As Trump’s return threatens to end U.S. support for Ukraine, allies scramble to fill the gap
As Ukraine’s allies gathered in Halifax on Friday for the International Security Forum, president Peter Van Praagh acknowledged the foreboding many felt following the election of Donald Trump.
“Judging from today’s reports and traditional and social media, we might be forgiven for believing that Ukraine can no longer win the war against Russian aggression,” he said. “This widespread forecast is not true.”
“It was not true when all the experts said the same thing on February 24, 2022, the date Putin invaded, and it is not true now,” he added, promising a conference that would “change this doom-and-gloom narrative.”
The meeting represents one of the best chances for those still committed to Ukrainian victory against Russia to try to find ways to stymie Trump’s declared intention of pushing Ukraine into peace talks that almost certainly would end with the loss of a large part of its territory.
Those allies face a difficult, perhaps insurmountable, task. But already, some of Trump’s predictions about how the world and the war would respond to his election victory are turning out differently than he expected.
One of Trump’s campaign promises was that he would end the Ukraine war before taking the oath of office.
“I will get it settled before I even become president,” Trump claimed during his only debate with Vice President Kamala Harris. “If I win, when I’m president-elect, what I’ll do is I’ll speak to one, I’ll speak to the other.
“They respect me. They don’t respect [President Joe] Biden.”
He repeated the claim in an interview on the podcast PMD: “I think the world’s going to behave, and I think I will settle Russia-Ukraine while I’m president-elect.”
But peace has not broken out. Instead, there has been a wave of escalation.
Far from quailing at the prospect of a Trump presidency, Russian President Vladimir Putin authorized the use of a new nuclear-capable intermediate-range ballistic missile (IRBM) called Oreshnik (‘the hazel”) in response to a Ukrainian missile attack on Russia.
Putin also went on national television to tell Russians that “a regional conflict in Ukraine previously provoked by the West has acquired elements of a global character,” and marked the 1000th day since Russia’s full-scale invasion by signing changes to Russia’s nuclear doctrine, lowering the threshold for the use of nuclear weapons.
The escalation has not surprised observers of this war, or of wars generally, said former Canadian defence official Andrew Rasoulis, now with the Canadian Global Affairs Institute.
“It’s very predictable,” he told CBC News. “As often is the case before wars come to an end and negotiations set in, the fighting sometimes can be heaviest at that point as both sides try to strengthen their positions before they actually sit down.
“Everyone is now doing positional fighting to strengthen their hand at these inevitable negotiations.”
‘We’re not going to panic’
At the APEC and G20 summits in South America, Prime Minister Trudeau said Canada continues to see Ukrainian victory as the only acceptable outcome.
“Any victory on that issue by Russia, any demonstration that if you have a bigger army that you get to redraw lines on a map, would have devastating consequences, not just for Ukraine … but for the entire world,” he said.
“How many countries have a neighbour that has a historical claim over this corner across the river where their citizens used to live, or that got rejigged a hundred years ago? How many conflicts have been averted because the world has agreed that you may not like the borders where they are, but they are where they are, and they hold?
“That is why it is so important that Ukraine wins this conflict, and that Russia loses.”
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says Ukraine was brought up by ‘many, many people’ around the table at the G20 summit in Brazil. ‘Our focus is very much on the phase we’re in right now,’ said Trudeau.
U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer brought a similar message to South America.
“We need to double down on shoring up our support for Ukraine and that’s top of my agenda,” he said in Rio de Janeiro. He didn’t reveal that he had already given Kyiv the green light to fire British-supplied Storm Shadow missiles into Russia.
In Lima for the APEC conference, Trudeau conceded that if the incoming Trump administration is determined to abandon Ukraine, Kyiv’s other allies will struggle.
“Let’s also be very blunt — all of the allies in the world would not be able to replace a complete withdrawal from supporting Ukraine by the United States,” he said.
But in Rio three days later for the G20, Trudeau said Canada remains determined to try.
“We’re very aware of potential challenges with President Trump coming in, but we’re not going to panic,” he said. “We’re going to continue to stay focused on getting the support to Ukraine to win this war.”
If only money were enough
If money were the only issue, the remaining allies could probably find a way to outspend Russia — a country with a nominal GDP smaller than any of the G7 nations, including Canada.
But dollars and euros do not easily convert into modern, sophisticated heavy weapons systems of the kind Ukraine needs to fight a military superpower such as Russia.
