The Realist Case for Ukraine

The Singular Opportunity of the Russo-Ukrainian War

Photo by Barry Weatherall on Unsplash

The Russo-Ukrainian War is now in its fifth month and the response from NATO remains strategically incoherent.  Russia has blundered in initiating this conflict.  Its shambolic military performance has not only given Ukraine a fighting chance at survival, but it also presents NATO a singular opportunity to reshape the security situation in Europe for decades.  If NATO collectively, and the United States in particular, has the leadership and political will to act decisively it may reorder the European military situation in ways not seen since 1991. 

The realist case for this action depends not on high-minded moral arguments about the sovereignty, safety, or freedoms of the Ukrainian people, however persuasive they might be.  Rather the rationale for assisting Ukraine rests on the fact that Russia is a threat to the US and NATO.  Moreover, the stronger Russia is when NATO is forced to confront People’s Republic of China (PRC), the more perilous the strategic situation for the collective democracies of the world will be.  The potential to neuter the conventional military capacity of Russia, using Ukraine as a proxy and in relative isolation from the PRC, is a unique opportunity NATO cannot afford to overlook.

The primary driver of NATO involvement in the Russo-Ukrainian War must be the global strategic contest between the US and its various allies, and the authoritarian governments of the world that have loosely coalesced around the Russian Federation and the PRC.  The United States is certainly in an effective cold war with the PRC, whether or not either government will officially acknowledge it.  Strategic jockeying for position and allies within the Pacific, Africa, and Latin America have all become well noted points of concern for national security analysts in the United States.  Economic competition, supply chain vulnerability, and especially economic dependency are dangers that have finally begun to be recognized post-COVID in the free world.  Finally, the FBI has recently given ample evidence that Communist Chinese intelligence services regard the United States as a prime target and have done so for some time.  Our two nations are in conflict.

This conflict has not yet involved overt hostilities, and the economic links between our two nations are significant.  Nevertheless, the PRC has predictably set itself against the United States and its interests around the globe.  Considering the ambitions of the Communist Chinese, and the massive disparity between our respective systems of government and societal worldviews, this was inevitable.  The PRC wishes to exert power globally and the US as the reigning hegemon stands in its way.  Given this state of enmity, the United States and our allies must look to weaken the PRC whenever the opportunity presents itself.  This includes targeting potential allies that might assist it in any future clash with the United States, whatever form such conflicts may take.

Enter the Russian Federation.  The Soviet Union and now Vladimir Putin’s Russia, have had extensive dealings with the PRC over the last seventy plus years.  This relationship has not always been friendly, but as it stands today both nations are united by their distrust and contempt for the free world if nothing else.  Any action taken by one that undermines the existing world order will, at least tacitly, be supported by the other.  It is in their mutual interest.

Clear evidence of this already exists as it relates to the Russo-Ukrainian War.  The PRC, along with India, is assisting Russia financially by purchasing increased volumes of fossil fuels.  Further, the PRC has agreed to assist Moscow by providing microchips that had become scarce after the embargo levied by most western chip manufacturers shortly after the start of the war.  Russian precision munitions, among other systems, depend on imported microchips and have been assessed to be in short supply of late.  As the war progresses other means of material and financial support from the PRC to Russia are possible.  The only impediment will be the perceptions of the war and its outcome as seen from Beijing.

The reason for this is simple: Russian use of aggressive warfare as a tool of state policy undermines the rules based international order established by the collective West after the Second World War.  This is to the PRCs benefit, as it seeks to upend that order and replace it with one in which the PRC plays the dominant role.  Should Russia win, the free world will be humiliated and the illusion of compulsory adherence to “international law” shattered.  Should Russia lose, it will have few friends in the developed world and will likely come to rely on the PRC to rebuild itself.  Either way, the Communist Chinese benefit.

Similarly, an undefeated Russia could be expected to provide assistance to the PRC in the event of any conflict between the PRC and the United States.  If the United States is weakened in the world, and if the bulk of Europe remains militarily decrepit and Russian fossil fuel dependent, Russia will gain a freer hand to exercise its revanchist impulses in Europe unhindered.  Neither nation enjoys the status quo, both are willing to use or underwrite the use of force to weaken it.

Unfortunately for Russia, Vladimir Putin blundered badly in his invasion of Ukraine.  Instead of an easy three-day drive to Kyiv and light resistance by the local population, Putin is now in the middle of a protracted land war that has claimed between 15,000 – 40,000 Russian dead and shows no sign of ending any time soon.  The Ukrainian Armed Forces is putting up a stiff fight, the Kyiv Government is claiming it will not cease hostilities until its pre-2014 borders are restored, and Putin is running short of personnel willing to go to war for Russian expansionism.  This is an opportunity for NATO.

