Washington Quietly Increases Lethal Weapons to Ukraine

By Ted Galen Carpenter Ted Galen Carpenter

For all of the loose (frequently hysterical) talk in Congress,
the foreign policy community, and the news media about President
Donald Trump’s alleged eagerness to appease Vladimir Putin, U.S.
policy remains as confrontational as ever toward Russia.

Among other actions, the Trump administration has involved U.S.
forces in NATO military exercises (war games) in Poland and other
East European countries on Russia’s border, as well as in naval
maneuvers in the Black Sea near Russia’s sensitive naval base at
Sevastopol. Washington has even sent U.S. troops as participants in
joint military exercises with Ukrainian forces—an act that Moscow
considers especially provocative, given its tense relations with
Kiev.

On no issue is the administration’s risky course more evident
than its military policy toward Ukraine. Recent measures are
certain to provoke Moscow further, and entangle the United States
to an unwise extent with an extremely murky, ideologically
troubling Ukrainian regime.

Secretary of Defense James Mattis acknowledges that U.S.
instructors are training Ukrainian military units at a base in
western Ukraine. Washington also has approved two important arms
sales to Kiev’s ground forces in just the past nine months. The
first transaction in December 2017 was limited to small arms that
at least could be portrayed as purely defensive weapons. That
agreement included the export of Model M107A1 …Read the Rest

Source:: Cato Institute