by Wayne Allensworth
For some time, we have been reading about the United States and the United Kingdom’s possibly permitting Ukraine to use American and British long-range missiles against targets not only in the warzone, but also deep in Russian territory. The weapons mentioned most often are British Storm Shadow (France also uses a variant of this system called SCALP) and American ATACMS cruise missiles. Storm Shadow cruise missiles have a range of about 155-340 miles, while ATACMS have a range of 100-190 miles. Previously, Ukraine’s Western sponsors restricted their use. The latest reports suggest that the Biden administration may allow Ukraine to fire Storm Shadow missiles at Russia, but not ATACMS, which, if true, tells us a lot about the actual status of US “allies.”
Because the Storm Shadow system has American made parts, the narrative goes, Washington had to agree to allow the Ukrainians to use it against the Russians. Strikes would be limited to military targets. But after meeting with British Foreign Secretary David Lammy last week, Joe Biden wants to delay a decision until after he meets with Ukraine President Volodymr Zelenskiy later this month. The U.S. previously denied Ukraine’s requests for advanced weapons systems such as the ATACMS and F-16 fighter jets, but eventually supplied them.
Some in Washington are concerned about what the Russian reaction might be if Ukraine uses the weapons on Russian territory. Last week, Russian President Vladimir Putin noted that the use of long-range precision weapons was beyond Ukrainian capabilities. Western specialists would have to operate them. Their use, said Putin, would signal “the direct participation of NATO, the United States and European countries” on Ukraine’s side in the war. Russia would react accordingly.
At the same time, globalist hawks claim that Putin is bluffing. British Foreign Minister David Lammy joined in the chorus after his meeting with Biden, saying that the West should not be bullied by the “fascist” Putin. As far as Putin’s likely reaction, I’ve been watching him closely since the late 1990s. He tends to be cautious and tries to avoid direct confrontation but will react if he feels he has been backed into a corner. For more than 20 years, through two “color” style revolutions in Ukraine — the “Orange Revolution” of 2004-2005 and the Maidan protests — Western backing for protests in Russia in 2011-2012, and the continued expansion of NATO, Putin attempted to bargain with the West for a security arrangement that would have included Ukrainian neutrality, a halt to further NATO expansion, and limits on the deployment of weapons systems in neighboring states that could threaten Russia. He was ignored. All the while, he was rebuilding Russia’s military capabilities. In December 2021, he made one last effort to win security guarantees for Russia and was ignored again. As he saw it, Russia had no choice, and the war was on. Putin had not been bluffing. It took a long time for a sharp Russian reaction, but it did come. And here we are.
One war hawk argument for allowing the use of Western long-range weapons against Russia is that Iran is supposedly supplying short range ballistic missiles to Russia with no restrictions on their use. For the sake of context, consider this: Western intelligence officers, Western mercenaries, and undoubtedly Special Forces personnel have been on the ground in Ukraine for some time. Western specialists have been aiding in targeting, training, and supplying the Ukrainians all along. Yet Russia has not struck Western countries. And the short 75-mile range of the Iranian missiles means they are not a credible threat against NATO.
Meanwhile, some NATO members aren’t so anxious to escalate the war. Finland, for example, following an attack on Murmansk, Russia by Ukrainian drones, hastened to announce that no drones were launched from its territory, which borders the Murmansk region. Murmansk is the base for Russia’s Northern naval fleet. Russian media had claimed that the drones were indeed launched from Finland. The Finns added that no attacks would be launched against Russia from Finland in the future. And Germany recently announced it would not provide new military aid programs for Ukraine, though funding for past commitments would continue. Germany has been Ukraine’s chief European supplier of military aid.
Importantly, US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has said that the use of advanced weapons systems would not decide the Russia-Ukraine conflict. The use of Abrams tanks, Bradley fighting vehicles, and other American supplied equipment, for example, has not altered the course of the war. And experts have agreed with him. Mark Cancian, a military analyst at the Center for Strategic and Institutional Studies, told Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty that he agreed with Austin. The weapons, he said, would not be “a game changer.” Cancian pointed to the limited impact long range weapons have had in attacks on Russian installations in Crimea. He stated that the use of long-range weapons “has not been decisive.”
No, they haven’t been, and they won’t be this time. Ukraine has proved to be unprepared, for example, to use the F-16s. One of its best pilots crashed one in August. It is safe to say that using Storm Shadow or ATACMS missiles for strikes on Russia will not affect the outcome of the war any more than the faltering Ukrainian incursion into Kursk Oblast in Russia. That attack appears to have been a sign of desperation, as Ukrainian casualties mount and NATO members grow skittish about escalating the war. If the aim of the incursion was to divert Russian forces from the Donbas region of Eastern Ukraine, where they are steadily advancing, now threatening a key Ukrainian supply hub in Pokrovsk, it has failed to do so. In fact, the Ukrainian army was forced to divert troops away from the Donbas to launch the ill-conceived incursion. The only “victory” of the incursion was a temporary one on the PR front, an attempt to boost globalist war hawks in the West calling for more aid to Ukraine. Some of those delusional war mongers are even claiming that Ukraine can still win — meaning it could evict all Russian forces from the captured territories, including Crimea, a preposterous proposition given the facts on the ground. Don’t worry about escalation, they say, Putin is bluffing! Like the globalist aim of overthrowing Putin, that claim is a fantasy. But the neocon/neoliberal cabal will not give up.
At this point, it appears that their chief aim is to simply keep the war going, waiting for a Russian collapse that will never come, even as they flirt with a nuclear apocalypse that threatens us all. Victoria Nuland, an official in the Clinton, George W. Bush, Obama, and Biden administrations, is a living example of the neocon-neoliberal merger — and its warlike intentions. As System Update commentator Glenn Greenwald observed, war hawk Nuland, who played a big role in U.S. support for the 2014 coup in Ukraine, recently acknowledged that the U.S., as well as then U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson, nixed a potential agreement between Russia and Ukraine to end the war back in 2022.
Nuland attempted to couch the veto as “advice” offered to an ally. But it appears that the plan was blocked by the war hawks, who did not want the conflict to end. The preliminary agreement apparently would have, among other provisions, stipulated Ukraine’s neutrality, allowed a significant level of autonomy for the Russian speaking regions of the Donbas, and restricted the types of weapons systems to be deployed in Ukraine. If the war had ended with such an agreement, it goes without saying that hundreds of thousands of lives would have been spared, and the chance for escalating to a nuclear Armageddon avoided. But the hawks killed it. Tell me again, just what is the U.S. “vital national interest” in risking an all-out war with a nuclear superpower over a piece of real estate that has never before been viewed as such?
It’s time to seek an end to the war and extricate ourselves from an extremely dangerous situation. GOP U.S. Senator and vice-presidential candidate J.D.Vance has spoken of a desire to do so and has offered a thumbnail sketch of what a settlement might look like. It is vitally important to reach such a settlement and work out a new security arrangement with Russia.
Needless to say, if we don’t, then all of the other best laid plans of the American populist movement may be for naught.
Chronicles contributor Wayne Allensworth is the author of The Russian Question: Nationalism, Modernization, and Post-Communist Russia, and a novel, Field of Blood.
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