US should not arm Ukraine, only help it to arm itself

When Congress overwhelmingly passed a resolution recently urging President Barack Obama to arm Ukraine with "lethal defensive weapon systems," it was calling on the US to send arms to the world's ninth biggest defence exporter, whose supplies last year helped Nigeria fight Boko Haram insurgents. So even if Russian-led aggression resumes in eastern Ukraine in the coming weeks or months, the US should help Ukraine do more to provide for itself, before sending weapons that would turn this into a proxy war between nuclear superpowers.

According to recently released data from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), which tracks the arms trade, Ukraine accounted for 3% of the global market in 2010-2014. In 2013, Ukroboronprom, the state company that controls most of the country's defence industry, sold $1.79 billion worth of defence goods overseas. Exports fell last year because of the war in Ukraine's eastern regions, but they continued. The Ukrainian defence industry's biggest export item was AI-222 jet engines, supplied in quantity to China and a number of other countries. Ukraine also sold and licensed gas turbines for military ships to China and India, a frigate to Equatorial Guinea, missiles for MiG-29 warplanes to Chad, and aircraft to Croatia and Mozambique. These goods wouldn't have been much good in the war on the Russian-backed insurgents, fought with tanks, armoured vehicles, artillery systems and small arms, so Ukraine did its best to keep foreign exchange coming.

Yet SIPRI also says Ukraine sold armoured recovery vehicles, used to retrieve damaged tanks and armoured personnel carriers from the battlefield, to Azerbaijan; armoured vehicles and tanks to Thailand and Nigeria; and anti-tank missiles to Kazakhstan and an unknown country, probably in East or North Africa. 

After the winter's intensive fighting, Ukraine clearly faces a shortage of armoured vehicles and tanks for the eastern war theatre, or it wouldn't have delayed deliveries on export contracts and made a deal to purchase 75 second-hand AT-105 Saxon armoured personnel carriers from the UK this year.

It also has the capacity to produce versions of most of the equipment it's asking the US to supply, from radars to guided missiles. Ukroboronprom has more than 100 factories outside the war zone, which employ about 60,000 people and added 2,000 jobs in the last two quarters of 2014, thanks to an increase in orders from the Ukrainian military. Some of these are modern, solvent enterprises that exported their products to Russia — which, between 2009 and 2013, was the third biggest buyer of Ukrainian defence goods after China and Pakistan — and to dozens of other markets.

The Ukrainian defense industry needs investment and help weaning itself off Russian orders. Most of the factories — with the exception of about 20 that were left in rebel-held territory — are not broken down or at a standstill. Given the realities of politics in Washington, this kind of assistance could produce results for the Ukrainian military as quickly as direct weapons supplies would: Ukroboronprom has competitive designs and existing products in every category that are being used in the conflict.

Courtesy: Bloomberg