World War III Begins With Forgetting

by Stephen Wertheim, New York Times, 03 December 2022

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In March, as President Biden was facing pressure to intensify U.S. involvement in Ukraine, he responded by invoking the specter of World War III four times in one day.

“Direct conflict between NATO and Russia is World War III,” he said, “something we must strive to prevent.” He underscored the point hours later: “The idea that we’re going to send in offensive equipment and have planes and tanks and trains going in with American pilots and American crews — just understand, and don’t kid yourself, no matter what you all say, that’s called World War III, OK?”

More than any other presidential statement since Sept. 11, 2001, Mr. Biden’s warning signaled the start of a new era in American foreign policy. Throughout my adult life and that of most Americans today, the United States bestrode the world, essentially unchallenged and unchecked. A few years ago, it was still possible to expect a benign geopolitical future. Although “great power competition” became the watchword of Pentagonese, the phrase could as easily imply sporting rivalry as explosive conflict. Washington, Moscow, and Beijing would stiffly compete but could surely coexist.

How quaint. The United States now faces the real and regular prospect of fighting adversaries strong enough to do Americans immense harm. The post-Sept. 11 forever wars have been costly, but a true great power war — the kind that used to afflict Europe — would be something else, pitting the United States against Russia or even China, whose economic strength rivals America’s and whose military could soon as well.

This grim reality has arrived with startling rapidity. Since February, the war in Ukraine has created an acute risk of U.S. - Russia conflict. It has also vaulted a Chinese invasion of Taiwan to the forefront of American fears and increased Washington’s willingness to respond with military force. “That’s called World War III,” indeed.

Yet how many Americans can truly envision what a third world war would mean? Just as great power conflict looms again, those who witnessed the last one are disappearing. Around 1 percent of U.S. veterans of World War II remain alive to tell their stories. It is estimated that by the end of this decade, fewer than 10,000 will be left. The vast majority of Americans today are unused to enduring hardship for foreign policy choices, let alone the loss of life and wealth that direct conflict with China or Russia would bring.

Preparing the country shouldn’t begin with tanks, planes and ships. It will require a national effort of historical recovery and imagination — first and foremost to enable the American people to consider whether they wish to enter a major war if the moment of decision arrives.

Navigating great power conflict is hardly a novel challenge for the United States. By 1945, Americans had lived through two world wars. The country emerged triumphant yet sobered by its wounds. Even as the wars propelled the United States to world leadership, American leaders and citizens feared that a third world war might be as probable as it today appears unthinkable. Perhaps that is one reason a catastrophe was avoided.

For four decades, America’s postwar presidents appreciated that the next hot war would likely be worse than the last. In the nuclear age, “we will be a battlefront,” Truman said. “We can look forward to destruction here, just as the other countries in the Second World War.” This insight didn’t keep him or his successors from meddling in third-world countries, from Guatemala to Indonesia, where the Cold War was brutal. But U.S. leaders, regardless of party, recognized that if the United States and the Soviet Union squared off directly, nuclear weapons would lay waste to the American mainland.

Nuclear terror became part of American life, thanks to a purposeful effort by the government to prepare the country for the worst. The Federal Civil Defense Administration advised citizens to build bomb shelters in their backyards and keep clean homes so there would be less clutter to ignite in a nuclear blast. The film “Duck and Cover,” released in 1951, encouraged schoolchildren to act like animated turtles and hide under a makeshift shell — “a table or desk or anything else close by” — if nukes hit. By the 1960s, yellow-and-black signs for fallout shelters dotted American cities.

The specter of full-scale war kept the Cold War superpowers in check. In 1950, Truman sent U.S. troops to defend South Korea against invasion by the Communist North, but his resolve had limits. After Gen. Douglas MacArthur implored Truman to blast China and North Korea with 34 nuclear bombs, the president fired the general. Evoking the “disaster of World War II,” he told the nation: “We will not take any action which might place upon us the responsibility of initiating a general war — a third world war.”

The extreme violence of the world wars and the anticipation of a sequel also shaped President John F. Kennedy’s decisions during the Cuban missile crisis, when the Soviet Union moved to place nuclear weapons 90 miles from Florida. Kennedy, who had served in the Pacific and rescued a fellow sailor after their ship went down, grew frustrated with his military advisers for recommending preventative strikes on Soviet missile sites. Instead of opening fire, he imposed a naval blockade around Cuba and demanded that the Soviets withdraw their missiles. A one-week superpower standoff ensued. Approximately 10 million Americans fled their homes. Crowds descended on civil defense offices to find out how to survive a nuclear blast. The Soviets backed down after Kennedy secretly promised to remove U.S. Jupiter missiles from Turkey. The world had come so close to nuclear Armageddon that Kennedy, citing the danger of a third and total war, took the first steps toward détente before his death in 1963.

