The current situation in Ukraine has degenerated swiftly since I last addressed potential solutions for it in December of 2021. While no invasion has yet taken place, the deterrence window for NATO is closing rapidly. In many cases, the various options I laid out then have had their potential effectiveness eliminated or vastly degraded based on the passage of time, the continued buildup of Russian forces, and the onset of favorable weather conditions for invasion. The question of what NATO, and specifically the United States, should do has begun to dominate the public discourse and it’s a fair question. If deterrence is no longer on the table or at best a long shot, what is the correct response? The answer is to make invasion painful for Putin.
Deterrence options are best exercised early, before the potential for war gains momentum. Not only are “off ramps” from war more politically palatable to aggressors (generally) earlier in the process, but the deterrence options themselves are less dangerous to enact. Thanks to a complete breakdown in NATO leadership, the alliance has largely passed this point. It must now look to more dangerous measures if it hopes to deter aggression. Should deterrence fail entirely, NATO should seek to damage Russian assets, and by extension Vladimir Putin, to the greatest extent possible by augmenting Ukrainian capability and exploiting the fog of war. This will ensure that however the war progresses, more damage will be inflicted on Russian forces, thereby reducing the danger to NATO from the remaining Russian forces at the war’s conclusion. We have almost passed the point of trying to convince Russia not to do something horrific. We are now entering the phase where the chief concern becomes generating significant Russian casualties so as to discourage them from trying this strategy of invasion and conquest again, potentially in the Baltics.
In other words, it’s time to f*ck with Vlad. How does one go about ruining the ambitions of an authoritarian dictator bent on war? By damaging the things that are important to him and that undergird his dictatorship. In Vladimir Putin’s case, this comes in three varieties. His economy: largely fossil-fuel export dependent. His nation’s prestige: the thing which Putin has been trying to rebuild following the loss of the Soviet Union in the aftermath of the Cold War. His power base: a combination of oligarchs, the military and the security services, and the acquiescence of the population. Since these are the things that matter to him, these should be NATO’s targets.
NATO has an abundance of options to target these sensitive points, and the limits to its effectiveness will be NATO’s willingness to be creative and aggressive in its actions. In some cases, restraint may be well advised, given the potential repercussions, but there are other options to wound the bear that carry relatively less risk. However, all the options should be understood and prepared for regardless of their eventual use, or not, as circumstances dictate. This will be a series of short weekly articles that will examine some of those options. This week’s headache for Vlad is:
NATO’s Garage Sale - Everything Must GO! (to Ukraine):
Former Warsaw Pact nations including both Ukraine and some current NATO members continue to use Soviet-era weapons, aircraft, and equipment (as upgraded). These new NATO members continue to maintain significant stocks of this equipment retained after the collapse of their former alliance and the Soviet Union. This haul of military hardware amounts to hundreds of aircraft, hundreds of T series tanks and BMP/BT series armored vehicles, dozens of SA series surface to air missile platforms, and thousands of smaller personal and crew served weapons. The Ukrainian Armed Forces already operate many of these platforms and have familiarity with most of the rest. In the largest quantities possible, they should be collected from NATO members and shipped to Kyiv immediately.
Overnight NATO could radically increase the capability of the Ukrainian Armed Forces. Poland, Bulgaria, and Slovakia alone could double the number of Ukrainian MiG-29’s currently in their inventory. Several former Warsaw Pact members have literally hundreds of armored vehicles in current inventory or in their reserves that could shore up a critical shortfall in Ukrainian Army capability that is currently hampering their ability to confront Russian mechanized combined arms units with comparable forces. Ukraine’s current Achilles’ heel is its lack of long range air defense capability. At present these NATO members have dozens of, admittedly earlier models in many cases, SA series surface to air missile systems that would augment Ukrainian capability to protect themselves from the Russian air threat. The small arms inventories would further increase the capability of front line and militia units in Ukraine. (Recently we have seen Ukrainian militia units having to train with wooden rifles. This could be immediately rectified.) Perhaps most importantly, these are weapons systems with which the Ukrainian military is already familiar and will require comparatively minimal retraining. The biggest problem may be finding enough Ukrainian crews to man the additional equipment.
Equally beneficial would be the transfer of the massive stocks of war material associated with these systems still in NATO inventories. Not simply munitions, though these will be of critical importance in any conflict between Ukraine and Russia, also spare parts and maintenance equipment. Assisting the Ukrainian logistics and supply train for critical warfighting platforms, both airborne and ground based, will be almost as valuable as increasing the number of the associated systems themselves.
Of course, this would leave a significant gap in the capabilities of these NATO members sending their ex-Russian equipment en masse to Ukraine. The United States should commit to immediately doing two things to address this. Deploy comparable active military units to the NATO nations in question to reassure them with a US tripwire force. Then the US should commit to providing its own 1st and 2nd line equipment to those contributing nations (along with trainers for the American equipment) to address the resulting shortfalls on a lend-lease basis. Not only will this reequip NATO’s eastern flank members with western compatible NATO equipment, but it will also act as a stop gap until programs like the F-35 can achieve the production levels necessary for these NATO members. It becomes a win for the alliance internally, externally, and for Ukraine’s potential survivability. There is no reason not to do it.
For NATO this is a low cost, potentially high reward response. It clears out masses of comparatively outdated or second rate equipment from NATO inventories while sending it to a Russian opponent familiar with those systems and in critical need of them in a short timeframe. It clears the way for a rearming of “front line” NATO members in the east, and it increases interoperability within the alliance. Russia will predictably complain, but what are they going to do? Threaten to invade Ukraine?