Why the Leopard and Abrams tanks are not enough for Ukraine (and what we don’t understand) – Corriere.it

The decision by the US and Germany to supply tanks to Ukraine is positive because – once again – it disappoints Putin to divide the West and reduce its support for Kiev. to me The next tanks are a few dozen against thousands of Russian tanks; They were carrying a bunch of problems (maintenance, fuel, ammunition); Many other weaknesses of the Ukrainian military are left unresolved such as the apparent gaps in air defense. Furthermore it the Berlin reservation Continue to detect essential lagcultural as well as political.

Many Germans still believe in the story of the first Cold War victory of 1947-1989 in cooperation with Moscow, not in the design of Ronald Reagan. Even the United States believed so much that it was living in an era of peace in which today’s defense industry is small and often ineffective. Italy also needs a healthy confrontation with the principle of reality, instead of the disastrous debates about Zelensky at the Sanremo Festival.

On and off the green light for US Abrams tanks German tiger 2 A famous joke attributed by some sources to Winston Churchill, the British Prime Minister who was the protagonist of the resistance against Nazi fascism in World War II (an alternative version attributes it to the Israeli Prime Minister, Abba Eban), comes to mind. You can be sure, as Churchill said, that Americans, having tried all the others, will always do the right thing. In this case, the joke could extend to NATO or the West. Since the beginning of this conflict, our support for Ukraine has been declining amid resistance and delays, each decision following grueling hesitations. Harsh judgment on the story of the cheetah d The Economist He reminds us that Zelensky’s request for tanks – to be able to resist massive Russian armored columns – came on the seventh day of the invasion, eleven months ago. It was the right thing to do now, it took me almost a year to admit it.

there The main reason for our hesitation – even on the part of Joe Biden – it was always not to provoke Putin, not to do anything that would legitimize his version of a direct confrontation between Russia and NATO. That is why Biden continues to force the Ukrainians to defend themselves with one arm tied behind their back, for example by denying them suitable missiles to hit the launch bases from which the Russian missiles are launched.

But Putin has used this narrative about NATO’s aggression since 2007 and with aggression justifying the aggression of an independent and sovereign country since 2008 (Georgian) and 2014 (Crimea). Any form of Western aid to Ukraine confirms Moscow’s propaganda theory. Tanks don’t change anything, Putin has already accused NATO hundreds of times of direct combat against Russia. For him also a A convenient excuse for Russian public opinion: To justify the setbacks your armed forces have suffered, it is useful to say that they are fighting a much larger enemy.

Actually Putin knows the fundamental difference between supplying arms and directly entering a conflict. In 1965-1975, during the Vietnam War, the Soviet Union and China supplied Mao the vast majority of weapons, training and intelligence to the Communists in North Vietnam. It is not for this reason that it can be said that America was fighting against the Soviet Union and China. If American propaganda had then used this argument to justify its difficulties, it certainly would not have been taken seriously by the pseudo-pacifist veterans. Who will compete with Zielinski today in San Remo?. The same ones who instead accepted Putin’s propaganda when he described NATO assistance as direct participation in the war.

This help will come – little and late – with many problems. Ukrainian forces must be trained to use tanks other than their own. These armored vehicles must be constantly supplied with fuel, spare parts, and especially ammunition. Here we touch a sore point. Ammunition production is a mirror of the decades-old disarmament process in the West. Including the United States, as documented in a recent Washington Congress report. At the end of World War II, the United States had 85 munitions factories. Today there are six remaining who often operate with machinery and equipment that are more than 80 years old. Although Russia is much poorer than the United States, it has a war economy in which war production receives a large portion of the national resources. And it can tap into military supplies from other wartime economies like Iran and North Korea (the latter is likely also the secret channel through which China is helping Putin).

L’America has dismantled or curtailed its military industry Especially after the end of the first Cold War, she is convinced that she will finally enjoy the benefits of peace. The internal shortcomings of the Pentagon and the military-industrial complex should not be underestimated. Aside from a few sporadic cases of corruption (yes, that doesn’t just exist in Kyiv), American generals have often fallen in love with their cathedrals, great works of war technology like expensive aircraft carriers or F-35 fighter-bombers, and scrapping super new technologies. Lightness like drones, or banal and not at all flashy products like ammunition.

a A recent virtual maneuver exercise conducted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies It showed that if China invaded Taiwan, the United States would run out of essential ammunition to help the island defend itself in less than a week. China invests five times more than the United States in its ability to produce munitions. If in World War II the production capacity of its industry was precisely America’s decisive weapon, now this advantage no longer exists. there Manufacturing decline Which has hit the United States for at least three decades has not spared the defense sector: some of its products rely on materials and components made in China, just like cell phones or electric cars. America maintains — for now — technological supremacy, often entrusted to individuals, and has been seen working with Starlink (Elon Musk) or Microsoft’s satellite role in helping Ukraine. But since Russian aggression uses tactics and technologies that evoke the First and Second World Wars, the program is not enough, we need boots on the ground, tanks, and ammunition.

Germany, Europe, is a special case in terms of a disarmament culture. Behind Chancellor Olaf Schultz’s reticence to the tiger is a kind of alternative vision of history. Many Germans have built a reassuring picture of the end of the Cold War, the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Much of the credit will go to them: cooperation and trade policies that would have eased the communist bloc. The role and steadfastness of Ronald Reagan, or that of Pope Wojtyla and his support of the Polish uprising, is conveniently obscured in this reconstruction. Instead, much of the credit should go to leaders of social democracy such as Willy Brandt, creator of Ostpolitik o Eastern politics (whose political career was cut short because his offices were teeming with Soviet spies). Gerhard Schröder, also a former Social Democratic consultant, was able to be appointed by Putin as the head of the Russian Energy Authority in the name of peace and brotherhood of peoples. The same democrat Angela Merkel He even supported the recent Nord Stream 2, the gas pipeline through which Putin wanted to perpetuate German-European dependence on Russian gas. L ‘The idea that Russia will become better By trading with us he drugged every lucidity of the German ruling class. Scholz still struggles today to get rid of him, and he’s doing it slowly and with his feet.