The Russian military is badly led, questionably equipped, and half trained at best.  Its performance in Ukraine to date has been lackluster by any measure, and a far cry from what many western analysts assumed was a new and improved version of the feared Soviet Army.  However, Vladimir Putin refuses to cut his losses.  The Russian military continues to fight it out in Ukraine and is therefore exposed to additional damage.  It is for this reason that NATO should involve itself in the conflict: the possibility of the destruction of large portions of the Russian military in detail.

I have covered much of what I believe to be the correct form this involvement should take in other articles, but I will summarize it briefly again here.  Assistance should be indirect and/or deniable in all cases – at all costs a direct NATO/Russia clash must be avoided for fear of catastrophic escalation.  To this end, NATO should be working to train (in NATO nations) and equip the expanding Ukrainian military to western standards with western equipment provided by its constituent member states.  NATO should also provide intelligence and similar indirect operational support wherever possible.  Economically speaking sanctions without loopholes against Russia will have some effect.  The more impactful course of action for nations like the US would be to build on a crash course basis, the appropriate extraction and infrastructure facilities to produce and export fossil fuels on a massive scale to satisfy European energy requirements.  If at all possible Europe should address the monetary aspects of keeping Ukraine’s economy afloat during the war given recent US experiences with massive financial aid to Iraq and Afghanistan, the results it produced in those nations, and the negative public perceptions that have grown out of such activity.  Broadly, goal of this support is to critically damage Russia to the point that she is cannot materially aid other nations hostile to the United States for the foreseeable future, specifically the PRC.  Assisting Ukraine will target the Russian military, while sanctions and a massive surge in energy production from allied nations will negatively impact the Russian economy while loosening the energy leverage Russia holds over much of Europe. 

Strategically speaking, there are a range of acceptable outcomes that could result from this policy program.  The low end, acceptable but not ideal, would be for a protracted land war in Ukraine to maul the Russian military badly enough that Vladimir Putin is forced to come seriously to the negotiating table.  Ukraine would likely not retain Crimea under these circumstances, but recovery of the Donbas region is certainly possible in such a negotiated peace.  Russian military forces would be seriously depleted, the Russian economy damaged to some degree, and the Russian Government forced to look to its internal stability and rebuilding.  Russian recovery efforts under this scenario would likely be assisted by the PRC, and therefore the damage inflicted on Russia pre-settlement will be critical in drawing off PRC resources in the attempt to make their potential ally viable again.

Closer to ideal would be the effective destruction of the Russian military in Ukraine with indirect NATO assistance.  The Ukrainian route of Russian forces and subsequent recapture of both the Donbas and Crimea, coupled with a revitalization of the US energy sector to weaken the Russian economy, has a distinct chance of creating a major political impact within Russia.  Vladimir Putin’s power does not rest in his popularity with the average Russian.  He relies on the intelligence and security services, the Russian oligarchs, and the Russian military to remain in power.  Severely weakening all, or even two, of those groups and tying said loss of power to Putins own actions could create the basis for political change within the Russian Government.  Should Vladimir Putin be removed from his office, the offer could then be made by Ukraine and NATO for a peace settlement with a return to normalized relations under certain conditions.  Russian recognition of pre-2014 Ukrainian borders and Russian evacuation of the Kuril Islands and Kaliningrad, with the sovereignty of those two territories to be returned to Japan and decided by the inhabitants respectively, should be the starting point for those negotiations.  In return NATO, and possibly Ukraine, could then offer a return to normalized relations in all respects and a treaty guarantee of Russia’s own borders as a salve to longstanding Russian cultural paranoia surrounding western invasion.  A rejection of those baseline terms would necessitate sanctions and punitive measures remain indefinitely.  Russia can be a member of the international community, or it can be North Korea writ large.

Whatever the actual outcome, and I consider the latter possibility detailed above both almost ideal and unlikely, the goal is to maintain Ukrainian sovereignty and damage Russian military capability.  This prevents a further extending NATO’s border with Russia and the worst of the spillover repercussions of a partially occupied, badly mauled Ukrainian rump state.  It will further allow the United States to draw down its European military footprint post-war, given demonstrated Russian conventional capabilities, to focus assets on countering the PRC elsewhere.  If the PRC then wishes to retain Russia as a potential asset in a future conflict between itself and the US, it will be forced to expend resources to assist Moscow.

From a US perspective, the Russo-Ukrainian war is an opportunity to think strategically and act tactically on the world stage.  Russia is a threat to America and her allies.  The chance to cripple Russia by proxy, without directly involving those nations whose interests align with Moscow’s, is priceless.  To say nothing of the possibility of causing Vladimir Putin’s removal from power should Russian defeat be catastrophic enough.  We will either take advantage of it now, or we will face China assisted by a far more intact Russia in a future confrontation.  Whatever the cost in war materiel, it will be cheap at twice the price compared to the alternative.