Don’t believe the hype about Western disunity over Ukraine

International media portrays the ongoing dust-up over Ukraine aid in the U.S. Congress as yet another example of fracturing Western support for Ukraine.  Alongside the Polish-Ukrainian grain spat and the recent Slovak election, the picture is clear: after 18 months, Westerners tire of an open-ended commitment to a faraway country. 

The reality, however, is quite different. And the U.S. and its allies must fight this pernicious narrative.  For in the classic Russian manner, the Kremlin is promoting this doom-and-gloom storyline to turn the tide of war in its favor by eroding public support.

Despite 18 months of combat, Europe and North America have felt little direct pain from the Ukraine War.  In the U.S., inflation is subsiding, even if the Biden administration’s domestic policy missteps have sparked understandable backlash. Eurozone inflation is also easing off as American energy replaces losses from Russian oil and gas.

Refugee flows have caused stresses, but they are mostly manageable — Ukrainian refugees do not cause nearly the same societal disruption as the war-driven migration wave of the 2010s. 

Hungary constantly complains of globalist influences and marks itself out as a Russophilic bulwark within the EU. Serbia pays lip service to the Kremlin and menaces Kosovo from time to time. But there is scant evidence of tangible action to support Russia, partly because Ukraine has done a masterful job of brutalizing the Russian military. 

Slovakia’s Smer, led by Russophilic former prime minister Robert Fico, has “won” the Slovak elections, but it appears unlikely that he will be able to form a government.  If he can, his government will be a fractious coalition of soft-left Europhiles and a handful of Eurosceptics.

Meanwhile, in spite of squabbles over Ukrainian grain saturating Poland’s markets, the conservative governing party in Poland continues to view Russia as an existential threat to the European system and Poland’s own long-term survival.  With elections approaching next week, they are putting up objections to demonstrate agrarian bona fides, with no serious intention of translating this into policy. 

Each of these apparent diplomatic crises for Ukraine are less substantive disruptions than acts of political theater to satisfy one constituency or another.  The key failure has been, at the level of policy, to communicate this reality prior to a major disruption. 

Russia’s theory of victory, however, is premised on taking these events — again, largely acts of domestic or legislative political theater — and transforming them into world-historical disruptions. This is because Russian power has been quite meaningfully diminished by Ukrainian resistance. Moscow has only a very limited chance of winning this war in the conventional sense, so long as Western support continues, and so that is the weakness at which Russia is striking.

On the Ukrainian side, the tangible reality of support remains consistent. Ukraine’s lack of artillery pieces and ammunition is not yet solved, but it has been greatly mitigated by increased German, American, Romanian, and Bulgarian production. By the end of 2024, it will be fully solved, as Ukraine increasingly transitions to NATO-standard artillery and Ukraine’s resurrected defense industrial system fills crucial gaps. Ukraine will receive a handful of F-16s in the coming months, and more throughout 2024, ultimately creating the nucleus of a real, modern air force. 

Western support should be more comprehensive and forward-leaning, particularly when it comes to long-range precision weapons, tactical aircraft, and armored vehicles. But Ukraine is still receiving replacements for destroyed vehicles, while Ukrainian engineers, alongside their European and American counterparts, frequently put damaged Ukrainian and captured Russian equipment back into the fight. 

In short, so long as even moderate Western support continues, Ukraine has the means to push on, slowly and methodically, toward victory.

If sensitivity lies at the heart of alliance management, then the Biden administration has a mixed record.  The U.S. must act where the Kremlin’s narrative seeks to sow dissent and disrupt and prevent high-value transfers to the Ukrainian armed forces. The more the battlefield situation tilts against Moscow, the less supposed evidence of Western disunity will dominate headlines.

Seth Cropsey is the president of Yorktown Institute. He served as a naval officer and as deputy Undersecretary of the Navy and is the author of Mayday and Seablindness.