-Analysis-
KYIV — During Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s recent visit to the U.S., President Joe Biden reiterated America’s goal: “We want Ukraine to achieve victory in the war.” Biden stressed that this victory involves Ukraine being “a sovereign, independent state, capable of defending itself and deterring future aggression.”
[shortcode-Subscribe-to-Ukraine-daily-box]
Biden also expressed frustration about the Republican party’s obstruction to Ukrainian aid — but Western political elites bear a deeper, more significant level of responsibility for the current situation.
In reality, it’s clear that the Biden administration and most Western politicians do not seek a strategic military defeat of Russia in Ukraine.
The unwritten Western rule
After the failure of the Russian blitzkrieg in the face of the Ukrainian army’s resistance to Russian aggression, the West began supplying Ukraine with increasingly sophisticated weaponry. But there seems to be an unwritten rule in military support: to offer a list and quantity of weapons that are somewhat adequate for defense, but fall short of enabling a decisive victory.
Even after Ukraine’s successful military operations in the Kharkiv and Kherson regions, this unwritten rule has not changed. The situation demanded an acceleration in the supply of ammunition to Ukraine and a significant expansion in their range, especially in anticipation of the Ukrainian counteroffensive.
By the fall of 2022, fear of backlash from Vladimir Putin as a justification for Western indecision became untenable. Arguments against providing Ukraine with modern aircraft or missiles with a range of 300 kilometers or more became absurd. It’s a basic military fact that a successful counteroffensive requires artillery superiority and control of airspace in key strike directions, which Ukraine lacked because of its insufficient weapons.
America provides enough military aid for Ukraine to survive, but not to win.
But as Ukraine’s offensive in the South faltered, criticisms of the Western strategy grew louder. In late November, an article in Newsweek questioned whether the U.S. genuinely wanted Ukraine to defeat Russia. The article suggested that while America provides enough military aid for Ukraine to survive, it refrains from supplying what is needed for Ukraine to win. According to this argument, the White House avoids supporting Ukraine to a point that would enable victory out of fear of global political consequences, as doing so might create the risk of significant political turmoil that could result from the fall of the Kremlin.
Learning from the USSR
For a number of reasons, the current situation looks bleak. The Biden administration seems more concerned about potential chaotic developments within Russia than Putin’s actual territorial annexation.
From this perspective, there is still a belief that Russia could somehow be pulled away from the Chinese sphere of influence, in a hypothetical division of the world into two geopolitical blocs: democracies and authoritarian dictatorships. Moreover, there’s uncertainty about what would happen with Russia’s nuclear weapons if the country were to undergo sudden disintegration.
Had the Biden administration taken more proactive steps to aid Ukraine earlier, the current deadlock with Congress might have been avoided. But excessive caution, and an inability to depart from conventional approaches, have trapped the White House.
Biden’s position could have been much stronger had Ukraine achieved greater success on the battlefield, inflicting new defeats on the aggressor. A strategic decision regarding tanks, planes and other weaponry in 2022 could have contributed significantly. But the White House chose not to take that risk. There might have been a naive hope that Ukraine could achieve significant results with relatively modest and inadequate weapons — if so, this was a serious miscalculation.
These apprehensions of Biden and his advisors echo the fears of the George W. Bush administration during the collapse of the USSR. At the time, Western elites believed in the possibility of a democratic, Western-allied Russia, while also fearing the fate of the country’s nuclear weapons. As a result, Washington didn’t support the independence of Ukraine and other republics, except for Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia.
In reality, the former Soviet republics relinquished their nuclear weapons, and there were no issues. But challenges arose swiftly with the Russian Federation, as the legal successor to the USSR. Despite this, a significant portion of Western elites tend to overlook potential new opportunities that might arise from Russia’s potential strategic defeat in Ukraine.
Russia’s (non-)defeat
The defeat of the Russian Federation could trigger destabilization across vast regions of Asia and Europe. If an internal crisis were to emerge within Russia, the West might struggle to contain or prevent the ensuing chaos.
But the process of disintegration of the colonial empire is one that can be influenced and steered. It remains unclear whether China could extend its dominance over every part of Russia in the event of its disintegration. Conversely, if the Russian Federation remains an integrated authoritarian state, the West may inevitably face an alliance between Beijing and Moscow.
Without a strategic defeat of the Russian army, there’s little hope for a change of regime.
Currently, the Western stance refuses to abandon its controversial and largely ineffective strategy that attempts to find a balance between the defeat of Russia and the defeat of Ukraine. This puzzling strategic balancing act carries considerable risks and could pose significant challenges in the future. It is clear that without a strategic defeat of the Russian army, there’s little hope for a change of regime in Putin’s Russia.
The preservation of Putin’s power also poses substantial risks to Europe’s security and NATO members. Without a strategic defeat, the Russian army may retain enough strength to potentially threaten neighboring states, which could result in conflict expanding beyond Ukraine’s borders to reach NATO members.
Furthermore, if Russia manages to evade defeat — and accountability — for its subsequent acts of aggression, it will severely tarnish the West’s reputation. This display of weakness and indecisiveness in achieving its objectives may embolden other authoritarian regimes, signaling the perceived decline of US and Western dominance. It might encourage attempts to reshape the world order, disregarding international law and sovereignty.
The West’s indecisiveness now risks creating a reality with an ever-greater likelihood of escalating global conflicts.
The current strategic deadlock in the Russian-Ukrainian conflict mirrors the ambivalent and inconsistent approach of Western elites and their unclear vision of what constitutes a Ukrainian victory. The primary aim should be to persuade the West that a Ukrainian victory stands as a far superior choice compared to a stalemate or Russia’s non-defeat.
