America Can’t Give Ukraine So Many Weapons a Nuclear War Starts

Well said Davis. Measured, reasonable, and above all, realistic. It is incumbent on all patriotic Americans to first and foremost prioritize American strategic interests and the security of America first. Our oaths are to our constitution and by it, to our country—not to any other, regardless of how emotionally compelling another people and another country’s plight may be. We are not the guarantor of the world, and certainly are not of a non-ally like Ukraine.

How does Ukraine intend on paying for the support we have already sent? Much less the thousands of items on their “wishlist”? Is it not irresponsible to borrow from our actual chief global opponent Communist China to oppose a tertiary and marginal opponent? Even though I have personally trained and engaged with members of the Ukrainian armed forces, I believe it is increasingly irresponsible and unwise to roll the dice on our own geo-strategic hegemony on their behalf.

Pathetic.
“We could give Ukraine enough arms, and they do have enough willing men, but we won’t because those nasty Russians would go nuclear because they are the bad guys”

Reality is that US and Nato manufactures as many shells a year as Ukraine fires a month (or Russia fires a week). They can’t supply the arms whatever.
Meanwhile Ukraine is running on new conscripts with 5 weeks of training, and most potential conscripts in the next round are in Europe or Russia and have been for 6 months.

But blame Nato incompetence and Ukraine lack of manpower on Russia because the alternative is to simply admit that US provoked Ukraine into a war it couldn’t win.

The author is another feckless example of a Neville Chamberlain cuck. The same appeasement ilk that empowered the rise of the Nazis and now the Iranian Mullahs. “Peace at any price!”

Now you know why America and its allies haven’t won a war since WWII. Even Putler isn’t stupid enough to use nukes, but if NATO doesn’t find it cojones quick, the whole world will be sucked into another conventional world war.

Thing is, the Liberals & Liberal-tarians are two sides of the same coin of Libertinism. They only care about themselves and hedonistic living for today.

From the halls of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli…
Sic Semper Tyrannis

Putin will be the one to slay the kingdom of babylon in our time. If babylon has to fall in today’s period.

Once that happens, that super duper ooper megapower will evolve into a haven for scavengers and all underworld dwellers instead of world’s finest hedge fund managers, casino operators, arms merchants and money printers.

No more galloping inflation, no more bloody proxy wars, woke culture, ersatz kardashian lifestyles, same gender unions and the like for the rest of the world.

Thanks, putin. For drawing your red line. For putting down your foot. In 2022.

You’re wrong. Ukraine’s territorial interests and integrity are aligned to those of the West. If Russia takes Ukraine it will then be butted up to Western nations like Poland, Romania and others. Not to mention ex soviet satellites like Hungary, Slovakia and to a degree, the Baltics. If Ukraine is defeated then the West will most certainly then be in direct military confrontation with Russia as they strive to recreate the old soviet empire. If Ukraine falls, we are up next.

I tend to agree with the opinions of Mr. Davis and Mr. Droy in the comment section. How this will all end though is anybody’s guess at this stage of the conflict, but the ball does seem to be in Washington’s court, unless something decisive happens on the battlefield.

You can’t put too much water in a nuclear reactor. Perhaps the title of the article should have been, America Can’t Give Ukraine Too Many Weapons.

Words don’t change things, guns do.

Perhaps Putin will agree to leave Crimea and the Donbas right after England agrees to leave Northern Ireland.

Ahh the apologist in chief returns

I’ll be frank defending Ukraine IS in the interests of the US no matter what Davis says.

1) it degrades (at a pittance) one of Americas two strategic rivals to the point where it won’t be able to threaten anyone for decades to come

2) it shows Americas allies that it s not a fair weather friend and can be relied upon ( thus boosting Americas soft power around the globe), especially since the US is a guarantor of Ukrainian territorial integrity under the Budapest memorandum. This also reduces the likelihood of nuclear proliferation as a Russian victory would make it rational for any non-nuclear state to acquire such weapons as an insurance policy against conventional attack leading to an increase in the risk of their use

3) it puts the Chinese open on notice that if they try anything with Taiwan to try and monkey with semiconductor supply chains then their products in for a world of hurt

4) crucially it denies Americas strategic competitor access to natural resources and industrial base that it could use to strengthen its geopolitical position at the expense of the U.S.

