Ukraine war shakes geo-political foundations of Europe
Research conducted and compiled by Ray White CEO – LIPR
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has shaken the geopolitical foundations of Europe and triggered a reassessment of transatlantic security.
BackResearch on background of Russia’s war with Ukraineground
Armed conflict in eastern Ukraine erupted in early 2014 following Russia’s annexation of Crimea. The previous year, protests in Ukraine’s capital Kyiv against Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych’s decision to reject a deal for greater economic integration with the European Union (EU) were met with a violent crackdown by state security forces. The protests widened, escalating the conflict, and President Yanukovych fled the country in February 2014.
One month later, in March 2014, Russian troops took control of Ukraine’s Crimea region. Russian President Vladimir Putin cited the need to protect the rights of Russian citizens and Russian speakers in Crimea and southeast Ukraine. Russia then formally annexed the peninsula after Crimeans voted to join the Russian Federation in a disputed local referendum. The crisis heightened ethnic divisions, and two months later pro-Russian separatists in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions of eastern Ukraine held a referendum to declare independence from Ukraine.
Armed conflict in the region quickly broke out between Russian-backed forces and the Ukrainian military. Moscow denied military involvement, though both Ukraine and NATO reported the build-up of Russian troops and military equipment near Donetsk and Russian cross-border shelling immediately after Russia annexed Crimea. The conflict transitioned to an active stalemate, with regular shelling and skirmishes occurring along the front line that separated Russian- and Ukrainian-controlled border regions in the east.
Beginning in February 2015, France, Germany, Russia, and Ukraine attempted to kickstart negotiations and broker a cessation in violence through the Minsk Accords. The agreement framework included provisions for a cease-fire, withdrawal of heavy weaponry, and full Ukrainian government control throughout the conflict zone. However, efforts to reach a diplomatic settlement and satisfactory resolution were largely unsuccessful.
In April 2016, NATO announced that the alliance would deploy four battalions to Eastern Europe, rotating troops through Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland to deter possible future Russian aggression elsewhere in Europe, particularly in the Baltics. In September 2017, the United States also deployed two U.S. Army tank brigades to Poland to further bolster NATO’s presence in the region.
In January 2018, the United States imposed new sanctions on twenty-one individuals–including a number of Russian officials–and nine companies linked to the conflict in eastern Ukraine. In March 2018, the State Department approved the sale of anti-tank weapons to Ukraine, the first sale of lethal weaponry since the conflict began. In October 2018, Ukraine joined the United States and seven other NATO countries in a series of large-scale air exercises in western Ukraine. The exercises came after Russia held its annual military exercises in September 2018, the largest since the fall of the Soviet Union.
Ukraine has been the target of thousands of cyberattacks. In December 2015, more than 225,000 people lost power across Ukraine in an attack on power generation firms, and in December 2016 parts of Kyiv experienced another power blackout following a similar attack targeting a Ukrainian utility company. In June 2017, government and business computer systems in Ukraine were hit by the Not Petya cyberattack, which was attributed to Russia; the attack spread to computer systems worldwide and caused billions of dollars in damages. In February 2022, Ukrainian government websites, including the defence and interior ministries, banking sites, and other affiliated organizations were targeted by distributed-denial-of-service attacks alongside the Russian invasion.
Concerns
The current conflict has severely strained U.S.-Russia relations and increased the risk of a wider European conflict. Tensions are likely to increase between Russia and neighbouring NATO member countries that would likely involve the United States, due to alliance security commitments. Additionally, the conflict in Ukraine will have broader ramifications for future cooperation on critical issues like arms control, cybersecurity, nuclear non-proliferation, energy security, counter-terrorism, and political solutions in Syria, Libya, and elsewhere.
Recent Developments
Since Russia launched a full-scale military invasion into Ukraine on February 24, 2022, fighting has caused nearly fourteen thousand civilian deaths and internally displaced more than seven million people, according to the United Nations. The conflict has forced another five million Ukrainians to flee to neighbouring countries—the majority of whom have arrived in Poland, a NATO country where the United States and other allies are helping to accommodate the influx of refugees.
