US and EU bickering leaves Ukraine adrift

These are not the interventions of an American globalist. They show once more the grip Donald Trump retains on Republican thinking on America’s role. The ground is being laid for the Republicans and potentially the US to abandon Ukraine. Johnson’s questions mirror those asked when America’s crucial support for the nationalists in the Chinese civil war and for other US-aligned regimes abandoned in South Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan.

While the funding package may pass before Christmas if the Biden administration agrees to stringent Republican demands to safeguard the United States’ southern border, alarm in Washington at the broader implications of the funding blockage grows.

Zelensky might well be ruing the chance Putin gave him in April 2022 to stop the war so long as he relinquished NATO membership ambitions.

President Biden accuses Republicans of “playing chicken with national security”. The Wall St Journal said that without the funding, Ukraine would find itself in peril, “touching off a domino effect of consequences for the Western world”.

In Washington, the White House says US funding for Ukraine will run out by the end of this calendar year, though the Pentagon avows that existing funding will be enough to carry Ukraine through the winter.

Even so, President Volodymyr Zelensky has ordered the construction of fortifications along Ukraine’s frontlines in the east and north-east, a sign he is switching to a defensive posture after offensives over recent months yielded few gains.

He might well be ruing the chance Putin gave him in April 2022 to stop the war so long as he relinquished Ukraine’s NATO membership ambitions. But the West, led by the United States, told Ukraine to fight on. Biden needed to bolster his national security credentials after the botched exit from Afghanistan, and many Western national security communities accepted the conventional wisdom that supporting Ukraine would deter Xi from taking Taiwan.

But is this conflict now the galvanising force it was held up to be for key US allies in Asia? The moment of resolve to show Xi that the lesson being taught Putin would also be meted out to him? The Republican blockage of funding also includes money for Taiwan’s defences.

Hollow rhetoric

With the bickering in Washington, increasingly it looks as if Ukraine will have to depend on the Europeans.

But little joy awaits Kyiv there either. Indeed, what is revealed is the hollowness of much Western rhetoric about abiding solidarity for Ukraine.

EU leaders will meet this week amid spats about how they will finance a proposal to provide €50 billion ($82 billion) to help support Ukraine’s budget over the next four years.

Germany is in the midst of an economic crisis forced on Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s administration by constitutional court restrictions on government debt-funded spending. His much-vaunted Zeitenwende – a turning point in Germany’s military outlook and culture away from post-war pacifism to a revitalised military – has stalled under the weight of the crisis exacerbated by inflation and the rising cost of munitions.

Poland has not shifted from the policy it announced before its October elections that it would provide no new arms for Ukraine. And pro-Russian Slovakian prime minister Robert Fico stands by his declaration of “not a single round” of ammunition for Kyiv. Italy, Spain and France offer only small contributions.

A damning assessment comes from Jacob Kirkegaard, senior fellow at the German Marshall Fund in Brussels, telling the Financial Times that “Ukraine is no longer special. It is no longer regarded as this issue of national security, of paramount importance for the EU, NATO or the United States. Because if that was the case, people wouldn’t be playing politics with it”.

Australia is marginal. Yet in July a cabinet minister told this column that “Ukraine is the only show in town” and that “we are with them for the next decade if that is what it takes”. Israel is now the fashionable cause but regardless, what meaningfully can Australia offer – beyond a few more Bushmasters – that is going to make an appreciable difference on the ground? By all means, send coal to assist Ukraine’s energy needs, and there is now renewed talk of sending to Ukraine the FA/18 Hornets mothballed in Newcastle.

But as AFR Defence correspondent Andrew Tillett notes, only 14 of the 41 aircraft there are in the condition to be readied for combat again, and that would take four to six months.

The bottom line is that few palatable options remain for American and European policymakers trying to manage failing military and political support for Ukraine.