Are you 14 years old Chris? Are you not aware that Russia views this conflict as an existential one meriting the use of whatever means are needed to prevent NATO from swallowing Ukraine and moving up to their steppe border?

We Americans illegally invade non-belligerents all the damn time. Get off your high horse of naïveté.

Goran: “allowed” to hold on to parts of Ukraine? Who is going to prevent them? The U.S. is not the ally of Ukraine, nor is it an existential matter to us which flag flies in Sevastopol. It is however an existential matter to Russia which flag does, and whether they have American troops on their Ukraino-Russo border. You know what that means? They will fight. And guess what, they have 6,500 or so nukes, which does matter, whether you want it to or no. If Saddam had had nukes, of course we wouldn’t have illegally invaded Iraq. If anything, NATO attacks on/interventions into places like Yugoslavia and Libya demonstrate the need for other countries to develop mechanisms to deter invasion/attack.

Repetition from Daniel Davis.
Essentially, he repeats the idea that we ignore the fact that Russian success in Ukraine would bind the USA to a new (second) open ended Cold War with Russia in Europe.
Of course, the USA’s strategic interests are utterly allied with Ukraine. Daniel Davis seems to have personal reasons for disagreeing.

(By the way, Daniel, the spelling of “armoured” by The Economist is entirely correct. The British spelling is used around the world.)

How much does Putin pay Mr Davis for his hot takes?

An unashamed Russian apologist who has been proven wrong in each of his articles, constantly belittling the achievements of the Ukrainians while talking up the prospects of Russian success. It is shameful at this point.

“that to have a chance to win [Ukraine], they must receive massive additional military and financial support”.
NOPE. What the Ukrainian army needs are the right weapons, not lots of equipment that just drags out a strictly defensive war. We all know, including Davis, that longer-range heavy weapons would wreck the supply chain of their Russian friends. That is why he questions the aid both in quantity and, above all, in quality.
On the other hand, it had been a long time since we had any news from Comrade Daniel. It is a pleasure to know that he is still well.

It amazes me just how narrow and feeble minded are the views of the people in America. It is obvious to me that none of you seem to care about right or wrong, or about peace. Here you are, blaming the russians, for something that YOU did. Why couldn´t you just leave it alone? Was it Russia that staged a coup d´etát in Ukraine? Was it Russia that failed to upheld the Minsk Accords, not once, but twice? Was it Russia that expanded its military alliance´s sphere of influence and tried to go further west? Was it Russia that armed and supported violent neo-nazi groups that viewed russians as “subhumans”, and underwent almost a decade of barbaric civil war?
Why are some people afforded the right to self rule, and others aren´t? Why was Kosovo allowed, but not South Ossetia? Why were the iraqi kurds allowed, but not the turkish kurds, just across the border? Why is Taiwan allowed, but not the Donbas, the palestinians, or the northern irish? The answer is simple. It´s hypocrisy.
Angela Merkel already confessed that the Minsk accords were just to buy time, there was never a sincere attempt to have peace. War with Russia was always the intent. And now you want to blame them for doing what you set them up to do from the start?? Grow a spine, America.

By Dec 17 Kyiv City fully restored the operations of the capital’s heating supply system after Russia’s Dec 14 missile attack – Mayor Vitalii Klitschko

Ukraine shot down 37 of 40 missiles fired at Kyiv in the last salvo, and the effects of Russia spending well over $40 Million for their efforts lasted less than 4 days.

Not exactly a sustainable model for Russia. Especially when Russian Ural oil is selling at $45 per barrel, India, Egypt, Algeria and others have cancelled their orders of Russian military equipment, and now Russia is wasting $40 Million+ for 4 days of net effect against civilians…which has zero effect on the actual front line.