In October 2021, Russia began moving troops and military equipment near its border with Ukraine, reigniting concerns over a potential invasion. Commercial satellite imagery, social media posts, and publicly released intelligence from November and December 2021 showed armour, missiles, and other heavy weaponry moving toward Ukraine with no official explanation.
By December, more than one hundred thousand Russian troops were in place near the Russia-Ukraine border and U.S. intelligence officials warned that Russia may be planning an invasion for early 2022. In mid-December 2021, Russia’s foreign ministry issued a set of demands calling for the United States and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) to cease any military activity in Eastern Europe and Central Asia, to commit against further NATO expansion toward Russia, and to prevent Ukraine from joining NATO in the future. The United States and other NATO allies rejected these demands and warned Russia they would impose severe economic sanctions if Russia invaded Ukraine. The United States sent additional military assistance to Ukraine, including ammunition, small arms, and other defensive weaponry.
In early February 2022, U.S. President Joe Biden ordered around three thousand U.S. troops to deploy to Poland and Romania—NATO countries that border Ukraine—to counter Russian troops stationed near its border with Ukraine and reassure NATO allies. Satellite imagery showed the largest deployment of Russian troops to its border with Belarus since the end of the Cold War. Negotiations between the United States, Russia, and European powers—including France and Germany—did not result in a resolution. While Russia released a statement claiming to draw down a certain number of troops, reports emerged of an increasing Russian troop presence at the border with Ukraine.
In late February 2022, the United States warned that Russia intended to invade Ukraine, citing Russia’s growing military presence at the Russia-Ukraine border. Russian President Vladimir Putin then ordered troops to Luhansk and Donetsk, separatist regions in Eastern Ukraine partly controlled by Russian-backed separatists, claiming the troops served a “peacekeeping” function. The United States responded by imposing sanctions on the Luhansk and Donetsk regions and the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline a few days later.
On February 24, during a United Nations Security Council meeting to dissuade Russia from attacking Ukraine, Putin announced the beginning of a full-scale land, sea, and air invasion of Ukraine targeting Ukrainian military assets and cities across the country. Biden declared this attack “unprovoked and unjustified” and has since issued severe sanctions in coordination with European allies, including sanctions that target four of Russia’s largest banks, its oil and gas industry , and the financial assets of Putin and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. The U.S. continues to commit military assistance to Ukraine; following Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s address to the U.S. Congress on March 16, Biden announced an additional $800 million in military assistance. Since Russia’s invasion, the United States has committed $3.4 billion in security assistance, including heavy weapons and artillery. The United States has also dramatically increased the numbers of U.S. troops in Europe, bringing the total to more than one hundred thousand. The United Nations, G7, EU, and other countries continue to condemn Russian actions and support Ukrainian forces. In an emergency United Nations session on March 2, 141 of 193 member states voted to condemn Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and demanded that Russia immediately cease its use of force in Ukraine.
In late March 2022, Russia announced that it would “reduce military activity” near Kyiv and Chernihiv. As the initial Russian invasion slowed, long-range missile strikes caused significant damage to Ukrainian military assets, urban residential areas, and communication and transportation infrastructure. Hospitals and residential complexes also sustained shelling and bombing attacks. By April 6, Russia had withdrawn all troops from Ukraine’s capital region. In the aftermath of the Russian withdrawal from Kyiv’s surrounding areas, Ukrainian civilians described apparent war crimes committed by Russian forces including accounts of summary executions, torture, and rape.
Meanwhile, civilians in Mariupol–a port city in south-eastern Ukraine–have been facing an ongoing humanitarian crisis with acute shortages of food, water, and heat. By late March, observers estimated that the Russian bombardment of Mariupol damaged or destroyed more than 90 percent of the city. Ukrainian officials have put the number of civilians killed during the Russian siege of Mariupol at twenty thousand, and satellite images show a mass grave located near Mariupol. Russian forces have surrounded the city for weeks with aerial bombardments that have killed hundreds of civilians. On April 18, Russia launched a new major offensive in eastern Ukraine following its failed attempt to seize Kyiv.
