Maybe I’m missing something. But if so, I don’t know what it is. And for one who does well on problems like how to get the missionary, the fox, and the goose across the river, the problem of getting the MIGs to the Ukrainians seems too easy to even be interesting.
Here’s the problem as I understand it:
- There are MIGs in Poland.
- The Ukrainian pilots know how to fly the MIGs.
- There seems to be some disagreement about how big a contribution to Ukrainian military capabilities those MIGs would make, but considering the repeated requests for a No-Fly Zone, the MIGs would surely be of real value. (This at the least: It has been said that the Ukrainians have been inhibited about running certain air-strike missions because they feel a need to conserve their limited number of aircraft.)
- The Poles don’t want to take the MIGs into Ukraine, but instead proposed flying them in the opposite direction into Germany to make them the problem of the Americans.
- The U.S. and NATO are reluctant to fly the MIGs into Ukrainian air space (i.e. it potentially puts NATO pilots into a direct confrontation with the Russian military).
- It is indeed escalatory for NATO to risk direct engagement where Russian weapons are already operating, arguably in violation of the “Hard-Won Wisdom of the Cold War,” in which arming proxies is allowed, but shooting between the two big nuclear powers is to be avoided.
- So the challenge is to get the planes into the hands of the Ukrainians without NATO flying them there.
Here’s what looks to me like the obvious solution:
- Ukrainians can get into Poland, as is proved by the fact that something like a million Ukrainian refugees have already done so.
- Therefore, it should not be difficult for Ukrainian pilots — in numbers corresponding to the number of MIGs available for Ukrainian use — to get into Poland, and specifically to go to wherever the MIGs are located.
- Those pilots could then fly the MIGs from Poland into Ukraine, where they would become part of Ukrainian air power in fighting the Russians.
Problem solved. Or so it seems to me.
I don’t see a problem with it. It is not a violation of the Cold War rules. It does not escalate: we’re already sending lethal weapons — Stinger anti-aircraft, Javelin anti-tank, and much else — and supplying the Ukrainians the MIGs is really just more of the same.
Am I missing something?