As well…There are now well over 50 countries sending supplies to Ukraine. From the US to Azeris, Israelis, Aussies, the EU and more… it’s an easy decision to send equipment to repair electrical systems.

You now have a collective GDP of close to $50 Trillion in the countries supporting Ukraine vs. Russia, Iran, and N. Korea, and Syria. at perhaps $2 Trillion. Good luck with that.

There is an endless list of reasons why Russia’s strategy is doomed to fail, and Daniel Davis’ efforts to twist himself like a pretzel to cling to any hope of proving himself right that Russia will come out ahead are also doomed to fail.

There will be no nuclear war, there will be no Russian victory, and no matter how much the Russian troll farm livestock on this site wish it will be…it will never be.

Have a liberating day.

People keep talking about ww3. In reality, it would only be an European plus five eyes war. The rest of the world is not interesting in fighting.

Losing Russian territory is sacred, Putin says.

As defined before or after Crimea?

Or before or after that last go round of declarations by Putin for areas he doesn’t even control?

Putin is doing his best to justify to the domestic population that Russia has already expanded.

Letting him keep any of the above just encourages him to do more of the same.

It’s called appeasement.

Tamerlane, are you sure that you know where the national interests of the United States begin and where they end? And in general, what do they consist of? Judging by your comment, you have no idea about this.

The first responsibility of the American administration is to the security of the U.S., period.
There is absolutely no justification in placing our country in a vulnerable state in order to prop up Ukraine, as the security and well-being of the West is not dependent on Ukraine’s victory.

(1) Give Ukraine as much as it needs w/o too much damage to our already weakened defense forces.

(2) FIX our weakened defense forces, NOW.

And you cannot keep shying away from putin threats you must face them mister no matter what to hell with putin.now putin is sending actors circuses and opera singers to Ukraine, they will PERFORM BETTER THAN THE PATHETIC SHOWER OF INCOMPITENT TWATS THEY HAVE NOW ,HAHAHAHA.

Daniel Davis is well liked at 19fortyfive because 1. He pisses off the libs, 2. He supports Putin, and the most important reason is 3 he’s click bait = money. They won’t get rid of him but they enjoy reading our comments. Daniel Davis isn’t going any where because of the strong military bromance behind this website. Hats off to you Daniel Davis. It only takes a pathetic genius to pull this off.

Mal: wrong. Ukraine’s territorial interests and integrity do not align to those of the United States. The only reason this war is going on is because the United States, instead of respecting that other countries have legitimate security interests, has decided to act like it is God and can position itself on anyone’s border without a reaction. Of course Russia will react negatively to an aggressive and expansionist military alliance like NATO moving closer and closer to its borders. They will no more tolerate Russia becoming indefensible than we would the Mexican border being militarized by communist China.

“Infantry Grunt”: wrong. It is you and the liberal elites pushing intervention in Ukraine who support cuck policies which only harm American capacity to maintain global hegemony. It is not appeasement to not intervene when such interventions will harm our own strategic security interests. It was not appeasement to recognize the limits of power in not entering a nuclear war with the Soviet Union over missiles in Cuba, despite the fact that we negotiated a removal of American missiles from Europe in exchange for removal of soviet missiles from Cuba. Not every example is Munich in ‘38. Not every parochial interest of some other people merits placing American dominance not to mention hundreds of millions of lives at risk. The United States hasn’t won a war since WWII because of liberal interventionists and neoconservatives like you, Infantry Grunt, who place other people’s interests above those of the American people. You probably even supported the self-evidently asinine war in Iraq, which was not in our interests even before the initial invasion. You probably supported the moronic invasion of Libya in 2011 and the even more harmful precedent set by NATO attacking Serbia for putting down a radical Islamic insurgency in 1999… sad.

