Why the West should continue to arm Ukraine

An immensely brave Ukrainian army, aided by civilians equipped with Molotov cocktails and small arms, is vastly outmatched by Russian armed forces. Nato countries are trying to help by providing more weapons: rifles and machine guns from the Czechs, missile-launchers from the Dutch, antitank missiles from the Estonians, munitions and more antitank weapons from the United States. Even Germany, which has shied away from direct military actions since World War II, is sending Stinger surface-to-air missiles and other shoulder-launched rockets.
At best, this will prolong the carnage of the Russian invasion. While Ukrainians have fought tenaciously, they almost certainly cannot win a conventional military conflict against Russia. (An extended guerilla war is a different matter.) The longer the fighting goes on, the more people will die, including many civilians. Much of Ukraine’s great cities could end up as rubble. It’s fair to ask, then, what is the point of providing more arms for a war that cannot be won, at least in the short term?
The same question arose during the last great war in Europe, too. During World War II, people in several countries, some better organised than others, tried to resist their Nazi occupiers with violence. German soldiers and local collaborators were assassinated. Railway lines were blown up. Military convoys were ambushed.
The mostly young men and women in these “shadow armies” took enormous risks for all kinds of reasons, patriotism being one of them. Many of them paid the ultimate price: death by torture or execution. Their actions also caused much suffering among ordinary civilians, who did not take any part in the violence. The Nazis were ruthless in their reprisals. For every German killed by a resister, many more innocent people were rounded up and murdered. Not surprisingly, violent resistance was not universally popular among occupied populations. In the eyes of many people, it caused more trouble than it was worth.
Other forms of resistance did save lives: hiding Jews and other victims of persecution, providing intelligence to allied troops, keeping people informed through the underground press and more. In military terms, however, the assassinations and small acts of sabotage were almost useless. They didn’t bring the allied victory any nearer. That was achieved in Europe by the massive battles fought on the eastern front by the vast Soviet Red Army and by allied forces in on the western front.
Resistance is nonetheless valuable for different reasons. For one thing, it boosts the morale of demoralised populations. Being occupied by a brutal foreign enemy is a deeply humiliating experience. Even with superior arms, an occupier cannot control an entire population by military force alone, as the Russians might soon find out. The occupier must create an impression that its authority is absolute and unassailable.
When the victims of such a regime start to believe this, they are no longer citizens but slaves in their minds at least.
However puny in military terms, armed resistance undercuts that projection of omnipotence. It reveals the vulnerability of the aggressor, just by showing that people can fight back. That sense of vulnerability can grow over time. Once an occupying power no longer believes in its own invincibility, the ground is prepared for future collapse. Even more importantly, resistance shows its worth once the enemy is defeated.

—Bloomberg