Anvesh Jain: Investing in Ukrainian victory is an investment in world peace
Stalemate or defeat for Kyiv will cripple the Western security guarantee and embolden revanchist powers from the Middle East to the Taiwan Strait
By: Anvesh Jain
Could NATO’s 75th anniversary be its last?
In February 2022, the then-30 member military alliance responded to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine with alacrity and purpose. The accession prospects of Finland and Sweden have boosted NATO’s ranks since. But with the wider phase of the war entering its third year, efforts to sustain Ukraine’s heroic resistance have stalled due to political infighting. Continued materiel delays could have ruinous costs for eastern Europe, NATO and the world at large.
As the fighting reached a stalemate last fall, rumours circulated that the U.S. and German governments were nudging Kyiv to the negotiating table with Moscow. Through the controlled delivery of arms and munitions, Ukraine would be given enough to maintain the front — without being offered sufficient means to expand its war aims or fully liberate its territory.
Even if the veracity of these claims can be doubted, the result remains the same. Prolonged attrition has destroyed civilian life and infrastructure and increased the Zelensky government’s desperation to conscript new soldiers. Meanwhile, Russia has been gifted the time needed to raise its cumulative troop strength to 1.3 million while shifting its economy to war footing.
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Western sanctions meant to deliver debilitating economic blows have not halted Moscow’s military machine. The World Bank ranks Russia’s total GDP by purchasing power parity ahead of all Western allies barring the U.S. and Japan. Likewise, the International Monetary Fund raised its growth forecast for Russia to 2.6 per cent this year — marking a 1.5 percentage point increase over its predictions from last October.
Russia is pouring a third of its national budget towards the war — ₽9.6-trillion in 2023 and ₽14.3-trillion in 2024 — representing a threefold increase from 2021. The country’s coffers were fuelled last year by energy revenues to the tune of ₽8.8-trillion. With a rejuvenated arms industry in tow, President Putin brags that “They [the West] won’t succeed! Our economy is growing, unlike theirs.”
The West’s approach to this conflict has truthfully been myopic, falling just a few steps short of the appeasement policies that allowed regional crises in the 1930s to erupt into world war in the decade after. Though the EU overcame Hungary’s veto to approve a €50-billion Ukraine support package at the start of February, partisan bickering from House Republicans threatens the passage of a similar aid deal through the U.S. Congress.
In Canada, Parliament has resumed with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau lobbing invectives at the opposition for voting against an updated free trade agreement with Ukraine. While accusations are easy, action has proven more difficult.
Canada did announce this week that it was sending drones to Kyiv, and that’s good, as far as it goes, but we are struggling in other areas. A year ago, the Liberal government promised a $400-million air defence system to Ukraine — one that is yet to be delivered. When Canada announced last January that it was only sending four Leopard 2 tanks for Ukraine’s defence, it wasn’t for lack of will — it was because we barely had more to give. Media reports revealed that after a decade of neglect, the majority of our tank fleet was “broken and inoperable.”
This weakness is being noticed, and of course it is. In 1940, imperial Japan’s foreign minister Yōsuke Matsuoka declared that “The era of democracy is finished and the democratic system bankrupt.” Modern authoritarians invoke the same rhetoric today to probe our confidence and chip away at the rules-based international order. In their revisionist belief, the 21st-century is ripe for remaking. Moscow’s war on Kyiv is fought with backdoor drones, artillery ammunition, and ballistic missiles from Tehran and Pyongyang, while their economy remains buoyed by Beijing.
The machinations of Russia, Iran, North Korea and China link global stress points in Ukraine, the Middle East and the Indo-Pacific. Should Western weakness result in Ukraine’s defeat or an indefinite stalemate, revanchist powers everywhere will be emboldened in their designs. A new strategic calculus could have Moscow training its sights on Baltic nations next. The CCP’s party heads may finally see an opportunity to force reunification with Taiwan.
And it is far from clear that NATO’s members are prepared to defend the world they’ve built. In the U.K., MPs have been warned that the British military would exhaust its capabilities after two months of total war. Germany’s defence minister, Boris Pistorius, has questioned the country’s ability to respond to an emergency. Swedish and Romanian army chiefs have recently urged their populations to prepare for conflict. On this side of the Atlantic, Canada’s outgoing Chief of Defence Staff Gen. Wayne Eyre has been sounding the alarm on readiness for years. As noted here in The Line yesterday by Philippe Lagassé, Donald Trump, a man with a realistic chance of returning to the White House in under a year, is once again harshly attacking NATO allies for not pulling their weight, and whatever you think of his tone and methods, he isn’t wrong on the basic truth of the matter.
History is once again at an inflection point. If today’s world feels more dangerous, then don’t blame entropy. Our political class let the world become unsafe when we abdicated defence leadership and our security responsibilities.
Without a much-needed defence policy update, Canada continues to fly rudderless in turbulent skies. The U.S., for its part, has recognized the need to rebuild its defence industrial base and domestic manufacturing capacity — Canada notably has not.
Instead of cutting its budget by $1-billion a year, the government must rapidly reconstitute the fighting capabilities of our armed forces and our domestic munitions industry. As we do so, Canada should be an evangelist for Ukraine’s cause however and wherever it can. With unity of intention and steadfast resolve, the most dire consequences can still be averted.
Anvesh Jain is a third-year J.D. candidate at the University of Ottawa Faculty of Law. The views expressed in this article are his own and do not reflect those of any organization, institution, or entity with which he is associated.
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The lessons of Neville Chamberlain ignored. Am I wrong in thinking the fate of the concept of democracy lies largely in the hands of the American voter this November? It may be too late for Ukraine by then of course.....a generational "own goal" to quote those with a better geopolitical understanding.
Canada is governed by wimps. The United States Congress run by running shoe hucksters and religious fruit cakes. North America could use some current members of the Ukraine government, to explain to us the realities of living and dying and governing in a war zone.