Walker: wrong on literally every point. Every solitary point you make advances only anti-American interests and weakens our power abroad. American intervention here, on top of NATO’s aggressive eastern expansion and invasion of two non-belligerent countries in the past generation have signaled a series of incentives to the rest of the world, incentives which by our intervention have informed the rest of the world that they must, though not sympathetic to Russia, oppose American strategic interests and overthrow the basis for our power. This challenge is far greater than the benefit of Ukraine being in NATO (something which would be a net COST to American taxpayers, not a benefit).

Stop pretending that Russia did some horrible unforgivable thing by attacking another country which didn’t attack them… we here in the United States do this all the time. That’s what powerful countries do… we attacked Serbia, Iraq, Libya… the list is long indeed… yet would Russia have been right in arming the Iraqi insurgency against us? Or sending Milosevic weapons to kill American pilots? Or sending Gaddafi arms to shoot down our aircraft? Get off your high horse with your fake moralizing, or were you posting “die Americans die” when our forces were in Iraq 2003-2011, or flying over Serbia bombing civilian infrastructure in 1999? I doubt it.

Welsh: wrong. That “agreement” was never ratified by the United States Senate, the ONLY body which can enter the United States into an alliance or commit the United States to defending another country.

Putin knows that he cannot win a nuclear war…so do his generals. The threats of using them is not credible, but even if they were they do not justify giving in to Putin because they would signal to him that nuclear blackmail will with as a strategy leading to ever more audacious red line crossing. Instead of pulling back and leaving Ukraine to it’s fate we should let Putin know that we are going to arm Ukraine with even more powerful weapons and that he will never succeed at conquering the country, further that we know that his nuclear threats are merely a bluff.

Jim: “Ukraine has already burned through the army they had at the start of the war.”

Ukraine has millions of able-bodied men, and tens of thousands of them are being trained in Ukraine and other countries at any given time.

Goran:

Your strategic expositions lead to some serious concerns when scrutinized. These include:

1) Ukraine’s “millions of able-bodied men” are outnumbered over 3:1 by Russia’s, and Ukraine, unlike Russia, as had a nationwide universal conscription for almost a year. Moreover, independent experts believe over a third of Ukrainians are unemployed with the situation deteriorating, and Ukraine’s notoriously corrupt government is now openly asking the United States to approve and fund direct welfare payments to the Ukrainian population. That billions of American taxpayer dollars being given directly to Ukrainian citizens, though with GDP cratering, one wonders precisely what this mass infusion of money will purchase without sky-rocketing upward their own domestic inflation. Surely there will be some “lost off the top” there in overhead. C’est la vie, right?

2) Russia is training what is estimated to be about half a million service members as we speak, and it is not difficult to determine that the same training officers and cadre are still in their training camps, and have not, despite the WaPo and other regurgitators of Ukraine’s Pravda state, been deployed to Ukraine. If someone with a lowly field grade officer’s personal and professional connections can verify this, I’m confident you’ll be able to find a way also.

3. As for Ukraine “conquering” Crimea… are you out of your mind? If there was a scenario most likely to precipitate the Russian use of nukes in this conflict, it’s when a solitary Ukrainian foot crosses in anger into the Perekop. (I’d note also that even Manstein in WWII was compelled to fight a horrifically frightful yard by yard artillery dominated fight through that volcanic hellscape to Sevastopol, and that was against remnants of Soviet armies)… consider that the Perekop is equivalent to the “hot gates” of Thermopylae… you recall what the 300 Spartiates did there?

You are keen to pronounce Russia’s defeat, but I remember reading French accounts following Borodino announcing Russia’s strategic defeat, and similar accounts in German generals memoirs regarding Moscow in ‘41. Those didn’t come to fruition did they? Nor is it simply a matter that one shouldn’t “count out” Russia, but rather, one should recall that at many times in history hubris and a desire for a preferred outcome have colored the perspective of a culture or “side” perceptibly, and wrongly.

I prefer for our country not to be calculating blindly, and I don’t see Russia as being anywhere close to giving up. Looking alone at the pricing of used ocean tankers, one can say with certainty that the Russians are acting as did the South Africans when under sanctions and fighting in Angola 4-5 decades ago. They are presenting conduct which tells us they intend on a long term course decision making in which the present level of western sanctions is maintained. What does that tell your strategic mind?

