Excellent, concise, very readable summary of the absolute need to support Ukraine 🇺🇦 as a global victory for mankind. “We” must win at all costs or the world will veer entirely off course to potential self determination by all nations, certainly a worthy and just goal. Negotiations in the US regarding budget issues must NOT deprive Ukraine of the support it requires. America First IS SUPPORT FOR UKRAINE. 🇺🇸🇺🇦
Every congress member questioning aid to Ukraine needs to receive a copy of this post. I’ll see that Marc Molinaro does, since he has flirted with pacifying the Putinists.
Thanks for underscoring the importance of Ukraine's victory. Here's another angle: "Germany, the country that ruined the 20th Century, is damaging the 21st. Berlin’s political decisions facilitated Putin’s invasion of Ukraine and now its politicians slow-walk the military assistance and sanctions needed to defeat Russia. The most recent example is Germany’s refusal to permit the acquisition by Ukraine of 300 German-made Leopard II battle tanks — unless and until America also sends M1 Abrams tanks to Ukraine. Washington has declined to send the Abrams because the tank is inferior to the Leopard, costly and cumbersome. Even so, Germany insists. But this is not about tanks. It’s about guilt and optics. German politicians worry that it won’t go unnoticed that the last time German tanks moved eastward was in 1941 when Hitler’s “Barbarossa” armada invaded and swept toward Russia using 3,400 tanks that were, like the Leopard II, made by arms giant, Krauss-Maffei Wegmann who was also Nazi Germany’s prime supplier. While eyebrow-raising, these inconvenient historical facts do not justify preventing Ukraine from deploying Leopard tanks to break through Russia’s “Maginot Line” of trenches, landmines, artillery, and cement barriers in its East. In this case, as in others, Germany’s mentality and hesitation have been unhelpful and disquieting." https://dianefrancis.substack.com/p/germanys-world-war-iii
Actually, Krauss-Maffei was the designer of the Leopard 1 and -2 before that part of the company was sold to Wegmann, and neither produced a single tank during World War 2. The primary manufacturer of the Panther and Tiger chassis was Henschel, and Maybach (part of what is now Mercedes-Benz) provided the power plants.
Comparison of the Abrams and Leopard 2 tanks is by its very nature speculative, but it is true that the Abrams is much more demanding logistically than the Leopard.
It would also be nice to avoid the misconception that heavy tanks are good for breaking though ''Russia's 'Maginot Line'" in your words. Historically, the Maginot Line was not broken through but circumvented: The Panzer divisions of Guderian, Rommel & Co. went through the Ardennes forest, which according to the British and French general staffs was impenetrable by tanks. The general tactics used in that successful campaign, and later by many others (including, especially, MacArthur in the Pacific theater) involve infiltration and envelopment, according to which enemy strong points are bypassed and encircled. I am confident that the Ukrainian leadership will avoid the frontal assaults that are so wasteful of soldiers' lives
Yours are useful historical tactical and logistical info; what can one take away that are, for support of the present self-defence, useful and necessary?
To some these info may seem trivia, but they are of the real stuff of having to self-defend against a viciously conducted military invasion and extermination effort.
The Ukrainian self-defense is of a kind and of a character wherein the invader and the sociopolitical community supplying it must see and currently do see their military strategies and tactical resources continuously, incrementally, and inexorably repulsed, wasted, depleted; this sense of failure and its concomitant frustration and exhaustion, brings about political capitulation as well as a setting aside of the war-making mindset.
Correcting asymmetries battlefield weaponry resources performs one role, supporting the will to self-defend in the face of many asymmetries of capacities to sustain military action, and sustaining the will and the morale in the face of the Putin regime's commitment to bringing any and all forms of brutality into the service of its invasion. Repulse the invading force, repulse and repulse and repulse, weaken again and again.
Excellent review🤟Germany need a new generation of ploticis. I’d say that without fast decision for Leopards they build a new guilt, now in 21st century. It could be a disaster for their future as a EU leader and for the EU future as well.
As for me it have to be changed, because it looks a bit insane when almost everything depands on Germany in Europe...
There is no leader..europe is riven with populism, emergent far right ...the war could bring things together through united effort, but the EU looks a failed project. NATO not much better.
From what I read, the Abrams tanks are not inferior, military.com calls it "the most modern tank in the world". They would be excellent but need training maintenance "complicated to maintain" a different fuel ( diesel/)? Austin and Milley are advising Biden not to send these. This is a sorry standoff/hesitation between the military here and in Germany. I wonder if the excuses are real. Biden says "Ukraine will get what it needs" ( whatever that means). The Germans are pathetic myopically wrongheaded even if this connects to guilt vis a vis WW2 (and given TS points above especially).Time is of essence. People are suffering and dying. It seems like Germany sells the Leopards and then has a say about how they are used.
