It must happen to many of you like me, who with the war in Ukraine I am learning a lot of geography with cities with unpronounceable names, while I look with anger the atrocities that are committed against defenseless civilians without water or electricity in dilapidated houses. He did not expect to see these things again in ‘civilized Europe’. I have also learned a lot about missiles (Patriot, Javelin, Himars…), their advantages and disadvantages, and now I have to do it with tanks, from the light Challenger to the very heavy Abramsgoing through the leopard. I would prefer to spend my time on other things but it is what it is.
Ukraine could not face Russia without the help it receives from the US and Europe in money to pay for the minimum services that the country’s operation requires and also in weapons, many weapons, and in intelligence information to get the best out of them. Without all this, it would have suffered the same fate as Poland in 1939, when it was divided between Hitler and Stalin. Putin must be a worse strategist because he has not succeeded but Russia is a lot of Russia, it has a lot of wardrobe and is preparing a great offensive whose objectives are confusing, because one day he says that Ukraine does not exist and is part of Russia, another he wants to put a puppet government in Kiev like the one in Belarus, and another day it seems that he could “settle for” a good piece of the country (25 % more or less) as well as Crimea, which it considers untouchable.
Zelenski asks for many tanks to stop this offensive and to recover the areas currently occupied by Russia, including the Crimea, which does not seem very realistic to me. And he asks for the German Leopards because they are good and they have the advantage that, as many countries have them, there are many potential donors and their delivery will strengthen the cohesion of the continent in support of his country. So it’s a smart request.
to get them has had to overcome the reluctance of Germany, which already sent its ‘panzers’ to Ukraine almost a century ago in conditions that it prefers not to remember. In addition, Berlin has always defended the policy of opening to the East (Ostpolitik) sponsored by Helmut Schmidt and Willy Brandt and which has been definitively shipwrecked with this ill-fated Russian invasion. Now Germany has forgotten its anti-militarism, has increased its contribution to NATO and has doubled its defense budget. His army will be the most powerful in Europe even if it does not have the nuclear capacity of France (the ‘force de frappe’), around which any “European strategic autonomy & rdquor; who wants to be credible (ask our ‘European’ politicians about that and you’ll see how nervous they get). All this has led Chancellor Scholz to say that we are facing a ‘Zeitenwende’, a turn that he wants to make in good company, anddemanding that the American, British and European partners announce beforehand their willingness to send their tanks as well. Germany does not want to go alone and does not want to lead either, it is terrified of leading and needs more time to overcome the traumas it caused (it and all of Europe) the last time it did so.
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And here comes Spain, which is going to send some of its 327 Leopards -and it seems very good to me-, although many are in a “regrettable & rdquor; maintenance, according to the Defense Minister. And since they have been bought with our money, someone should explain to us how it could have happened.
But let’s not fool ourselves tanks are not going to turn the war around and probably will not arrive in time to stop the impending Russian offensive because they need fine-tuning, trained crews and a lot of logistics that cannot be achieved in two days. Zelensky has called this week, in London, Paris and Brussels, long-range missiles and aircraft and I suspect that we will end up giving it to them after initially saying no, as we have done with the tanks, because they will slide us one step closer to an extension of the conflict that is their most dangerous alternative. That’s the real problem. We think that there is no danger as long as we do not put “boots on the ground”, but I am not sure that Putin also sees it that way. Therefore, better to tread carefully and rather than respond to Ukrainian requests as they occur, we would need to insert them into a own strategy that demands a serious debate from us to find out how far we want to go. And how, because it is better to be safe than sorry.