Regardless of which way the Ukraine conflict tilts America’s current policy will not produce a beneficial outcome for the United States. For the good of our national interest and our country itself, Washington must quickly adjust to emerging realities and shape a new strategy that has a reasonable chance of success, suggests American military site “19fortyfive”.
American military officials privately warn that if Ukraine does launch an offensive this spring or early summer, Kyiv will incur significant risk.
According to numerous reports, the United States, Germany, the UK, and Poland have trained more than 30,000 Ukrainian troops in NATO-style offensive operations and have equipped them with a modest amount of modern tanks, artillery, rocket launchers, personnel carriers, and air defense systems.
Given our actions over the past 14 months, there is no change that would be easy, desirable, or palatable. Unless we want to deepen our failure, however, change is nevertheless compulsory.
It is clear that many in Europe already recognize that Ukraine cannot win the war in a practical time frame at a reasonable cost.
Poland and the Baltics appear to be stalwart in their desire to continue all actions to help Ukraine fight Russia, but much of the rest of Europe would likely support a move to find a negotiated settlement.
The U.S. should take the diplomatic initiative by first privately conferring with Kyiv and Brussels — as well as Moscow — to begin the process of finding a settlement.
What Washington cannot do is continue, possibly for years, to provide thousands of combat vehicles to Ukraine and millions more artillery shells, rockets, and small arms — along with the billions of dollars per month needed to keep Ukraine’s government and economy afloat.
Working with all the relevant players, Washington could help them find a deal that ends the war, ends the killing and destruction, and stops the open-ended loss of American resources.
As horrible as it would be for us to accept ending the war on undesirable terms, it would be even worse to ignore reality and continue pursuing an unattainable military objective.
The cost for the former is unpleasant.
The cost to the latter could be infinitely worse.
