As President Joe Biden’s administration prepares to transfer power to the incoming team of President-elect Donald Trump, VOA Ukrainian Iuliia Iarmolenko spoke with Michael Carpenter, the National Security Council director for Europe. Carpenter discussed the Biden administration's final efforts to strengthen Ukraine and why it would take more time and resources from Washington to start successful negotiations between Ukraine and Russia.
VOA: In September, we talked about Ukraine's “victory plan” and now it seems like the conversation is moving towards the negotiation process. Do you think the victory of Ukraine is still possible? And is there something that the Biden administration can still do to help Ukraine achieve that goal?
Michael Carpenter, Senior Director for Europe at National Security Council: I do. I do think victory is possible. I think Ukraine must prevail. I think for the good of the international order, for the good of security in Europe and for the good of all those brave Ukrainians that are fighting for their freedom, it must prevail. The question is, what can we do now to set Ukraine up to be in a position of strength? It's going to take a dedicated effort of providing additional security assistance in order to stabilize the lines. And it's going to take a range of other efforts, including macro financial assistance, humanitarian support, support for the energy sector. But this is underway. And this administration, although it only has a month left in office, will continue to surge the support and it will spend every penny. Every dollar of security assistance that has been authorized for Ukraine will be obligated by the end of this year.
VOA: But is there enough time? The Pentagon yesterday said that they might not be able to use every dollar, every penny of the remaining funding to provide security assistance.
Michael Carpenter: Oh, they will. They will. Now, some of that security assistance is on contract, so some of it will not arrive until 2025. But all of the money will be spent down by January 20th.
VOA: Air defense continues to be the biggest issue for Ukrainian civilians. In that remaining time, will the air defense be prioritized in order to give Ukrainian civilians some kind of protection?
Michael Carpenter: Of all the capabilities that Ukraine needs, air defense is the most important one because this goes to the protection of cities which Russia has been targeting, targeting relentlessly with its drones, cruise missiles and ballistic missiles, including the Oreshnik. And then also for critical infrastructure. It's really important to have, maybe not always Patriots, but a smaller version of an air defense system.
So that is absolutely the priority. The problem is that a lot of our partners and allies have dug so deep into their own stocks that they don't have a whole lot left to give. So we are talking with all of our allies, seeing what else we can possibly get in advance of the winter to give Ukraine the air defense that it needs.
VOA: President-elect Trump and his team talk about ending the war in 24 hours. And they also say that they're coordinating their work with the current administration. Is there a consensus between the two teams about the need for a just peace in Ukraine, not just for an end of fighting?
Michael Carpenter: I can't speak for the Trump administration that's coming into office soon. You'll have to ask them for their views. What I can say is that in order for a negotiation to be successful, it has to be leveraged appropriately. And so Ukraine needs to be able to approach that negotiation from a position of strength, which first and foremost means stopping the erosion of the forward line of troops in the Donbas and at least stabilizing those lines, if not reversing the momentum. That's going to take some time. So it's going to take into 2025 and it's going to take resources. It's going to take additional security assistance, in order for Ukraine to be able to do that. Now, look, the notion that the Russians are really strong right now is, I think, false. We have seen that as many as 600,000 Russian casualties have accumulated over the course of these 2½ years of war and the Russian economy of course, inflation, is picking up. Interest rates are at 21%, potentially even going higher. Russia's not 10 feet tall. But, that said, we will have to resource Ukraine in order for it to be able to prevail. And no matter what administration or what country you're in, and what political party you affiliate with, that is an objective fact, that Ukraine will need to have the strength provided by resources to be able to approach Russia and have a negotiation where they can protect their sovereignty and independence.
VOA: What is your message to the next administration? How do you hope they will approach this issue of Russia's war against Ukraine? And how do you think they can give Ukraine that leverage that it needs for any possible negotiations?
Michael Carpenter: Well, I think that the fundamental message is that whether you're concerned about the growing influence and capability of the PRC, of Chinese unfair market practices, of what they're doing in terms of intellectual property rights and the theft of intellectual property, whether you're talking about other types of malign influence that the PRC projects, all of it is related in some way to the war in Ukraine, because Ukraine is about the fundamental basis within the international system upon which everything else rests, that sovereignty, its territorial integrity, it’s the inviolability of borders. If you don't protect that in Ukraine, you don't protect it anywhere. And so, regardless of what team we're talking to, what administration, what country, this centrality of Ukraine, not that this is some faraway conflict where, you know, two countries have a dispute over territory. It's much bigger than that. That has to be the fundamental message.
VOA: President Zelenskyy said that invitation for Ukraine to join NATO would help to stop a “hot phase” of the war. And he says that he intends to speak to President Biden about it. Should we expect any change of heart on this in Washington?
