NATO is willing to give Ukraine just enough to avoid defeat; desperate politicians may find the pretext for escalation.

(Originally published June 20 in “What in the World“) Ukraine launched strikes over the weekend using its rapidly depleting stock of artillery and missiles on Donbas, including Russian-controlled Donestsk, to try to halt the Russian offensive there.

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg is warning the war could drag on for years, though he suggested to Germany’s Bild am Sonntag that more modern weapons could enable Ukraine to push Russia out. Alas, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization is only will to risk as much as it takes to prevent Ukraine from losing. The leaders of France and Germany visited Kyiv last week to dispel Ukraine’s accusations that they were willing to sacrifice Ukrainian sovereignty to prevent wider war with Russia and end the economic pain being inflicted on their economies. They pledged to stand beside Kyiv no matter what and held out the prospect of Ukrainian membership in the European Union, but promised Kyiv only a fraction of the additional arms it says it needs.

NATO still stands to be forced into escalation by some pretext. So far, likely candidates to supply one have been Russia, naturally, the United States or even Ukraine itself. But the catalyst could also come from another NATO member like the United Kingdom, whose politically embattled Prime Minister Boris Johnson, fresh from barely surviving a no-confidence vote amid rebellion by his own party, paid a second visit to Kyiv to promise British training for Ukrainian soldiers. It wasn’t immediately clear whether that would mean stationing British military personnel in Ukraine or ferrying Ukrainian soldier to Britain for their tutelage.

Iran, meanwhile, is busy digging tunnels as part of efforts to build a nuclear site that can withstand bunker-busting bombs.