“I Need Ammunition, Not a Ride.” And Other Comments on America and Ukraine

If there is a contest for quote of the year, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has already won it with his response to America’s offer to fly him out of the country (or maybe to Lviv, in far western Ukraine, I’m not sure) after the Russian invasion started.  Maybe we thought he would want to leave, like Afghanistan President Ashraf Ghani did when we abandoned Afghanistan.  But President Zelensky didn’t.  Which leads to my first comment:

1. Just like in Afghanistan, our intelligence in Ukraine was really bad.  In Afghanistan, we thought the government could last for months after we left.  Instead, it collapsed before we were even gone.  It was a total intelligence failure.

     It was much the same in Ukraine, except in the opposite direction.  While we got it right that Russia was going to invade, we were totally wrong about how well the Russian army would do and we were totally wrong about how well the Ukrainian army would defend its country.  We saw the Russian army as experienced and well-equipped, and we thought they would roll over the Ukrainians.  We saw the Ukrainian army as weak and unprepared, and we thought they wouldn’t be able to stand up to the Russians.  Both of these were wrong, and that was important because those intelligence failures may have affected our policy choices.

2. We seem to have united NATO on Ukraine.  Or, perhaps more accurately, Vladimir Putin has united NATO by invading Ukraine, and we haven’t messed it up.  In either case, NATO is united.  The key Is to keep it that way.

3. President Zelensky should not have had to go before Congress to ask for supplies.  We should have been offering him supplies before he even asked.  As soon as Russia invaded, or maybe even before, we should have been figuring out what Ukraine needed and how we could provide it.  I understand President Biden can’t do this himself, but he’s got a lot of smart people, in the military and in his administration.  They should have been doing it, even if he didn’t ask.  Just to be ready.  Maybe they were doing it and we don’t know it because it was behind the scenes.  But if so, why weren’t we providing more supplies to Ukraine earlier?

4. In my first post on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine (this year, opposed to its invasion in 2014), I said, “[I]t’s not what you say, it’s what you do.”  I asked if the United States was “willing to spend a little less on social programs, so we can spend more on defense?  [Are we] willing to authorize more drilling on federal lands, get more gas pipelines built, and fast-track the construction of liquified natural gas terminals in the U.S., so U.S. LNG can help replace Russian natural gas in Europe?”

     So far, most of the things we have done, maybe other than the ban on Russian oil, haven’t cost us anything right now.¹  We have sent weapons, etc., to Ukraine, but did we cut back on anything so we could do that or are we just increasing the deficit by an amount that disappears in the rounding?  We increased sanctions on Russia and Russian oligarchs, and we froze accounts of Russia’s central bank, but the costs of those things will come down the road.

     Do we support Ukraine enough to do something that’s hard?  For example, are we willing to increase our production of natural gas so we can ship more liquified natural gas to Europe to replace the gas they buy from Russia?  Are we willing to speed up the approval of LNG terminals in the U.S. so we can load more gas onto ships to send to Europe?

     There will be people who say we can’t do those things because of climate change.  But that’s the point.  If we really support Ukraine, then we need to be willing to do things we wouldn’t otherwise do.  We need to make sacrifices.  Of course, we’re worried about climate change, but if we expect countries to stop buying oil and gas from Russia (so Putin doesn’t have as much money to spend on attacking his neighbors), then we need to produce more oil and gas so we can replace the oil and gas they are buying from Russia.²  I’m not talking about using more oil and gas; I’m just talking about changing who Europe gets its oil and gas from.  But we have to increase our oil and gas production to do that.³

     If we are not willing to do this, then we need to tell the Ukrainians and Europe now, so they know what we will do and what we won’t do.  Because we shouldn’t mislead people into relying on us if we’re not going to be there for them.

5. President Biden has spent a lot of time telling the Russians what we won’t do.  We won’t send troops to Ukraine; we won’t help provide MiGs to Ukraine; etc.  The problem with this approach is that if you tell the other side what you won’t do, they’ll know what they can do – and it might be more than they would have otherwise done.

     The same is true with all of the talk by President Biden (and others) about how we can’t let this turn in World War III.  Of course, we don’t want World War III.  Nobody does.  But, as with the prior comment, if we spend our time talking about the things we won’t do because we don’t want to start World War III, then Vladimir Putin will have a much better idea of what he can do – and he’ll know how to scare us into not doing even more things.  The way to make sure we don’t get into World War III is not to talk about it all the time; it’s to be strong and ready to act.

6. President Biden talks a lot about how we will defend every square inch of NATO territory.  That is good and important.  But there are countries in Europe, besides Ukraine, that are not in NATO.  For example, Moldova, Bosnia, Finland, Sweden.  We need to be thinking about what we would do if Russia attacks one of them.  We don’t need to talk about yet (hint to President Biden), but we need to be thinking about it.  We need to be ready.  I hope the Administration is doing that.

7. One final thing:  Russia and Ukraine are both big grain exporters.  Because Ukraine didn’t let Putin roll over them, there could be a lot less grain grown in Ukraine this year.  Also, who knows how much grain Russia will grow this year or be allowed to sell because of sanctions.  Countries like Egypt get most of their wheat from Russia and Egypt.  Are we thinking about this?  If we expect countries to stay onside vis-à-vis Ukraine, we need to help them with their food problems.⁴ 

     One idea: We can grow a lot of food.  Basically, we are an agricultural superpower.  Maybe we grow more corn and soybeans than wheat, but we can grow a lot of food,  We can help get food to people and countries that don’t have enough – if we want to and if we plan ahead.  We could supply even more if we stopped turning so much of our corn into ethanol.  Ethanol really isn’t important for the environment.  It’s mainly important to win the Iowa presidential caucuses.  Instead of worrying about the Iowa caucuses, let’s worry about hungry people around the world.  Once again, I hope somebody in the Administration is thinking about this.  Because that is what leaders do.  They don’t sit back and wait to be asked.  They anticipate problems ahead of time and get solutions ready for when they are needed.
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¹ Oil and gas prices were going up before we banned Russian oil, but the banning of Russian oil may have increased the amount it went up.
² Some will say we should just get more renewable energy.  That’s good in theory, but it will take too long.  We need oil and gas now and to get that, we need to increase our production.
³ Note that I am not talking about ignoring climate change.  I’m just talking about increasing our oil and gas production so we can cut Russia’s.  And it won’t be forever.  It would be for maybe three to five years, and after Putin has lost and Russia is out of Ukraine, we can push all that much harder on climate change.  But we still have to make that decision to increase our oil and gas production now.
⁴ We also need to be thinking about how we can help countries get fed because we’re decent people.