Michael Carpenter: I think it's for the new team to decide on the NATO invitation. What I can say is that, ultimately, for Ukraine to have its security protected, it needs to be in NATO. There is nothing else that matches NATO's Article Five in terms of a security guarantee, because it's distributed across 32 allies and because it carries the weight of all of their collective defense capability. So this is where Ukraine obviously needs to get. It needs to have membership in the alliance. And at the NATO's summit in Washington last July, we all said that Ukraine is on an irreversible path to membership. That has to be the goal. The question is how long is it going to take for the 32 allies and their parliaments to ratify NATO's membership? It's going to take time. And what we need to do in the meantime, is we need to think about what kind of security guarantees, what kind of security assistance, do we need to help to tide Ukraine over, until such time as it has an Article Five guarantee?
VOA: But why [has] President Biden decided that it's not the time to invite Ukraine? Because allies say that Washington and Berlin are the two capitals that are not greenlighting the invitation for Ukraine to join NATO.
Michael Carpenter: Look, if the United States is going to support an invitation, it has to be something that is supported across administrations. It can't be that one administration supports it and then the next rescinds the invitation. It has to be durable. And so, you know, that's why I think this administration is not going to take any action on this without the support of the next administration. So basically, it's up to them to pursue this. But as I said earlier, the fact that Ukraine must be in NATO to have its security guarantees – I think that's an irrefutable fact. And so the question is the timeline and how do you build unity. Because you also don't want to have a fight within NATO where some countries are supportive and others are against. You need to align the diplomacy with the goals. And so you need to have all 32 allies saying, yes, now is the moment, and then we should do it together. So there's going to be a lot of behind-closed-doors conversation about this that I assume will take place over the course of the coming months into the new administration. And, you know, our team, President Biden, you know, will be supportive of those conversations and will be guiding the next team on this to the extent that they want to take that advice. Of course, this is going to be their call.
VOA: Looking back at the Biden administration's response to Russia's war against Ukraine some critics say is that half-measures, indecision, hesitation, did not allow Ukraine to be fully successful. Is there something that President Biden wishes he could have done differently?
Michael Carpenter: Look, I think there'll be time in the future to look at the lessons learned from this war, what could have been done differently. The fact of the matter is, there were different phases of this war. There was the initial assault on Kyiv when antitank weapons were paramount. And that was a capability that really, truly mattered on the battlefield. At later stages of the war, tanks did not figure as prominently, and so anti-tank weapons were perhaps less important. Then we started talking about F-16s and we started talking about air defense systems, Patriot systems and other sorts of capabilities. So each phase of this war has brought new capabilities to light that were that were critical in that phase. The reality is that neither the United States nor any of our other allies had massive surplus stocks of these capabilities available.
For example, ATACMS [the Army Tactical Missile System] missiles, especially the long-range variants. None of us, not the United States, certainly not our allies, had large numbers of these missiles available, just to be able to hand over to Ukraine from one day to the next. So it's taken time. The one thing we've discovered is our defense industrial base in the United States needs a lot more investment. It needs to be ramped up dramatically to be able to deal with these sorts of contingencies. That's what we've learned. And then there's also the other piece to this, which is that the key variable in the fight currently is manpower. We can talk about all the types of capabilities and the weapons and the munitions that we want. But at the end of the day, the most important variable is how many troops does each country have on the front lines. And there we just simply see that Russia has numerical superiority.
And so we have to devise a strategy going forward for how we can help Ukraine to recruit more people, to bring more people in, to serve on the front lines, even as Western countries provide the training and equipment. But just talking about the training and equipping without factoring in this manpower issue is not really doing justice to the situation as it stands on the front lines.
VOA: But is there enough equipment?
Michael Carpenter: The limiting factor right now is not equipment. I will tell you, there are a lot of munitions in Ukraine stocks right now. We have pledged, Western countries, not just the United States, our allies as well, that we will train every Ukrainian soldier that the Ukrainian armed forces can bring forward.
VOA: President Zelenskyy right now is in Brussels. Do you think right now is the time for European allies to step up their support for Ukraine?
Michael Carpenter: Unambiguously, yes. Absolutely. It is time for our European partners and allies to step up, to look at their stocks, to look at their defense industrial base. We have ramped up ours considerably. We still have a lot of work to do. It is not where we would like it to be.
But when you take something like, for example, 155 [mm] ammunition, we have doubled and then doubled again, our production capability. In Europe, it lags far behind.
So we need our European allies to step up and look at these key capabilities. When you talk about air defense systems, we just spoke about that. We need our European partners to also be able to produce air defense and to be able to give those systems to Ukraine or wherever else they may be needed. So this is not just about the United States. This is about our allies stepping up, too. They've done a lot. They've done a lot in terms of the overall figure of support that's been provided. But when you look country by country, certainly there are some countries that could do a lot more.
