Vance professes to believe that American weapons are irrelevant to Ukrainian security; the ultimate guarantees of Ukrainian independence are the lack of Russian resources to occupy the country and Putin’s supposed desire to reduce defense spending. Is he right?
No. The issue with an occupation is a real one–in fact, I cited it as a reason he wouldn’t invade years ago–but a man who inflicts hundreds of thousands of casualties on both sides because Duke Vladimir of Rus hung out in Ukraine isn’t likely to be deterred by such a prosaic problem. And there is no reason to believe that Putin wants to put his economy back on a peacetime footing. The war has been a strategic disaster for Russia, but it has helped Putin dispense with the flotsam and jetsam of democracy and run the country as a purely fascist state. The end of the emergency would result in calls for liberalization. Why would Putin go for that?
It is not true, as Vance suggests, that a total Russian victory is inevitable. NATO weapons may not be enough to expel the Russians entirely from Ukraine, but all of the evidence indicates that they are enough to create a stalemate that NATO and Ukraine can ultimately tolerate. That’s our real war aim here.