As Canadians know well, modern military procurement is a multi-year process, which makes modern warfare something of a come-as-you-are affair. Countries burn through weapons faster than they can produce new ones.
While Canada has given generously to Ukraine, about two-thirds of its assistance has been in the form of money, loan guarantees, technical assistance, training and humanitarian aid.
Two-thirds of U.S. assistance, on the other hand, has been in the form of military hardware.
Europe’s assistance, too, has skewed more to the financial side, but European allies have also contributed collectively even more military assistance than the U.S.
Can they keep that up? Will it be enough?
The U.S. defence industry is vastly larger than that of any other western country.
Money earmarked for Ukraine has flowed to arms production facilities in 70 U.S. cities, where it buys equipment like the Abrams tanks made in Lima, Ohio, or the 155mm shells made at a plant in Scranton, Pennsylvania that Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy visited in September.
Ukraine’s other allies also make arms, but Europe has had to rely heavily on its retired and surplus stocks to arm Ukraine.
Those stocks are not yet exhausted. Many European countries still have large numbers of stockpiled or retired armoured vehicles that could be refurbished and sent to Ukraine.
Canada delivers NASAMS
On Thursday, at the Commons defence committee, Defence Minister Bill Blair announced that Canada had delivered new air defence equipment to Ukraine that it ordered in 2022, the first year of the conflict.
Canada purchased the National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile System (NASAMS) from U.S. manufacturer Raytheon for about $400 million. “We have been able to deliver, at long last,” he told committee members, “and I think it’s going to make a difference because it will enable them to protect communities.”
That deal with Raytheon points to ways other countries might continue to leverage the capacity of the U.S. defence industry, even if the Trump administration itself is determined not to chip in.
Blair spoke more about how the NASAMS deal came together on Friday, at the Halifax International Security Forum.
“We put the money on the table and said, ‘OK, we’ll do this’. We went to industry, they told us to get in line and it would probably take four or even five years to deliver on those systems.
“Fortunately, the United States stepped up and said, ‘We have bigger buying power and perhaps a more advantageous position in the contract.’ They said, ‘Join us.’
“And it still took two years.”
Blair said western leaders will have to lean on their defence industries to scale up and speed up. “All of us recognize that we need to work more closely, more effectively with industry to make sure that we can meet the moment,” he said.
Potential new suppliers
There is also the possibility that, as the U.S. departs the scene, new players — albeit smaller ones — might step up. One example is South Korea.
South Korea has been building up its defence industry for years, with the goal of becoming a world player. Its strategic decision to focus on armoured vehicles was sometimes derided as outmoded, but the rush of international orders following the Ukraine invasion has silenced the critics.
Until now, South Korea has adhered to a strict policy of not supplying arms to countries involved in active conflicts, including Ukraine.
South Korea’s defence and foreign ministers visited their Canadian counterparts in Ottawa this month. South Korea’s President Yoon Suk Yeol met with Trudeau in Peru last week.
Canadian officials privy to those meetings say that North Korea’s decision to send troops to fight on Russia’s behalf has been received in Seoul as an almost existential threat to South Korea’s own security.
South Korea is sending signals it could soon be ready to supply Ukraine directly.
Japan also fears the effect that exposure to modern Russian training and doctrine could have on the North Korean military, and dreads the possible quid pro quo Moscow might give Kim Jong-un in return for its intervention. Japan, like South Korea, has so far given only money and humanitarian aid to Ukraine.
While these nations could never replace the U.S. as a source of weapons, they could theoretically help to mitigate the loss of American support.
Ukraine’s DIY approach
Finally, there’s Ukraine’s own defence industry, an antiquated Soviet relic that has modernized and shown a talent for innovation since the 2022 invasion.
This week, 12 European countries joined with Ukraine in a new defence cooperation group focused on promoting that industry and linking it more closely to defence industries throughout northern Europe.
The Northern Group-Ukraine includes Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Norway, Iceland, the Baltic countries, the U.K., Germany, the Netherlands and Poland.
Canada is also pursuing initiatives to grow Ukraine’s domestic industry, Blair said Friday.
“This is a critical moment in the Ukrainian-Russian war,” he said. “We have to make sure that we remain united and strong in our support of Ukraine to achieve the appropriate, right outcome for the Ukrainian people, which is victory.”
