Against Russian assault, a battery for defense will help immensely
Quin Hillyer
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Wednesday’s decision for the United States to send a Patriot missile-defense system to Ukraine is a good one, better late than never.
Frankly, one wonders both why it took so long to agree to send the defense system and how many lives or injuries could have been avoided if the Patriot had been sent earlier. The way to win wars isn’t by gradual defensive escalation but by decisive use or repulsion of force. If the Patriot isn’t too big a provocation to Russia now, then it would not have been too big a provocation months ago, when President Joe Biden should have agreed to share it in the first place. By waiting this long, Biden unwisely ensured that Ukraine actually will not be able to use it until spring because it will take a few months to train Ukrainian forces how to operate.
BIDEN TO ANNOUNCE PATRIOT MISSILES TO UKRAINE
Still, even months later, the decision to share the Patriot is the right one. As the most advanced air-defense system in the U.S. arsenal, the Patriot can help counteract some of the air advantages Russia still holds and through which it is terrorizing innocent Ukrainian citizens and hobbling their electrical grid and sometimes their water supply. If the war is still ongoing by the time the system is operational in Ukraine, the human suffering the Patriot might prevent is significant.
Despite carping from ignorant voices on both the Left and especially the Right, the U.S. has significant interests in seeing Ukraine be successful in expelling Russians from Ukrainian soil. Successful conquest invites more attempts at conquest, whereas successful defense deters future aggression. If Russia succeeds in bringing Ukraine to heel and then consolidates its gains, its imperial aims will grow, and its threats to other European nations will grow accordingly. So too will grow its threats to American commerce there, and freedom to travel, and to international stability.
For reasons both practical and moral, then, Ukraine must succeed in sending Russia back within its own borders. It is Ukraine’s soldiers who are carrying this fight, and Ukraine’s population that is bravely enduring the hardships. But they also fight for an ideal of freedom, for the free exchange of goods and services in stable world markets, and for the cause of keeping a rapacious state from gaining power it would use for even more nefarious purposes.
Here’s hoping the system becomes usable by Ukraine more quickly than expected — and, even better, here’s hoping that by the time it is ready to be used, the war will already somehow be over, with Russia’s murderous incursion conclusively rebuffed.
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