Two weeks into Vladimir Putin’s murderous invasion of Ukraine, there are growing calls in Europe and the United States for the NATO allies to declare a no-fly zone over the battlefield.
On Tuesday, 27 foreign-policy luminaries including distinguished soldiers such as Ben Hodges, a former commanding general of U.S. Army Europe, and Philip Breedlove, a former supreme allied commander Europe, signed an open letter calling for a “limited No-Fly Zone over Ukraine” that would begin by protecting so-called humanitarian corridors.
Hodges, Breedlove, and their colleagues should know better. A no-fly zone over Ukraine — limited or otherwise — would be a serious mistake. Such a declaration would be the start of open war with Russia.
“NATO leaders,” the letter’s authors write, “should convey to Russian officials that they do not seek direct confrontation with Russian forces, but they must also make clear that they will not countenance Russian attacks on civilian areas.”
But it is hard to imagine that a “U.S.-NATO enforced” no-fly zone could avoid direct confrontation with Russian forces. Allied warplanes would, by necessity, be forced to intercept and engage Russian aircraft. And, in a contested battlespace, American pilots would likely be shot at by anti-air batteries on the ground. Unless the Russians unilaterally surrendered — which, again, is highly improbable — we would need to conduct a coordinated, high-intensity Suppression of Enemy Air Defenses campaign to protect our pilots. We would be bombing, shooting at, and launching cruise missiles at Russian radar operators, gun crews, and missile batteries on the ground. Russians would die. Americans would die.
Make no mistake, the imposition of a no-fly zone over Ukraine could well result in the most intense combat to control the skies since the Korean War.
Regardless, the Russians are not winning this war due to air power, and we shouldn’t assume that a no-fly zone would meaningfully change the operational situation. Indeed, with the Ukrainian air force still fighting, the Russians have not even established total air superiority after two weeks of combat.
Moreover, once a nation declares a no-fly zone in a conflict, it owns the war. Assuming we succeeded in establishing a no-fly zone, the Russians would turn to their vast superiority in ground-based artillery and rockets to continue their devastating attacks on Ukrainian civilians. The calls to widen our intervention would begin immediately, and the pressure to act would be intense.
It would go too far to say that Putin is looking for an open fight with NATO. Putin knows that the majority of his combat power is committed to Ukraine. He knows that he would lose a conventional war with NATO. But he would not hesitate to fight NATO in Ukraine, especially if he could pin the blame for any escalation on the United States. Russian military doctrine welcomes escalation — even nuclear escalation — in a bid to bully an opponent into submission. We don’t have to guess here: Putin warned the West on Saturday that Russia would view any nation declaring a no-fly zone “as participants of the military conflict.”
We should not give Vladimir Putin the obvious opportunity to “escalate to deescalate.”
For these reasons, a no-fly zone over Ukraine — limited or otherwise — would be a colossal failure to see more than one move ahead. Moreover, this decision is of such gravity that Congress should not leave it up to President Biden. Congress should move to exercise its constitutional authority by passing a resolution in both houses directing the president to ask permission before declaring what would be fundamentally an act of war against the Russian Federation. We can scarcely think of a better occasion for Congress to reassert its constitutional authority over the decision to declare war.
The United States and its allies should do everything possible short of open conflict with Russia to assist the Ukrainians in their fight to save their country. This means facilitating the transfer of supplies and weapons of all kinds — even Allied fighter jets and armed drones — to Ukraine as quickly as possible. It means providing real-time intelligence to the Ukrainian armed forces. It means quietly but meaningfully assisting democracy advocates in Russia and encouraging those inside the regime who may oppose Putin, assistance that would be made more difficult in the event of direct conflict with NATO, which would — so far as this can be predicted — be likely to encourage Russians to rally around their flag. Fighting Ukrainians, fellow Slavs with long historical and cultural connections to Russia, is one thing; seeing Russians shot out of the skies by American jets would be quite another. Such scenes would also, however dishonestly, be used by Putin as “proof” that he was right about NATO’s intentions all along.
“Speak softly and carry a big stick,” Teddy Roosevelt once advised. A limited no-fly zone would be the opposite.