But memory is never static. After the Soviet Union collapsed and generations turned over, World War II was recast as a moral triumph and no longer a cautionary tale.

In the 1990s, an outpouring of film, history and literature celebrated the “greatest generation,” as journalist Tom Brokaw anointed those who won the war for America. Under their watch, the United States had saved the world and stopped the Holocaust — which retrospectively vaulted to the center of the war’s purpose, even though stopping the mass murder of European Jews was not why the United States had entered. A new generation, personally untouched by great power war, reshaped the past, revering their elders but simplifying the often varied and painful experiences of veterans.

In this context, the double lesson of the world wars — calling America to lead the world but cautioning it not to overreach — narrowed to a single-minded exhortation to sustain and even expand American power. Presidents began to invoke World War II to glorify the struggle and justify American global dominance. On the anniversary of Pearl Harbor in 1991, George H.W. Bush told the country that “isolationism flew escort for the very bombers that attacked our men 50 years ago.” Commemorating the 50th anniversary of D-Day in 1994, Bill Clinton recalled how the Allied troops gathered “like the stars of a majestic galaxy” and “unleashed their democratic fury,” fighting a battle that continued.

In 2004 the imposing World War II Memorial, one decade and $197 million in the making, went up between the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial. George W. Bush, a year into invading Iraq, gave the dedication: “The scenes of the concentration camps, the heaps of bodies and ghostly survivors, confirmed forever America’s calling to oppose the ideologies of death.” Preventing a repeat of World War II no longer involved exercising caution; it meant toppling tyrants.

Besides, why dwell on the horrors of global conflict at a time when no such thing even seemed possible? With post-Soviet Russia reeling and China poor, there were no more great powers for the United States to fight. Scholars discussed the obsolescence of major war.

It wasn’t just major war that seemed passé. So did the need to pay any significant costs for foreign policy choices. Since the Vietnam War roiled American society, leaders moved to insulate the American public from the harms of any conflict, large or small: The creation of an all-volunteer force did away with the draft; air power bombed targets from safe heights; the advent of drones allowed killing by remote control.

The deaths of more than 7,000 service members in the post-Sept. 11 wars — and approximately four times as many by suicide — devastated families and communities but were not enough to produce a Vietnam-style backlash. Likewise, although the wars have cost a whopping $8 trillion and counting, the payments have been spread over decades and passed to the future.

Not having to worry about the effects of wars — unless you enlist to fight in them — has nearly become a birthright of being American.

That birthright has come to an end. The United States is entering an era of intense great power rivalry that could escalate to large-scale conventional or nuclear war. It’s time to think through the consequences.

The “acute threat,” as the new National Security Strategy states, comes from Moscow. President Vladimir Putin controls thousands of nuclear weapons, enough to destroy civilization many times over. Since invading Ukraine, he has threatened to use them.

Mr. Putin could plausibly act on that threat under several scenarios: if U.S. or NATO forces directly enter the conflict, if he believes his rule is threatened or if Ukrainian forces verge on retaking Crimea. No one knows precisely what might prompt the Kremlin to employ a nuclear weapon, but Mr. Biden recently said that the risk of Armageddon was the highest it has been since the Cuban missile crisis.

Mr. Biden has ruled out using force to defend Ukraine. His administration is pursuing a finely tailored objective: It seeks to strengthen Ukraine’s position on the battlefield in order to strengthen its hand in peace negotiations. That goal does not commit the United States to ensuring a complete Ukrainian victory. Yet the Ukrainian Army’s recent successes have prompted American commentators to redouble their backing for Kyiv and further marginalize talk of diplomacy (not that Mr. Putin has shown any readiness to stop the killing).

If the possibility of war with Russia was not enough, U.S. relations with China are in free fall, setting up the world’s two leading powers to square off for decades to come.

Despite Mr. Biden’s caution toward Russia, he is contributing to the rising chances of conflict with China. In a series of interviews, he asserted that the United States has a commitment to defend Taiwan (in fact, it is obligated only to help arm the island) and vowed to send U.S. troops in the event of a Chinese invasion. These repeated gaffes are likely intended to deter Beijing in light of its many recent military maneuvers around the island. But especially in tandem with high-level congressional visits to Taipei, they risk implying that the United States wishes to keep Taiwan permanently separated from the mainland — a position it is hard to imagine Beijing will ever accept.

Equally important, Mr. Biden seems to be saying that defending Taiwan would be worth the price of war with China. But what would such a war entail?

A series of recent war games held by think tanks help us to imagine what it would look like: First, a war will likely last a long time and take many lives. Early on, China would have incentives to mount a massive attack with its now highly developed long-range strike capability to disable U.S. forces stationed in the Pacific. Air Force Gen. Mark D. Kelly said that China’s forces are “designed to inflict more casualties in the first 30 hours of combat than we’ve endured over the last 30 years in the Middle East.”