Why NATO Has Become a Flash Point with Russia in Ukraine
Russian leaders have watched with mounting resentment as the transatlantic alliance has nearly doubled its membership since the end of the Cold War. President Vladimir Putin has drawn a red line in Ukraine.
Introduction
Tensions between Russia and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) have reached the point of crisis. The government of Russian President Vladimir Putin is threatening a wider military incursion into Ukraine unless the U.S.-led alliance makes several major security concessions, including a commitment to cease expanding eastward.
Russia says that the United States and NATO have continually violated pledges allegedly made in the early 1990s that the alliance would not expand into the former Soviet bloc. Meanwhile, alliance leaders have said they are open to new diplomacy with Russia on arms control and other matters but that they are unwilling to discuss forever shutting NATO’s doors to new members.
What is the source of Russia’s dispute with NATO?
Russian leaders have long been wary of the eastward expansion of NATO, particularly as the alliance opened its doors to former Warsaw Pact states and ex-Soviet republics in the late 1990s (the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland) and early 2000s (Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia). Their fears grew in the late 2000s as the alliance stated its intent to admit Georgia and Ukraine at an unspecified point in the future.
For the Kremlin, the notion that Ukraine, a pillar of the Soviet Union with strong historic ties to Russia, would join NATO was a red line. “No Russian leader could stand idly by in the face of steps toward NATO membership for Ukraine. That would be a hostile act toward Russia,” Putin warned U.S. Undersecretary for Political Affairs William J. Burns, who is now director of the CIA, in the weeks leading up to NATO’s 2008 Bucharest Summit.
Although NATO did not announce a formal membership plan for Ukraine and Georgia at the Bucharest Summit, the alliance did affirm “that these countries will become members of NATO,” and it extended formal invitations to accession talks to Albania and Croatia, which became members in 2009. NATO expanded again in 2017, admitting Montenegro, and in 2020, welcoming North Macedonia.
Did the United States promise the Soviet Union that it would freeze NATO expansion?
Russian officials say that the U.S. government made a pledge to Soviet leaders not to expand the alliance’s eastern borders, a commitment they say came during the flurry of diplomacy following the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and surrounding the reunification of Germany in 1990. Proponents of this narrative often cite the words that U.S. Secretary of State James A. Baker said to Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in February 1990, that “there would be no extension of NATO’s jurisdiction for forces of NATO one inch to the east.” They say the United States and NATO have repeatedly betrayed this verbal commitment in the decades since, taking advantage of Russia’s tumultuous post-Soviet period and expanding the Western alliance several times, all the way to Russia’s doorstep in the case of the Baltic states.
However, many Western analysts and former U.S. officials involved in these discussions dispute what they say is a selective view of history. They point out that, in early 1990, the focus of the diplomacy between the so-called Two Plus Four (East and West Germany plus the United States, France, the Soviet Union, and the United Kingdom) was the future of Germany and the question of whether the soon-to-be unified country would be part of NATO. (West Germany was already an alliance member, while East Germany was part of the Soviet-aligned Warsaw Pact.) They say that the discussions were not about NATO’s long-term plans for eastward expansion, which would have made little sense at that time; the Warsaw Pact and the Soviet Union still existed, and there was scant indication they would dissolve as quickly as they did, in a matter of months. In a 2014 interview, Gorbachev said as much: “The topic of ‘NATO expansion’ was never discussed. It was not raised in those years.”