As always, Mr Davis’s unwavering support for Russia is hardly surprising. Throughout this war, we observed how weak Russia became. This is the result of the fall of the USSR and the following economic failure. War is very expensive. Now, the US and NATO have another golden opportunity to bankrupt Russia. The bankruptcy will further weaken Russia and it is in Ukraine’s and the US’s best interests to make sure Russia does not become a threat to any neighbouring countries. Tanks and armoured vehicles are hardly useful for a naval war with China. Contrary to Mr Davis’s argument, I believe sending tanks and armoured vehicles to Ukraine will increase the security of the US rather than decrease it.

Jim and Tamerlane, I remember a while back, I asked one of you gentlemen to make a bold prediction on how the situation on the ground may develop. To show you what I mean, I made a prediction of my own and said Ukrainians would take Kherson by New Year’s. So, let’s talk in those terms, if Daniel Davis can make a prediction that Russians will take Kharkiv and Odessa, and six months later still be treated like someone who’s opinion matters, trust me, you’ll be OK if you mess up. So, open up a map, ballpark a time frame and tell me what is so strategic that Putin’s military will take that could force Ukrainians into surrendering?

Not having power for a few days at a time and having their economy in a bind are boo boos and owies considering they are fighting a war of independence, it’s inevitable. Also, don’t tell me Ukrainians should surrender because many of them are dying, as some people definitely see value in being patriotic. So let’s get out of that nebulous category, open up a map, open up a calendar and let’s be bold.

Again, I’ll go first: I predict that Ukrainians will be in control of Melitopol by the end of August of next year. Your turn gentlemen.

There is simply zero reason to believe that Russia has learned from the many mistakes it has committed in this war. Their industrial base is not capable of replacing its battle losses as fast as the west can resupply Ukraine, it is true that Ukraine is training conscripts, many of whom are old. Russia has more manpower to work with but i’d that manpower is not motivated and morale is low, if they cannot be adequately supplied or competently led there is very little reason to believe that they are going to be able to retake the initiative. More likely their conscripts will remain the kind of cannon fodder that they’ve been since last February. More and more body bags is not going to be a good look to a population who has little desire to be drafted.

It is actually not quite true that we have no formal defense commitment to Ukraine. When they agreed to give up their Soviet-era nukes, we agreed – in writing – to guarantee their security and territorial integrity. It is true that this commitment is not an actual ratified treaty, and no one thinks that the US would or could commit national nuclear suicide to protect Ukrainian sovereignty over every square inch of pre-2014 territory. However, aiding Ukraine is more than just something we are doing out of the goodness of our hearts. This does not mean that they have been given a blank check. We are obliged to do what we reasonably can. That includes everything we have done so far, and there is room for us to do some more. It is correct that we really don’t have the inventory or the industrial capacity to totally fulfill their wish list. We’ll do what we can, and they will have to make do with that.

I understand why they would take a hard line and insist on the recovery of every spare inch. They will hold that hard line all the way up to the moment where they make the grand but prudent compromise of writing off Crimea. They aren’t going to be able to re-take it in any case, but they can certainly bottle up the Russians there.

Daniel ‘Defeatist’ Davies is so MAGA: America Security First is always turned into Russia Security First in the end.

You do realize that oBlamma and oBiden installed the little used condom in Ukraine in 2014 ryte? All this money going to Ukraine is hush money. The little soy boy was going to spill the beans on oBiden and son. They not only installed the little soy boy they stole ALL of their gold. sooooo you c it’s a lot deeper than the msm lets on…

1. We encouraged Ukraine to give up their nukes and Russia, Britian and the US promised to respect their borders. So they are not just a non-entity to us.
2. We spend in effect more than $100 billion per year to be ready to fight Russia in Europe and have done so for decades. This war is decimating the Russian conventional forces on the cheap for NATO without any loss of NATO lives for a pittance compared to our spend over the last 10 years.
3. Of course Putler threatens the use of nuclear weapons. They have done so for years on every upgrade to US and NATO force posture. But they know the answer to “If you use a nuke in Europe, then what happens?” The answer is you have no idea,and using nukes on your neighbor can create quite a bit of nuclear blowback.

