‘We are united’: Biden, announcing tank deal for Ukraine, stresses transatlantic unity
In decision to send tanks to Ukraine, Biden presses Russia on transatlantic resolve.
US President Joe Biden, announcing a deal under which Germany will permit a European consortium to send as many as 200 Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine in the near term, and the US will send 31 M1 Abrams tanks to Ukraine some months in the future, stressed that Russian President Vladimir Putin had bet wrong in expecting transatlantic unity and resolve to support Ukraine to fray over time.
“Putin expected Europe and the United States to weaken our resolve,” Biden, flanked by Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, said in remarks from the White House today. “He expected our support for Ukraine to crumble with time. He was wrong.”
“We are united,” Biden said. “America is united and so is the world.”
Biden thanked German Chancellor Olaf Scholz for stepping up, and ticked off a long list of recent significant European defense contributions to Ukraine.
“I want to thank every member of that coalition for continuing to step up,” Biden said. ”We are fully, thoroughly, totally united.”
An announcement from the German government today said: “The goal is to quickly assemble two tank battalions with Leopard 2 tanks for Ukraine. As a first step, Germany will provide a company with 14 Leopard 2 A6 tanks from Bundeswehr stocks. Other European partners will also hand over Leopard-2 tanks. The training of Ukrainian crews is to begin quickly in Germany.”
Germany will also issue the appropriate transfer permits to partner countries that want to quickly delivery Leopard 2 tanks from their stocks to Ukraine, the German announcement said.
“Riot Act”
But there were some bumpy moments in the transatlantic diplomacy to unlock the deal for tanks for Ukraine, with some German officials as recently as last week saying Germany would not send the Leopards unless the US announced it was sending Abrams to Ukraine, a decision the Pentagon seemed to oppose.
A well-sourced German columnist reported on Sunday that Lloyd Austin had had a tense meeting with Scholz advisor Wolfgang Schmidt in Berlin last Thursday, followed by US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan reportedly reading the “riot act” to his German counterpart Jens Plötner in a phone call.
The fact that that the allegedly tense calls leaked, apparently from the US side, seems to reflect frustration on the US side, said Dr. Liana Fix, an expert on German foreign policy with the Council on Foreign Relations.
“The fact that…the conversation between Austin and the [Chancellor advisors] leaked reflects that there was [U.S.] irritation about the German approach,” said Fix, referring to a Jan. 22 column by Stefan Kornelius in Germany’s Der Sueddeutsche newspaper. “I think there was genuine irritation because the Biden administration didn’t want to be pressured by Germany to send the Abrams.”
The decision announced today seems “a good end to a bad episode,” Fix said. It unlocks the sending of the Leopards to Ukraine in the short term, and the Abrams in the long term.
The US decision to send orders for 31 M1 Abrams tanks for Ukraine to manufacturers for delivery in several months is “probably a middle ground between sending the Abrams from US stocks immediately now into Ukraine, which the Pentagon said would be difficult to maintain, and not sending them at all,” Fix said. “This seems to be the compromise.”
A senior Pentagon official on Monday explained why the Department of Defense (DoD) saw sending Abrams to Ukraine as impractical for Ukraine’s near term needs.
“I would say from a DOD standpoint,…our focus has been on trying to provide Ukraine with the capabilities that they need right now to be effective on the battlefield,… particularly as we go into the springtime,” the US military official, speaking not for attribution, told reporters. “So we've got to be sure that the capabilities that we're giving them enable them to do combined arms sooner rather than later. So that's really been our focus.”
Biden today made the case for a decision that unlocks capabilities for Ukraine’s short term and longer term defense needs.
“With spring approaching, the Ukrainian forces are working to defend the territory they hold and preparing for additional counter-offensives,” Biden said. “They need to improve their ability to maneuver in open terrain. And they need an enduring capability to deter and defend against Russian aggression over the longer term.”
Giving Scholz cover
Biden ultimately sided with the State Department and National Security Council to announce the Abrams for Ukraine over Defense Department reservations, in order to get Scholz to agree to free the Leopards, and to maintain western alliance unity, said former US Ambassador to NATO Ivo Daalder.
“Scholz wanted the cover of the US for reasons of deterrence, and he finally got it when Biden sided with State/NSC against DoD and agreed to send the M1As, which he did for alliance management reasons,” Daalder, now president of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, said. “I don’t think there’s more to it than that.”
“We know this is the way Germany prefers to act, in concert with others,” a former US diplomat posted to Germany, speaking not for attribution, said today.
“For Germany, they always want to go as a pack, not alone,” the former diplomat continued. “It is absolutely a frustration for many of their partners….They like to lead from the middle. They want to be surrounded by others in that. I think that was the real difficulty here.”
“The German chancellor has for months been very careful,” said Jeff Rathke, President of the American Institute for Contemporary German Studies at Johns Hopkins University, and a former US diplomat, said in an interview. “He has never said we won’t provide tanks. Instead, he has always reverted to two positions. One is Germany won’t go it alone, without ever being super specific about it.”
“Second, he would refer directly, explicitly to Pres. Biden’s position,” Rathke said. “And that has been the principle way that Scholz has dealt with this issue in the German political context, even as he has come under pressure…As that pressure has risen, Scholz and others in his circle have said, ‘We don’t see the Americans providing tanks. Why are you pushing us so hard?’”
“This all busted out into the open when Congressional members met with Scholz at Davos last week, and Scholz reportedly said to them directly that American delivery of Abrams was essential for him to move forward with the Leopards,” Rathke said.
Compromise unlocks German decision
“After a long and painful debate, the German decision unlocks not only the delivery of 14 German Leopard 2 [tanks], but also the potential delivery within a few months of 100-120 Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine by a variety of NATO Allies,” former NATO official Camille Grand, now with the European Council on Foreign Relations, wrote on Twitter today.
“The addition of US Abrams M1 or French Leclerc [tanks] to the already diverse Ukrainian…inventory…serves an important political purpose (unlocking the German decision), but creates additional logistical constraints that might outweigh the benefits if delivered in small numbers.”
“Altogther, the #LeopardsAreFree decision is a good and important one,” Grand wrote, “but [it] will be important in the battlefield if deliveries take place soon and in significant numbers.”
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