The diplomacy between U.S. and Soviet leaders during this period focused on Germany and included discussions of various post-unification security options, including the potential for Germany to become part of both NATO and the Warsaw Pact, for Germany to be nonaligned, and even for the Soviet Union to join NATO. Early in the talks, Soviet leaders insisted that a unified Germany never become part of NATO, though they eventually accepted Germany’s right to decide for itself. Similarly, the United States stepped back from Baker’s initial language on not expanding “NATO’s jurisdiction,” which he reportedly used only in the discussion about whether NATO troops would be based in what was then East Germany. In the end, the treaty recognizing German unification that the Two Plus Four powers signed in the summer of 1990 stipulated that only German territorial (non-NATO) forces could be based in East Germany while Soviet forces withdrew. After that, only German forces assigned to NATO could be based there, not foreign NATO forces. The treaty doesn’t mention NATO’s rights and commitments beyond Germany.
How did NATO feature in diplomacy between U.S. and post-Soviet Russian leaders?
Some experts point to another pivotal moment to help explain the mistrust between Russia and NATO today: the 1993–94 discussions between the Bill Clinton administration and the Russian government led by Boris Yeltsin.
By this point, the Warsaw Pact and Soviet Union had collapsed, and the Clinton administration was seeking to craft a new security architecture in Europe that would help foster and fortify the continent’s fledging, post-Soviet democracies, including Russia. Some in the Clinton government, as well as Central European countries such as the Czech Republic and Poland, wanted to move quickly and start expanding NATO’s membership eastward. However, most Clinton officials reportedly did not, being wary that expansion would rankle Russian leaders at a fragile, transitional moment and detract from other U.S. foreign policy objectives, such as nuclear arms control.
Instead, Clinton chose to develop a new NATO initiative called the Partnership for Peace (PfP), which would be nonexclusive and open to all former Warsaw Pact members, as well as non-European countries. Seeing this non-membership framework as a compromise of sorts, in October 1993, U.S. diplomats proposed it to Yeltsin, who eagerly accepted. (Just days before, Yeltsin, with the Russian military’s support, forcefully put down an attempt by parliament to oust him.) NATO launched PfP at its annual summit in January 1994, and more than two dozen countries, including Georgia, Russia, and Ukraine, joined in the following months.
However, Clinton soon began speaking publicly [PDF] about expanding NATO’s membership, saying in Prague just days after the launch of PFP that “the question is no longer whether NATO will take on new members but when and how.” Yeltsin warned Western leaders at a conference in December of that year that “Europe, even before it has managed to shrug off the legacy of the Cold War, is risking encumbering itself with a cold peace.”
Clinton subsequently made efforts to allay Yeltsin’s concerns: pushing off enlargement until after the Russian leader was re-elected in 1996, inviting Russia to join the Group of Seven, and establishing a formal, non-adversarial forum for Russia-NATO diplomacy. But analysts say that NATO’s expansion in the ensuing years would leave deep scars on the Russian psyche. “For many Russians, most importantly Vladimir Putin, the 1990s were a decade of humiliation, as the United States imposed its vision of order on Europe (including in Kosovo in 1999) while the Russians could do nothing but stand by and watch,” James Goldgeier, an expert on NATO-Russia relations, wrote for War on the Rocks.
The Russian government, led by Putin, continued to be wary of NATO expansion in the 2000s. Putin expressed doubts that the alliance, which grew its fastest in 2004, would be effective in tackling the security challenges of the day, including international terrorism and the conflict in Afghanistan. Many new members, particularly the Baltic countries, saw NATO membership as a shield against their former Soviet rulers.
In the years that followed, Putin grew increasingly outspoken in his displeasure at NATO’s inroads into Eastern Europe, saying at a high-profile speech in Munich in 2007 that “it is obvious that NATO expansion does not have any relation with the modernization of the alliance itself or with ensuring security in Europe. On the contrary, it represents a serious provocation that reduces the level of mutual trust.” In the summer following NATO’s 2008 Bucharest Summit, where NATO stated its intent to admit Georgia and Ukraine, Russia invaded the former. Six years later, as Kyiv stepped closer to an economic partnership with another Western bloc, the European Union, Russia invaded Ukraine and annexed Crimea.
What is Russia demanding of NATO and the United States today?