Signed on..a compelling read...my professional career involved global energy finance and Germany’s links to Russia made no strategic sense for an energy independent Europe or one free from Russian influence..Merkel, so much the darling of western press either was stupid or complicit..and she wasn’t stupid..except in hindsight
After the Leopards from Poland, the US should send Abrams as well, even token, and begin whatever is necessary as far as maintenance training and fuel issues go. This may be happening already but we don't know it. We are such armchair generals but the "can do, will do" commitment is not as full as it should be here, as good as it is...or so it seems. Biden is, after all Commander in Chief. At his age he should not be worrying about re-election either more than doing the right thing now.
Thank you so much, Professor. Ive been helping support and corresponding w a young Ukr mother in Kyiv (found her clothing company on Etsy) I have and have given out Ukrainian garden flags. A group of us are hosting a group of eight Ukr refugees in our state.
I write/email my DC reps and sens more than theyd like.
We need to stop acting out of fear of russia. We (and effing germany) just need to do the right thing and put an end to this humanitarian and environmental catastrophe.
It is wonderful to have the conversations, even small conversations, with Ukrainians who are in the midst of what is happening there! I also imagine my legislators would prefer I stop emailing but they will just have to put up with us constituents who share their thoughts!
Excellent as always. As a physicist who is active in efforts to eliminate nuclear weapons and the facilities that make them possible, I would like to emphasize my agreement with points number 10 and 11. Unsaid, no doubt for brevity, are the facts that Ukraine had an arsenal of nuclear weapons when the Soviet Union collapsed, and it agreed to give up those weapons in return for security guarantees by both the Russian Federation and the United States. Russia has abrogated its agreement, and the United States has not fully upheld its promise to guarantee Ukraine's security. Of course, the US argues that the 1994 Budapest Memorandum was not really a security guarantee but rather a promise to respect Ukraine's territorial integrity. In other words, a toothless document.
The world has a sad record when it comes to security guarantees as rewards for nuclear nonproliferation. Ukraine is an example of Russian disregard of its promises, but the US is not without guilt. We beseeched Qaddafi to give up his nuclear weapons program, and the instant he did we along with some of our European allies overthrew him. Little wonder, IMO, why Iran and North Korea are so distrustful.
The presence of thousands of nuclear weapons is an existential threat to life on this planet, ranking in urgency second only to climate change. The employment of even a small fraction of the US or Russian thermonuclear warheads would be sufficient to cause a nuclear winter, causing a die-off on a scale not seen since the Cretaceous-Paleogene mass extinction.
Budapest Accord..UK and US ...but as Stephen correctly points out, a political doc without any enforcement teeth..however, times have changed and it’s pointless to refer to Budapest as some do- evidence of “criminal gangsters running the west” ...or even as of any significance- at the time it was seen as no more than nice words on paper ...
An essential reminder—thankyou!—of the true horror of potential use of nuclear weapons. The truth is so horrific people cannot mentally encompass it, so block it out in denial. Same goes for climate change.
People speak about Germany's reluctance to send tanks because of the Nazis attack on the Soviet Union. What about what the Nazis did in Ukraine? What about what Stalin did to Ukraine?
These tanks Germany could send would be fighting against the direct descendants of Stalin and the KGB. They would be fighting against Putin's fascist aims.
At 1m 33s in, a woman says, "They asked whether I will cooperate or not, and I certainly will not cooperate, so they--my kitchen is small--they boiled some water and said that if I am not going to work with them, then I do not need hands. I managed to pull one hand away, but boiling water poured on my left hand." This is the first time I'd encountered a description of Russian torture techniques used in Ukraine in which the Glove Trick was used. I have no idea how widespread it is in Ukraine. Nor do I know if there is widespread knowledge of it in Russia, or if these soldiers learned about it from their superiors. But it is among the most ghastly forms of torture I've ever come across in reading history.
“Germans want to be seen as a partner, not an aggressor, and they have a particular sensitivity to delivering arms in regions where German arms were historically used to kill millions of people,” said Steven Sokol, the president of the American Council on Germany, citing Russia, Poland and Ukraine. “People do not want German weapons on the front lines being used to kill people in those regions.”
