by Thaddeus G. McCotter
NATO’s rationale of "bleeding Russia’s military" through prolonged aid to Ukraine turns allies into expendable pawns, undermines moral credibility and ignores the devastating human cost.
Throughout Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the Biden administration and our NATO allies have offered numerous rationales for the initial and subsequent tranches of billions of dollars in military and economic support for our ally. Some are more plausible than others, but one rationale, in particular, should never be a consideration at any time.
Growing more prevalent as the war continued, this rationale belies NATO’s self-proclaimed concern and support for an ally and, in the eyes of the world, undermines the peaceful professions of the collective security organization at the very time it is engaging in its reason for existence: countering Russian aggression in Europe.
In Western nations, there is overwhelming support for defeating and deterring Russian aggression and, if possible, deposing Putin. Playing upon this sentiment, NATO has increasingly put forward the rationale that continued aid to Ukraine “is bleeding the Russian military.” What could possibly be amiss with this statement?
To bleed the Russian military, one must also bleed the Ukrainian people. And the Ukrainians and the rest of the world know it.
Some may attempt to justify this rationale by claiming the brave Ukrainian people are okay with this formulation and/or can intuit that there is an implicit recognition that, somehow, NATO actually cares about their losses as much as Russian casualty counts. To do so strains credulity, evinces a lack of understanding of human nature, and exhibits an absence of sympathy, let alone empathy, for suffering Ukrainians on the part of proponents of this rationale. In short, this rationale turns our flesh-and-blood allies into abstractions in a strategic tussle between NATO and Russia (and its international abettors, such as the PRC, North Korea, and Iran). In the real world, this rationale is calloused to the war’s human cost.
To wit: A family member working in Chicago came across a co-worker bent over her desk, softly sobbing. Hoping to comfort her, the family member asked the woman what happened. Through the tears streaming down her face, she replied in her still distinct accent that, while she’d just been notified her fiancé had been killed fighting Russians in Ukraine.
Do you think she received any comfort knowing he died bleeding Russia’s military?
For the more hardened among us, such losses are the price of “great power” competition. Yet, such a rationale diminishes NATO in the eyes of current and prospective allies and emboldens its enemies. Who wants to sign up to be the next expendable pawn in a great power competition?
In fact, regarding pushing away potential allies and, indeed, hardening present enemies, there is a historical irony at work, circa August 1, 1944—the Warsaw Uprising.
Per The National World War II Museum of New Orleans:
The Warsaw Uprising was catastrophic and had lasting impacts for decades to come. The lack of Soviet support, coupled with the fact that Nazi leaders used untrained SS troops to suppress the uprising, proved disastrous for the AK [Polish Home Army] and civilians living in Warsaw. Altogether, Polish losses during the uprising included 150,000 civilian deaths and about 20,000 Home Army casualties. The German forces lost an estimated 10,000 troops. Fighting stopped on October 2, 1944, with the formal surrender of the AK, but during the next three months, German forces demolished much of what was left of the city and deported 650,000 civilians to a labor camp south of Warsaw. According to the historian Maciej Siekierski, when Soviet troops finally “liberated” Warsaw in January of 1945, “Poland’s capital was a vast desert of hollow-shelled buildings and rubble.
Delaying and denying assistance, Stalin was cynically allowing his nominal allies, the Poles, to bleed his enemy, the Germans; and all the while he was calculating how much easier it would then be post-war to subjugate Poland beneath the totalitarian Soviet yoke. (This, of course, occurred after no one came to aid the intrepid Jewish Poles who led the Warsaw Ghetto uprising.)
While NATO lacks Stalin’s devious endgame for Poland, the “bleed Russia’s military” rationale nevertheless damages the collective security alliance because it suggests a casualness in its price tag that includes a war-ravaged Ukraine being turned into “a vast desert of hollow-shelled buildings and rubble.” It is an excuse for NATO’s failure to successfully facilitate a Ukrainian victory and for Western governments’ failure to define realistic, achievable war aims, let alone craft an acceptable—if not agreeable—off-ramp for the carnage. Honestly, how much more blood needs to be shed?
There will be those who will dismiss noting the harm of the “bleed Russia’s military” rationale as a trivial complaint. Yet, it speaks to the larger issue that the U.S. foreign policy establishment and our NATO allies have become too rigidly ideological and too abstract in their thinking. (See the attempted reconstruction of Afghanistan and Iraq.) It needs to be more political, more practical—and, yes, be more understanding of and empathetic to all the peoples involved. (See the successful reconstruction of Germany and Japan.)
Speaking of practicality, just how much of our military hardware have we diverted from other allies to support Ukraine? The American weaponry being expended in Ukraine will need to be replenished. How many of these new weapons will require parts made in communist China or other nations? What happened to the manufacturing base that once armed the “Arsenal of Democracy?” Questions abound as to who is bleeding whom.
Yet, that is for another day. Presently, suffice it to say: do not speak in the abstract to build support for continuing to wage a proxy war that bleeds your enemy, your ally, and yourself.
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An American Greatness contributor, the Hon. Thaddeus G. McCotter (M.C., Ret.) served Michigan’s 11th Congressional district from 2003-2012 and served as Chair of the Republican House Policy Committee. Not a lobbyist, he is a frequent public speaker and moderator for public policy seminars and a Monday co-host of the “John Batchelor Radio Show,” among sundry media appearances.
Thaddeus G. McCotter
Source: https://amgreatness.com/2024/12/07/ukraine-bleeding-an-ally/
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