Belgium announced 92 million euros in additional military aid to Ukrainethe largest Belgian support package, bringing the total effort of Defense at 186 million euros since the start of the war in February 2022. According to some international comparisonsBelgium remains at the bottom of the ranking of countries supporting Ukraine.
At a press conference, both the Minister of Defense and the Prime Minister dismissed this argument, preferring the notion of complementarity to that of competition between nations. “In our interactions with the Ukrainians, they know what we have and are very precise in their needs. There is no point in sending material for which there is no specific request”stressed Alexander De Croo placing Belgium on the same level as France, Spain and Italy, and recalling that the kingdom was one of the first countries to provide military support to Ukraine.
A substantial sum
“92 million euros is a substantial sum”, comments Christophe Wasinski, professor of International Relations at the ULB, expert in the areas of legitimizing war and questions of armament and security. But he refuses to compare it with the sums allocated by other countries, because “we do not have full visibility, or at least complete data, on what is supplied to Ukraine by the various European countries”.
He adds that certain forms of aid are not quantified and come under agreements between States, pointing in particular to the indirect support provided by Belgium to Ukraine a few months ago, when our country sold to Great Britain heavy vehicles of the self-propelled howitzer type, put back into service across the Channel with a view to being exported to Ukraine. “It is also, he said, a form of contribution, on a political level, and that is essential”.
Comparison is not right
“One must be extremely careful when trying to classify the States to say that there are good and bad students in terms of support for Ukraine”continues the researcher, pointing to the interest of some, according to him, in creating a form of emulation to push others to deliver more material to kyiv.
With regard to Belgium, we know that some of the arms and ammunition that have just been released come from defense stocks, while others are purchased from the arms industry to be transferred to Ukraine. “If we export weapons currently belonging to the Belgian army, that means that we have to buy new weapons for defence. This is a calculation that seems to have been made in certain European countries: giving up rather old weapons for to be able to take advantage of the European fund and renew its equipment. In the second dimension, this seems to be entirely beneficial for the Belgian armaments industry, in a commercial logic”.
What impact on Defense stocks?
Theoretically, military aid given to another country is not supposed to undermine a national stockpile of weapons that might be needed to defend itself or project itself abroad. “In terms of security for Belgium, there are not many risks”assures the professor.
“The conflict is taking place in Ukraine, the Russian army which was presented as the third most powerful army in the world is blocked in Ukraine, we realize that its military potential is much weaker than we thought. So even if the Belgian stocks are started for the moment, there are no risks in the long term, at least conventional, for Belgian territory. Although there is always a risk of escalation and geographical extension of the conflict towards countries Ukrainian border […] but nobody today imagines the Russian army arriving in Western Europe after its Ukrainian campaign”, he explains.
“Turning point” or war of attrition?
According to Christophe Wasinski, “as long as we focus exclusively on arms deliveries, we do not focus on possible negotiations and on a possible political resolution of the problem and its origins […] However, the debate, more and more, is devoted to these questions of armament. This is extremely problematic for me because it obscures the essential: the political dimension of the conflict.
“Today, we hear in the speeches of many experts or politicians, the idea that we are at a turning point. But we have been repeating it for a while… Maybe we are not there at all, maybe we’re just in a war of attrition and we’re burning out, which to me is extremely worrying,” concludes the political scientist.