Why Send Abrams Tanks?
Published at 09:04 on 26 January 2023
Well, because Ukraine is at war and needs them to help defend itself, duh. But it’s not that simple.
You see, the M1 Abrams tank is just about the biggest, most high-tech tank around. Each tank comes with a very complex set of technological and logistical challenges. It will take a significant amount of time to train the Ukranian military to answer these challenges. Until that is done, one might as well send Ukraine a shipment of large boulders; they will be as useful in war as those tanks will be.
Yet Ukraine needs help now, not at some ill-defined point in the future when training in the use and maintenance of the M1 becomes complete. As such, smaller and simpler tanks like the German Leopard 2 would be much more useful. So why waste time and money sending Abrams tanks at all? Just send more Leopards.
The answer is politics. Germany has a deep-seated domestic aversion to using military force or helping others use military force. This aversion was in fact deliberately planted by the victorious Allies after Germany was carved up after losing World War II, and it persists in today’s unified Germany.
There is, as a result, very little support in Germany for taking a leading role when it comes to arming Ukraine, and shipping a big batch of Leopards to Ukraine would amount to taking such a role. So the Germans said to the USA: “after you.” They were willing to send tanks only if others did so as well. The United Kingdom is also sending some of its Challenger tanks, making this whole tanks-to-Ukraine business a multinational effort. (France may send tanks as well.)
That some of these tanks are unlikely to be as useful as others matters not; domestic German politics, and not military strategy, necessitated sending them.