Let's Let Ukraine Win

The West has one big golden opportunity in 2023. We better seize it.

London stands with Ukraine.

A win. That’s what we need now – a real, big, undoubtable win. The West cannot afford another year like 2022.

President Zelensky’s visit to Washington was a good start. By having him over (we don’t know on whose initiative, but the whole affair certainly felt like a Nancy Pelosi production) the Americans took serious ownership of the war effort. Rest assured: Joe Biden wouldn’t publicly embrace a foreign country in this way if he planned to let it down.

Biden, of course, does not run American foreign policy all by himself. He has his Secretaries of State and Defense – and his National Security Advisor. These men all come with specific turfs and agendas, and normally it would fall on the NSA to reconcile them. But Sullivan (who I suspect wasn’t exactly thrilled about Zelensky’s visit) has been quite open with his views; going forward, he might find that he has severely undermined his own role as a power broker. Blinken and Austin already know full well what Sullivan will tell the boss, and can coordinate accordingly. Not least, they can remind the President of all the times Sullivan has been proven wrong.

Had he been right, nuclear warheads would have come flying on any number of occasions during the past ten months. But no matter how badly the war has gone for Russia, and no matter what level of support we have given to Ukraine, no such thing has occurred. The only “escalation” that has actually taken place – apart from a growing list of Russian war crimes – has been the increased mobilisation of conventional Russian ground forces.

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A new approach is long overdue. We all know what that would entail: F-16 fighter jets, no-limits artillery ammunition, Abrams tanks, Reaper and Predator drones. Some of this is being prepared. Some other things, like Patriot air defence systems, are well underway. But it certainly is frustrating to consider what might have been, had the West gone all-in much, much earlier. Just imagine the lives, the suffering and the treasure saved if we had shown the Russians from the very beginning that we were dead serious about them losing.

But what’s (not) done is done. We have to look ahead. And in doing so, we should view Ukraine as a golden opportunity for the West to shine once more. According to most estimates, Russian military capability has by now been cut down to half. With our unconditional support, Ukraine could quite possibly finish the war by late summer. Imagine for a second what this would do for the revival of the rules-based world order.

China would postpone whatever sinister plans it has for Taiwan, perhaps even scrap them altogether. The butchers in Damascus and Tehran would feel the ground finally shake under their feet. The regimes in Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua would find themselves increasingly isolated. In large parts of Africa, the Russian presence would be rolled back. In short, Western power and influence would soar, just as it did in the 1990’s after the successful liberation of Kuwait.

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Imagine too what a clear Russian defeat would do for us; what it would do for something as simple, and yet as vital, as pure optimism. I can think of no other moment in European history that even compares, apart from June 6th, 1944. So instead of fretting about an escalation that will never happen, let’s finish this.

Let’s let Ukraine win, and win decisively. The cost will be great but the gain – and I cannot stress this enough – the gain will be beyond measure. Once the dust settles, the West, together will an immensely strong new ally on its eastern flank, will truly be invincible.

In fact, we already are; we just need to act the part. In the new year, I pray we do.