As Washington lavishes more weapons on Ukraine, Japan launches its PM to Kyiv to counter China’s Moscow gambit

(Originally published March 22 in “What in the World“) The White House has approved $350 million in new military aid for Ukraine, raising the amount of weaponry provided since Russia’s invasion to $32.5 billion worth (full inventory below).

The latest package will send the Pentagon rummaging through its pantry to provide Kyiv with some more hand-me-downs from its own rapidly depleting stockpile, including howitzer shells and rockets for U.S.-supplied long-range precision High Mobility Artillery Rocket System, or Himars. Ukraine will also get ammo for its Bradley fighting vehicles, HARM air-to-surface missiles and anti-tank weapons.

The Pentagon is also rushing to get M1 Abrams tanks and Patriot anti-missile batteries to Ukraine sooner than first anticipated. By refurbishing older tanks, the U.S. will be able to get tanks to Ukraine by fall, still too late alas for Russia’s big spring offensive—which appears to be the worst-kept secret in military history.

While the U.S. ships more weapons to Ukraine, Europe is still struggling to meet its military commitments to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg is now resorting to shaming NATO members by pointing out that only seven of the alliance’s 30 members met their target in 2022 of spending at least 2% of their respective GDP’s on armaments.

It’s still unclear what, if anything, China’s President Xi Jinping will accomplish by visiting Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow. So far, Xi and Russian President Vladimir Putin have only offered only diplomatic puffery about their abiding friendship and shared opposition to the U.S.-dominated world order. The economic agreement they signed is reportedly also weak tea, suggesting that either Russia has little else to offer China, or that China isn’t eager to expand its economic support of Moscow. Behind the scenes, Xi could either be secretly trying to talk Putin off the ledge in Ukraine, or secretly hatching the next phase of an evil alliance with Iran and Saudi Arabia—the two historic enemies between whom Beijing recently brokered a watershed diplomatic agreement.

China has advertised Xi’s trip as a peace mission, while the U.S. has decried the trip as lending diplomatic support to Putin and hinted that it might be a prelude for more direct involvement by China in support of Russia. Ukraine has largely ignored the trip, since China’s published plans so far don’t explicitly call for Russia’s withdrawal from Ukrainian territory. Xi has reportedly scheduled a phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, however, after his visit to Moscow. Instead of Xi, Zelensky’s revolving door of world leaders this week featured Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida.

Xi’s trip has also been juxtaposed against the International Criminal Court’s issuance of a warrant for Putin’s arrest for alleged war crimes to suggest Xi supports a war criminal. It’s important to note that neither China nor Russia are signatories to the Rome Treaty that established the ICC. The U.S. also doesn’t recognize the ICC’s authority. Former President Bill Clinton signed the treaty but failed to submit it to Congress for ratification. Former President George W. Bush then withdrew the U.S. signature from the treaty.

The New York Times has matched Politico’s scoop about Russia buying drone parts from China and lent it extra outrage. The Times’ breathless account of how Russia has managed to lay hold of $12 million worth of buzzing, camera-toting quadcopters from Chinese company DJI featured the below photo of a Chinese knockoff of the kind of Reaper drone the U.S. uses. Note that DJI doesn’t make these kinds of drones, or the kind of kamikaze drones Russia is buying from Tehran, or the kind that Ukraine just used to destroy a shipment of Russian missiles in Russian-occupied Crimea. DJI’s largest drone is about a meter in width, comes packed in a box, and, while its drones certainly could be useful for getting a bird’s-eye view of opposing forces in Ukraine, Ukraine forces are importing them, too. More worrisome was Politico’s allegation that a Chinese company shipped assault rifles to Russia. Now, if Beijing were sending Moscow surveillance balloons, that would be another thing.

For its part, Iran still denies sending any drones to Russia, despite their wreckage being found all over Ukraine. Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Tuesday blamed NATO for creating the conditions for the war by expanding eastward to Russia’s border, a charge that has been leveled by many secular Western diplomats. Khamenei said the war principally benefits Western arms manufacturers—another reasonable charge. Therefore, Khamenei said, Washington doesn’t want to end the war, an only slightly far-fetched hat-tip to Eisenhower’s warnings about the military-industrial complex steering U.S. foreign policy. But Khamenei then lays the blame for the suffering of “the poor people in Ukraine” at the feet of the U.S. defense industry, instead of with Putin where it belongs.