In most rounds of a war game recently conducted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the United States swiftly lost two aircraft carriers, each carrying at least 5,000 people, on top of hundreds of aircraft, according to reports. One participant noted that although each simulation varied, “what almost never changes is it’s a bloody mess and both sides take some terrible losses.” At some stage, those Selective Service registrations required of young American men might need to be expanded and converted into a draft.

Second, each side would be tempted to escalate. This summer, the Center for a New American Security held a war game that ended with China detonating a nuclear weapon near Hawaii. “Before they knew it,” both Washington and Beijing “had crossed key red lines, but neither was willing to back down,” the conveners concluded. Especially in a prolonged war, China could mount cyberattacks to disrupt critical American infrastructure. It might shut off the power in a major city, obstruct emergency services or bring down communications systems. A new current of fear and suspicion would course through American society, joining up with the nativism that has reverberated through national politics since Sept. 11.

The economic consequences would be equally severe. A Chinese invasion of Taiwan, which produces most of the world’s advanced semiconductors, would profoundly damage the U.S. and global economy regardless of Washington’s response. (To this end, the United States has been trying to move more semiconductor manufacturing home.) But a U.S.-China war would risk catastrophic losses. Researchers at RAND estimate that a yearlong conflict would slash America’s gross domestic product by 5 to 10 percent. By contrast, the U.S. economy contracted 2.6 percent in 2009, the worst year of the Great Recession. The gas price surge early in the Ukraine war provides only the slightest preview of what a U.S.-China war would generate. For the roughly three-fifths of Americans who currently live paycheck to paycheck, the war would come home in millions of lost jobs, wrecked retirements, high prices and shortages.

In short, a war with Russia or China would likely injure the United States on a scale without precedent in the living memory of most citizens. That, in turn, introduces profound uncertainty about how the American political system would perform. Getting in would be the easy part. More elusive is whether the public and its representatives would maintain the will to fight over far-flung territories in the face of sustained physical attack and economic calamity. When millions are thrown out of work, will they find Taiwan’s cause worth their sacrifice? Could national leaders compellingly explain why the United States was paying the grievous price of World War III?

These questions will be asked during a conflict, so they ought to be asked in advance. Even those who think the United States should fight for Ukraine or Taiwan have an interest in educating the public about the stakes of great power conflict in the nuclear and cyber age.

The last nuclear-related sign I saw, a few weeks ago, proudly declared a small liberal suburb of Washington, D.C., to be a “nuclear-free zone.” “Duck and Cover” deserves a 21st-century remake — something a bit more memorable than the Department of Homeland Security’s “Nuclear Explosion” fact sheet, which nonetheless contains sound advice. (For example, after the shock wave passes, you have 10 minutes or more to find shelter before the radioactive fallout arrives.) For every moral condemnation of adversaries’ actions, Americans should hear candid assessments of the costs of trying to stop them. A war game broadcast on “Meet the Press” in May offered one model. Even better to follow it with a peace game, showing how to avoid devastation in the first place. Without raising public awareness, political leaders risk bringing about the worst-case outcome — of waging World War III and losing it when the country recoils.

As international relations have deteriorated in recent years, critics of U.S. global primacy have frequently warned that a new cold war was brewing. I have been among them. Yet pointing to a cold war in some ways understates the danger. Relations with Russia and China are not assured to stay cold. During the original Cold War, American leaders and citizens knew that survival was not inevitable. World-rending violence remained an all-too-possible destination of the superpower contest, right up to its astonishing end in 1989.

Today the United States is again assuming the primary burden of countering the ambitions of governments in Moscow and Beijing. When it did so the first time, it lived in the shadow of world war and acted out of a frank and healthy fear of another. This time, lessons will have to be learned without that experience.

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Stephen Wertheim is a senior fellow in the American Statecraft Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and a visiting lecturer at Yale Law School and Catholic University. He is the author of “Tomorrow, the World: The Birth of U.S. Global Supremacy.”

Citation: Stephen Wertheim, "World War III Begins With Forgetting," New York Times, 03 December 2022.

Russia and Ukraine each likely suffered 100,000 troops killed or wounded, US general says

Russia and Ukraine each likely suffered 100,000 troops killed or wounded, US general says

Oren Liebermann, CNN, 10 November 2022

Joint Chiefs Chair Gen. Mark Milley, speaks at an event at The Economic Club of New York, called Russia’s invasion of Ukraine a “tremendous strategic mistake” on Wednesday November 9.

