In no way ought geopolitics be conflated with eschatology: championing supremacy in the name of exceptionalism in an era of unipolarity was hubristic enough; trying to impose a “rules-based international liberal order” in conditions of increasingly acrimonious multipolarity is even more so.
This echoes part of my argument that the logical conclusion of the rhetoric espoused by the Biden administration in the context of staging last year’s Summit for Democracy is that it considers the Russian and Chinese regimes (and some others it identifies as autocratic) to be ultimately illegitimate. This does not necessarily mean that regime change is about to become actionable U.S. policy, but it does imply that, in principle, democracies should only make tactical concessions and accommodations with autocracies. This also aligns with the Atlantic Council’s recent assessment that the Western strategy in the conflict over Ukraine is to “inflict maximum pain without direct military engagement.” But the execution of a strategy without clear tactical goals is like mindlessly driving on the highway without a destination, to paraphrase Daniel DePetris.
After one hundred days of driving, the destination remains unknown: the fundamental question of Western war aims in the conflict over Ukraine is simply not being answered—not just in public, which is fine, but most probably in private, too, which is not.
Is the aim to engender regime change in the Kremlin? The destruction of Russia’s capability to fight and win wars? A return to Soviet-era living standards for the citizens of the Russian Federation? A war crimes tribunal? A ceasefire? A peace agreement? A territorial settlement? A new European security architecture?
In the absence of a consensus answer to such and similar questions, the West remains united in an unprecedented political and financial effort to support Kyiv, which is the primary reason why Kyiv has become resistant to abandoning a maximalist warmaking and negotiation strategy.
Ukraine was and remains an object of great power relations and not a subject of international order. Indeed, it would be hard to argue persuasively that a country that depends almost entirely on the free guns, ammo, and reconnaissance supplied by foreign powers is either fully sovereign or fully independent, regardless of its regime type.
Sounds harsh? Well, the support provided to Ukraine by the West comes in the form of arms sales and weapons transfers, military training, real-time intelligence sharing, direct cash grants and massive loan guarantees, an open-door refugee policy, and the threat of repurposing billions of U.S. dollars of seized Russian assets for reconstruction coupled with the promise of spending untold amounts of Western resources on the same.
It is thus becoming increasingly hard to disprove the Kremlin’s claim that the conflict over Ukraine amounts to a proxy war between the West and Russia—or at least that it has become one since the West realized that Moscow’s “special military operation” would not produce the rapid capitulation of the government in Kyiv. Consequently, the West was able to rally behind Kyiv’s “David versus Goliath” narrative, personified by its young and telegenic president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
So emboldened and equipped, an important thread in the strategic thinking of Ukraine’s leadership emerged: striving for total victory, defined as the return of all lands held by Russia, even including (in some iterations) Crimea. Such a maximalist outcome is the least likely to come to fruition without enormous cost, since it seems credible enough that Russia would be willing to use a tactical nuclear weapon or two to prevent it
it is stupefying that the West’s maximalists see nothing wrong with coming dangerously close to allowing their own foreign policy to be outsourced to a state almost entirely dependent on the West’s largess to keep pursuing a goal of total victory, as defined above.
But even such hints of sobriety have often been accompanied by ante-upping public statements. These not only tactically undercut the pursuit of a policy of relative restraint (or at least escalation beyond the point of no return), but they will also make it more difficult to advocate down the road for an outcome that falls sort of what the Kremlin effectually would consider to be unconditional surrender.
https://nationalinterest.org/feature/henry-kissinger-and-ending-conflict-over-ukraine-202774
This echoes part of my argument that the logical conclusion of the rhetoric espoused by the Biden administration in the context of staging last year’s Summit for Democracy is that it considers the Russian and Chinese regimes (and some others it identifies as autocratic) to be ultimately illegitimate. This does not necessarily mean that regime change is about to become actionable U.S. policy, but it does imply that, in principle, democracies should only make tactical concessions and accommodations with autocracies. This also aligns with the Atlantic Council’s recent assessment that the Western strategy in the conflict over Ukraine is to “inflict maximum pain without direct military engagement.” But the execution of a strategy without clear tactical goals is like mindlessly driving on the highway without a destination, to paraphrase Daniel DePetris.
After one hundred days of driving, the destination remains unknown: the fundamental question of Western war aims in the conflict over Ukraine is simply not being answered—not just in public, which is fine, but most probably in private, too, which is not.
Is the aim to engender regime change in the Kremlin? The destruction of Russia’s capability to fight and win wars? A return to Soviet-era living standards for the citizens of the Russian Federation? A war crimes tribunal? A ceasefire? A peace agreement? A territorial settlement? A new European security architecture?
In the absence of a consensus answer to such and similar questions, the West remains united in an unprecedented political and financial effort to support Kyiv, which is the primary reason why Kyiv has become resistant to abandoning a maximalist warmaking and negotiation strategy.
Ukraine was and remains an object of great power relations and not a subject of international order. Indeed, it would be hard to argue persuasively that a country that depends almost entirely on the free guns, ammo, and reconnaissance supplied by foreign powers is either fully sovereign or fully independent, regardless of its regime type.
Sounds harsh? Well, the support provided to Ukraine by the West comes in the form of arms sales and weapons transfers, military training, real-time intelligence sharing, direct cash grants and massive loan guarantees, an open-door refugee policy, and the threat of repurposing billions of U.S. dollars of seized Russian assets for reconstruction coupled with the promise of spending untold amounts of Western resources on the same.
It is thus becoming increasingly hard to disprove the Kremlin’s claim that the conflict over Ukraine amounts to a proxy war between the West and Russia—or at least that it has become one since the West realized that Moscow’s “special military operation” would not produce the rapid capitulation of the government in Kyiv. Consequently, the West was able to rally behind Kyiv’s “David versus Goliath” narrative, personified by its young and telegenic president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
So emboldened and equipped, an important thread in the strategic thinking of Ukraine’s leadership emerged: striving for total victory, defined as the return of all lands held by Russia, even including (in some iterations) Crimea. Such a maximalist outcome is the least likely to come to fruition without enormous cost, since it seems credible enough that Russia would be willing to use a tactical nuclear weapon or two to prevent it
it is stupefying that the West’s maximalists see nothing wrong with coming dangerously close to allowing their own foreign policy to be outsourced to a state almost entirely dependent on the West’s largess to keep pursuing a goal of total victory, as defined above.
But even such hints of sobriety have often been accompanied by ante-upping public statements. These not only tactically undercut the pursuit of a policy of relative restraint (or at least escalation beyond the point of no return), but they will also make it more difficult to advocate down the road for an outcome that falls sort of what the Kremlin effectually would consider to be unconditional surrender.
https://nationalinterest.org/feature/henry-kissinger-and-ending-conflict-over-ukraine-202774