Russia has put forth two draft agreements that seek explicit, legally binding security guarantees from the United States and NATO, respectively:
Treaty with the United States. The draft treaty contains eight articles, some of which call for tight restrictions on U.S. and NATO political and military activities.
Article 4 calls for NATO to end its eastward expansion, specifically, deny future membership to ex-Soviet states, such as Ukraine. It would also ban the United States from establishing bases in or cooperating militarily with former Soviet states.
Article 5 would block both signatories from deploying military assets in areas outside their national borders that “could be perceived by the other party as a threat to its national security.” Heavy bombers and “surface warships of any type” shall refrain from deploying outside the party’s national airspace or territorial waters to areas where they could strike the other’s territory.
Article 6 calls for parties to confine their deployments of intermediate- and short-range, ground-launched missiles to their own territories, and only in areas where they could not strike the other’s territory.
Article 7 would block the parties from deploying nuclear weapons outside their respective territories and would require related nuclear weapons infrastructure in third-party countries to be dismantled agreement with NATO. The draft agreement has nine articles, including several that call for dramatic military concessions from the transatlantic alliance.
Article 4 would effectively divide NATO’s Western and Eastern European membership. It would ban NATO countries that were members of the alliance as of 1997 (a grouping that excludes nearly all eastern members) from deploying military assets to “any of the other states of Europe” in excess of what those members had deployed by 1997. Such deployments could only take place “in exceptional cases” and with Russia’s consent.
Article 5 would forbid the parties from stationing intermediate- and short-range, ground-launched missiles in areas that could strike the other parties.
Article 6 would restrict NATO “from any further enlargement,” including admitting Ukraine.
Article 7 would ban NATO members from conducting any military activity in Ukraine, as well as in other Eastern European states and those in South Caucasus and Central Asia.
Many Western analysts and officials have said that several of Russia’s demands, such the ban on future NATO enlargement, are effectively nonstarters and that the Kremlin has proposed them in bad faith. Some fear Moscow’s demands are deliberately excessive, intended to be dismissed by Western powers and serve as a pretext for Russia to escalate its military activity in Ukraine, potentially by a broad invasion.
How are the United States and NATO supporting Ukraine?
The United States and NATO have said they remain committed to restoring Ukraine’s territorial integrity and sovereignty. They do not recognize Russia’s claims to Crimea, and have encouraged Russia and Ukraine to resolve the conflict in the country’s eastern Donbas region via the Minsk agreements [PDF]. Signed in 2014 and 2015 and brokered by France and Germany, these accords call for a cease-fire, a withdrawal of heavy weapons, Ukraine’s control over its border with Russia, and local elections and a special political status for certain areas of the region.
Meanwhile, Kyiv has affirmed its goal of eventually gaining NATO membership, and it holds yearly military exercises with the alliance, including the Sea Breeze and Rapid Trident drills. The U.S. military has provided Ukrainian forces with training and equipment, including sniper rifles, grenade launchers, night-vision gear, radars, Javelin anti-tank missiles, and patrol vessels. In 2020, Ukraine became one of just six so-called enhanced opportunity partners, a special status given to NATO’s closet allies, such as Australia.
Is Diplomacy Between Russia and the West Still Possible?
The West should keep open the possibility of diplomacy with Russia.
Amid more than two months of intense media focus on the war in Ukraine, one story was largely overlooked. In late April, the United States and Russia carried out an exchange of prisoners. Russia released an American (a former marine) whom it detained some three years ago, while the US released a Russian pilot imprisoned over a decade ago on drug smuggling charges.
What makes the exchange noteworthy is that it took place at a time when Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine has brought relations with the US to their lowest point since the end of the Cold War. The US has opted to avoid direct military involvement in the war, but it is doing a great deal to affect its trajectory, including providing Ukraine with large quantities of increasingly advanced arms, intelligence, and training so that it can successfully resist and potentially defeat the Russian forces. The US has also taken steps to strengthen NATO and impose severe economic sanctions on Russia.