Russia has suffered more than 100,000 killed and wounded soldiers as a result of the war in Ukraine, the top US general said Wednesday evening — and Ukraine is probably looking at similar numbers.

Joint Chiefs Chair Gen. Mark Milley, speaking at an event at The Economic Club of New York, called Russia’s invasion of Ukraine a “tremendous strategic mistake” for which the country would pay “for years and years and years to come.”

The war, which began in February, has caused a tremendous amount of human suffering, Milley said, including between 15 million and 30 million refugees and about 40,000 Ukrainian civilians killed.

“You’re looking at well over 100,000 Russian soldiers killed and wounded,” Milley said. “Same thing probably on the Ukrainian side.”

Road to peace: Milley said there may be a chance to negotiate an end to the conflict if and when the front lines stabilize during winter.

 “When there’s an opportunity to negotiate, when peace can be achieved, seize it,” Milley said. “Seize the moment.”

But if negotiations never materialized or failed, Milley said the United States would continue to arm Ukraine, even as outright military victory for either side looks increasingly unlikely.

“There has to be a mutual recognition that military victory is probably in the true sense of the word may be not achievable through military means, and therefore you need to turn to other means,” he said.

Kherson withdrawal: Milley also said the US was seeing initial indications that Russia was indeed pulling out of Kherson, as they had stated. But he said the withdrawal of up to 30,000 Russian troops from the west bank of the Dnipro River could take days or even weeks.
 

“I believe they’re doing it in order to preserve their force, to re-establish defensive lines south of the river, but that remains to be seen,” Milley said. “Right now, the early indicators are they’re doing what they say they’re doing and we’re seeing those early indicators.”

Citation: Oren Liebermann, "Russia and Ukraine each likely suffered 100,000 troops killed or wounded, US general says," CNN, 10 November 2022, https://edition.cnn.com/europe/live-news/russia-ukraine-war-news-11-10-22/h_75bb61257924b161cf87f399616dc9bd

The Ukraine War Will End With Negotiations

by Emma Ashford, Foreign Affairs, 31 October 2022

By late August 2022, the West’s focus on Russia’s war in Ukraine was diminishing. The two sides were bogged down in an extended stalemate, freeing Western leaders from making difficult choices or thinking too hard about the future of the conflict. Events since early September — dramatic Ukrainian gains, followed by Russian mobilization, annexations, missile attacks on civilian areas, and nuclear threats — have shattered that illusion, pushing the war into a new and more dangerous phase.

Since the start of the war, the Biden administration has effectively maintained a balanced realpolitik approach: arming and funding Ukraine, yet continuing to make clear that the United States will not engage directly in the conflict. But the administration has avoided talking about one crucial area of war strategy altogether: how it might end. Experts and policymakers who have suggested that the United States should also support diplomatic efforts aimed at a negotiated settlement have been treated as naïve or borderline treasonous. Driving the administration’s skittishness about endgames, then, are questions of morality: many argue that it is immoral to push Ukraine toward a settlement.

But nearly all wars end in negotiations. Moscow’s escalation this fall raises the twin specters of a broader war with NATO and of the use of nuclear weapons. The global economic costs of the conflict are already enormous and will almost certainly increase with the onset of winter. Even if a negotiated end to the war seems impossible today, the Biden administration should begin to raise — both publicly and to its partners — the difficult questions that such an approach would entail. It must think through the right timing to push for negotiations and at what point the costs of continuing to fight will outweigh the benefits. In seeking a sustainable settlement, the administration must also figure out how to capitalize on Ukraine’s successes without setting the stage for further conflict. To prepare for the best deal, American policymakers must maintain a common front between the West and Ukraine, take account of Ukrainian and Russian domestic politics, and embrace flexibility, particularly in working out which sanctions against Russia can be lifted without strengthening Putin’s regime. If the administration does not prepare soon, it may find its carefully calibrated response to the war being overtaken by a dangerous fantasy of absolute victory.

NOT IF, BUT HOW

In the eight months since the Russian invasion, the Biden administration’s support has allowed Ukraine to retake territory and inflict heavy damage on Russian forces while keeping the risk of large-scale escalation relatively low. The administration has also carefully avoided talking about what comes next, claiming that it is up to Ukrainians to decide what is in their best interest. But maintaining that position is becoming more difficult now that Russian President Vladimir Putin has doubled down on the war and made blatant nuclear threats against the West. Putin has chosen to take significant new risks rather than to back down, suggesting that this war will not end through simple Russian capitulation. Though these risks seem manageable for now, the time may come when negotiations are necessary to forestall catastrophe.

