U.S. Arming Ukraine ‘Reinforces Failure’ Says Former Colonel Macgregor

Aug. 25, 2022 (EIRNS)—Retired U.S. Army Col. Douglas Macgregor, in an Aug. 23 article, “Reinforcing Failure in Ukraine“ in the American Conservative on Aug. 23, argued that continuing to flood Ukraine with weapons—a flood which from Europe has been reduced to a trickle, he said—only reinforces failure. Macgregor was responding to an open letter, “U.S. Must Arm Ukraine Now, Before It’s Too Late,“ published in The Hill on Aug. 17, signed by some 19 retired military officers, diplomats, and former defense officials demanding that the Biden administration rapidly increase the flow of weapons to the Kiev regime.

Macgregor writes: “The hard truth is the introduction of new weapon systems won’t change the strategic outcome in Ukraine. Even if NATO’s European members, together with Washington, D.C., provided Ukrainian troops with a new avalanche of weapons, and it arrived at the front instead of disappearing into the black hole of Ukrainian corruption, the training and tactical leadership required to conduct complex offensive operations does not exist inside Ukraine’s 700,000-man army. In addition, there is an acute failure to recognize that Moscow would react to such a development by escalating the conflict. Unlike Ukraine, Russia is not currently mobilized for a larger war, but it could do so quickly.”

Macgregor continues: “American military and civilian leaders routinely ignore the historical record and its lessons. Most importantly, they ignored the criticality of human capital in uniform that frequently constitutes the margin of victory in war.”

In his view, it is time to end the war in Ukraine, but instead, the signers of the letter seek to reinforce failure. “They are demanding a deeply flawed strategy for Ukraine that will lead in the best case to Ukraine’s reduction to a shrunken, land-locked state between the Dnieper River and the Polish border,” he says. “These are results of misguided policies originating in the 1990s under the Clinton administration, which drove Russia into political isolation from Europe and forged Moscow’s alliance with Beijing.

“Expanding NATO to Russia’s borders was never necessary and has become disastrous for Europe,” Macgregor concludes. “The longer the war with Russia lasts the more likely it becomes that the damage to Ukrainian society and its army will be irreparable. Neutrality on the Austrian model for Ukraine is still possible. If Washington insists on perpetuating Ukraine’s war with Russia, the neutrality option will vanish, NATO’s fragile ‘coalition of the willing’ will collapse, and Ukraine will become the new ‘sick man of Europe’ and remain a catalyst for future conflict.”