week to let Ukraine fire U.S. - supplied missiles against targets fairly deep inside Russian territory. The shift, which Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky had been requesting for a year, will likely improve the Ukrainian army’s ability to stave off an impending Russian offensive - but how much, and to what strategic effect, can’t be predicted.
The weapons, known as ATACMS (pronounced attack - ’ems, the acronym stands for Army Tactical Missile Systems), can deliver 375 pounds of explosives at targets 175 miles away from the launch site. They are ballistic missiles, meaning they soar very high into the atmosphere, then plunge back down to earth at an extremely high speed, making them harder for air - defense weapons to hit.
The key to Biden’s decision is that Russia is currently amassing 50,000 troops - including 10,000 North Korean soldiers - for an attack to push Ukrainian troops out of Kursk, the region in western Russia that the Ukrainians have occupied since a daring incursion in August. The Russian troop deployments outside of Kursk are about 150 miles from the area in Ukraine where the ATACMS would be launched, well within the missile’s range.
Last summer, in his first relaxation on the use of American weapons, Biden let Ukraine fire missiles launched by HIMARS (High - Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems) against sites in Russia that were supporting a massive offensive against the eastern Ukrainian town of Kharkiv. HIMARS have a range of about 50 miles - long enough to hit the Russian sites but not those where the counteroffensive against Kursk is currently being prepared.
Ukraine has had a small number of ATACMS for some time, but Biden supplied them on the condition that they be used only against Russian forces inside Ukraine, including those in Crimea. And they have been used very effectively. Biden has imposed no restrictions on the use of Ukrainian - built weapons, which have been fired against targets inside Russia for some time. However, those weapons have mainly been drones, which are much less powerful than ATACMS’ payload.
Biden has held a tight leash on the ATACMS until now, in part because Russian President Vladimir Putin has said that he would regard any use of U.S. - supplied weapons against Russian territory as an attack by the United States, a major escalation - crossing a “red line,” as Putin has put it - which he would match, either by firing tactical nuclear weapons or by attacking U.S. military targets in Europe.
When Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, Biden sent Kyiv massive quantities of military aid, but his administration said that he would avoid steps that might “start World War III.” At first, he refused to send Ukraine not just long - range missiles such as ATACMS and HIMARS, but also Abrams tanks, F - 16 fighter jets - any weapon that could even potentially be sent across the border into Russian territory. From the start, supporters of Ukraine - including some of Biden’s own advisers - thought Biden was too fearful of Putin’s red lines. The U.S., some charged, was “self - deterring” itself from properly filling Ukraine’s defense needs.
In retrospect, Biden’s caution seems justified, at least to some extent. Bob Woodward reported in his recent book, War, that, in late September 2022, seven months into the conflict, the U.S. received “highly sensitive, credible” intelligence, based on “conversations inside the Kremlin,” that “Putin was seriously considering using a tactical nuclear weapon” as a way to reverse Ukraine’s battlefield successes at the time.
However, soon after, the war settled into a slogging stalemate, and this threat subsided. Since then, Biden has gradually relaxed the restrictions; recently, he even allowed American contractors to service and repair U.S. weapons on Ukrainian soil. (U.S. armed forces are still barred from taking part in the fight.)
So why did Biden change his policy now? There are a few reasons.
First, by drawing foreign military forces directly into the fight, Russia’s recruitment of 10,000 North Korean troops is escalating the war in much the same way that Biden was trying to avoid. So Biden feels counterescalation - which, even so, is much less extreme that Russia’s move - is justified.
Second, Biden is well - aware that Donald Trump will be sworn in as president in two months. Trump has said he wants to end this war immediately. He told Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, the most pro - Putin leader in Europe, that he would do this by ending all aid to Ukraine. Trump’s vice president, Sen. J.D. Vance, has endorsed a peace deal that lets the two combatants own the territory their troops currently occupy. This would give Russia about 15 percent of Ukrainian territory - and, of course, would provide no guarantee that Russia, after a brief respite, won’t resume the war and eventually take over all of Ukraine.
For this reason, Putin is thrilled with Trump’s electoral victory, but he wants to push Ukrainian troops out of Kursk and back across the border before any peace treaty is negotiated. Hence, his recruitment of 10,000 North Korean troops, which Kim Jong - un gladly supplied, in exchange for who - knows - what favor. This is the reason for the timing of Biden’s new permissiveness on the use of ATACMS - to let Ukraine fire back at the Russian and North Korean bases outside of Kursk, and thus to blunt and delay the attack.
Biden’s move will have a multiplier effect. Some time ago, Britain and France sent Ukraine their own long - range missiles - the British Storm Shadow and the French SCALP - but, not wanting to get out ahead of the American president, also barred their use against targets in Russia. Now that Biden has dropped the restriction, their leaders - Prime Minister Keir Starmer and President Emmanuel Macron - are likely to do so as well.
To the extent Biden still fears that this shift in policy might cross a serious red line in Putin’s mind, the timing of the shift - coming just two months before Trump’s return to the White House - is likely to mitigate the risk. Putin learned well how to push Trump’s buttons the first time around; Trump still admires Putin and very much wants to restore friendly relations between Washington and Moscow. Putin probably wouldn’t want to risk this prospect - which could include the lifting of U.S. sanctions, the softening (if not total end) of U.S. support for Ukraine, and many other benefits - by attacking American military targets, an action that even Trump might not tolerate.
Few believe, at this point, that Ukraine can win this war in any meaningful sense of the term. Biden’s objective now is to lower the chances that Russia can win it. Zelensky mounted his incursion into Russian territory in part to lift the nation’s morale but also to grab a bargaining chip so he can enter any negotiations from a position of strength, allowing him to say, “Ukraine will withdraw from Kursk if Russia withdraws from eastern Donbas province.”
This scenario’s plausibility depends on a few things: whether Ukraine can hold on to Kursk while also stopping Russian troops from plowing any deeper into eastern Ukraine; the extent to which Trump cares at all about the fate of Ukraine (Zelensky is hoping the returning president can be jolted to care a little bit); and how badly Putin wants to end the war. About 200,000 of his soldiers have been killed and another 400,000 wounded; his military has been depleted to the point of relying on Iran for drones and on North Korea for artillery shells; his economy is in a tailspin; his country is isolated. It’s unclear how much this weighs against his dream of restoring the old Russian empire, the first step of which is to regain control of all of Ukraine.
But if an even partly fair peace agreement is possible, Ukraine has to hold tight for the next few months. For that, ATACMS are vital.
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