After almost a year of pleading with their North Atlantic Treaty Organization allies for advanced main battle tanks (MBTs), the alliance is finally giving in to the Ukrainians.
This comes as the Russian invasion, which had ground to a halt after the unsuccessful attempt to capture Kiev, ended in the retreat of Russian forces back to Russian-held territories in eastern Ukraine and the Crimean Peninsula.
After the Russians had retreated, rather than use their victory in the Battle of Kiev as leverage to get a negotiated settlement from Moscow, the Ukrainians took their forces on the offensive.
Once the war shifted from a defensive war into an offensive one in territory that the Russians had held at least since 2014, things changed for the Ukrainians.
Now, Russia has fully mobilized and has deployed anywhere from 300,000 to 350,000 troops and is readying for a massive counterattack against the strained Ukrainian lines. To prevent a total rout, the NATO alliance is stepping in at the eleventh hour to send in a hodgepodge of MBTs.
Western analysts, abandoning their sense of reason and probity, have become little more than cheerleaders for this decision (and other escalatory actions).
But when one looks at the timelines involved, the brittleness of the NATO supply chains into Ukraine and the way that the strained and drained Ukrainian defensive lines are already buckling under what is still-limited Russian pressure, one cannot help but wonder if these actions by NATO are wrong, dangerous and even futile.
They will not help Ukraine; they will get more Ukrainians killed and risk a wider war with the West.
What is NATO sending?
It has been reported that Britain is sending a company of 14-15 Challenger 2 tanks.
After much hemming and hawing, the Germans have consented for their Leopard 2 tanks to be exported to Ukraine, though this was conditioned on the United States agreeing to send some of their M1 Abrams tanks to Ukraine.
In all, Germany has agreed to send a company of Leopards (14-15) while the Americans have acquiesced to sending 31 Abrams.
Not once do these breathless (and premature) Western declarations of victory over Russia in Ukraine take into account that Ukraine had been begging for 300 tanks months ago.
Along with the mobilization of upwards of 350,000 troops, Russia delivered about 200 T-90 MBTs to their forces fighting in the separatist republics of eastern Ukraine as part of their buildup at the end of 2022.
So much for the ‘arsenal of democracy’
Plus, the US has been hesitant to send the M1 Abrams tanks because they are America’s premier MBTs. American industrial capacity is not what it once was, as evidenced by the Pentagon’s embarrassing admission that it lacks requisite numbers of its advanced versions of the M1 Abrams tank to send to Ukraine at present.
The US has done a poor job of increasing its industrial output to replenish its arsenals from the demands of supporting Ukraine’s war effort.
There is a material limit to what the US can send to Ukraine while not risking its own M1 Abrams arsenal. Because the Americans are planning to send their most sophisticated version of the tanks, these units will have to be built from scratch. Ukraine should, therefore, should not expect delivery of the tanks for 12-18 months (or more).
Furthermore, since the M1 Abrams is the flagship tank of the US military – indeed, it is iconic – it is unlikely that Washington wants to risk the humiliation of losing large numbers of these units in battle.
Hence the increased calls now for F-16s and other advanced airframes to be given to Ukraine. After all, without air cover, NATO tanks will be easy targets for Russian planes.
The risk of Russia using the shipment of US tanks into battle as a casus belli against NATO and the United States itself is weighing heavily on the recalcitrant minds of US policymakers. This explains why American enthusiasm for sending these critical systems has been so tepid.
What’s more, saying you’ll send tanks is a far cry from actually sending them.
Basic math eludes Western policymakers
In the case of the Germans, they have agreed to send 15 Leopard 2s to Ukraine but have not given a specific timetable. The Americans, with their 31 tanks, are even more circumspect in their deployment timetable. Poland is also giving 15 Leopard 2s and an assortment of older Soviet-era tanks.
Meanwhile, the actual number of tanks – if they are, in fact, all sent as promised any time soon – will be minuscule compared with the size and disposition of Russian armor arrayed against Ukraine’s forces. The US is basically asking the Ukrainians to man tanks that they have little to no formal training in operating and zero experience maintaining at a desperate moment in the fight against a larger Russian force.
This isn’t just a point-and-shoot Stinger or Javelin we’re talking about. These are top-of-the-line weapons systems that require many months, even years, of training to operate. Russia could conceivably throw its entire T-90 tank arsenal at Ukraine’s lines in a few months while Ukraine’s spent frontline forces are waiting for the handful of NATO’s MBTs to arrive.
Did no one in Western intelligence agencies learn basic arithmetic?
Let’s see, 14 Challenger 2s from Britain, 14 Leopard 2s from Poland, and 14 Leopard 2s from Germany equals 42 tanks. Plus the additional 31 M1 Abrams tanks – whose arrival will come anywhere between the next few weeks and the next several months – equals 73 advanced NATO MBTs at Ukraine’s disposal.
NATO insists that Ukraine will be given as many as 321 tanks, though when that happens or whether those tanks will be the advanced MBTs or more Soviet-era junk remains to be seen.
Without adequate air cover, lacking hard numbers of tanks against the entire Russian armored force and its 350,000-strong army sounds like Don Quixote on steroids.
How did Ukraine stop Russia in 2022?
To be sure, the Ukrainians have done far better against the Russians than was previously expected. Yet we shouldn’t delude ourselves as to how. Yes, the Ukrainians are gallant. No, they are not supermen.
The reason Ukraine was able to deflect the Russian invasion last year was sheer numbers and geography: The Russians invaded their country with a paltry force of 160,000 troops who did not have the means or leadership to march on Kiev the way President Vladimir Putin thought they could.
This has all changed. The Russians are massing across from the Ukrainians in such a way that their offensive will be plodding and gruesome but ultimately will break through the tired Ukrainian resistance – all while Ukraine sends a few companies of NATO tanks into the chaos and gets chewed up for the quixotic attempt.
Logistics, geography and arithmetic still count in warfare.
Sadly for Kiev, these timeless factors are now working against it. Warfare is an inherently political act. The strategic objectives should have been the preservation of the Ukrainian core in the western portion of the country and the speediest end to the invasion as possible – an end that could not come through force of arms alone.
Because of Kiev’s inability to see this, coupled with the fantastical (almost childlike) notions of its NATO backers, Ukraine is about to be crushed over the next six months by the onslaught of a totally mobilized Russia.
NATO will have depleted its own weapons stockpiles and treasury and it will have brought the world to the brink of another great power global conflict – all for nothing.