At the same time, the economic fallout of the war is rapidly growing. In Ukraine, public finances have been ravaged; the country is running out of cash. As the economic historian Adam Tooze put it in September, “Unless Ukraine’s allies step up their financial assistance, there is every reason to fear both a social and a political crisis on the home front.” Europe, meanwhile, is trapped in its own tightening noose, as surging energy prices exacerbate inflation and raise the prospect of a deep recession. All this makes the administration’s position—that Kyiv alone will decide when the war ends—increasingly untenable.

In reality, the question is not whether negotiations are needed to end the war but when and how they should unfold. Yet policymakers must contend with a Catch-22: the better Ukrainian forces perform on the battlefield, the more difficult it is to discuss a negotiated settlement, even though it is to Ukraine’s advantage to negotiate from a position of strength. As the risk of Russian escalation grows, so does the prospect that any Western leader who talks about ending the war will be portrayed as unrealistic, immoral, or caving to “nuclear blackmail.” But internal discussions on acceptable settlement terms now would better position all parties when the opportunity for such a deal does arise.

DURABLE, NOT MAXIMAL

To lay the groundwork for a settlement, American policymakers must act to ensure that American, European, and Ukrainian interests do not diverge. Ukrainian interests are not necessarily identical to those of its Western partners. For Kyiv, the stakes are higher, and—with the Ukrainian economy already in a shambles — it may determine that it has little to lose in risking escalation or continuing the war. But Ukraine’s efforts are made possible by Western arms, funding, and intelligence. European states are bearing substantial economic costs from the war. And any risk of escalation or nuclear exchange poses a direct threat to the West itself. Ukraine’s Western backers have a strong stake in the war; they should have a say in how it ends.

This does not mean that the West should push Ukraine to concede, as some have argued. But it does suggest that the United States and its partners should provide future aid with an eye to putting Ukraine in the best negotiating position, not simply continuing the war. For example, Ukraine and its allies must focus on core interests, such as preserving Ukraine’s sovereignty and protecting its population. These goals should be narrow by design: rather than trying to retake all its pre-2014 territory or to punish Russian leaders, Ukraine should pursue objectives that are less likely to produce dramatic escalation and more likely to result in a durable peace. Washington should encourage pursuing those objectives, and should also make clear to Kyiv, at least in private, where the limits of American support lie and what the White House perceives as unacceptable escalation risks. Setting clear expectations now reduces the risk of misperception in Kyiv.

American policymakers must also consider Ukrainian and Russian domestic politics, since internal support in both countries will be vital to making any settlement last. History suggests that a power transition in Moscow is possible but by no means likely or inevitable. Thus, policymakers need to focus on Putin and the small group of elites around him and consider what settlement they might be willing to accept. Given Putin’s mobilization of several hundred thousand additional frontline troops, it seems increasingly clear that he will seek to avoid a complete, devastating loss at any cost. But like many other authoritarians before him, he can sell a poor result as a win. This means that it may be possible to find some face-saving deal in which de facto realities, such as Russian legal control of Crimea, could be recognized, and which the Kremlin could portray to the Russian public as genuine concessions by the West.

In Kyiv, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky faces a more open, contentious political environment, as the divisions of Ukrainian politics begin to reemerge. Nonetheless, he faces a similar dilemma. Ukraine’s population has become more unified since February, rallying around a national struggle against invasion. After asking so much of Ukrainians, the Ukrainian government will find it difficult to compromise in any way that seems to reward the enemy. If Zelensky accepts an unpopular settlement, it could lead to his defeat at the ballot box. In these circumstances, a deal in which Ukrainians feel that they have largely triumphed is more likely to succeed. This makes it all the more important to manage expectations now. Washington should encourage Kyiv to take a more moderate stance on issues, such as Crimea, that are likely to figure in a future settlement; to tone down triumphalist talk; and to emphasize the economic rewards that Ukraine stands to receive through international reconstruction aid and European economic integration under a settlement.

Ukraine’s Western backers should have a say in how the war ends.

Policymakers should set clear basic parameters for a settlement but have significant flexibility in many details. A few points are nonnegotiable. Paramount among them are Ukraine’s sovereignty and the protection of Ukrainian citizens, particularly those who wish to leave Russian occupied territory. But there are other issues on which flexibility is possible. Final territorial borders, for example, may be determined partly by military gains on the ground. Policymakers should not be irrevocably devoted to the pre-February 24, or even pre-2014, status quo. A more territorially compact Ukraine, shorn of Crimea and some of the Donbas—both of which retain some pro-Russian populations—might be more stable and defensible.

And in general, policymakers should seek to prioritize practical outcomes over abstract principles. An independent sovereign Ukraine that can defend itself and integrate economically with Europe, for example, would be far preferable to a Ukraine with permanent territorial disputes within its borders. The situation in Ukraine remains dynamic; U.S. policymakers should avoid tying their own hands now with declarations that may be hard to achieve in practice.

