“None of this is going to change the calculus,” says Jennifer Kavanagh, senior fellow and director of military analysis at Defense Priorities, a Washington think tank promoting restraint in U.S. foreign policy. “Putin has shown that he has been willing to bear these costs,” she adds, “and I see no reason to think that has changed.”
Underpinning the argument that the talk of Tomahawks is largely political messaging is the reality that even if Mr. Trump announces Friday that he’s selling the long-range missiles to Ukraine, the weapons system couldn’t be operational in the war for months at least.
The Tomahawks would require a launching system that isn’t off-the-shelf available, experts note.
“As it is right now, there’s no way for Ukraine to launch the Tomahawks even if we provided them,” Dr. Kavanagh says, “so, really, it’s nothing that would be helpful today.”
Read at The Christian Science Monitor
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