Ukraine’s leader flings forces against creeping inertia; US fights to stay in Iraq

(Originally published Sept. 4 in “What in the World“) Russia has stepped up its barrage on Ukraine’s cities, including a large number of ballistic missiles fired at Kyiv. Two missiles struck a military institute full of people, killing at least 50.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said the latest attack served as a tragic reminder of Ukraine’s shortage of air-defense ammunition. “Once again, we urge everyone in the world who has the power to stop this terror,” he said after the strike. “Air defense systems and missiles are needed in Ukraine, not in a warehouse somewhere.”

Zelensky also reiterated his plea for the White House to remove restrictions on using long-range missiles to strike Russian attackers firing from deep inside Russia. “Long-range strikes that can defend against Russian terror are needed now, not sometime later,” Zelensky said. Moscow is clearly worried he’ll succeed: it has announced it plans to change the conditions for using nuclear weapons in response to Western escalation in Ukraine.

While Russia’s nuclear threats are increasingly derided as empty bluff, particularly by Zelensky, the problem for the West remains that Russian President Vladimir Putin is willing to go to greater lengths to achieve his goals in Ukraine—keeping the birthplace of the Rus from becoming yet another Western ally on Russia’s doorstep. Simply put, he wants it more. He’s willing to risk more and potentially pay a higher relative price.

Writers like former CIA analyst Peter Schroeder argue that Putin’s nuclear bluster is what informs U.S. President Joe Biden’s incrementalist policy towards arming Ukraine, it’s not. Washington’s aim all along has been to avoid provoking any expansion of the war by Russia against the West, whether by nuclear or conventional attack in, say, the Baltics, or by somehow convincing China to throw in alongside it. Instead of providing Ukraine with the means to eject Russia, therefore, it has chosen instead to give it only enough to keep it from losing—the most cynical policy of all. The result is that Putin has already achieved what he wanted: establish a land bridge to the strategically vital Crimea peninsula. The rest is a matter of negotiating the border.

Washington’s gamble, however, was that Putin would lose a war of attrition, either by going broke or facing domestic unrest. Neither has occurred. Instead, time has been on Putin’s side. Schroeder argues that the best strategy for the West is to try to wait Putin out. He assumes a successor would be able to walk away from what by then will seem like hard-won Russian gains paid for with great sacrifice. Schroeder also seems to overlook the fact that Ukraine is likely to run out of soldiers before either Putin dies (he’s only 71) or Washington and its allies lose public support for the heavily lopsided cost of maintaining a stalemate in Ukraine.

That’s why Ukraine’s incursion into Kursk is so dangerous. Ukraine’s surprise invasion of Russia has been explained as a tactic to eliminate Russia’s ability to launch attacks on Ukraine and to win a stronger position in any eventual negotiations over Ukraine’s partition. But it has been combined with a stepped-up campaign to hit Russian military targets and infrastructure using homemade, long-range drones. While Biden may not be willing to risk as much as Putin, even Putin isn’t willing to risk as much as Zelensky. Zelensky’s goal in Kursk is to escalate the war inside Russia, provoke a Russian response and force the West to intervene directly to save Ukraine. Even if that means starting World War III.

There’s an important lobby that supports the status quo in Ukraine, however. Himars and Javelins aren’t the only weapons getting attention thanks to their performance in Ukraine. More nations are lining up to buy Patriot air-defense missile systems, too. RTX, which makes the Patriot launch battery, says its working on 13 orders—including a $2.2 billion purchase of five by Switzerland and a $2.4 billion order for four from Germany. Patriot launchers fire sophisticated, precision PAC-3 missiles made by Lockheed Martin that cost $3.7 million a pop.

With Russia launching some of its largest aerial bombardments of the war this week, it’s clear Ukraine is going to need a lot of new U.S. military aid to keep knocking them down. Lockheed Martin’s Arkansas plant is churning out 550 a year and ramping up to 650 a year by 2027—that’s $2.4 billion in new missiles a year at today’s prices. It’s also still selling older, PAC-2 missiles.

Also defending the status quo are U.S. troops still hanging around in Iraq. The roughly 2,500 troops were left there to mop up remnants of Islamic State, a job that is also being done by the Iraqi military and its ragtag paramilitary groups. Since the war in Gaza started, however, those American troops have largely served as targets for the paramilitary groups, many of which are backed by Iran and have joined a so-called “Axis of Resistance” against the U.S. and Israel.

Baghdad is pushing Washington, therefore, to remove these last troops. But this year, U.S. forces say they have had to mount an unusually high number of missions against IS—three as of August, compared to four for all of 2023. That might seem low, but the U.S. military says ISIS claimed 153 attacks in Iraq and Syria in the first six months of this year, putting them on track to double in 2024. To demonstrate their continued purpose, U.S. forces last week conducted a joint raid on ISIS with their Iraqi counterparts in the country’s remote western desert.

The Axis of Resistance includes Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen, who this week launched two ballistic missiles and a “suicide” drone against two oil tankers in the Red Sea.