Fear Has Big Eyes
By Stephen Blank
February 06, 2023
BLACK SEA (February 5, 2018) Standing NATO Maritime Group Two (SNMG2) and Standing NATO Mine Countermeasures Group Two (SNMCMG2) sail together in the Black Sea. Formation included HMS Duncan (D37), TCG Gaziantep (F490), ROS Regele Ferdinand (F221), HMS Enterprise (H88), TCG Akcay (M270) and ROS Lt Lupo Dinescu (25). SNMG2 and SNMCMG2 are on a routine patrol in the Black Sea to increase interoperability among the groups and with Allied Navies that operate on the Black Sea. NATO photo by Royal Navy LPhot Paul Hall / Released.
Russia either has just launched its expected offensive or it is imminent. Yet Ukraine’s allies are still unable or unwilling to give it the full complement of what it needs to win. Moreover, the signs of eroding public support for U.S. assistance are multiplying. The unseemly recent spectacle of allied divisions over providing tanks ended with Ukraine still not getting as many tanks as it requested or needs. Now the struggle has shifted to air planes and air defenses and here too allied fissures abound. Germany, again displaying its cowardice, refuses to give Ukraine airplanes while President Biden rejects giving Kyiv F-16s. In both cases the reason is what has long since become a standard operating response that this will provoke Moscow who might actually escalate against NATO.
Unfortunately these equivocations employ the long-standing “Moscow factor” discernible in U.S. and Western policy, namely that we cannot do anything for Ukraine that may provoke Russia who, after all, has usable nuclear weapons and regularly threatens to use them. However, this signal of Western fear merely emboldens Putin who apparently still thinks he can win, in no small measure due to such overtly expressed fears. Worse yet it ignores years of Soviet and Russian history that demonstrate no such inhibitions on Moscow’s part when it comes to sending aircraft and air defenses to our adversaries.
During the Korean War Soviet pilots flew combat missions in Soviet Mig-15s for North Korea. We knew this but covered it up lest it provoke an escalation. In the Vietnam war Moscow similarly provided North Vietnam with millions of dollars of aircraft, radars, air defense systems etc. In the two wars fought by Egypt. with Syria against Israel, already a Western partner, in 1967 and 1973, Moscow similarly provided billions of dollars of tanks, planes, air defenses, etc. to its Arab clients. Indeed, in the so called “war of attrition” in 1969-70 its pilots even flew combat missions out of Egypt against Israel. Thus, such conduct is hardly unprecedented. Moreover, in none of these cases did Moscow evince any great concern that we would escalate.
https://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2023/02/06/fear_has_big_eyes_879880.html
