Give it credit for decades of consistency. The American foreign policy apparatus continues its streak of group-think and lack of imagination on geopolitical issues. Admittedly, such criticism reflects the casual observer’s (and taxpayer’s) assumption that, consistent with the rhetoric machined by government mouthpieces, the management of such issues to a useful, preferably non-lethal and stability-inducing end, is in fact the official objective.
Case in point: Ukraine’s government now predicts a Russian invasion in January or February. President Biden is said to be preparing to confront Putin about this in an upcoming virtual summit. Experts are weighing in on Biden’s policy options, each said to be fraught with risk. The basic question: What should be the extent of US support for Ukraine? The standard parlor game resumes:
Rajan Menon (City University of New York) worries that Biden’s statement of “unwavering support for the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine” will be seen as an “ironclad” commitment that forces Washington into defending Ukraine or looking weak when it fails to do so. Biden’s intent to have his statement deter a Russian invasion is only useful as long as Putin doesn’t force the issue by calling Biden’s bluff.
Hanna Shelest (Foreign Policy Council’s Ukrainian Prism, a thinktank) dismisses the concern: “There has been panic and hype…. When we talk about a guarantee of security there are plenty of other options. For example, sharing intelligence, the satellite pictures of the buildup, and making it public is already a support. You don’t need an American soldier to stand at the contact line. You can have diplomatic statements at the proper level that are very clear.”
Within the Biden administration itself there is debate. The “hard” side, the self-styled “realists” in geopolitics, is for deliveries of anti-tank and anti-aircraft weaponry that would let Ukraine inflict losses, the possibility of which might deter Russia. The “soft” sees weapons as an unnecessary escalation that would raise Moscow’s fear of a US or NATO attack on the Donbas. It is that fear which is said to drive Russia’s military moves along the border.
Fiona Hill, formerly of the National Security Council, refers to “a very stark choice: the [US] capitulate on Ukrainian sovereignty … or risk all-out war”. And while she supports the virtual summit and negotiation with Russia about “strategic stability,” she is adamant that “Ukraine can’t be on the bargaining table”. She rejects what Russia wants, a return to the Cold War paradigm of large countries’ deciding spheres of influence.
That the analytical framework is of the same tired either/or character we have seen for decades is dispiriting. This is the best that experts and imperial clerks can come up with? Hill, in particular, rejects out of hand the two proposals that might prevent war: have Ukraine forego NATO membership and commit to not retaking Donbas by force. She claims that it would “make a nonsense of Ukraine’s sovereignty” and create a dangerous precedent.
But, surely, the preservation of meaningful sovereignty has the appreciation of facts as a prerequisite. The first of these is that Ukraine is condemned to live forever next to Russia. The second is that the US will not go to war with Russia over Ukraine, a truth of which the Russian government is well aware. And the third is that whoever sits in the Kremlin sees Ukraine as Russia’s backyard and reflexively deems a hostile military presence there a national security threat.
Crimea is proof of the hollowness of the American concern with precedent. There is no evidence that Ukraine — and even less the US or NATO — intends to undo by military means Russia’s (unlawful and correctly unrecognized) annexation of the peninsula. Sanctions will be the limit. What meaningful effect these have on policy discussions at the Kremlin we do not know. But what we see is that Kyiv and Washington have de facto accepted the reality that the annexation will not be undone.
(Here it’s worth mentioning — in a cultural setting where events from six months ago are ancient history and anything before that never happened at all — that Americans’ affection for sovereignty as the overriding principle is hardly steadfast. Washington has had a long-standing habit of shredding sovereignty in far-away places, most recently in Afghanistan and Iraq, where the consequences will continue to be felt by all except the endeavors’ engineers.)
If the US sees itself obligated for Ukraine’s sovereignty, does its analysis not have to consider Russian motives, which include the aversion to the “loss” of Ukraine, the heightened threat of which took the recent form of US intentions to “integrat[e] [Ukraine] into European and Euro-Atlantic institutions [read, NATO]”? Signals that Russia will use force to prevent that loss should be taken at face value.
Back to the most basic of questions: to whom is Ukraine more important, Moscow or Washington? Since the USSR’s demise thirty years ago, triumphalism has pushed the West’s values and institutions to the Russian border. Only Ukraine gets to decide for itself what organizations and alliances to join, it was said. A stand on principle is easy enough for policy makers who don’t live anywhere near the real-world consequences of a Russian reaction.
In this regard, the US does Ukraine no favors. By continuing to shout its “unwavering commitment to Ukraine’s sovereignty, independence, and territorial integrity” the US creates in Ukrainian minds the unrealistic expectation that it will defend Ukraine against Russian force. Putin knows that Washington will not risk a direct confrontation with Russia’s military, but he will use whatever military support the US does provide as a rationale for his own escalation of the conflict.
Worse, messages of unstinting US support have caused the government in Kyiv to be less than faithful to its obligations under the Minsk II Accords with respect to the insurgency in Donbas. It has refused to hold discussions with separatist leaders. It has failed to enact legislation that gives more power to the country’s regions, including the Donbas. And its military posture suggests a coming assault on Donbas.
The obvious risk to the government in Kyiv is that, if / when bullets fly — because Russia sees Ukraine’s actions as crossing a line or simply uses them as pretext to do what it has always intended to do — “support” will mean something different in Washington than it does in Kyiv. Only Ukrainians will die as a result. That it is their right to make this choice does not legitimize the West’s encouragement of a quixotic exercise.
None of this exculpates Putin and his irredentist designs on Ukraine. Nor does it excuse the various other ways in which his criminal minions undermine the Ukrainian government’s ability to function effectively as it struggles to create a civil society and combat a long-standing culture of corruption and sub-rosa Russian provocations .
But the prospect of a stable Ukraine must start with an acknowledgment that, when it comes to the use of force, Ukraine faces overwhelming odds, odds that the West will not take the risk to overcome. As for Donbas, a perpetual drain on Kyiv’s resources and attention, offer the people there true self-determination in the form of a referendum: Russia or Ukraine? And honor the people’s choice which, if nothing else, would cause Russian heads to explode at the exotic nature of the idea.
How suicidal it would be politically for Ukraine’s leaders even to consider the idea is unclear. European history has not been kind to the appeasement of thuggery. The surrender of Donbas is anathema to Ukrainians. As sentiment, understandably so. But for a people whose younger generation has before it the real possibility of a legitimate civil society, why hold on to something whose only purpose is to prevent it? The West would better serve Ukraine by persuading it to cut its losses.
The obvious additional uncertainty at the heart of this approach is that we don’t know if these steps would satisfy Russia’s clearly stated policy of not permitting Ukraine to become a modern country modeled on Western values. If Ukraine did not join NATO, and if Donbas became part of Russia, would that end the matter or cause Moscow to up the ante by continuing to foment instability in the rest of Ukraine, consistent with its refusal to recognize Ukraine as an independent entity at all?
Here is where the West could be useful. Putin’s machinations require him to calculate the costs of Ukraine obsession. The West can make those costs clear and unacceptable not by military means — Putin and his cohort are hardly squeamish about having people killed — but through graduated sanctions that, ultimately, would freeze Russia out of the world economy (particularly, out of Western property markets where money is washed). That and relentlessly publicizing his corruption.
Whether policy makers in the US and Europe can resist the temptation to go with the spectacular gesture of missiles rather than the patient if unglamorous but substantive economic impact remains to be seen. With one eye on an electorate that demands entertainment, the bloodier the better, missiles are the safer bet. Unless, of course, Trump returns to the White House in early 2025, in which case Ukraine risks becoming just another oblast of Russia at zero cost to Putin.
