Another military taboo has been broken in the conflict in Ukraine with London’s decision, announced on Saturday, to deliver fourteen Challenger 2 heavy assault tanks to the Ukrainian army “in the coming weeks”. kyiv’s Western allies had so far refrained from taking this step, for fear of triggering an uncontrollable escalation with Moscow. Almost a year from the start of the Russian aggression, on February 24, 2022, this decision foreshadows anything but a peace agreement. Rather, it signals a programmed stalemate, following a deaf logic of war of attrition represented on the ground at the present time by the clashes to end, but without great strategic value, that Russian and Ukrainian soldiers are engaged in for the village of Soledar and the small town of Bakhmout.
A handful of heavy tanks, however powerful and modern they may be, does not fundamentally change the balance of power in the short term. The message is no less loaded. Acknowledging that it would take the Ukrainians hundreds more to hope to change the balance of power, which kyiv pleads loud and clear, which always seems to end up being heard. Finland and Poland have also said they are ready to send German-made heavy tanks, Leopard 2s, but they cannot do so without permission from Berlin. So much so that the British announcement is also a way of influencing Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who, shouted down, faces a public opinion reluctant to see Germany sink militarily. Let Scholz give in, which seems to be in the making, and that would represent a significant shift in German military and security policy.
In this case, the warmongering behavior of Great Britain is inevitably reminiscent of the Anglo-American front which was cemented against Iraq in the 2000s. In Rishi Sunak, British Prime Minister, he there’s something like a Tony Blair dressed as a Conservative. Britain is, after all, the second country to provide the most military aid to Ukrainians, after the United States. In addition, James Cleverly, British Foreign Secretary, is due to visit the United States and Canada (which also has Leopard 2 tanks) this week to advocate for an increase in the war effort. On Monday, Justin Trudeau certainly did not close the door to this possibility.
There are obviously domestic political issues: Mr Sunak, believe it or not, would be watching ex-Prime Minister Boris Johnson in the rear view mirror, who would not hesitate to continue to cultivate his ties with President Volodymyr Zelensky . The European press even says that Mr. Johnson would not have given up on a return to Downing Street.
The news of the last few days and months, marked by the gradual increase in Western military aid and the evidence that Vladimir Putin is applying a long and resilient strategy of annihilating the enemy, unfortunately confirms the idea that “The Third World War has begun”, to put it as the controversial intellectual Emmanuel Todd puts it, this historian who, moreover, scripted the fall of the USSR before anyone else. It reinforces the idea, he affirms, of a NATO which revolves primarily around a Washington-London-Warsaw-kyiv axis in relation to which countries like France and Germany become, like by vassalization, “minor partners”.
For having wanted to prevent Ukraine from entering NATO, Putin, with his “special operation” presented as a preventive and defensive war, finds himself having created, by headlong rush, a situation in which kyiv is now de facto part of the organization. This war is less than a year old and one has the impression that it has already been going on for years. This is undoubtedly explained first of all by the fact that, against all odds, Ukraine initially knew how to resist militarily; but also because, no less surprisingly, Russia has managed to resist economically, despite the massive train of Western sanctions. Will she still be able to do so for a long time, despite the bad position in which her army finds itself? Contrary to many observers, Todd believes with others that yes. So that, in this situation, the war would be existential not only for Russia backed by China, but also for the United States. A dynamic has set in which prohibits the United States and Russia from withdrawing from the conflict or considering an end to the war.
“We will be there until the end by your side in a fight that concerns us all,” said Joe Biden, while calling for a “just peace”, when he received Zelensky in Washington on December 21. Peace, a vague concept in international relations… History teaches, says the former French minister Hubert Védrine, that the goal can only be, in all realism, to seek the least unjust peace. It will have to be found in Ukraine.