Biden administration reportedly now willing to send U.S. made Abrams tanks to Ukraine

The Unit­ed States could be on the verge of agree­ing to send Ukraine a small num­ber of Abrams main bat­tle tanks to sup­port its fight for free­dom against Vladimir Putin’s mur­der­ous regime, The Wall Street Jour­nal report­ed today.

“The announce­ment would be part of a broad­er diplo­mat­ic under­stand­ing with Ger­many in which Berlin would agree to send a small­er num­ber of its own Leop­ard 2 tanks and would also approve the deliv­ery of more of the Ger­man-made tanks by Poland and oth­er nations,” the Jour­nal reported.

“It would set­tle a trans-Atlantic dis­agree­ment over the tanks that had threat­ened to open fis­sures as the war drags into the end of its first year.”

The Unit­ed King­dom has tried to encour­age both Ger­many and the Unit­ed States to make their best armor avail­able to Ukraine by offer­ing up some Chal­lenger 2 main bat­tle tanks. Those exist only in the hun­dreds, where­as there are thou­sands of U.S. and Ger­man-made main bat­tle tanks in the world.

“The White House is expect­ed to announce a deci­sion as ear­ly as Wednes­day,” The New York Times report­ed. “Two offi­cials said the num­ber of Abrams tanks could be about 30.” That might not sound like much, but it’s the key to unlock­ing Ukraine’s access to a much larg­er num­ber of Leop­ards already on the continent.

The Leop­ard 2 is Ger­many’s prized main bat­tle tank, and Ukraine would very much like to add Leop­ards to its army. How­ev­er, Ger­many has been reluc­tant to send its own Leop­ards to Ukraine or sign off on re-export licens­es request­ed by oth­er coun­tries (like Poland) unless the Unit­ed States made a sim­i­lar move with the Abrams. U.S. offi­cials have been try­ing to get Ger­many’s gov­ern­ment to change its stance with­out chang­ing their own, but have made lit­tle progress.

The Pen­ta­gon has pub­licly argued that send­ing Abrams tanks to Ukraine does­n’t make sense for a num­ber of rea­sons, such as their need for jet fuel in their default con­fig­u­ra­tion (they can run on oth­er fuels, how­ev­er) and their high main­te­nance require­ments (which seems like anoth­er solv­able problem).

Amer­i­cans unfa­mil­iar with U.S. for­eign pol­i­cy may not be aware that the export ver­sion of the Abrams is already in the ser­vice of a num­ber of for­eign armies, includ­ing those of Egypt, Kuwait, Sau­di Ara­bia, Aus­tralia, and Iraq.

Export­ing the Abrams to Ukraine would there­fore hard­ly be unprecedented.

The Biden admin­is­tra­tion has been warm­ing to the idea as a way to resolve the impasse over giv­ing Ukraine heav­ier weapon­ry. Ger­man offi­cials have said they would be okay giv­ing Ukraine the Leop­ards before the Abrams could be ready for deploy­ment, which would be very help­ful to Ukraine’s armed forces.

The Pen­ta­gon no doubt still has reser­va­tions. But it is time to fig­ure out how to get to “yes” instead of dig­ging in and con­tin­u­ing to say “no.” The Abrams was designed pri­mar­i­ly for a land con­flict against the old Sovi­et Union. To con­tin­ue to with­hold it from an ally in need now, when the Krem­lin is try­ing to crush its neigh­bor with demo­c­ra­t­ic aspi­ra­tions through force of arms, does­n’t make sense.

The U.S. has already agreed to pro­vide Stryk­ers and Bradleys to Ukraine. The Abrams is the final fron­tier with respect to what the U.S. can offer in terms of armored vehi­cles. U.S. pro­vid­ed HIMARS sys­tems have been used with incred­i­ble effec­tive­ness by Ukrain­ian troops, deeply anger­ing the Kremlin.

Russ­ian mil­i­tary brass have grum­bled pub­licly about NATO’s role in arm­ing Ukraine, with chief of staff Gen­er­al Valery Gerasi­mov say­ing that Rus­sia is now fac­ing the “col­lec­tive West” in the con­flict. Of course, Rus­sia could end its bru­tal inva­sion today and not have to face the “col­lec­tive West” any­more sim­ply by with­draw­ing from Ukraine, but it shame­ful­ly refus­es to do so.

Putin’s regime has will­ful­ly vio­lat­ed Rus­si­a’s pre­vi­ous com­mit­ments and agree­ments with respect to Ukraine, so unfor­tu­nate­ly, nego­ti­at­ing with the Krem­lin is point­less and won’t yield the peace we’d all like to see in Europe.

NPI strong­ly sup­ports giv­ing Abrams tanks to Ukraine.

We can, with­out com­mit­ting our own troops, ensure that Ukrain­ian forces are com­pet­i­tive in this con­flict despite being out­num­bered. Amer­i­can and NATO weapon­ry is supe­ri­or to what the Rus­sians can field and are field­ing, and it’s with­in our pow­er to arm Ukraine so it can prop­er­ly defend itself.

Every pro­gres­sive who loves peace should want this con­flict to come to an end as soon as pos­si­ble. Count­less lives are at stake, along with the future of a coun­try that yearns to be free and pros­per­ous rather than oppressed and poor.

As Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Lar­ry Seaquist explained last year, the quick­est route to peace in Europe is the defeat of the Russ­ian mil­i­tary, so that is the posi­tion that pro­gres­sive lead­ers and activists should be com­mit­ted to.