Published at Sat, 23 Nov 2024 09:00:00 +0000
These rare and mysterious deepsea fish are washing up in California, and no one’s sure why
As It Happens6:32These rare and mysterious deepsea fish are washing up in California, and no one’s sure why
Ben Frable considers himself a librarian of fish, and he just acquired a rare new specimen for his collection.
A 3.3-metre oarfish — a mysterious deepsea creature shaped like an eel — washed up earlier this month on the shores of California..
Thanks to the efforts of a keen-eyed PhD student, it will soon be added to Frable’s “fish library,” better known as the marine vertebrate collection at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego, Calif.
“They’re very rare encounters for us,” Frable, the collection’s manager, told As It Happens host Nil Kӧksal.
“Getting to see a fresh specimen with a bright silver skin and that bright red fin, and just the full scale of it laid out, was pretty astounding.”
What do we know about oarfish?
Oarfish are massive and elusive fish with reflective skin who reside in the oceans’ depths all over the world.
Sometimes called “doomsday fish,” they are described in Japanese folklore as harbingers of disaster. It’s suspected they could even be the origin of the mythical sea serpents drawn throughout history on sailors’ maps.
The longest oarfish ever recorded was eight metres long, making them the biggest species of bony fish. Frable says some partial remains suggest they could reach as long as 11 metres.
Because they’re deepsea fish, humans don’t encounter them very often. Footage captured in recent years has shed some light on how they hunt — hovering vertically with their heads up, waiting for prey to swim by.
“Their main prey item, even though they do kind of look ferocious and get pretty big, are actually very small shrimp-like creatures called krill,” Frable said. “And then they have this very elaborate mouth that they can use to generate suction and slurp down these krill.”
There’s so much scientists still don’t know about oarfish, Frable said, and most of what they do know comes from studying their remains when they wash ashore.
Even that, Frable says, is rare. There are only 22 scientific recordings of the creatures washing up in California since 1901.
“That doesn’t give us a very large sample size,” he said. “So each specimen can really provide a lot of insight into these animals.”
That’s why he was so excited when he heard from Alison Laferriere, a Scripps PhD student, on Nov. 7.
Nearly swiped by surfers
Laferriere, who studies ocean acoustics, was walking her dog along the Grandview Beach in Encinitas, Calif., when she spotted an “elongated object” on the ground.
“As I got closer, I recognized it immediately,” she said. “I knew it was rare, so I knew it was important.”
She reached out to Frable, who contacted the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to recover the fish and bring it in for a necropsy.
While she waited for the team to arrive, Laferriere stood guard over the grisly discovery.
“Shortly after I found it, I had gone back to my beach chairs to tell my fiancé about it, and I turned around and I see a surfer walking down the beach with the fish on the surfboard,” she said.
Laferreriere ran up him and his friends, explained the fish’s scientific value, and convinced him to put it back.
“He said, ‘I just wanted to put it in my friend’s van,'” she said, laughing. “I’m glad that I didn’t end up in someone’s van and then the garbage. I’m glad I was able to help.”
3rd in as many months
When oarfish wash ashore, Frable says, there tends to be more than one.
In fact, this is the third oarfish specimen to turn up in California in as many months, including one Scripps recovered in La Jolla in August.
“That might indicate that maybe these fish are moving around and are in a specific location for a year or two and then move away from that location,” he said.
“While they’re here, if they’re disoriented or sick or dying — we don’t really know why — they will eventually wash onto beaches. But we don’t have a good answer as to why that might be happening now in California.”
In 2013, the last time oarfish were turning up in California, marine biologist Milton Love told As It Happens he suspected a change in ocean currents brought the fish out of the calm deep waters they’re used to, and into more turbulent shallow waters.
“They’re just very delicate, and I think that they just died from trauma, basically,” he said at the time.
Nearly a decade later, he told the New York Times that’s still his best guess.
A bad omen?
Several of the creatures washed ashore in Japan ahead of the catastrophic 2011 earthquake, further entrenching their doomsday reputation. But a 2019 study by Japanese scientists found no correlation between quakes and oarfish appearances.
Frable he’s not worried the recent finds signify anything ominous.
“If there was something bad happening in the ecosystem, we wouldn’t just see a couple of random fish,” he said. “We’d see a lot of other organisms also showing up on our beaches.”
Laferreriere seemed similarly unfazed.
“I’m hoping, you know, it’s not specifically a bad omen for me,” she said with a laugh.
Published at Fri, 22 Nov 2024 22:58:58 +0000
