NATO missiles for Ukraine

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Coming up next on The World and Everything in It: U.S. aid to Ukraine.

ZELENSKYY: ​​[Speaking Ukrainian]

On Friday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy sought a green light to launch long-range strikes on Russia.

Meanwhile, President Biden met with UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer in Washington.

BIDEN: The United States is committed to standing with you to help Ukraine as a defense against Russia's onslaught of aggression. Clear that Putin will not ... make it clear that Putin will not prevail in this war.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Going into the meeting, Biden hinted that he might approve Ukraine’s request for Western missiles to strike Russia. The meeting ended with no commitment one way or the other.

But if there were such an escalation would it hasten an end to the war or just make it worse?

WORLD Radio’s Paul Butler has the story.

PAUL BUTLER: Since Russia rolled into Ukraine in 2022, military experts in the United States have debated how much support should be given to Ukraine.

JOHN HARDIE: I think the administration has always been trying to balance what they see as competing objectives…

John Hardie is deputy director of the Russia program for the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies.

HARDIE: So one is supporting Ukraine and helping it defeat Russia's unprovoked invasion, and the other is preventing escalation. So over time, you've seen the administration sort of shift what it views as too risky.

In the beginning, America’s aid for Ukraine included largely humanitarian relief, financial aid, and defensive weapons. The U.S. was reluctant to give lethal weapons, for fear that Russia would retaliate. But so far it hasn’t.

ROBERT PETERS: Every time the Russians put out a red line, and we would do something, there was no real response, right?

Robert Peters researches nuclear deterrence and missile defense for the Heritage Foundation.

PETERS: We gave them Bradley's fighting vehicles, and there was no response. We gave them M1 Abrams tanks, no response. We gave them F-16s, and there was no cost that was imposed upon the United States by the Russians. And so it became, well, look, I guess they're not serious.

Even after Ukraine invaded the Russian region of Kursk, the Kremlin opted not to deploy tactical nuclear weapons. John Hardie sees that as a sign that Russia’s rhetoric should not be taken seriously…and a reason to support more military aid to Ukraine.

HARDIE: I think at this point, there's very little risk that attack and strikes against legitimate military targets in Russia would lead to major escalation.

Hardie says supplying Ukraine with weapons like Army Tactical Missile Systems, or ATACMS, doesn’t pose as much of a threat to Russia as it might have earlier in the war.

HARDIE: That is because Russia has shifted a lot of its warplanes out of ATACMS range, out of the range of the Storm Shadow and Scalp cruise missiles provided by the British and French…

But Robert Peters is skeptical about giving Ukraine more powerful weapons while ignoring Russia’s warnings.

PETERS: While the Russians have been frankly dumb in crying wolf for two years and desensitized us to those threats, there may come a day when we wake up and they actually do use and they say, we've we've told you this, that we were going down this route, and you guys have been ignoring us. And then what do we do?

If Russia is serious about its newest threats, Peters says the NATO Alliance would have to answer a more difficult set of questions.

PETERS: Is Ukraine worth fighting a nuclear war over? No way. Is Ukraine worth fighting a conventional war with Russia over? Um, I would be very hesitant to say to any American president, whoever was in the White House, that Ukraine is worth fighting a conventional war over in which it was direct American forces and NATO allied forces directly engaging in combat with Russia.

Avoiding a direct war with Russia is one thing, but the more immediate issue is charting a course for ending Russia’s war with Ukraine.

On the campaign trail Donald Trump has said he would sit the two sides down to make a deal. But Hardie says Russia is in no position to negotiate in good faith.

HARDIE: Putin is still making maximalist claims, demanding that Ukraine agree to give up even more territory than is already occupied, let alone recognizing Russian occupation of that territory before they even start talking. And so obviously that's a non-starter.

He says it’s likely Ukraine and Russia will end up with a “frozen conflict,” where neither side achieves victory. And if there were to be a ceasefire, he believes that would eventually end in another war.

Robert Peters says that may be the case, but believes it’s time for the U.S. to shift its focus.

PETERS: We spent $174 billion on the Defense of Ukraine. So that is about as much as we spend on the U.S. Army every year. And the fact of the matter is that Russia is nowhere near the threat that China is to American interest.

There is no equivalent to the NATO alliance in the Pacific…and without the U.S., nations like Japan, Taiwan, and the Philippines would be no match against China.

PETERS: Yeah, there's a war going on in Europe today, but the threat to American interests is far, far greater in the western Pacific than it is in Europe. And European nations are far more capable to deter that threat than our friends and allies in the western Pacific are.

But Hardie says it’s possible to do both…particularly since Ukraine and Taiwan are requesting different kinds of weapons.

HARDIE: I think that we can definitely walk and chew gum at the same time.

For WORLD, I’m Paul Butler. Harrison Watters wrote and reported this story.

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