Meanwhile, sanctions relief is likely to be one of the most important but politically fraught parts of any negotiation for Western policymakers. Sanctions tend to turn into permanent features of international politics, even though their economic and political impact weakens over time. They are therefore often more useful as bargaining chips than as permanent punishment. Policymakers should think carefully now about how to use sanctions relief to obtain Russian concessions. Throughout the war, Western sanctions have served two goals: short-term punishment for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and long-term weakening of Russia’s military machine.

Some sanctions relief for Russia will likely be a prerequisite for a successful peace deal, but policymakers should think carefully about which sanctions are worth lifting. Allowing Russia to repatriate some of its foreign exchange reserves, for example, might be helpful as part of a deal because it is attractive to the Kremlin for short-term economic stabilization and because keeping these reserves frozen does little to weaken Russia’s economy over the long term. In contrast, export controls imposed on Russia should serve to limit the country’s defense industrial base in the longer term; they should be maintained, if possible. Policymakers should also embrace thorough plans for phasing, in which Russia concretely concedes or withdraws in exchange for gradual sanctions relief—something that was notably absent from the failed Minsk agreements.

KNOW WHEN TO HOLD ’EM

There are three circumstances in which it may make sense for the United States to push for a settlement. The first is if Ukrainian forces continue to achieve significant success and leadership in Kyiv begins to talk about liberating Crimea. Given the importance of Crimea to Russian leaders, such a goal substantially raises the risk that Putin will resort to the use of nuclear weapons, damaging norms against nuclear use and directly endangering the United States or — more likely — its NATO allies.

The second is if Russian forces regain the initiative and retake significant territory, particularly if they begin to advance out of the Donbas. This would suggest that Russian mobilization has worked and that a settlement may be necessary to maintain Ukraine’s sovereignty. The third is if the two sides become locked in another stalemate, with neither able to regain the advantage. In such a situation, Europe and the United States and even Russia and Ukraine may conclude that it is no longer worth bearing the substantial costs of continuing the war.

At first glance, it may seem strange that U.S. policymakers should consider a settlement when Ukraine is winning, when it is losing, and when it is doing neither. And each of the situations outlined above would likely produce wildly different settlements. But what connects all three is that, in each, battlefield outcomes point to a relative consensus around which a settlement could be built. Today, the battlefield is still dynamic; both parties think they are going to triumph. A settlement will become possible only when the outcome on the battlefield becomes more apparent. Until then, robust Western support can help ensure that the first of these scenarios is the most likely.

Recent airstrikes against Kyiv and other major Ukrainian cities suggest that Russia may be contemplating greater escalation. There are substantial risks and costs to a widening conflict; even if it is not yet the time to negotiate, policymakers need to explore now the circumstances under which the United States would push for an end to the war. They should think through how to effectively leverage sanctions and battlefield gains to put Ukraine in the best position at the negotiating table. And perhaps most important, policymakers in Washington should communicate the results of these discussions to Kyiv and to European capitals in order to avoid potentially dangerous divergences in national interest among Ukraine and its Western partners.

All wars end. By raising now the crucial questions that will need to be addressed in the case of Russia’s war in Ukraine, policymakers can guard against unwanted escalation and ensure a more robust and stable settlement when the time finally comes. Though a settlement may seem unpalatable now, only by astute and careful negotiation are Ukraine’s core interests — and the security of the region — likely to be protected for the long term.

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Emma Ashford is a Senior Fellow at the Stimson Center and an Adjunct Assistant Professor at Georgetown University. She is the author of Oil, the State, and War: The Foreign Policies of Petrostates.

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Citation: Emma Ashford,"The Ukraine War Will End With Negotiations," Foreign Affairs, 31 October 2022.  https://www.foreignaffairs.com/ukraine/ukraine-war-will-end-negotiations

It’s Time to Bring Russia and Ukraine to the Negotiating Table

by Charles A. Kupchan, New York Times, 02 November 2022  

The war in Ukraine is dangerously escalating. Ukraine is advancing on the battlefield and is growing only more determined to expel Russian troops. In the meantime, the Kremlin reinforces its beleaguered forces in eastern Ukraine, pounds Ukrainian cities and critical infrastructure, and hints at the possible use of nuclear weapons. Meanwhile, the United States and its allies are speeding more weapons to Ukraine, prepared, as the Group of 7 leading democracies recently stated, to “stand firmly with Ukraine for as long as it takes.”

Ukraine, with the West’s help, has put up a staunch and inspiring defense of its sovereignty. But the risk of a wider war between NATO and Russia is rising by the day, as is the risk that economic blowback from a prolonged war could undermine Western democracy. It is time for the United States and its allies to get directly involved in shaping Ukraine’s strategic objectives, managing the conflict, and seeking a diplomatic endgame.

