U.S. Support for Ukraine Lacks Intellectual Rigor

From left, Britain's Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, French President Emmanuel Macron, Japan's Prime Minster Fumio Kishida, President Joe Biden, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, Canada's Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Italy's Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, European Council President Charles Michel and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen stand on stage during an event on the sidelines of the NATO summit in Vilnius, Lithuania, Wednesday, July 12, 2023, to announce a joint declaration of support for Ukraine. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)

To date, the U.S. and NATO’s Ukraine war strategy has achieved some good things:  revealed the corruption of the Russian polity; proved once again that authoritarian regimes are incompatible with Western liberal democracies; demonstrated NATO defense technology and superiority of joint warfare; exposed China as hostile to Western liberal democratic values and amenable to violence to achieve political ends; revealed Iran (and North Korea) as an implacable enemy; created (a few) divisions within the Russian populace; and weakened the Russian military.

However, since the United States is a party to this conflict, it makes sense to apply the fundamentals of conflict to perceive of and move toward a coherent end. That is where most analysis simply evaporates. And that is where the Administration seems stymied or indifferent (or purposefully quiet).

Here are the fundamentals of conflict:

How many of these fundamentals have been answered by the Administration? What is the war goal for the Biden Administration, for instance? U.S. policy is, ostensibly, ‘victory,’ interpreted as ‘Russian forces must withdraw from all of Ukraine.’ But then what? Reparations? Return of all Ukrainian citizens the Russians have taken hostage into Russian territory? Ukraine joins NATO? War crime tribunals for Russian attacks on Ukrainian civilians, as well as individual killings? Putin indicted by the International Criminal Court? Putin travels internationally again as before (or is arrested in a third country)? And what about Russian forces on the border, poised to return to fighting?

The Biden Administration seems to have had originally an unstated war aim of getting the Putin regime to fall to a nominally more liberal democratic regime. But it has never stated this explicitly. And if so, this unstated goal seems to have evaporated.

Most private analysts make only surface-level observations about the war and offer no vision:

The Biden Administration wants to win through slow attrition – as long as Putin is not threatened with a humiliating defeat. There is an obvious contradiction here. This has encouraged a strategy of providing weapons to shoot attacking and occupying Russian forces but nothing beyond that seems clear. The strategy of the United States seems to be to supply weapons to the Ukrainians to shoot occupying Russian forces to attrit so many Russian soldiers that Russia withdraws from Ukraine out of exhaustion. (But then what? What about reparations? Ukrainian children held hostage by Russia? What to do about war crimes?) The Russian strategy seems to be to attrit enough Ukrainian soldiers that the country’s defenses will weaken and surrender parts of Ukraine to Russian occupation out of exhaustion.

Both sides are pursuing the same strategy, which may be (also) the overarching U.S. strategy. That is what happened in Afghanistan – the U.S.-backed government held the cities, and the Taliban held the countryside. The two sides then waited each other out. The U.S. eventually gave in (and gave up!) to that mutual strategy of attrition. (In such cases, historically, liberal democracies tend to give up first; autocracies can demand more sacrifice and tolerate more loss and ambiguity from their people.)

The danger here is that the United States and Ukraine will eventually lose or give up – principally because they cannot envision or seize ‘victory’ and the American people will become impatient with an Administration that cannot achieve or conceive of victory or a ceasefire. That would be a disaster:  spend billions of dollars and achieve no coherent goal. In short, current strategy lacks a coherent, explicit ‘theory of victory.’

The U.S. Administration seemed to expect internal dissidence inside Russia to produce some sort of coup or political change or war compromise. Yet modern authoritarianism is extremely tenacious, using the surveillance state (cyberspace) to monitor and quash any hint of political opposition before it has any chance of organization. Putin has been able to appeal to traditional Russian fears of invasion to defend his aggression and control the information narrative inside Russia. His popularity has risen in Russia.

Political change is likely to happen in Russia only when Russians feel the military sacrifice and economic sanctions touch them directly and Russians conclude that Putin is not strengthening Russia. More specifically for authoritarian Russia, internal regime change (by Russians) will occur only when Putin is viewed as having severely weakened Russia and thereby threatened the internal security service of its wealth, privilege, and status.

