Now You See It

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Middlegame

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What’s America’s strat= egy in Ukraine? Rob Lee on how the West is rediscovering t= he challenges of establishing method in the madness of conventional warfare= .

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Jeswin Thomas

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Russia’s invasion of= Ukraine last February provoked global outrage against Moscow and = support for Kyiv, both largely unaba= ted today. Western allies quickly imposed unprecedented sanctions on Russia a year ago and have sent bill= ions in defense and humanitarian aid to Ukraine since—including US$27= billion in military assistance from the United States alone. In September,= U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said that Washington’s = goal in the war was for Kyiv to liberate all sovereign territory occupied b= y Moscow.
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And yet Washington’s seemed = reluctant to provide Ukraine with the weapons it would need to meet that go= al. Last month, U.S. President Joe Biden agreed to send M-1 Abrams tanks, o= nly after Germany refused to send its Leopard 2s without the Americans pledging their commitment first. Thi= s year, the U.S. will spend more than US$815 billion on defense, further de= veloping what’s already the most powerful military in the world&mdash= ;with the most cutting-edge aircraft, tanks, missiles, ships, and logistics= tools. By all appearances, if their strategy were truly focused on repelli= ng Russian forces and re-establishing Ukraine’s internationally recog= nized borders, the Americans could supply Kyiv with much more war materiel.= So what is the U.S. strategy in Ukraine, exactly?
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Rob Lee is a seni= or fellow with the Foreign Policy Research Institute’s Eurasia Progra= m and a former Marine infantry officer. To Lee, the apparent ambiguities he= re make sense in the context of America’s competing priorities in the= conflict: defending Ukraine and keeping the war from spiraling into region= al and global chaos. These aren’t priorities the U.S. can choose, Lee= says; they’re written into the situation, and they’re constant= ly competing with one another. They’re also complicated by Moscow&rsq= uo;s disinterest in backing down or compromising, willingness to feed unlim= ited civilian conscripts into the war, and, so far, freedom from domestic c= onsequences—whether for the popularity of the war or for the Kremlin&= rsquo;s continuing grip on power.

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Eve Valentine: Wh= at would you say we know, and don’t know, about the U.S. strategy in = Ukraine?
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Rob Lee: We know = it’s driven by two priorities. One is to prevent Russia from defeatin= g Ukraine. The other is to prevent any escalation of the war that broadens = it and brings Russia into direct conflict with NATO.
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But we also know these are competi= ng objectives. As much as the U.S. and its Western allies would love to see= them realized together, they’re separate.
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For example, if Ukraine were to su= cceed to the point where it was able not just to defend the territory it he= ld when Russia invaded last year but to push back into Crimea—which t= he Russians annexed in 2014—the U.S. would see that as carrying the r= isk of a nuclear escalation from Moscow. Similarly, if Russian forces were = to get routed and start collapsing, and Moscow were to see itself as facing= domestic and international humiliation, that’s a scenario, too, that= could potentially trigger a nuclear escalation.
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Neither scenario would necessarily= mean a nuclear escalation is likely. But even if it were very low-probabil= ity, the U.S. would still have to understand it as very high-risk—as = potentially catastrophic on its own terms, and as the kind of event that co= uld force NATO directly into the breach.
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What we don’t know is how th= e U.S. will balance these competing objectives as the war evolves.
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=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09Valentine: So= , what do we know about how the U.S. is balancing the objectives so far? =09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09

