Why the US Arms Flow Has Failed to Translate Into Strategic & Political Win for Kiev and Biden
20:13 GMT 08.09.2022 (Updated: 17:06 GMT 20.04.2023)
© AP Photo / Susan Walsh
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US Secretary of State Antony Blinken paid an unannounced visit to Kiev on September 8 as the Biden administration unveiled an over $2.8 billion military aid for Europe and Ukraine. Earlier in the day, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin announced a $675 million package of heavy arms and ammo for Kiev at a conference in Ramstein, Germany.
The Biden White House's continued military aid to Ukraine amid Russia's special military operation is largely ongoing because of the perception within the US that Kiev is "functionally operation at a high level against" Russian forces, an academic has said.
"The US wants the conflict prolonged on American terms, i.e., in ways that signify and represent deaths happening for the Russian military and damage to the overall objectives and plans of the Kremlin," says Dr. Matthew Crosston, professor of national security and director of Academic Transformation at Bowie State University.
"If the conflict was being prolonged but relatively ineffectual in stopping Russian objectives, then I think you would have seen a degrading American interest in supporting Ukraine. But because there is at least the perception here in America that Ukraine is functionally operating at a high level still against the Russians, then the White House will continue funding those efforts."
Crosston explains that the US has never been interested in the safety of Ukraine or the number of lives lost on the Ukrainian side: "The only thing that ever mattered to America was the disruption of Russian strategic objectives and the embarrassment of President [Vladimir] Putin," the academic says.
The US has been providing Kiev with military aid for quite a while but has ramped up supplies of lethal arms to Kiev since the beginning of the Russian special operation to demilitarize and de-Nazify Ukraine.
The Pentagon reported in August that since January 2021, the United States has provided Ukraine with more than $13.5 billion in security assistance. With the new aid package taken into account, US military aid has exceeded $14 billion.
Moscow has repeatedly emphasized that providing Kiev with Western arms does not contribute to a resolution of the Ukraine conflict and will only have negative consequences.
Prior to the special military operation, Russia came up with a comprehensive security initiative urging the US and NATO to provide guarantees of the transatlantic military alliance's non-enlargement and Ukraine's non-admission to NATO. Moscow handed over its draft security agreements to Washington and NATO amid the US military buildup in Ukraine and Kiev's snubbing of the Minsk Agreements with regard to Donetsk and Lugansk People's Republics.
Nonetheless, the US and NATO rejected key provisions of the Russian proposals.
"The general principle in terms of international law has always been solidly against outside nations getting embroiled in dyadic conflicts by providing one side with deadly weapons," stresses Crosston. "How can this maneuver do anything except intensify the death and destruction?"
What has also gone unnoticed in the West is how fortunate Western nations have all been in the Russian reaction to the supplying of American arms, according to the academic. "It would have been easy and not entirely unjustified for this weaponization of Ukraine to trigger a larger conflict directly with the United States," he remarks, stressing that Moscow did not resort to this option thus preventing the conflict from going global.
US Weapons Flow to Ukraine
However, it appears that Moscow's balanced approach has encouraged some American policy-makers to weaponize Ukraine more "brazenly" and "aggressively," according to the Hill.
"I think the instincts of the people in the departments and agencies, particularly State and Defense and the intelligence community, I think their instincts are to be more forward leaning and more aggressive," one former senior government official told the media outlet.
As the flow of heavy and sophisticated arms from the US to Ukraine is gaining momentum, reports emerging in the Western press since the beginning of the conflict indicate that many of the American weapons systems routinely vanish "in the fog of war."
First CNN, and then CBS News noted that billions of dollars of military aid that the US is sending to Ukraine does not always make it to the front lines. Furthermore, officials interviewed by CNN earlier this year admitted that there is a grave risk of weaponry ending up in the hands of criminal and terror groups.
"[T]he United States has always had a very shaky record on the reporting of using aid and the accountability mechanisms that need to be in place to make sure aid is properly used as intended," says Crosston.
"This is not exclusive to the Ukrainian conflict but has been seen again and again all over the world in all the areas that the United States offers aid. Corruption and misuse of aid has a very long and well-documented history. Unfortunately, despite massive criticism, stopping this corruption and misuse has never really been tackled in any kind of comprehensive and effective manner."
Despite billions' worth of arms coming from the US and NATO countries to Ukraine, Kiev government forces have been sustaining defeat and proved incapable of launching counter-offensives. This situation has prompted some world leaders to subject Washington's weaponization spree to ridicule. Thus, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan called weapons supplied by Western countries to Ukraine scrap metal.
"They say they are sending weapons to Ukraine. Whatever scrap metal they have, they send it to Ukraine," the Turkish president told a news conference in Belgrade on September 7 following talks with Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic.
Ukraine Policy and US' November Midterms
While the Biden administration announces new multibillion-dollar military aid packages for Ukraine, its inflation concerns - not the Ukraine conflict - that continues to trigger concerns among Americans threatening to deprive the Democrats of majority in the House and the Senate chambers.
A majority of Americans (56%, including 67% Republicans and 44% Democrats) now say inflation is causing them financial strain, according to a new Gallup survey. The latest NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll also indicates that inflation is now the top issue overall for voters. Remarkably, the Ukraine crisis is not listed among Americans' top concerns.
Crosston does not believe that there will be any major political implications against the Biden administration in the long run when it comes to his maneuvers and policy in Ukraine.
"It is quite true the Democrats will likely have problems in the midterm elections," says the academic. "[But] no one is trying at the moment to tie the costs of Ukrainian support to hardships possibly suffered by the American people domestically."
For his part, Peter van Buren, a former US Foreign Service employee, argues in his op-ed for The Spectator that Joe Biden's Ukraine policy is a "multidimensional mess" which is likely to backfire heavily on the US president's legacy: "What is the Biden policy, what is it intended to achieve for US interests, and what is its end game? No one can really answer those questions beyond a childish 'the other side goes home before we do.'"
While Biden "makes plans to send additional sticks and stones to Ukraine," China is stepping up its influence in Africa and continues to make inroads into the "Lithium Triangle," which is made up by Argentina, Bolivia and Chile, according to Van Buren.
At the same time, Biden's sanctions "have actually aided Russia," the former US official continued: Moscow's export energy prices "have been on average around 60% higher than they were last year."
"About the only people actually sanctioned so far have been American consumers, who paid $5 a gallon for gas in the spring and early summer," he remarked.
The upcoming November midterms are said to become a litmus test for the Biden administration's performance, with Ukraine being one in a string of Biden's foreign and internal policy blunders, castigated by his political opponents and their voters. So far, bipartisan observers see little if any odds of Democrats prevailing in the November elections.