Yet the Biden Administration has not seemed to have developed an information operations campaign to frame the war correctly (e.g., ‘the Ukraine invasion has weakened Russia and made Russians more vulnerable’). Nor is it framing Chinese Chairman Xi’s support for naked aggression as evidence of his opportunistic hostility toward the rule of law. Further, at present, Putin seems more emotionally committed to victory than does President Biden. That is also a problem since victors are usually those more committed.

The Russian military and Russian people must conclude that Putin threatens them and their survival because of his adventurism and aggression. Autocrats own victory but also own defeat. They succeed by allegedly bringing success to the state but if they bring destruction or weakness, they lose legitimacy. Unlike elected officials in free democracies, autocrats are not representing their people; they are commanding them. The Russian people must conclude that Putin led them into foolish, ruinous destruction, a middle-class brain drain, isolation, criminality, and a weaker, more vulnerable state.

It was a mistake of the Clinton and Bush administrations to allow Putin to rise unimpeded. The United States likely knew Putin and the KGB successor organization were behind the Moscow apartment bombings; the U.S. Government likely knew that Putin and his cronies killed Russian citizens to create a crisis to propel an obscure KGB officer into national prominence to take over the state. Both U.S. Presidents saw Russia’s deep state – the siloviki (former members of the security and military services) -- return and dominate the Russian government, turning the state into a mafia state, much like the CCP has in China. Both U.S. Presidents should have retreated from cooperating with Putin as his authoritarianism grew.

Putin likely believed the nonsense his intelligence yes-men analysts told him about Ukrainian political weakness. His goal in Ukraine was likely not to occupy the entire state, but to intimidate the Ukrainian military; eject the Zelenskyy government (have it flee to Poland); and install the pro-Moscow Ukrainian President again (who was sitting in Belarus, waiting to return to Kyiv). His goal was another 2008 Russo-Georgian-like war:  brief, regime-targeted, and low-cost.

Putin also likely has a poor understanding of joint military doctrine. His military advisors were likely afraid of him and likely assumed his approval numbers were legitimate. They overestimated their capabilities and are likely not part of his political deliberations. Putin, therefore, thought ejecting the Kyiv Government would be as militarily easy as ejecting the Ukrainian Government from Crimea. Putin likely assessed the United States and NATO would stay out and that the Ukrainian military would defect or become largely frozen, much like Ukrainian forces did in and around Crimea in 2014.

Before the war, Biden told Putin that U.S. forces would not become involved in Ukraine – just what Putin wanted (and expected) to hear. Biden fashioned an economic sanctions package that he threatened would be implemented if Putin were to invade. Biden resisted sending weapons before the conflict began. All these signals paint a certain, manageable picture of the United States, which Putin counts on.

Biden fears sending weapons he considers ‘escalatory,’ demonstrating the very restraint Putin counts on consistently from democrats, who think ‘escalation’ is dangerous and therefore must always be avoided. Escalation is dangerous. But such restraint likely emboldened Putin, which led to his original miscalculation and overextension in Ukraine. Our ‘defense-only’ strategy guarantees that the Ukrainians will fight hard on Ukrainian land … but then will eventually run out of ammo. President Biden sends many advanced weapons – but not the very advanced ones that might win the war by escalating the conflict or imposing unacceptable cost and exposing Russian weakness.

So what are President Biden’s wartime goals today? The longer the war continues, the less coherent such goals seem.

If Americans wake up tomorrow and learn that Ukrainian President Zelenskyy were killed in an airstrike, we would be appalled but not surprised. The Russians no doubt want him dead. But is the United States helping Ukrainians threaten Putin (or at least his reputation inside Russia) or Russians in return? If not, how can we expect this war to end favorably to anyone but Putin? At present, Putin can conduct an endless war, fearing no threat to himself, as long as he can divert public focus elsewhere and control information internally.

The Biden Administration and NATO seem intimidated by Putin and his military threats. Yet Russian forces attack civilian targets almost daily. Why isn’t Putin threatened by U.S. and NATO capability?

Putin perceives Biden as weak – not likely to act unpredictably or risk conflict with Russian forces; convinced that consistency is more likely to accrue advantage than guile. He likely sees Biden as not his equal – too inured by decades of Foreign Affairs Committee sophistry; too intimidated to escalate the war; and certainly not willing to confront Putin directly or threaten him. Putin has called Biden a career politician – a slur in his mind, someone predictable and risk-averse.