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Lee: One way to t= ry to glean an answer to that question is from any patterns in U.S. militar= y support to date—and one I think we can see among them is that this = support has often been measured in response to specific difficulties the Uk= rainians have been experiencing.
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For instance, initially, the U.S. = provided Javelin and Stinger missiles, which aren’t particularly heav= y types of equipment. A lot of artillery only came in April, when Ukraine w= as running low on it. Heavier missile systems, like HIMARS, which are much = longer-range, only came in June, when disparities between Russian and Ukrai= nian munitions were becoming really apparent. But notably, when the U.S. di= d provide HIMARS, it emphasized it was not providing ATACMS, which are much= longer-range still.
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Now, there’s a lot going on = behind these calculations, and there’s a lot more going on on the gro= und while they’re being made, so you can’t read the situation e= ntirely decision-by-decision—whether it’s to provide HARM air-t= o-surface missiles last summer or, significantly, tanks now. Or for that matter, not yet to provide F-16 fi= ghter jets. You can see the overall pattern, though, as intended to signal = to Russia that the U.S. is very serious about supporting Ukraine’s se= lf-defense—but not interested in escalating the conflict any more tha= n it has to.
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Valentine: That m= ight suggest the U.S. is leaning somewhat toward the second priority—= non-escalation. Are there any patterns pointing the other way?
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Lee: There’= s reporting that suggests the Biden administration has recently become less= reticent to allow Ukraine to strike in Crimea. And Ukraine has done some o= f that, even if just with commercial drones that they’ve jerry-rigged= to use as unmanned kamikaze weapons—but there’s some evidence = suggesting a change of thinking in Washington and other NATO capitals about= what kinds of weapons can and should be provided, and what the escalation = risks really are.
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That said, the context for this th= inking is fluid. The fundamental reality of the war is fluid. The situation= on the ground in Ukraine is fluid; Russia’s response to it is fluid;= and so the relative weight of the United States’ divergent prioritie= s is going to be fluid.
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Before Moscow decided to mobilize = the Russian population through involuntary conscription, for example, the m= anpower situation was favorable for Ukraine. But once the Kremlin mobilized= its population with conscripts, it gave itself a considerable manpower adv= antage. And it’s an ongoing mobilization—and there just isn&rsq= uo;t enough of a domestic backlash in Russia to threaten it. By all appeara= nces, Moscow can keep it up.
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=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09So Ukraine may have gotten eno= ugh weapons to succeed in the circumstances they were in back in August and= September, but once Russia mobilized and gave itself a much larger force&m= dash;even if it’s not very well-trained—the question became whe= ther the U.S. and the West needed to provide more and qualitatively stronge= r military capabilities in order for Ukraine to be able to overcome the cha= nge in Russian manpower. It’s just one illustration of how the priori= ty of helping Ukraine defend itself is in a shifting tension with the prior= ity of not escalating the conflict.

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Mykola Makhlai

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More from Rob Lee at The = Signal:
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=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09“Before the war = began, Moscow believed it would win fast with overwhelmingly super= ior capabilities—that the Ukrainians would just accept the invasion, = the U.S. and NATO wouldn’t get meaningfully involved, and the whole t= hing would be wildly successful. Which was all obviously very wrong. = Still, more than a year later, there are no indications that the Russians h= ave limited their ultimate objectives for the war. … Along the way, = they’ve held out hope that NATO unity would break …, and that = hasn’t happened, either. … So it’s going to be significa= ntly about endurance. And the Russians believe they can endure for longer t= han Ukraine can—with conscripts, with ammunition—and it’s= not obvious that they’ll be wrong as a long war grinds on.” =09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09
=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09“The U.S. and&nb= sp;the NATO coalition haven’t fought or supplied a real= industrial war like this in a long time. In Afghanistan and Iraq, the U.S.= obviously used a lot of munitions, but they were munitions the U.S. milita= ry could deploy at sustainable rates. A high-intensity conventional war lik= e the one in Ukraine today requires far more artillery ammunition, far more= precision-guided missiles—the kinds of thing the U.S. hasn’t h= ad to test its defense industry on in a very long time. For decades, at lea= st, if not going back to the Second World War.”
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=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09“In Europe, coll= ective security is stronger than it was before the war. I think th= ere’s a recognition now, among the U.S. and its European allies, that= large-scale conventional war isn’t just a thing of the past—an= d that Russia, in particular, is going to be a significant adversary and th= reat for the foreseeable future. So we’ve seen Finland and Sweden joi= n NATO; there’s going to be no question in the long term about whethe= r Ukraine will join NATO; and everyone’s relearning the value of hard= military power. A lot of the thinking in Washington and the capitals of Eu= rope will be changing about what kinds of surprises they might encounter ne= xt and how to be ready for them.”

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