US Objectives in the Ukraine War

by April 16, 2022 6 Comments Foreign Policy

What should the US be seeking to accomplish with regard to the war over Ukraine?  Obviously, we have sought, quite successfully, to help the Ukrainians fight back against an aggressor, but fighting aggression isn’t the only or even the most important objective we should be pursuing.  To my mind, the US stance on the conflict should be governed by four concrete objectives. In descending order of importance, they are:

(1)–Avoiding escalation to nuclear warfare

(2) Achieving a settlement of the conflict that maximizes the long-run chances for peace and stability in Europe

(3) Minimizing human suffering and death

(4) Defending the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine

It should be understood that there is a good deal of tension among these four objectives. For example, if (1) weren’t so vitally important, then we would likely have done a lot more in pursuit of (4). Nor are (3) and (4) entirely compatible. (4) necessarily comes at the expense of (3): a surrender by Ukraine would have minimized bloodshed, but it is clear that there is a considerable willingness among the Ukrainians to risk their lives to defend their country, a willingness that we do well to respect.

Note what I haven’t included among our desirable objectives: what might simply be called “unconditional victory over Russia.”  That objective was stated forthrightly by the conservative commentator Anne Applebaum in an interview yesterday on MSNBC. She thinks the US should give the Ukrainians enough weaponry to enable them to expel the Russians altogether from their country.  I think that is dangerously unrealistic. Applebaum would valorize (4) at the expense of (3) and with serious risk to (1). Nor is it clear that a completely crushed and humiliated Vladimir Putin would serve the second objective.

The overarching objective of US policy, instead, should be to find an optimal balance among the four above-listed partly competing objectives. Initially, I thought the Biden administration was performing the balancing act quite well. Increasingly, though, I worry that American policy is tempted by the Applebaum view. The temptation came through in President Biden’s imprudent call for Putin’s removal, and in his suggestion that he should be tried as a war criminal. We would all like to see Putin go, or, short of that, to suffer a complete and humiliating defeat, but such emotionally satisfying fantasies are incompatible with any realistic attempt to bring this conflict to an end at acceptable cost. We need to give Putin a way out; raising the stakes for him does the opposite.

I don’t know how to strike the optimal balance among the four objectives. I believe that, notwithstanding the Russians’ poor military performance thus far, Putin has the resources and the determination to hang on in the eastern Donbas region indefinitely, unless we are willing to fuel a terrible bloodbath and flirt with the risk of nuclear war.  Any settlement of the conflict is going to have to recognize that harsh reality. Which is to say, any settlement of the war will fall well short of an ideally just outcome.  I don’t see any signs of such recognition by the Biden administration.

 

6 comments

  1. Saphsin April 18, 2022 at 3:27 am

    I want to copy something I wrote today and wanted to hear your thoughts:

    [One of my biggest issues with how much of the Left discusses this is that there is no button pressing formula for this. It’s an actual war, one with uncertain outcomes and where the main actors involved have their own drives, and they’re not us. Discussing a war should involve listing the different possible outcomes and our contingency plans for those outcomes, and acknowledgement of taking a risk when advocating one path over another.

    It’s understandable for the Ukranians to not only want to defend themselves, but kick out the Russians from their own country. It’s not impossible for small countries to kick out bigger imperial invaders, there’s a past history of it like in Vietnam. The Left was in full support of Vietnam while liberals utterly failed to do so back in the day, the positions are now reversed.

    I also don’t think it’s wrong to seriously discuss the likelihood that the Ukrainians are unlikely to win their war aims and that it’s better to push to end it now. Pushing past the 38th parallel during the Korean War was a mistake in retrospect. Solidaristic advocacy shouldn’t exclude coldly-calculated consequentialist considerations.

    But what does it mean to press for a negotiated settlement if the Ukranians want to liberate more of their country? There are those on the Left who say we shouldn’t send weapons to Ukraine because that will escalate the war instead of encouraging negotiations, but that doesn’t guarantee Ukranians will lose their will to fight, and much more likely it’s a benefit for the Russians in their war effort. Perhaps the lack of questioning of what it would even mean to negotiate with the Russians stems from understating Russia’s imperial motives and overestimating the relevance of NATO. And the idea that the Left (even assuming we have much more power than we have now) would succeed in some kind of advocacy protest movement that will convince the rest of the public to join our cause to not send military support for Ukraine sounds absurd.]

    Some clarifications. I consider myself part of the Left, I align with Chomsky in my critique of U.S. Foreign Policy. I also agree with you that it’s disturbing how much the prospects of nuclear conflict isn’t acknowledged as part of the considerations by hawks. I would distinguish sending military weapons from direct NATO interventions like a no-fly zone, the latter which I consider certain suicide. I understand the argument against encouraging fighting to the last Ukranian, but I think we should help support putting them in the best negotiating position if such compromises is at the end.