So far, the West has done an admirable job of keeping its level of involvement and risk in sync with the interests at stake. President Biden has made the correct call that the defense of Ukraine is a strategic priority — but not a vital interest. That is why the United States is leading the effort to provide Ukrainians the wherewithal to defend themselves, but not directly joining the fight. Washington has allowed Kyiv to call the shots, sending economic and military support while letting Ukraine set its own war aims and design its own military strategy.

But keeping the involvement of the United States at a level proportional to its interests is getting more difficult as the war intensifies. Yes, Ukraine’s successes on the battlefield constitute welcome setbacks to the Kremlin’s predatory ambition. But even though all Russian targets are fair game as Kyiv fights for its sovereignty and territory, Ukrainian actions that substantially raise the risk of escalation may be strategically unwise. To limit the potential for a wider conflict between NATO and Russia, Washington needs Kyiv to be more transparent about its war plans and U.S. officials need more input into Kyiv’s conduct of the war.

Ukraine has already undertaken operations that have provoked President Vladimir Putin into even more reckless behavior. U.S. intelligence agencies believe that the car bombing outside Moscow in August that killed Daria Dugina, the daughter of one of Russia’s most strident ultranationalists, was authorized by parts of the Ukrainian government. Then in October, a truck bomb took down sections of the Kerch Strait Bridge connecting Crimea to Russia, and Ukraine apparently launched attacks on the Russian region of Belgorod, an area close to the border used as a staging ground for Russian troops heading to Ukraine. This past weekend, Ukrainian drones targeted ships in Russia’s Black Sea Fleet off the Crimean port city of Sevastopol.

The United States apparently did not have warning of the car bombing or bridge attack, and reportedly chastised Kyiv for the assassination of Ms. Dugina, concerned that such actions have escalatory potential but little impact on the battlefield.

The Kerch bridge is a legitimate military target; Russia built it after Moscow’s illegal annexation of Crimea in 2014 and it is a supply line for Russian forces in Ukraine. But the bridge is also of huge symbolic and political importance to Mr. Putin. He has responded with a punishing air campaign against Ukraine’s urban centers and energy and water systems, threatening Ukrainians with acute hardship as winter approaches.

The United States has avoided providing weapons systems that Kyiv could use to hit deep inside Russia proper, suggesting that Washington might well have misgivings about the recent attacks on Belgorod. U.S. officials have distanced Washington from the attack on vessels off Sevastopol, a strike that prompted Mr. Putin to temporarily suspend a United Nations-brokered deal to export Ukrainian grain, a move that risked worsening a global food crisis and further driving up food prices.

The United States and its allies have been right to help Ukraine defend itself — and they should continue to do so. But they have also been right to exercise prudent restraint to avoid war with Russia, holding back on the provision of long-range weapons, refraining from putting NATO boots on the ground, and declining Ukraine’s request for NATO enforcement of a no-flight zone. As the conflict escalates, prudent avoidance of war between NATO and Russia necessitates a next step: direct U.S. involvement in Ukraine’s operational planning.

Ukraine’s battlefield success also raises the question of how far Kyiv intends to go. President Volodymyr Zelensky seems intent on driving Russian troops from all of Ukraine, including those territories Russia occupied in 2014, Crimea and a portion of the Donbas. “We will return there,” Mr. Zelensky recently said about Crimea. “I don’t know when exactly. But we have plans, and we will return there, because this is our land and our people.” Mr. Zelensky has also forsworn any diplomacy with Russia as long as Mr. Putin is in power.

Ukraine’s war aims are morally and legally warranted, but they may not be prudent. In response to recent Ukrainian gains, Mr. Putin has doubled down, not backed down. When he announced the annexation of an additional chunk of eastern Ukraine on Sept. 30, he insisted that the people living in that region “are becoming our citizens —forever.”

A conflict that had been about the future of Ukraine has become for Mr. Putin an existential struggle for the future of Russia: “The battlefield to which fate and history have called us is the battlefield for our people, for great historical Russia, for future generations,” he declared.

Mr. Putin is raising the stakes and backing himself into a corner. Accordingly, the Kremlin’s resort to a nuclear weapon becomes a realistic option should Russian forces face full expulsion from eastern Ukraine and Crimea. If Mr. Putin crosses the nuclear line, NATO would almost certainly become directly involved in the war, with the potential for nuclear escalation.

Ukraine’s battlefield successes could go too far. If the defense of Ukraine is not worth U.S. boots on the ground, then the return of all of the Donbas and Crimea to Ukrainian control is not worth risking a new world war. Russia has already been dealt a decisive, even if not complete, strategic defeat in Ukraine. Given Ukraine’s battlefield advances, Kyiv and its NATO partners are understandably tempted to try to vanquish Russia and restore Ukraine’s full territorial integrity. But Mr. Putin’s effort to subjugate Ukraine has already failed, and pushing for Russia’s total defeat is an unnecessary gamble.