The war is likely to stretch on for some time. Although Ukraine’s fundamental interest is to end the war and prevent more death and destruction, President Volodymyr Zelensky’s desire for peace is conditional. He seeks to regain territory that Russia occupies and ensure the country’s sovereignty is respected so that, among other things, Ukraine can join the European Union. He also wants those responsible for war crimes to be held accountable.
Russian President Vladimir Putin, for his part, needs to achieve an outcome that justifies his costly invasion lest he appear weak and be challenged at home. There is little chance that a peace could be negotiated that would bridge the gap between these two seemingly irreconcilable positions. It is far more likely that the conflict will continue not just for months, but for years to come. This will be the backdrop for US and Western relations with Russia.
One possibility for the West would be to link the entire relationship with Russia to Russia’s actions in Ukraine. This would be a mistake, though, because Russia can affect other Western interests, such as limiting the nuclear and missile capabilities of Iran and North Korea, and the success of global efforts to limit the emissions that cause climate change.
The good news is that, as the prisoner exchange demonstrates, profound differences over Ukraine need not preclude conducting mutually useful business if both sides are willing to compartmentalize. But protecting the possibility of selective cooperation will require sophisticated, disciplined diplomacy.
For starters, the US and its partners will need to prioritize and even limit their goals in Ukraine. This means renouncing talk of regime change in Moscow. We need to deal with the Russia we have, not the one we would prefer. Putin’s position may come to be challenged from within (or he may succumb to reported health challenges) but the West is not in a position to engineer his removal, much less ensure that someone better replaces him.
Likewise, Western governments would be wise to put off talk of war crimes tribunals for senior Russian officials and stop boasting about helping Ukraine target senior Russian generals and ships. The war and investigations are ongoing, and the Russians need to see some benefit in acting responsibly. The same holds for reparations.
Similarly, although Russia will likely find itself worse off economically and militarily as a result of initiating this war of choice, the US government should make clear that, contrary to Secretary of Défense Lloyd Austin’s remarks, America’s goal is not to use the war to weaken Russia. On the contrary, the US should underscore that it wants the war to end as soon as possible on terms that reflect Ukraine’s sovereign, independent status.
As for the war in Ukraine, the West should continue to provide support for Ukraine and prevent escalation by avoiding direct combat. The Kremlin, though, should be made to understand that this restraint is premised on its not widening the war to a NATO country or introducing weapons of mass destruction, at which point such self-imposed Western limits would disappear.
The West also should consider carefully its war aims and how to pursue them. The goal should be that Ukraine controls all its territory, but this does not necessarily justify trying to liberate Crimea or even all of the eastern Donbas region by military force. Some of these goals might be better sought through diplomacy and selective easing of sanctions. But, until Russia’s behavior changes, sanctions should not just remain in place but be extended to cover energy imports that are funding the Russian war effort.
Diplomacy is a tool of national security to be used, not a favour to be bestowed, and it should continue to be pursued with Russia. Private meetings between senior civilian and military officials of Western countries and Russia should resume, in order to reduce the risk of a miscalculation that could lead to confrontation or worse, and to explore opportunities for limited cooperation.
It may well be that constructive relations with Russia do not emerge until well into a post-Putin era. But this in no way alters the West’s interest in seeing that relations do not fall below a certain floor in the interim.
Why should Ukraine wait on cease-fire talks with Russia?
Ukraine has rejected recent calls by the West for it to settle its war with Russia. Ukrainian leaders believe they have a chance to reclaim territory lost in the early fighting—and that they can do so before serious negotiations begin.
Several European leaders and prominent Western commentators have called for a cease-fire in Ukraine, but without success. Ukrainian leaders have reason to hope they can continue to repel Russian forces, and pushing for a settlement now could foreclose military gains, undermine Western unity, and strengthen Russian President Vladimir Putin’s resolve.
Given the death and destruction that Russia’s invasion has caused, why are Ukrainian officials resisting calls for a cease-fire?
