At its Plenary Sitting on Monday the 27th of May, 2024, in Sofia, Bulgaria, NATO’s Parliamentary Assembly adopted Declaration 489 – Standing with Ukraine until Victory.[1] Inter alia the Declaration reiterated, in the strongest terms, unequivocal condemnation of Russia’s ongoing war of aggression in Ukraine as evidenced by its ongoing missile and drone attacks against urban centers and critical infrastructure, all for the sake of terrorizing the Ukrainian people.
The Declaration also reaffirmed a commitment to support Ukraine’s democracy, independence, sovereignty, and territorial integrity, given her internationally recognized borders, and thus Ukraine’s right to self-defense and self-determination.
Because Russia’s war against Ukraine is a critical test of the collective resilience of democracies against the brutality of authoritarianism, the West must therefore ensure that Ukraine wins in recognition of the simple fact that Russia’s aggression will not stop at Ukraine. Russia not only can but must suffer strategic defeat in Ukraine.
Finally, and significantly, the Declaration stressed that the current levels of military assistance are insufficient for Ukraine to prevail against Russian aggression, recognizing that the amount, type and timeliness of military assistance being provided have significant battlefield consequences.
As U.S. and European leaders began the recent NATO Summit convened in Washington, DC, on July 9, they were forced to acknowledge precisely this: an inability to produce enough weapons for Ukraine’s defense against Russian atrocity. According to Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg, production capacity has been “delinquent,” with serious gaps in NATO’s “interoperability.” Production and supply efforts, he noted, simply haven’t matched the battlefield demand.
But this deficiency noted by Stoltenberg is merely a symptom of a deeper “delinquency,” namely, the West’s lack of urgency and resolve to mobilize its financial and military resources for the purpose of winning the war. The pattern of Western nations – and particularly the U.S. – has been to slow-walk aid, while imposing absurd restrictions on Ukraine’s use of weapons being supplied. The futility and foolishness of “as long as it takes” (per Biden and Stoltenberg) should be apparent. In a war of attrition, Ukraine will collapse, as issues of manpower, civilian infrastructure, and economics presently demonstrate.
The urgency of the matter was graphically – and most tragically – on display the day before the Summit began, with Russia launching 40 missiles at Ukrainian cities. Among the targets were three separate hospitals, a violation of Article 18 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, ratified by the United Nations after WWII. (One of these, Kyiv’s Okhmadyt Children’s Hospital, is Ukraine’s largest oncological facility, taking in about 18,000 children a year.) A total of over forty people were killed and more than 170 injured. We might ask: What has been the response to these atrocities by relatively free nations? By the U.S.? And common sense requires us to ask: Should Ukraine not be given the air defense and weaponry necessary to nullify Russian missile attacks by destroying the very Russian military sites that are launching such attacks? Would we hope to respond if we were under such attack?
Few people in the West think through what is actually happening in Ukraine. None of us can fathom the degree of suffering that the Ukrainian people have endured in these last two-and-a-half years of war, destruction, and deprivation. Those who gathered more recently at the 2024 Ukraine Recovery Conference in Berlin attempted the daunting task of estimating the excruciatingly painful effects of the war thus far. Among these: a third or more of Ukrainians – about 14.6 million people – have had to flee their homes since February of 2022; 6.5 million have fled the country while 3.7 are still there but displaced. At least 31,000 soldiers and tens of thousands of civilians have died. As of February 2024, an estimated 156,000 square miles of Ukrainian territory have been contaminated by mines. The June 2023 destruction of the Kakhovka Dam caused $14 billion in damage or loss and flooded roughly 620 square kilometers of land. As of the present, over $10 billion damage has been done to Ukraine’s energy and civilian infrastructure, including billions worth of damage inflicted upon Ukrainian healthcare facilities. And all of this is fully aside from Ukraine’s acute shortage of soldiers as the war continues in its third year.
The Berlin conference noted the critical role played by international support for Ukraine’s assistance and recovery – both immediate and long-term – in sending a cautionary message to dictators and tyrants globally. Sadly, however, most of our Western leaders – and surely those of the U.S. – are motivated more by a “fear of escalation” than a commitment to do what is right, just, and morally principled. We are unwilling to deter socio-political evil. Vladimir Putin has publicly vowed to return “historically Russian lands” to the motherland, and no evidence exists to indicate that Putin is intimidated or deterred by the West; rather, the West is intimidated and deterred by state-supported Russian terrorism. There can be little doubt as to Putin’s perception of the West: our collective weakness is far greater than our resolve to ensure Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity; Putin will subjugate Ukraine. This, as the Atlantic Council’s Peter Dickinson has rightly observed, is “the appeasement of the twenty-first century.”[2]
There is no denying present geopolitical realities: our adversaries – chiefly, Iran, North Korea and China – are helping to rebuild Russia’s war machine. And recently Russia used its United Nations Security Council vote to block the U.N. from continuing to monitor international sanctions against North Korea. Hatred of the U.S. and the West has united these rogue regimes and so we face a moment not unlike that of the allies in 1938/39. Appeasement, not principle, is the air that we breathe. There is no “rules-based international order.” Two and a half years after it formally invaded Ukraine Russia continues its terror, shocking the world with crimes against humanity for which it is not held accountable.
It is hopelessly and absurdly narrow-minded that democratic nations – especially the U.S. – “fear escalation” in the context of geopolitical evil or choose to focus solely on their own internal problems. Why was the “Good Samaritan” pronounced “good”? Because he was willing to act on the basis of moral principle and fundamental justice where confronted by critical human need. To whom much has been given (in the world), much will be required. Let J.D. Vance, given his supposed commitment to Christian faith, consider that.
Whether we admit it or not, global security starts with Ukraine. Terrorism is terrorism, whether committed by non-state actors or rogue regimes, and the Russian dictator will not stop until he has been stopped. The age-old wisdom of international relations remains: weakness invites catastrophe, while strength deters.
[1] https://www.nato-pa.int/download-file?filename=/sites/default/files/2024-05/033%20SESP%2024%20E%20-%20DECLARATION%20489%20-%20UKRAINE%20%282%29.pdf.
[2] Peter Dickinson, “Victory in Ukraine Would Dramatically Strengthen Putin’s War Machine,” UkraineAlert (June 11, 2024); accessible at https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/ukrainealert/victory-in-ukraine-would-dramatically-strengthen-putins-war-machine/.