Are we ready to fight the Final Struggle?
Russia [on Tuesday the 12th] sent a formal diplomatic note to the United States warning that U.S. and NATO shipments of the “most sensitive” weapons systems to Ukraine were “adding fuel” to the conflict there and could bring “unpredictable consequences.”
The diplomatic démarche...came as President Biden approved a dramatic expansion in the scope of weapons being provided to Ukraine, an $800 million package including 155 mm howitzers — a serious upgrade in long-range artillery to match Russian systems — coastal defense drones and armored vehicles, as well as additional portable antiaircraft and antitank weapons and millions of rounds of ammunition.
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Moscow, which has labeled weapons convoys coming into the country as legitimate military targets but has not thus far attacked them, may be preparing to do so.
They are legitimate military targets. Under international law, provision of military aid to one side in the midst of conflict makes the provider a party to the conflict. Russia has not acted on this principal principle.
...Putin, in a speech on the February morning that the invasion began, warned that Western nations would face “consequences greater than any you have faced in history” if they became involved in the conflict.
“a very explicit warning about not sending weapons into a conflict zone.”-George Beebe, below.
Having drawn a red line, [Beebe]asked, are the Russians “now inclined to back that up?”
“They have targeted supply depots in Ukraine itself, where some of these supplies have been stored,” said George Beebe, former director of Russia analysis at the CIA and Russia adviser to former vice president Dick Cheney. 1) “The real question is do they...try to hit the supply convoys themselves 2) and perhaps the NATO countries on the Ukrainian periphery” that serve as transfer points for the U.S. supplies.
2) That would be permitted under the international law principle theory mentioned above. It would, however, trigger NATO mutual defense Article 5: “The Parties agree that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all…” While this commitment to collective defense lay at the heart of NATO, it was left to the judgment of each member state to decide how exactly it would contribute.
If Russian forces stumble in the next phase of the war as they did in the first, “then I think the chances that Russia targets NATO supplies on NATO territory go up considerably,” Beebe said. “There has been an assumption on the part of a lot of us in the West that we could supply the Ukrainians really without limits and not bear significant risk of retaliation from Russia,” he said. “I think the Russians want to send a message here that that’s not true.”
The diplomatic note was dated Tuesday, as word first leaked of the new arms package that brought the total amount of U.S. military aid provided to Ukraine since the Feb. 24 invasion to $3.2 billion, according to Pentagon spokesman John Kirby. In a public announcement Wednesday, Biden said it would include “new capabilities tailored to the wider assault we expect Russia to launch in eastern Ukraine.”
The document, titled “On Russia’s concerns in the context of massive supplies of weapons and military equipment to the Kiev regime,” written in Russian with a translation provided, was forwarded to the State Department by the Russian Embassy in Washington.
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...Russia accused the allies of violating “rigorous principles” governing the transfer of weapons to conflict zones..."
We are violating principles.
...Washington, it said, was pressuring other countries to stop any military and technical cooperation with Russia, and those with Soviet-era weapons to transfer them to Ukraine.
We have done that, with China.
“We call on the United States and its allies to stop the irresponsible militarization of Ukraine, which implies unpredictable consequences for regional and international security.”...
Putin said "consequences greater than any you have faced in history” on Feb. 24. Here the formal diplomatic language, "unpredictable consequences" is used, as it was, for instance, time and time again by the Nazi regime in the run-up to World War II.
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Senior U.S. defense officials remain concerned about the possibility of such attacks [on Western convoys]. “We don’t take any movement of weapons and systems going into Ukraine for granted,” Kirby said Thursday. “Not on any given day.”
Kirby said Ukrainian troops bring the weapons into Ukraine after the United States brings them into the region, and “the less we say about that, the better.”
Say it, Kirby, say it explicitly, we have never made a secret of it. The president just publicly signed a bill transferring military aid.
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The upshot of this is obvious: Are we ready for war with Russia? For practically and under international law we are and have been a party to the Russo-Ukraine conflict. We have gotten away with transferring $2.4B of military materiel to Ukraine under the most transparent fig leaves due entirely to Putin's forbearance. Such forbearance is common. China however sent troops into battle to check a North Korean rout by the Americans in the Korean War. We did not widen the war to China. The Soviet Union was a major arms supplier to North Vietnam. We did not attack the Soviet Union. We did widen the war to Cambodia because of troop infiltration. We aided the mujahideen during the Russo-Afghan War. Or perhaps Putin is not ready. What triggered Tuesday's diplomatic protest was the latest $800M tranche. President Biden repeatedly has answered the question indirectly, that he wanted to avoid a direct NATO-Russia shooting match, which implicitly but not explicitly answers that we are not ready. I don't think we are (I'm sure that is worth a lot to all of you.). I think we need a couple of more years: we need to bring our nuclear arsenal up to parity, at least, with Russia's. We have to develop and deploy hypersonic missiles. We have to modernize missile defense systems. However, I do think that the Final Conflict is now inevitable. Putin's large aim is to rollback NATO! The Bidens have to ask themselves and answer the question explicitly. The question is now ripe.
