One of the certainties of experience is that wars rarely go as planned. Vladimir Putin, after many others, can confirm this.
The fact that the plan drawn up in the run-up to a conflict that started cold in the end corresponds to the requirements of a military victory does not guarantee success either. The United States, the world’s leading military power, has twice demonstrated its inability to bring about peace, in both Afghanistan and Iraq.
This double failure subsequently prompted them to wage the war in Libya “from behind” or to refuse engagement in Syria. The move away from interventionism, embodied by Barack Obama and then shared by his quasi-antagonist Donald Trump, has yielded no more satisfactory results for the interests of Washington and its allies.
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As the Russian-imposed war in Ukraine entered its twelfth month on January 24, its momentum continues to push the boundaries that Kiev’s Western backers had explicitly and implicitly set for military aid. The most recent crossing concerns the unavoidable delivery of heavy tanks made in Germany. They are the only ones available in sufficient numbers in the European countries most strongly mobilized for Ukraine’s victory to play an effective role on the ground.
Barring an unlikely brutal Russian collapse, everything leads us to believe that other red lines will be similarly crossed in the coming months. Undoubtedly under the same conditions, a mixture of insistent Ukrainian appeals and improvisation, without adequately explaining these decisions to public opinion in the countries concerned.
Two facts
These successive deletions have reignited debate over the legitimacy and relevance of this Western aid. These questions were particularly raised in these columns (Le Monde of January 21) by former Paris MP Pierre Lellouche, who, to his credit, did not discover these questions the day before yesterday.
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They were initially decided by Ukraine’s unexpected resistance to Russia’s violation of the integrity of its borders and sovereignty. The aggressor’s disregard for the most elementary laws of war, as evidenced by the massive bombing of civilian infrastructure, then played in favor of ever-increasing aid. But the relative stalemate observed in Kyiv since the end of the offensives in autumn 2022 has revived them.
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