West to provide arms, but human resources are Ukraine’s responsibility – ex-Biden adviser

Assassination attempt on Donald Trump boosts his chances in the U.S. elections. For Ukraine, a Republican victory could be disastrous. However, sentiments in the U.S. and the West will be shaped by the situation on the front line. Ukraine needs to stabilize the front and gradually pressure Russian forces. Western weapons are currently arriving, but Kyiv’s mobilization policy is the reason of a noticeable lack of personnel in the Ukrainian military.

These views were expressed in a detailed interview with BitukMedia by Dr. Michael Haltzel, a senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Institute at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies, former adviser to Joe Biden during his Senate tenure, and a U.S. representative during NATO’s expansion in the Balkans and at the OSCE.

– Can we expect that the world will want to end Ukraine’s war with Russia before the American elections? Because there is concern that Trump will win the election.

– I would rather not have any agreement before the election than have a bad agreement.  And right now, I think it would be a bad agreement.  Putin is claiming four Ukrainian oblasts.  I can’t see any reason for the United States to try to rush a settlement through before the election.  I think it would be foolhardy and I don’t see it happening.

Pushing through agreements prematurely and hastily is never a good idea.  

But if I were in your shoes, I would realize that the big threat to Ukraine in the coming months is not even Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin.  The biggest danger to Ukraine in the coming months is named Donald Trump. I can’t emphasize this enough.  The fact is he’s the reason that the House of Representatives dawdled for six months in getting the appropriations through, which this summer will increasingly aid Ukraine on the battlefield.

 And more importantly, he’s the reason that the future is up in the air.  Basically, this is a guy who is not only infatuated with autocrats – infatuated implies a short-term romance. This is a man who basically doesn’t believe in democracy, who has had the most questionable meetings with Putin in the past,  who’s made clear what he thinks of NATO allies telling Putin he can do whatever the hell he wants to with allies who don’t meet the 2% GDP target,  which Trump apparently doesn’t even understand. 

Just imagine if he wants to deal that way with NATO allies, how he would deal with Ukraine,  a country that he already doesn’t like because of the involvement in his first impeachment, which was a justifiable charge against him. 

He holds grudges. He would sell you folks out, throw you under the bus, whatever the metaphor you want to use is, in a heartbeat.  That’s what you should be worried about right now.

I think from the standpoint of Ukraine if Trump wins it would be a disaster.

– How do you think, Trump will benefit from the attack on him?

– Yes. I think the unsuccessful assassination attempt last weekend will likely help Trump in the presidential campaign.

If you care about public opinion in the West, especially in the United States, the best thing that could happen is for the battle lines to stabilize and for the Ukrainian forces to slowly push the Russians back.  That’s not very sexy, but it’s the way the world works.

– Is it possible to freeze the conflict, as it was in Georgia or former Yugoslavia?

– I think that the United States, and by extension NATO and the EU, will defer to Ukraine on this. It’s your country. You’re the ones who are fighting and dying.  There’s no way in the world that the United States under Joseph R. Biden Jr. — or NATO or the EU — would force a peace settlement on Ukraine. 

– You say that it is solely our decision whether to fight or not, but we have seen the Republican Party recently block the supply of arms to us.

– If we say hindsight is 20/20, it’s always easy to look back and say that we really should have given the Ukrainians F-16s or longer range attack missiles. Ukraine has been provided with a lot of weaponry.  I know you would like to have more and permission to attack deeper into Russia.  I won’t go into my own personal feelings, they’re not relevant here. But I think the way you characterize it, Dmytro, is brutally unfair.

– Dr. Haltzel, I’m sorry to interrupt you. But we saw how Trump decided to blackmail the entire House of Representatives, and the arms delay was for six months. So you say that Ukraine can fight as it wants. But how will she do it without a weapon?

– I understand this.  Don’t forget that in an earlier interview I called it a scandalous spectacle. 

But we do live in a democracy, and as difficult as it may be to stomach it,  the fact is they were within the bounds of the law.  I think it was misguided — in my opinion, even immoral.  But it was legal, and that’s just the way it is.

Ukraine is obviously in a very tough position.  Nonetheless you are now getting increased ammunition and better armaments.  I don’t want to go into all the all the tactics, how long it takes to train Ukrainian pilots on F-16s and things like that.  Once again, I think it’s it’s easy to maximize your own difficulties and minimize your opponents’.

– Recently, Putin signed an agreement with North Korea that the countries undertake to defend each other in case of war. Some see it as strengthening the bloc of dictators and preparing for a major war. What do you think?

– No, I don’t think it is. When all is said and done, Kim Jong Un knows that if he starts a war, obviously it would be terrible for the whole world, but he wouldn’t have any country left. 

Putin is in such a bad shape that goes hat in hand to a country, which can’t even feed its own people

The image of Putin going hat in hand to a country like North Korea, which can’t even feed its own people, is pathetic.  Putin is not in good shape. The Russian economy is being puffed up artificially. And on the battlefield, Putin is desperate. He needs more ammunition.  And the only place that he hasn’t been able to get it from yet, except for China, of course, is North Korea.

– But this agreement was signed during the Peace Summit in Switzerland. It looks like a demonstration that Putin is forming his own bloc in response to the Western world’s unity around Ukraine. Do you agree?