The United States and its allies also need to be concerned about the rising economic and political threat that a long war poses to Western democracy and solidarity. The trans-Atlantic community has so far shown remarkable unity and resolve in supporting Ukraine, but the West’s staying power may be fragile.

The original Cold War occurred when the West was politically healthy, enjoyed widely shared prosperity, and was anchored by ideological centrism. Today, democratic societies on both sides of the Atlantic confront political polarization, economic duress and ideological extremism. Despite the return of military rivalry with Russia and intensifying competition with China, the United States and its democratic allies in Europe remain imperiled by illiberal populism and angry and divided electorates.

The economic dislocations produced by the war are heightening the internal threats to Western democracy and straining solidarity on supporting Ukraine. Soaring inflation and looming recessions have the potential to produce toxic political effects.

Against the backdrop of rising prices, Republicans appear poised to take control of the House in the midterms. The ranks of a new Republican majority in Congress would likely include a growing number of representatives hailing from the “America First” wing of the party. J. D. Vance, Ohio’s Republican candidate for the Senate, holds views of the war in Ukraine that may be emblematic of what is to come. “I don’t really care what happens to Ukraine one way or another,” Mr. Vance said in an interview in February. Although he later backtracked and insisted that “we want the Ukrainians to be successful,” Vance is not alone in having misgivings about the costs of supporting Kyiv; Kevin McCarthy, the minority leader, recently said there can’t be a “blank check” for Ukraine if Republicans win control of the House.

Europeans head into winter facing spiking energy prices and potential gas shortages. A hard-right coalition that includes pro-Russian voices just took power in Italy after running a campaign focused on energy costs and inflation. In Germany and France, the political center is for now holding. But cracks have opened up in Germany’s government over the provision of heavy weapons to Ukraine, German manufacturers face unsustainable energy bills, and France is rocked by labor strikes and mass protests over the rising cost of living. This is fertile ground for both illiberal populism and the splintering of a trans-Atlantic consensus on standing up to Russian aggression in Ukraine.

Sooner rather than later, the West needs to move Ukraine and Russia from the battlefield to the negotiating table, brokering a diplomatic effort to shut the war down and arrive at a territorial settlement. A hypothetical deal between Russia and Ukraine would have two main components. First, Ukraine would back away from its intention to join NATO — an objective that has for years provoked strong Russian opposition. Russia has legitimate security concerns about NATO setting up shop on the other side of its 1,000-mile-plus border with Ukraine. NATO may be a defensive alliance, but it brings to bear aggregate military power that Moscow understandably does not want parked near its territory.

Ukraine would continue to receive arms and economic support from the West and work toward membership in the European Union, but it would formally embrace the neutral status that it adopted after separation from the Soviet Union in 1991. Earlier in the war, Mr. Zelensky himself suggested that Ukrainian neutrality could be part of a peace deal with Russia.

Second — the harder part — Moscow and Kyiv would need to arrive at a territorial settlement. A reasonable starting point for negotiations would be to aim for a Russian withdrawal to the “line of contact” that existed before Russia’s invasion began in February. Diplomacy could then focus on the ultimate disposition of Crimea and the chunk of the Donbas that Russia occupied in 2014. Both sides would need to compromise: Moscow to abandon its recently announced intention to annex a major slice of eastern Ukraine, and Kyiv to settle for an outcome that could entail less than regaining all its land.

Although such negotiations might fail to readily produce a peace deal, transitioning from war to diplomacy provides hope of ending the killing and destruction, containing the mounting risk of a wider war between Russia and NATO, and reducing harm to the global economy and democratic resilience on both sides of the Atlantic. Washington’s efforts to broker such a deal would also open up a channel of communication with Moscow, reversing the dangerous fall-off in direct U.S.-Russia contact since the invasion of Ukraine began in February.

The mounting risks that the West faces in Ukraine necessitate that the United States and its NATO partners get more involved in managing the war and in setting the table for an endgame. From Vietnam to Afghanistan to Iraq, the United States has gotten in over its head, taking on strategic commitments not warranted by the interests at stake. Helping Ukraine defend itself is worth a quite significant effort, but not one that leads to World War III or fractures Western democracy.

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Charles A. Kupchan, a professor of international affairs at Georgetown University and senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, is the author, most recently, of Isolationism: A History of America’s Efforts to Shield Itself From the World.

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Citation:  Charles A. Kupchan, "It’s Time to Bring Russia and Ukraine to the Negotiating Table," New York Times, 02 November 2022  https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/02/opinion/russia-ukraine-negotiation.html

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