How the U.S. Should — and Should Not — Continue to Support Ukraine

It may well turn out that the United States cannot, consistent with its own interests, give Zelensky the means to get his entire country back.

B ack in May of last year, I outlined the reasons why the United States should support Ukraine in resisting the Russian invasion. Briefly, Russia under Vladimir Putin has for the last 20 years made itself a global adversary of the United States by launching cyberattacks and sponsoring cyber-syndicate crime, threatening NATO allies in Europe, wreaking havoc in Syria, supporting Iran in its regional ambitions, and expressing in word and deed its “unlimited friendship” for China, which is a peer competitor of the United States with designs on global hegemony.

It was therefore very much in America’s interest to frustrate Russia’s ambitions in Europe and weaken the will and power of the Russian state to threaten the United States elsewhere. Supporting Ukraine had the additional advantage of putting us on the side of the good guys in resisting an unprovoked invasion that has been conducted with the savagery that characterizes Vladimir Putin’s approach to the world.

So far, the war has turned out better than anyone could have hoped. But Ukraine’s surprising success on the battlefield, coupled with Russian war crimes, has understandably led the Ukrainian government to pursue ambitious war aims that are, or at least could be, in tension with the interests of the United States.

From the American perspective, Russia has already suffered a stunning defeat. It is isolated diplomatically and damaged economically. Its leadership is challenged at home and has lost credibility abroad; its industrial base is in distress; its army has been exposed, and it has suffered losses in men and matériel that will take years to replace, if they are replaceable at all.

Putin’s strategic goal was to divide NATO and increase the danger to the Baltic allies; instead NATO has emerged more united, and now will be enlarged with the inclusion of Sweden and Finland, two countries with substantial military capabilities. Moreover, the war has pushed our European allies to spend at least somewhat more on defense, and to step away from the climate policies that had compromised the alliance by making some of its most important members dependent on Russian oil and natural gas.

All in all, Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine was, for Russia, an error of such magnitude that it deserves a place on the Mount Rushmore of strategic blunders.

But the fact that Russia has lost does not mean that Ukraine has won.

Ukraine wants to recover all the territory Russia has sliced away from it since 2014, including Donetsk and Luhansk provinces; it also seeks reparations and the establishment of a war-crimes tribunal to prosecute Russian commanders for their brutality against Ukraine. Obviously, Putin will never agree to anything like those terms, unless forced to by losses on the battlefield that Ukraine is unlikely to be able to inflict.

Russia seems, finally, to be learning from its mistakes. It is still conducting a largely pointless offensive against Bakhmut but is otherwise going on the defensive. It conducted an orderly retreat from Kherson and has prepared defenses in depth east of the Dnipro. Its mobilization last fall, though poorly executed, has enabled it to increase manning levels along its lines. To be sure, many of the new troops are badly trained and equipped, but it is easier in war to defend than to attack, and Ukraine cannot count on the advantage of surprise in any future offensives. (For a thorough review of the current state of the war, and the possibilities going forward, see this excellent article by Michael Kofman of the Center for New American Security.)

So what should be U.S. policy now?

First, the Ukrainians deserve a fair chance to achieve their goals. We should continue to provide them the arms they need, including systems we have previously withheld, such as tanks, aircraft, air-defense systems, and longer-range missiles that will extend the reach of their attacks against Russian forces and logistics nodes, and even military targets in Russia itself. Perhaps the Ukrainian army can indeed regain the Donbas; at this point, I would not put anything past them. But even smaller successes will pressure Putin to end the war and also assist in establishing ceasefire lines that are militarily defensible in the future.

PHOTOS: Volodymyr Zelensky in Washington

I should add that if the Russians manage to reconstitute their forces and launch a major offensive — a small but cognizable risk — we should do everything reasonably possible to ensure that Ukraine doesn’t lose on Putin’s terms. The last thing we need after the Afghanistan disaster is to abandon another ally.

Yet we should also continue signaling that our support for Ukraine’s goals is not open-ended. Solidarity does not mean a blank check to continue fighting indefinitely over a largely static battlefield. That would consume stocks of ammunition that are needed elsewhere, divert funds that ought to be used for building up our own armed forces, and increase the devastation to Ukraine and therefore the cost of rebuilding after the war is over — all without getting Ukraine much more territory than they now control.

In other words, it may well turn out that the United States cannot, consistent with its own interests, give Zelensky the means to get his entire country back. But we should commit ourselves to establishing real security for Ukraine once the war is over, including the possibility of admitting Ukraine to NATO in return for yielding some territory to Russia.

Yes, that would mean enlarging the responsibilities of NATO. But Ukraine has reduced the burden of those responsibilities by degrading Russian combat power, probably for years to come. Besides, the Ukrainian army is obviously highly capable and now has more experience fighting in something like maneuver warfare — the most likely kind of war if NATO ever actually engaged Russia — than most NATO members do. Adding those soldiers to the NATO mix would be a significant net gain for the alliance, and it would show that the United States is willing to act firmly to deter aggression, whether the aggressors like it or not.

That is a message we need to send. War is always tragic, but the greatest tragedy of this one is that it might well have been avoided if NATO had long ago done what it is planning to do now: establish a permanent military base in Eastern Europe as a bulwark against Russian aggression.

Instead, NATO countries cut their defense budgets and drew down their forces, even as Putin was stepping up his aggressions. Consider this: In 2013, five years after Russia had detached two provinces from Georgia, the United States did not have a working tank in Europe, and as recently as four years ago, long after Putin had begun his attempt to dismember Ukraine, the German army was so short on rifles that its soldiers were forced to train with broomsticks.

Is it any wonder that Putin believed the West would fold if Russia invaded Ukraine?

As I wrote in May, the war in Ukraine is about a lot more than a heroic people determined to defend their way of life. It is also about the ability of the West, and in particular the United States, to protect its vital national interests by sustaining the tools of our own power and acting in concert with other countries that have similar objectives and interests.

In other words, peace through robust strength and collective security. It’s not an easy or inexpensive strategy, but it’s a lot better than the alternatives.

We pursued that strategy during the Cold War, and as a result defeated the Soviets without ever having to fight them face to face. We haven’t done it since; we’ve allowed our power to atrophy while blundering from one disaster to another. If we can’t do it now, the next war — and everyone knows where that is likely to occur — will make Ukraine look like a skirmish, and will require a lot more from us than sending money and missiles and cheering on the good guys from the sidelines.