But Germans risk misinterpreting the lessons of their history, said Timothy Garton Ash, a historian of Germany and Europe at St. Antony’s College at Oxford. “The German position is profoundly confused, with the old thinking dead and the new not yet born,” he said.
(end quote)
Profoundly confused, amazingly so... Doesn't the German position seem perversely nationalistic? German weapons cannot be used and Germany can keep itself "clean" while others bear the burden ( including of German security) while Russia reaps the benefits of its aggression with the help of German defacto appeasement.
Thank you, Tim. Much love and appreciation to you from Ukraine 🇺🇦
Particularly for mentioning and linking to savelife.in.ua NGO. Those people are performing extreme efforts to help Ukrainian military to succeed. Official U.S. branch of this fund will open soon. Every your dollar donated there will approximate our common victory.
Most of this does not follow automatically from Ukraine winning the war. It must also win the peace. Just as Germany's defeat after WW1 did not prevent WW2, but in fact, the terms of peace led directly to political and social dysfunction, then to Hitler.
Ukraine must organize and fund a clearing of the rubble, salvaging of material, and forward-looking reconstruction. It cannot become the victim of vulture investors backed by the IMF (which has no history of success anywhere). At the same time, an impoverished and embittered Russia sets the stage for more strife, not less.
I just sent this article to a Quaker friend who has been in the peace movement since the 60s. I've been trying to get her and others in her group to understand why U.S. involvement is not the same as our involvement in previous conflicts over the past several decades. Stopping our support will not bring peace, but genocide.
Excellent, concise, very readable summary of the absolute need to support Ukraine 🇺🇦 as a global victory for mankind. “We” must win at all costs or the world will veer entirely off course to potential self determination by all nations, certainly a worthy and just goal. Negotiations in the US regarding budget issues must NOT deprive Ukraine of the support it requires. America First IS SUPPORT FOR UKRAINE. 🇺🇸🇺🇦
Every congress member questioning aid to Ukraine needs to receive a copy of this post. I’ll see that Marc Molinaro does, since he has flirted with pacifying the Putinists.
I'm in too.
Thanks for underscoring the importance of Ukraine's victory. Here's another angle: "Germany, the country that ruined the 20th Century, is damaging the 21st. Berlin’s political decisions facilitated Putin’s invasion of Ukraine and now its politicians slow-walk the military assistance and sanctions needed to defeat Russia. The most recent example is Germany’s refusal to permit the acquisition by Ukraine of 300 German-made Leopard II battle tanks — unless and until America also sends M1 Abrams tanks to Ukraine. Washington has declined to send the Abrams because the tank is inferior to the Leopard, costly and cumbersome. Even so, Germany insists. But this is not about tanks. It’s about guilt and optics. German politicians worry that it won’t go unnoticed that the last time German tanks moved eastward was in 1941 when Hitler’s “Barbarossa” armada invaded and swept toward Russia using 3,400 tanks that were, like the Leopard II, made by arms giant, Krauss-Maffei Wegmann who was also Nazi Germany’s prime supplier. While eyebrow-raising, these inconvenient historical facts do not justify preventing Ukraine from deploying Leopard tanks to break through Russia’s “Maginot Line” of trenches, landmines, artillery, and cement barriers in its East. In this case, as in others, Germany’s mentality and hesitation have been unhelpful and disquieting." https://dianefrancis.substack.com/p/germanys-world-war-iii
Actually, Krauss-Maffei was the designer of the Leopard 1 and -2 before that part of the company was sold to Wegmann, and neither produced a single tank during World War 2. The primary manufacturer of the Panther and Tiger chassis was Henschel, and Maybach (part of what is now Mercedes-Benz) provided the power plants.
Comparison of the Abrams and Leopard 2 tanks is by its very nature speculative, but it is true that the Abrams is much more demanding logistically than the Leopard.
It would also be nice to avoid the misconception that heavy tanks are good for breaking though ''Russia's 'Maginot Line'" in your words. Historically, the Maginot Line was not broken through but circumvented: The Panzer divisions of Guderian, Rommel & Co. went through the Ardennes forest, which according to the British and French general staffs was impenetrable by tanks. The general tactics used in that successful campaign, and later by many others (including, especially, MacArthur in the Pacific theater) involve infiltration and envelopment, according to which enemy strong points are bypassed and encircled. I am confident that the Ukrainian leadership will avoid the frontal assaults that are so wasteful of soldiers' lives
Thank you, Mr. Schiff.
Yours are useful historical tactical and logistical info; what can one take away that are, for support of the present self-defence, useful and necessary?
To some these info may seem trivia, but they are of the real stuff of having to self-defend against a viciously conducted military invasion and extermination effort.