The first reason is obvious from a look at the map: Russia occupies much of Ukraine. Yes, Russia’s armed forces have suffered some major setbacks, which some analysts—including my CFR colleague Charles Kupchan—have described as a strategic defeat. But the territory Russia has seized is roughly four times larger than the two separatist regions it controlled in eastern Ukraine when the war started. To Ukrainians, that’s not a defeat for Putin; it’s a victory that has to be undone. They believe that, with the right support from the West, they have a shot at reversing their early losses. That hope is the second reason they don’t want a cease-fire now. As more and better military equipment flows to their forces, they see an opportunity to turn the tide against the Russians.
At what point would it make sense for the United States to call for a compromise?
If Ukrainian forces push the Russians back to the pre-invasion lines of February 23, or even close to them, that would be a genuine strategic defeat for Putin. It would automatically start a serious conversation between Ukrainian and Western leaders about whether and how to translate success on the ground into success at the negotiating table. Both Washington and Kyiv know this.
As for Russian forces, if the next phase of the war goes badly for them, they’ll be calling for talks themselves. The signal that Putin is serious about negotiations is when he stops accusing Ukraine and the West of staging atrocities, such as those at Bucha, to thwart diplomacy. Until then, talking about all the painful compromises Ukraine will have to make for peace will only divide a country that the United States has every reason to help.
What about the fear that the Russians will use nuclear weapons?
No one can completely dismiss the risk that Putin will use nuclear weapons—not after all the bizarre things he has said and done of late. But there are also reasons not to overstate that risk or be paralyzed by it. Though Putin makes mistakes, he doesn’t seem suicidal. (To the contrary, those long conference tables suggest extreme caution.) And as deferential as his generals have been to all his wild ideas, they’re not suicidal either. Fear of nuclear conflict might be the one thing that could lead them to resist a presidential order. It’s the job of the president of the United States to reinforce their hesitations and to make warnings about the consequence of using nuclear weapons as vivid and credible as possible.
Wouldn’t an early settlement facilitate a better postwar relationship between the West and Moscow?
Managing relations with Russia will be an immense policy challenge no matter how—or how soon—the war ends. There is no easy path back to a cooperative relationship, not even a narrow, transactional one. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov admits as much. He recently said Russia was at an historic turning point, like 1917 or 1991. (For a senior Russian official, there is no more dire way to describe the moment than to compare it to these two cases of regime collapse.)
Great skill and imagination will be needed to forge a new relationship, which won’t endure unless it rests on some measure of common interest. But the United States can’t dodge this upheaval, or smooth the transition, simply by deciding that it wants to work with Russia on climate change or any other pressing challenge. Among all the global players whose cooperation is needed to solve such problems, Russia doesn’t rank very high.
Proponents of an early end to the war often express doubt about Western unity. Is that another reason to push Ukraine to compromise?
Both Russia and Ukraine are watching the unity of the Western alliance very closely. It’s one reason Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has put so much effort into courting European publics. Putin, meanwhile, is counting on division within the West to simplify his policy choices. He likely tells himself that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the European Union (EU) have overreached, and that European consumers won’t stand for the higher food and energy costs that sanctions and the war impose on them.
If this is Putin’s hope, it will surely make him even less likely to show any flexibility in negotiations. To succeed, Western policy has to disabuse him of this hope. European leaders who want Russia to call the war off on terms that they—not to mention Ukraine—can accept first have to persuade Putin that Western unity will hold. Only when Putin stops counting on disunity will he start looking for an exit strategy.
Bibliography
- https://www.cfr.org/global-conflict-tracker/conflict/conflict-ukraine
- https://www.cfr.org/europe-and-eurasia/ukraine
- https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/why-nato-has-become-flash-point-russia-ukraine
- https://www.cfr.org/article/diplomacy-between-russia-and-west-still-possible
- https://www.cfr.org/in-brief/ukraine-should-wait-cease-fire-talks-russia-heres-why
