Where’s the plan?
On January 20, when asked about tanks, President Biden said “Ukraine is going to get all the help they need”. It turns out after all that Ukraine is not going to get any tanks, not the German tanks they want, anyway. But Biden didn’t just make another of his notorious verbal gaffes. He’s selling a bill of goods. And it’s a crime. A crime of omission.
The US has no official goals in Ukraine, no strategy, no long term planning. President Biden merely promises help. With its allies, Washington is indeed making sporadic, ad hoc deliveries of large quantities of weapons, but these are scrupulously restricted to items deemed to be non-escalatory. No modern warplanes, no modern tanks, no long range artillery, no long range missiles. Enough to keep the Ukrainians bleeding and dying in battle, but not enough to throw the Russians out. Not enough to protect Ukrainian cities from Russian missile barrages. Not enough for deterrence. If there were a virtue in buying time nobody has yet explained what that is. But buying time also, arguably, works in Putin’s favor.
Does the US, then, have a long term policy to deal with Putin’s Russia? If it has, it’s a secret. No senior administration official has admitted that the world has fundamentally changed, as though after the war is over — no matter how it ends — things could return to the status quo ante. The administration, for example, advertises its ad hoc sanctions on Russia as incentives to end the war but fails to spell out under what terms sanctions might actually be lifted. How could they, without a policy? And as if failing to recognize the inherent danger Russia poses to the future were not enough, the administration also fails to meticulously and specifically connect the dots between Russia and the threat of war in other parts of the world.
So far President Biden has done enough to escape the blistering criticism of doing nothing but he has not done, and resolutely refuses to do, enough to ensure victory. He’s selling the idea that we can provide effective military aid at low risk to ourselves and relatively cheaply. Containment, essentially, of a warm war. Most people want to believe that this is true and, at least so far, international security elites have bought the story. That’s perfectly understandable. People don’t like the uncertainty of being enmeshed in a hot war and people really don’t like the prospect of the economy being put on a war footing. Especially not in our era of economic fragility. But no matter how much the rape of Ukraine receives plebiscitary approval, in the long run an underdeveloped framework invites failure.
Is it really so difficult to understand that Russia is our common enemy and that its invasion of Ukraine represents an existential threat to our own security? We must set goals accordingly. Regarding Ukraine, we must make clear that it is our common objective for Ukraine to recover all its pre-war territory, including Crimea. Furthermore, Russia must remain a pariah unless and until it pays reparations and, even more importantly, submits Russian officials from Putin on down to an international war crimes tribunal.
To underscore our determination we should immediately expel all Russian Ambassadors, close most Russian consulates, and require a drastic downsizing of remaining Russian diplomatic staff. Breaking off diplomatic relations completely remains a possible next step. And it is absurd for us to allow Russia to retain a seat on the UN Security Council. Whatever it takes, that must be rectified.
As WWII passes from living memory its shadow lingers. The principle that a war of aggression is the “supreme international crime” remains true even when we abjure and ignore it. We can make believe that we are safe in the comfort of our institutional norms or we can live up to our legacy. Our choice.