Week 109

Note: Today’s Weekly Conclusion is Part 2 of my long-belated post-mortem of the Battle of Avdiivka, focusing on the implications of irresolution and the price of continued failure.

More than anything else, the reason for Avdiivka’s fall was singular: supply. Soldiers and analysts from all sides noted marginal improvements in Russian tactics, but all ascribed the outcome in Avdiivka not to a strength of Russian arms but a deficit of Ukrainian weapons. It was not a matter of will but of materiel, men let down by allies who had promised so often and so loudly to provide.

This is not a temporary concern or an insignificant development. Avdiivka’s fall is just the beginning. Western officials and Ukrainian commanders (including new Commander-in-Chief Colonel General Syrskyi) have warned that further supply problems may soon enable Russian forces to make substantial breakthroughs and advance deep into Ukraine. Yet instead of responding to their concerns, the United States has spent six months squabbling and failing to lead, as Europe – whose limited stockpiles and industry cannot replace deeper American reserves – has scrambled to act as a stopgap, to little avail. And even as they struggle alone, we have found the gall to demand that they stop targeting oil refineries, so much more worried are we by the prospect of paying a dime more for gas than by the waning strength of a cause that we are supposedly sworn to defend.

Two years ago, we promised to assist Ukraine “for as long as it takes.” It seems we are not as good as our word. As the richest nations in history bicker and complain, arguing over how many fractions of a percent of our enormous wealth we should spend, Ukrainians must watch, wait, and suffer the consequences. Each and every day, the cost of our fecklessness is measured in Ukrainian lives, in broken homes and open caskets and empty holes in family photos. Supplies for critical systems are running low, with no replacements in sight. Artillery commanders must decide when and where to use their tiny supply of shells, leaving soldiers to fight on without help or relief. Civilians hide behind an air defense shield whose supply of missiles is dwindling, wondering how many will die in the next air raid, as they huddle together and wait in darkness for the return of the thousands of fathers and sons whose faces will never be seen again.

This is a road that leads only to sorrow.

For now, that sorrow and those costs are borne by Ukraine alone. For now. It is a common refrain that failure is not an option. But the truth is and has always been that it very much is, and even for us, the consequences of that failure are not theoretical. Even a partial Russian victory will unleash a more dangerous world, one with more conquests and more violence, more dictators and more wars. And no matter how hard we try to separate and insulate ourselves from it, this is a world that we still live in. Before long, the bell will toll, the wheel will turn, and history will repeat. The scythe will come first for the least of us – an Estonia, a Moldova, a Taiwan, so small and insignificant and easy to ignore. Then as now, people with the power to act will close their eyes and believe the fates of lesser nations inevitable, unavoidable, the sort of unfortunate thing that could only ever happen to someone who isn’t them. And they will believe it until the day they are finally, inevitably, proven to be wrong.

We do not have the luxury of living in a permanent world. No victory is ever total, and success can never be bought, only leased for a time. The triumph of peace, democracy, and the current international order eight decades ago came at enormous cost, but it was neither ordained by God nor carved in stone. It was built with blood by the unsteady hands of fallible men, and it must be maintained by the hands of their equally fallible successors. Failure is still an option. It always has been. It always will be. And should we fail, here and now, then we will have earned the consequences, and the right to live in the world that comes after.

“The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance, which condition – if he breaks – servitude is at once the consequence of his crime and the punishment of his guilt.”

— John Philpot Curran