Nancy Pelosi is a superb legislative strategist, but she has never manifested any notable sophistication or originality in her pronouncements on foreign policy. It is a pretty good bet that her proclamation of a goal of victory in Ukraine, however ambiguous (just what does “victory” consist of?) reflects the current mood of the Biden administration.  That’s too bad. There’s little prospect for victory in Ukraine, if that implies expelling the Russians altogether.  The realistic military objective should be to hold the Russians back sufficiently to enable the Ukrainians to negotiate a settlement from a position of reasonable strength.

Not all Western politicians share Pelosi’s exuberance.  The NY Times reports unease among our NATO allies that the US may be broadening its war aims, from a defense of Ukraine to an enduring degradation of Russian power, if not regime change in Moscow.  It cites one French analyst who reports a sense in Europe that “the U.S. is dragging everyone into a different war.”

The Europeans have good reason for their doubts.  Writing in the Guardian, former BBC Moscow correspondent Angus Roxburgh warns against overreaching:

No day goes past without some senior western politician proclaiming that Ukraine will be “successful” and that Russia is “failing”. This is certainly morale-boosting. But it is clearly nonsense.

The fact is, as time goes on, more towns and cities are destroyed and then fall to the Russians. In two months, the area under Russian control – originally just the breakaway parts of Donbas – has grown to perhaps five times the size. If Russia continues to suffer “defeats” at this pace, then in another two months the entire south of Ukraine will be in ruins, cities such as Odesa will resemble Mariupol, and thousands upon thousands more Ukrainians will have died….

If Russia’s aim was to exterminate the Ukrainian nation, then the west’s approach is helping to do just that.

Surely, if the lives of Ukrainian people are our concern then the west has to do something to stop the war – now. Encouraging the Ukrainians to continue, however just their cause, is merely making their country uninhabitable.”

The US needs to state clearly that we want a negotiated end to this war.  It’s not clear that that is the case.

Note: Roxburgh’s assessment of Russian advances is considerably more pessimistic (from the Western point of view) than reports in today’s NY Times.  Chalk it up to the fog of war.  Time will tell.