Democrats and the isolationist wing of the Republican party consistently fear ‘regime change,’ noting (correctly) that regime change invites ‘instability’ (meaning to them ‘danger’). Democrats and the isolationist wing of the Republican party also consistently fear ‘escalation’ and thus pull back from prosecuting a war to its coherent end. They are constantly reacting to Russian operations with weapon systems designed only to defeat Russian operations (meaning Ukrainian forces are forever going to be ‘defeating’ Russian operations.)  But one cannot win anything if nothing is risked.

Putin’s war exposes President Xi of China as another dictator, curious and privately supportive of a revanchist Russia attempting to extend its empire through force. Xi issues nonsense public statements, ignoring Russian war crimes, and attempts to legitimize an outrageous and illegitimate war, which has caused the deaths of thousands of civilians. The war exposes Xi as another autocrat, likely willing to conduct violence to further communist Chinese goals.

The United States cannot help Ukraine win this war if it fears escalating it. And it certainly cannot win the war if it cannot conceive of a favorable war end.

Since it is hard for the Biden Administration to discern and explain to the American people what an acceptable end to the war is, perhaps we can discern what ends would not be acceptable:

The Putin (autocracy) strategy of keeping border states weak, unstable, and subservient to Moscow must end forever. Authoritarianism is cheap governance and incompatible with modernity. Russians must come to terms with their history and reject authoritarianism forever. Any ‘frozen conflict’ or any degree of status quo ante rewards authoritarianism and emboldens both Putin and President Xi of China, who thinks that China’s ‘near abroad’ must also remain weak and subservient.

But no ‘frozen conflict’ solution can ever allow Putin to return to the G20, sell oil again to any liberal democratic state, or be free from Western sanctions. Regardless of where the violence in eastern Ukraine ends, Putinism is fundamentally incompatible with the Western liberal democratic states – forever. As soon as U.S. and NATO leadership state this, the better.

Putin likely invaded because a democratic, economically successful Ukraine would suggest to the Russian population that it can someday be both economically successful and politically free – something Putin cannot allow. But since Ukraine has been deeply hurt, Putin could argue to himself and his constituencies that he has succeeded:  Ukraine today poses no threat of emerging as an economically and politically free state on Russia’s border anytime soon. Putin can claim that he has set back Ukraine a decade, destroyed its military to a significant degree, and kept the United States and NATO away from the Russian border.

Let Putin claim this. Over time, Russian weakness from Putinism will become more and more evident. Both military sacrifice and economic sanctions will come closer to the Russian people if the conflict were to be frozen today. In other words, as long as Putin does not return to status quo ante, he has lost much.

The United States finds itself (whether it realizes it or not) at a George Kennan moment. Since 2000, the United States has told itself that involving the autocracies of Russia and China in a web of entangled trade, economic, and military regimes would eventually pull them into the West and lead to liberal democracy inside both states. This policy of ‘entanglement and enlargement,’ pursued by majority segments of both U.S. parties, was naïve and has utterly failed. But to date, no American political leader has fashioned a replacement. The Biden Administration seems disinterested or intellectually incapable of perceiving something to replace it – and so continues it, despite the near consensus that it has failed. Yet recognizing that autocracy is incompatible with liberal democracy and modernity is today a self-evident insight.

Today, Russia and China agitate for political change around the world, while the United States remains a status quo power. This dynamic must be flipped. The current Russian and Chinese governments want Americans to be afraid to demand political progress from them. They achieve this through intimidation, influence operations, the corruption of U.S. academia and journalism, cyberspace operations, and scaremongering. That is why the United States and NATO must muster the political strength, will, and leadership to advance the only coherent national strategy left. We are in an era of zero-sum political competition, whether we like it or not, with the global autocracies, which work to advance U.S. decline as we naively hope that they will somehow develop into liberal democracies.

James Van de Velde, Ph.D., is a Professor at the National Defense University and an Adjunct Faculty Member at Johns Hopkins University. The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not reflect the official policy or position of the National Defense University, the Department of Defense, or the U. S. Government.