The former supreme allied commander says Obama should capitalize on the
Russian leader’s distraction by stoking the Ukraine crisis.
Moscow is stressed. It is conducting an overt military
campaign in Syria and and a subversive one in Ukraine, where it annexed the
Crimean peninsula last year. The Russian government also faces growing
international pressure on how it will respond to an explosion that brought down
a civilian airliner full of vacationers, and the strengthening theory that the
Islamic State group was the perpetrator.
If ever there were an opportunity to wrong-foot
Vladimir Putin, this is it.
“If the U.S. were sensitive to the Russian plan, this
would be the ideal time to provide much greater economic and training
assistance to Ukraine,” says retired Army Gen. Wesley Clark, who oversaw all
NATO operations in Europe as the supreme allied commander before retiring in
2000. “This is a good time if you want to train the Ukrainian military, and
provide defensive weapons.”
Clark, who unsuccessfully sought the Democratic
nomination for president in 2004, has been among the most vocal advocates for
President Barack Obama to provide weaponry, such as anti-tank missile
launchers, to the Ukrainian military and ramp up efforts to train them. The
Obama administration so far has balked at what would be a major escalation in
the East-versus-West battle that could also further incite the Russian-backed
separatist rebels in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk and Luhansk regions.
The former “breadbasket of the Soviet Union,” Ukraine
has increasingly identified with the West since the collapse of the USSR,
prompting a harsh response from Moscow, which considers its efforts to join the
NATO alliance a threat. Since its pro-Russian president was ousted last year in
a popular uprising, Ukraine has sought military equipment, training and
financial support to counter Russian aggression even as it focuses on stemming
what has become endemic domestic corruption.
Some of Obama’s top advisers have pushed hard for the
U.S. to supply Ukraine with advanced weaponry in addition to the non-lethal aid
the U.S. currently provides.
“I personally fall into the camp that believes we
should provide lethal defense assistance to Ukraine, primarily anti-tank
weapons,” said Evelyn Farkas, who until last Friday was the deputy assistant
secretary of Defense for Russia, Ukraine and Eurasia.
Farkas told reporters last Friday her departure had
nothing to do with policy differences with the administration, but she did express
concerns that the administration is not doing enough to deter Russia.
Obama is receiving conflicting advice on the idea. Lt.
Gen. Ben Hodges commands all U.S. Army operations in Europe and also believes
Russia cannot sustain its current spread of military activities on its
shrinking budget. Injecting more armaments into the situation, however, could
make it more deadly.
“If the U.S. were to provide a lot of weapons, say to
Ukraine, which resulted in killing or destroying a lot of Russian equipment or
Russian soldiers, that would not change the strategic calculus in any positive
way,” he told U.S. News in September. “If [Putin] were to start suffering big
casualties there, I think he would double down on it and now we would have a
serious escalation.”
“I’m not opposed to Ukrainian soldiers being able to
destroy Russian tanks, but we have to keep in mind the larger strategic
picture. If we were to provide offensive weapons, that would put some serious
strain on our relations with our allies in maintaining the unity of the
alliance against Russia, which is so important.”
But for Clark, the requirements of Putin’s wars,
Russian domestic concerns and the ongoing crash investigation provide a
singular opportunity for exploitation.
“Why not take advantage of Putin’s distractions?” he
says. “Put him on the back foot. Show him that he may be playing a game in the
West for Syria, but we’re playing a game for the West in Ukraine.”
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