Day 644

Note: Today’s Daily Conclusion is the third of a very belated three-part post-mortem of the Ukrainian 2023 Counteroffensive, which is widely agreed to have culminated by the end of October. This part consists of a look at the potentially-decisive issue of Western military aid deliveries.

With the current attritional/positional phase of the war confirmed, it is clear that Ukraine requires the delivery of more and better weapons to overcome this obstacle and secure victory.

This is a vital and pressing need, but Western nations have not yet risen to the challenge. Patriot, F-16, ATACMS, and Leopard 2 are all fine and capable systems that have (finally) arrived, but they have been delivered in quantities and at speeds befitting boutique luxuries, not expendable military equipment being used in one of the largest and most intense interstate conflicts since the Second World War.

Ukraine’s tenacity and will to fight are indispensable, but *elan* alone is no more capable of winning wars now than it was in 1914. Manpower, vehicles, and munitions: only Ukraine supplies the first, but half a hundred of the world’s largest and wealthiest nations have promised the rest. But where are the results? Ukraine’s ability to access war materiel – physical, tangible items, made of metal and filled with explosives – is as crucial as ever, but more is urgently needed.

To adequately arm Ukraine, fill national stockpiles, rebuild withered militaries, and secure peace in Europe, the West must undertake a serious and sober effort to expand its own military-industrial capacity. This is no easy task. It will require introspection that recognizes our own deficiencies, the tackling of difficult questions ignored by an entire generation of leaders, and the prioritization of speed and output over cost-efficiency and price tags. Moreover, it must be supplemented by the growth of spines more willing to part *en masse* with the kind of high-end systems that scare Russia and provoke warnings of an “escalation” that never appears, the kind of items that do not merely prop-up but increase Ukraine’s military capabilities.

Will this occur? The answer to this question has the very real capacity to decide the outcome of this war, and the ability of the West to respond to even more dangerous and pressing future crises.  Failure would undoubtedly endanger our security, our prosperity, and our moral probity, a calamity that would resound for decades to come.

It is deeply unsettling, then, to know that failure here is anything but unthinkable.

Already, the setback of the counteroffensive has encouraged the worst elements – found in every nation – to shout that continued resistance is pointless, that it would be cheaper and easier to close our eyes, that we would be “saving lives” by cutting off support, ending the war, and turning away.

But what did they say when Russia’s “gesture of goodwill” saw its troops retreat in disorganized disgrace from Kyiv, Sumy, and Chernihiv? When Ukrainian soldiers liberated Kharkiv, Kupyansk, and Kherson? When Russia beat itself bloody at Bakhmut? When the Russian Navy lost ship after ship? When the streets of Bucha, the mass graves of Mariupol, the forest-cemeteries of Izyum, or the torture chambers of Kherson were revealed? Why, the very same things that they say now.

Their opposition to Ukraine’s survival and victory is neither new nor altruistic. They have always shielded their cowardice and moral bankruptcy behind thinnest of veils, abusing fatalism, misplaced nationalism, and fictitious austerity in the hopes of accomplishing through subversion and lies what Russian tanks have failed to achieve on the battlefield. Precisely *how* or *why* they justify carrying water for a genocidal dictator hostile to our interests and values is irrelevant. Their prattling – and their preferred strategy of cutting and running – is foolish at best, and subversive at worst.

If Western leaders were to listen to these elements, we would suffer a self-inflicted wound at the outset of a Second Cold War, emboldening our enemies and shaking our allies, harming our security and endangering the peace we now enjoy. To fail Ukraine – and ourselves – would not just be morally reprehensible, but an unacceptable lapse of security in a more dangerous world.