Sending Tomahawks to Kyiv won’t ignite World War III — they’ll ignite peace talks

With the Pentagon signing off on the idea, the case just got stronger for giving Ukraine some Tomahawk missiles to force Vladimir Putin to make peace.

Department of War officials determined that the US stockpile of the long-range cruise missiles is large enough that we can spare some to send to Kyiv, removing one of President Donald Trump’s concerns — namely, that we don’t give “away things that we need to protect our country.”

He has also professed concerns that it would take too long to train Ukrainians in using the Tomahawks, risking a strike going astray and harming innocent Russian civilians.

But that sidesteps the grim fact that Moscow is now targeting Ukrainian civilians every day — and not even pretending that the horrors are an accident.

Kyiv, by contrast, targets military and strategic assets; it wants Tomahawks so it can hit them deep inside Russia, just as Moscow strikes deep into Ukraine.

That adds to the threat to Putin’s vital energy industry, and to the bases that support his invasion.

For years, Putin used the World War III boogeyman to bluff President Joe Biden into slow-walking Ukraine’s requests — only for Moscow to simply roll with the punches when Kyiv finally got the new capabilities.

Trump recently ruled out sending Tomahawks but allowed that “I could change my mind”; if he wants “peace through strength” to be more than a slogan, he’ll do just that. 

It’s how we get this war to end.