Mark Hertling gives us a lesson in charitable interpretation
Mark Hertling is one of the people I follow on Ukraine. He is a staunch advocate for arming Ukraine, but he recently had a tweet thread defending what some see as the overly cautious and slow approach taken by the United States. Here are some tweets from his thread:
Now, maybe we should be sending more weapons to Ukraine, and doing it faster. Maybe Hertling is being too generous to a public official he identifies with, or perhaps knows personally. There are smart people who think we should be more aggressively arming Ukraine. I actually tend to agree with them.
But what is really clear is that this is a hard and complicated decision, the people making it are trying to deal with multiple other problems at the same time (dealing with logistics and training, helping Ukraine with intelligence and advice, managing an international coalition, getting legislation through Congress, weighing the risk of a Russian nuclear strike, etc.). What I find admirable and rare in Hertling’s thread is his willingness to be charitable towards government decisionmakers who we have every reason to believe are doing their best in a difficult situation and who at the very least seem to be getting things more right than wrong.
Yeah, I guess, I hope so.
but to the extent, and possibility, that fear of making Putin mad is an important factor in these decisions, I would like to state my opinion that the best response to a bully is a sudden and unexpected and overwhelming punch to the jaw.
i realize this “risks nuclear war.” but so does not stopping him in his tracks.
I think there are other military considerations. The risk of nuclear escalation is real enough to be cautious but beyond that I suspect that there is an intense assessment of Ukraine’s manpower availability going on. ATACMS without the manpower to then exploit the situation might be a negative development if the real plan is to accept the current geography and let sanctions continue to erode Russian support for the war. ATACMS is a system that prepares the ground for pushing the Russians completely out. Ukraine has a clear geographical goal here, not simply degrading Russian forces. That Ukraine might not have the troops that can get that done is a real possibility. They had a Petersburg moment, but they do not seem to be on the road to their version of Appomattox. My gut is that the Russian call-up was a message for NATO leadership, not so much for Ukraine.
Eric
you may well be right. But US could obliterate Russian forces in Ukraine in a day and a half (would have taken them an hour if they had acted when the first Russians crossed the Ukraine border),
That might send a message even Putin could understand. No need for Ukraine to do it alone.
Sanctions are eroding OUR support for the war. Don’t get me wrong. I am for sanctions. I just don’t think we can count on our people or Europe’s to stay the course.
Gloves-off NATO involvement won’t happen in Ukraine. At this point, that’s a general war, so why bother with the logistics to move stuff to that front? General air and naval engagement and ground action wherever NATO thinks it has advantage or Russian responses make necessary. Almost no chance of it really. Ukraine patriots have some hard thinking to do if they understand this. Accepting a big escalation like ATACMS but not getting what they probably really need in the way of direct involvement may not be in their best interest.