The Ukrainian self-defense is of a kind and of a character wherein the invader and the sociopolitical community supplying it must see and currently do see their military strategies and tactical resources continuously, incrementally, and inexorably repulsed, wasted, depleted; this sense of failure and its concomitant frustration and exhaustion, brings about political capitulation as well as a setting aside of the war-making mindset.
Correcting asymmetries battlefield weaponry resources performs one role, supporting the will to self-defend in the face of many asymmetries of capacities to sustain military action, and sustaining the will and the morale in the face of the Putin regime's commitment to bringing any and all forms of brutality into the service of its invasion. Repulse the invading force, repulse and repulse and repulse, weaken again and again.
Excellent review🤟Germany need a new generation of ploticis. I’d say that without fast decision for Leopards they build a new guilt, now in 21st century. It could be a disaster for their future as a EU leader and for the EU future as well.
As for me it have to be changed, because it looks a bit insane when almost everything depands on Germany in Europe...
Thanks. Germany has forfeited its position as Europe's leader, so has France.
Poland appears to be stepping into the lead. The rightward tilt of its governing party does raise some concerns, however.
Someone help England, please.
There is no leader..europe is riven with populism, emergent far right ...the war could bring things together through united effort, but the EU looks a failed project. NATO not much better.
Unsure it's failed but it will restructure politically for sure
From what I read, the Abrams tanks are not inferior, military.com calls it "the most modern tank in the world". They would be excellent but need training maintenance "complicated to maintain" a different fuel ( diesel/)? Austin and Milley are advising Biden not to send these. This is a sorry standoff/hesitation between the military here and in Germany. I wonder if the excuses are real. Biden says "Ukraine will get what it needs" ( whatever that means). The Germans are pathetic myopically wrongheaded even if this connects to guilt vis a vis WW2 (and given TS points above especially).Time is of essence. People are suffering and dying. It seems like Germany sells the Leopards and then has a say about how they are used.
You would enjoy my piece Germany's World War III
https://dianefrancis.substack.com/p/germanys-world-war-iii
Signed on..a compelling read...my professional career involved global energy finance and Germany’s links to Russia made no strategic sense for an energy independent Europe or one free from Russian influence..Merkel, so much the darling of western press either was stupid or complicit..and she wasn’t stupid..except in hindsight
After the Leopards from Poland, the US should send Abrams as well, even token, and begin whatever is necessary as far as maintenance training and fuel issues go. This may be happening already but we don't know it. We are such armchair generals but the "can do, will do" commitment is not as full as it should be here, as good as it is...or so it seems. Biden is, after all Commander in Chief. At his age he should not be worrying about re-election either more than doing the right thing now.
I think it's more likely the case that Scholz is a Putinversteher.
Thank you so much, Professor. Ive been helping support and corresponding w a young Ukr mother in Kyiv (found her clothing company on Etsy) I have and have given out Ukrainian garden flags. A group of us are hosting a group of eight Ukr refugees in our state.
I write/email my DC reps and sens more than theyd like.
We need to stop acting out of fear of russia. We (and effing germany) just need to do the right thing and put an end to this humanitarian and environmental catastrophe.
Now. We must act NOW!
Slava Ukraine! Slava Democracy!!
It is wonderful to have the conversations, even small conversations, with Ukrainians who are in the midst of what is happening there! I also imagine my legislators would prefer I stop emailing but they will just have to put up with us constituents who share their thoughts!
Excellent as always. As a physicist who is active in efforts to eliminate nuclear weapons and the facilities that make them possible, I would like to emphasize my agreement with points number 10 and 11. Unsaid, no doubt for brevity, are the facts that Ukraine had an arsenal of nuclear weapons when the Soviet Union collapsed, and it agreed to give up those weapons in return for security guarantees by both the Russian Federation and the United States. Russia has abrogated its agreement, and the United States has not fully upheld its promise to guarantee Ukraine's security. Of course, the US argues that the 1994 Budapest Memorandum was not really a security guarantee but rather a promise to respect Ukraine's territorial integrity. In other words, a toothless document.
The world has a sad record when it comes to security guarantees as rewards for nuclear nonproliferation. Ukraine is an example of Russian disregard of its promises, but the US is not without guilt. We beseeched Qaddafi to give up his nuclear weapons program, and the instant he did we along with some of our European allies overthrew him. Little wonder, IMO, why Iran and North Korea are so distrustful.
