| This week, our government announced it would provide Ukraine with new weapons: the High Mobility Artillery Rocket System, or HIMARS. These satellite-guided rockets can be fired from the back of a truck and can be propelled as far as 45 miles. At the same time, our government also made clear that it is not providing Ukraine with a similar weapons system in which the rockets can be propelled as
far as 185 miles.
In other words, we’re boosting Ukraine’s capacity to retaliate against the hard rain of long-range artillery Russia has loosed as it pushes forward in Eastern Ukraine. We are not enabling Ukraine, however, to retaliate against the really long-range artillery barrages that Russia is launching from its own territory.
And we’ve put a corresponding condition on Ukraine’s use of HIMARS: No firing onto Russian soil.
Clearly, it’s time to resurrect a word that has almost disappeared from usage since the Cold War began to wind down: "brinkmanship," which Webster (at least, my Webster) defines as "the practice of pushing a dangerous situation to the limit of safety before stopping." Webster (at least, my Webster) fails to note that the term came into use only when it
referred to standoffs between nuclear powers.
Which is why the word needs to be exhumed today. The balance that President Biden is striking between arming Ukraine to resist and repel the Russian invasion, but not arming Ukraine so that its counterattacks could reach into Russia itself, which might just compel Putin to use tactical nuclear weapons, which might in turn compel—well, let’s not go there—is brinkmanship par excellence.
The problem with brinkmanship is that it requires everyone on both sides to play by its rules. That’s hard enough to ensure in peacetime; in times of actual war, it’s harder still. Precisely calibrated military actions are few and far between. (See: "surgical strikes.")
That said, I think Biden has so far gotten the balance between what I view as the necessary defense of Ukraine and the risk of plunging the planet into far more catastrophic conflict just right. But as he knows all too well, he’s on a tightrope. So are we all.
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