– I think that we should not exaggerate the importance of the peace summit in Switzerland.  What’s really important is what happens on the battlefield in Ukraine in the next several months.

 I am not privy to the intelligence, so it’s very difficult for me to make an informed judgment. I think that when the new weaponry and the ammunition appears in large quantity on the battlefield, there’s every reason to believe that not only will the defensive lines become stabilized, but that Ukraine will methodically — probably too slowly for a lot of people’s taste —  but nonetheless responsibly, start to roll back the Russians.

So if Ukraine can show that it’s starting to turn the tide, then it becomes increasingly easy for people who are inclined toward Ukraine but skeptical and maybe sitting on the fence, for them to come right out in full support.  And that’s really important.  There’s a silly, but valid saying in English: “nothing succeeds like success.”

– How much, in your opinion, can the position of the BRICS countries influence the end of the war?

– I think the West is incomparably stronger than the BRICS or the Chinese-Russian alliance, where  the real danger, of course, is China. 

And if you remember, some of the other countries in the Global South resisted signing on to the communique of the peace summit in Switzerland. At one level, that was disappointing. At another level, it merely underlined the fact that Ukraine is part of the West, and it’s not part of BRICS. It’s not part of the Global South.

Сertainly the United States, and to a slightly lesser extent Western Europe, is much better equipped to meet the challenges such as  climate change, or migration, or demographic change or any number of fundamental problems.

 I understand that it’s easier for me to say this as an American sitting off in Virginia and not fighting on the battlefield in Ukraine.  I get that, and I have boundless sympathy and solidarity for you folks.

The next time the Chinese make an incursion into Ladakh or breach the Line of Actual Control in the Galvan Valley in the Himalayas and Mr. Modi starts screaming about sovereignty and inviolability of borders – let’s see how many countries remind him of his unwillingness to sign on to the communique last week in Switzerland.  The hypocrisy is there for everybody to see.

– How much would a “new Casablanca” help Ukraine? An agreement between the Allies that Russia should be completely destroyed.

– I’m a historian and I believe in trying to look at history and maybe learn from it. But I think we run the risk of putting a World War II template on everything. We were fighting the Nazis, the absolute evil, but the conditions were  very different from today’s.  This is not 1943. We’re not talking about total war.  We’re not talking about an enemy that has vowed to exterminate another people.  And there was even a plan the Nazis had for conquering North America.  

As bad as things are, this is not the situation today.  Moreover, Nazi Germany, as you well know, didn’t have the atom bomb.  Well, to put it mildly, the Russians do.  And the fact is, I think it would be counterproductive to enunciate a hard and fast principle like Casablanca. 

The Third Reich did not have nuclear weapons, but Russia does

It’s both unfair and strategically unwise to criticize the West for not issuing some sort of grandiose statement calling for Russia’s absolute surrender, which would just tie our hands in future negotiations and increase domestic support for Putin. 

If we want to show that we’re standing up to Putin, then we ought to show it tangibly by giving more assistance and greater leeway to Ukraine. That’s much more important than issuing a Casablanca-type statement.

– I am just thinking that the world still doesn’t know what to do with Russia. Russia has already declared that it wants to arbitrarily change the borders in the Baltic Sea, and the world still does not have enough courage to oppose it.

– And what was the reaction of the Finns? It was very mature and very low key.  In the past the Finns have shown the Russians how to fight. Their reaction was sort of “Well, this is interesting.  We’ll study it.”  It’s clear that there’s no way in the world that Finland is going to compromise on its border.  In any event, I don’t think that the the Russians are seriously considering trying to change the maritime border in the in the Baltic.

– In Ukraine, they say that our war is only the beginning. A harbinger of global conflict.

– This is a view that is widespread in the West and that’s not new.  Some American politicians are saying the same thing. 

But how would you dislodge the Russians from the defensive lines that they’ve built over the last year on occupied Ukrainian territory?  What would you do?  Attack them with nuclear weapons?  Let’s get serious.

– The West has enough advanced non-nuclear weapons to provide them to Ukraine. Fighters, air defense systems, guns, tanks.

– The complaint Ukraine generally has is that it’s not allowed to use this weaponry against targets inside of Russia. That’s been modified. It’s OK to use them in the area between Kharkiv and Belgorod. So even there, there has been a change in attitude in the West.

Talking about the Ukrainian offensive last summer.  That’s within Ukraine, sovereign Ukrainian territory. Ukrainians are allowed to attack that with howitzers and with rockets. That’s not being held up.

– The Russians exceeded us not only in the number of manpower, but also in tanks, planes, etc.

– I don’t want to get into an argument with an ally. We have the same goals. It’s a question of how we reach them.

 But the question of manpower and, you know, that you’re significantly outnumbered on the Eastern front.  That has nothing to do with the United States. That’s domestic Ukrainian politics. 

IF YOU DO NOT CALL UP ANYONE AGED 18 TO 25, YOU WILL HAVE A SHORTAGE

You have made the basic choice not to draft younger people for demographic reasons.  I understand the argument.  Well, if you’re you’re not going to draft anybody from 18 to 25, of course you’re going to be holding back and you’re going to be outnumbered on the front lines.

As to weaponry, the Republicans’ hold up in the U.S. House of Representatives was disgraceful, but it’s now finally being remedied.