The presence of thousands of nuclear weapons is an existential threat to life on this planet, ranking in urgency second only to climate change. The employment of even a small fraction of the US or Russian thermonuclear warheads would be sufficient to cause a nuclear winter, causing a die-off on a scale not seen since the Cretaceous-Paleogene mass extinction.
I don’t know why the abrogation of the agreement that returned the nukes to Russia is so little reported.
Thanks for the reminder that Ukraine had to cede their nukes. Id forgotten that.
And now Ukrainians are dying and being kidnapped and raped and tortured.
And it’s partially on us - collectively.
Budapest Accord..UK and US ...but as Stephen correctly points out, a political doc without any enforcement teeth..however, times have changed and it’s pointless to refer to Budapest as some do- evidence of “criminal gangsters running the west” ...or even as of any significance- at the time it was seen as no more than nice words on paper ...
An essential reminder—thankyou!—of the true horror of potential use of nuclear weapons. The truth is so horrific people cannot mentally encompass it, so block it out in denial. Same goes for climate change.
Always the first person to look to for honest evaluation. Ukraine fights for us all.
I get slammed so many times for saying just that..thankyou
People speak about Germany's reluctance to send tanks because of the Nazis attack on the Soviet Union. What about what the Nazis did in Ukraine? What about what Stalin did to Ukraine?
These tanks Germany could send would be fighting against the direct descendants of Stalin and the KGB. They would be fighting against Putin's fascist aims.
RE #1: A few days ago I came across this video from DW, in which some of the citizens in liberated Kherson described what the Russians had done to them. https://twitter.com/dwnews/status/1614260496500146176?cxt=HHwWgICyzc3XgOcsAAAA
At 1m 33s in, a woman says, "They asked whether I will cooperate or not, and I certainly will not cooperate, so they--my kitchen is small--they boiled some water and said that if I am not going to work with them, then I do not need hands. I managed to pull one hand away, but boiling water poured on my left hand." This is the first time I'd encountered a description of Russian torture techniques used in Ukraine in which the Glove Trick was used. I have no idea how widespread it is in Ukraine. Nor do I know if there is widespread knowledge of it in Russia, or if these soldiers learned about it from their superiors. But it is among the most ghastly forms of torture I've ever come across in reading history.
from the NYT "Russia-Ukraine War Briefing":
“Germans want to be seen as a partner, not an aggressor, and they have a particular sensitivity to delivering arms in regions where German arms were historically used to kill millions of people,” said Steven Sokol, the president of the American Council on Germany, citing Russia, Poland and Ukraine. “People do not want German weapons on the front lines being used to kill people in those regions.”
But Germans risk misinterpreting the lessons of their history, said Timothy Garton Ash, a historian of Germany and Europe at St. Antony’s College at Oxford. “The German position is profoundly confused, with the old thinking dead and the new not yet born,” he said.
(end quote)
Profoundly confused, amazingly so... Doesn't the German position seem perversely nationalistic? German weapons cannot be used and Germany can keep itself "clean" while others bear the burden ( including of German security) while Russia reaps the benefits of its aggression with the help of German defacto appeasement.
Thank you for keeping this at the forefront. So many issues will be solved at once when we assist Ukraine and end this horror show.
Just found this on BBC: "Ukraine war: Germany won't block export of its Leopard 2 tanks, foreign minister says." https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-64370165
Thank you, Tim. Much love and appreciation to you from Ukraine 🇺🇦
Particularly for mentioning and linking to savelife.in.ua NGO. Those people are performing extreme efforts to help Ukrainian military to succeed. Official U.S. branch of this fund will open soon. Every your dollar donated there will approximate our common victory.
Glory to Ukraine 🇺🇦!
Thankyou Prof Snyder...
Most of this does not follow automatically from Ukraine winning the war. It must also win the peace. Just as Germany's defeat after WW1 did not prevent WW2, but in fact, the terms of peace led directly to political and social dysfunction, then to Hitler.
Ukraine must organize and fund a clearing of the rubble, salvaging of material, and forward-looking reconstruction. It cannot become the victim of vulture investors backed by the IMF (which has no history of success anywhere). At the same time, an impoverished and embittered Russia sets the stage for more strife, not less.
An idea for reparations: https://aharvey.substack.com/p/an-alternative-for-reparations
I just sent this article to a Quaker friend who has been in the peace movement since the 60s. I've been trying to get her and others in her group to understand why U.S. involvement is not the same as our involvement in previous conflicts over the past several decades. Stopping our support will not bring peace, but genocide.
Thank you Dr Snyder for a concise summary of the issues at stake in the Ukraine war.