So quit tapping your umbrella and be steely tough. Russia must lose and will if we supply and are tough. Like the Ukraine.

I have yet to read a word here written by the Be-Afraid-of-Russia posters here detailing what in their minds a post-war Ukraine will look like. Fellow UKR supporters, let’s see if they’re actually willing to write it down.

I love reading the comments to Davis’ article, even if they might be clickbait.

I think Davis’ ultimate point is that the U.S. shouldn’t look back in 2042 and say, “so what was the point?”, as they said after withdrawing from Afghanistan after 20 years.

What will happen, will happen with or without people making predictions. What you really need is someone to reveal the policy options that the strategists in Washington had back in January. The rest is speculation.

I think America was more afraid of Europe/Germany having access to a reliable supply of Russian natural gas, petroleum and minerals than from any fear of a new Russian Empire emerging. If that was indeed Washington’s main policy objective at the start of this conflict, so be it, who am I to question the strategists in Washington. No one in America will mourn the dead after this conflict is over, whether that be in 30 weeks or 30 years.

The author should go to Moscow, where his rethoric is very much appreciated.

Absolutely, Ukranians should have the freedom to do whatever they think is in their best interest. Equally, Ukraine’s neighbours and the U.S. have the freedom to assist Ukraine in whatever way they think is in their best interest. All Davis is arguing, in my opinion, is that the U.S. and NATO should better define what supporting Ukraine ‘for as long as it takes’ actually means. I was of the opinion, at the start of the conflict, that NATO pretty much invited Russia to invade eastern Ukraine. And that overall, NATO would have been content with Russia occupying Ukraine east of the Dnieper. It would provide Russia with the buffer it desired and would allow western Ukraine to proceed down the path to NATO and EU membership.

And to be fair, Ukranian citizens, should also have the freedom to move towards Moscow if they chose to do so.

Ukraine

@Rich You’re wring and stupid. Ukrainians do NOT sell those weapons on black market. It’s ruZZkie soldiers/commanders who seek additional profits. If they surround and take some UA units as POWs then they have their stuff, inluding Javelins etc.
“Ukraine is corrupt” – just as any post soviet state before they joined EU. But compared to ruZZia UA is very clean and transparent.

Ukraine already attacked ruZZkie supply lines IN ruZZia. How many nukes were launched? Zero. ruZZkies won’t use nukes. Crimea is Ukraine. Letting ruZZkies go away with this will make ALL other countries to start their nuclear programs. Because “if u have nukes u can do whatever you want”.

Russian justification for it’s invasion of a sovereign nation is no different than Nazi policy of “lebensraum”. As another dictatorial autocrat, only Putin matters. He sees the U.S. government as the only force able to prevent Russia achieving their goal. Everything he has said “collapse of soviet union was a catastrophe” to what he does, invade four European neighbors plus Syria, supports that so it is not rhetoric. We are all aware of the historic failure of appeasement so denial of this is not just wrong headed, it’s dangerous. Russia is an adversary. All the other aggressors on the planet will just see such an aversion to confrontation as weakness…and will then act as all bullies do in response, leading to much bigger problems. Give Ukraine what they need to secure their borders so we can have peace already!

I do not know who is right or wrong; however, it appears to me that the only ones that truly care are the politicians – who only care about the money that they can get out of the situation. The Russian oligarchs and the American politicians are selfish people at the expense of the less elitists while the hardworking (not the lazy) just survive! As for me – “give me liberty or give me death”! John

Ukraine is of no vital importance to USA. If the Europeans think otherwise let them do what they want without our aid.

Very informative. Thank you.

One point of disagreement is that we cannot question the support we have given to Ukraine.

This is America. We can, and should, question anything and everything.