    I also think there’s more to the story of Russian intervention in Ukraine than NATO. See Rupert Russell & Sam Greene’s recent writings on the subject. I think NATO is relevant for long-term contextual causal reasons and less for immediate causes.

    https://www.currentaffairs.org/2022/04/noam-chomsky-on-how-to-prevent-world-war-iii

    https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2022/03/the-lefts-bad-takes-on-ukraine.html

    https://www.amazon.com/Price-Wars-Commodities-Markets-Chaotic/dp/0385545851/ref=sr_1_1?crid=37BUTTKA1E2K1&keywords=rupert+russell&qid=1650266716&sprefix=rupert%2520russell%2Caps%2C45&sr=8-1

    https://tldrussia.substack.com/p/heres-looking-at-eu?s=r&fbclid=IwAR02x4Pa6Jch8a_WK5oJi9TvKElwLWR8HNsuY6AQOabi7ok41POptUQgCu4

    Reply

    • tonygreco April 18, 2022 at 11:17 am

      I think we see things very much the same way, and that is to say, with less clarity than we would like. As I said, it’s hard to find the right balance. Yes, I do support arming the Ukrainians to defend themselves, but only up to a point. E.g., I don’t think we should encourage them to go all out to try to liberate the Donbas. There is a lot of good sense in the Chomsky link you cite, and I would recommend it to readers. The Greene piece is also interesting and provocative, though I think there is more flexibility–more room for possible compromise–than he indicates. E.g., I’m not sure that a kind of hybrid Finlandization–yes to Ukraine in EU, but not in NATO–is unworkable.

      Reply

      • Saphsin April 19, 2022 at 12:56 am

        But Zelensky already floated concessions on NATO and neutrality, Russia ignored them and proceeded with the ongoing kidnappings and massacres.

        One of my disagreements is here:

        “Nor is it clear that a completely crushed and humiliated Vladimir Putin would serve the second objective.”

        I don’t have a problem with your judgment that we should sacrifice the opportunity to impose a huge cost to Russia if that allows us to achieve a desirable goal. On the other hand, I think the flip side of the quoted statement is more likely to be dangerous for 2), an emboldened Russia that succeeded in their military aims. Putin has been saying that Ukraine is not a real country and nationality, to him it’s just a puppet government of the West. If he had succeeded in toppling Kyiv, the next aim may have been Moldova. The fact that they’ve been so humiliated in their failure to do so is why we’re even talking about negotiations at the moment.

        https://www.npr.org/2022/04/15/1091998660/ukraine-russia-war-moldova-security-transdniester

        Again I agree that we need to be concerned with 1), nuclear conflict denial is not much different from climate change denial in my opinion, even worse actually. But a lot of things have gone beyond expectations of political pundits, the Russian invasion itself and the outperformance of the Ukranians’ resistance. This goes back to my first statement about there being no button pressing formulas, I feel more skeptical of the classroom setting type of discussion of this. It really depends on the battlefield outcomes and their receptions in the domestic politics among all the actors involved. Chomsky also says we should send weapons to the Ukranians although the first priority is pushing for a negotiated settlement (most recent C-Span interview and with Jeremy Scahill) But I don’t really know what that entails in practice as Russia is launching its full offensive on Donbass today. That’s why I think there needs to be much more discussion of the actors involved and the logic of their motives if we’re able to even articulate concrete proposals.

        Reply

        • tonygreco April 19, 2022 at 9:27 pm

          We are mostly in agreement. On the one point of possible disagreement: I don’t think there is much chance of Putin coming out of this emboldened. That might have happened if the West had stood by and he managed to gobble up most of Ukraine, as he apparently intended, but that hasn’t happened and won’t happen. On the other hand, I shudder to think what Putin might try if he is actually pushed entirely out of Ukraine (though I don’t think that will happen either).

          Reply

  2. Art Leaderman April 18, 2022 at 5:23 pm

    Lamentably, it looks more and more like a long proxy war against Russia with scant evidence of encouragement from the United States for settlement. Veteran USFS and DOD official Chas Freeman identifies how such prolongation is attracting advocates in Washington who see the conflict as a “low cost” way to exhaust Russian international strength with Ukrainian blood, not Uncle Sam’s. (He sees serious problems from those in harmony with the Applebaum view that you discuss.)

    https://thegrayzone.com/2022/03/24/us-fighting-russia-to-the-last-ukrainian-veteran-us-diplomat/

    I see two questions among, of course, so many others. Will some intermediate-term cease fire be possible once Russia consolidates positions in the East? Will new weapons from the NATO orbit fuel nationalist enthusiasm for combat and then make compromise by Zelinskyy/Yarmack too hard to sell within Ukraine?

    Reply

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