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November 18, 2024 - 9:00am
President Joe Biden has approved Ukraine’s use of long-range US weapons for strikes against military targets inside Russia. It might seem contradictory, but this decision actually helps his successor Donald Trump’s looming effort to negotiate an end to the war in Ukraine.
Biden’s actions will mean Ukraine can use the ATACMS missile system to reach targets up to 190 miles inside Russia. The UK and France, which have been pushing the US President to make this decision for more than a year now, are highly likely to provide Ukraine with approval to use their own Storm Shadow/SCALP missiles against Russian targets. They were hesitant to do so without prior US approval, due to the risk of allowing Vladimir Putin to fragment Nato’s deterrent posture. But what does this development mean for the future of the war?
At the tactical level, the main benefit for Ukraine is that it can now damage far more key targets in Russia. What’s more, the very threat of these weapons will force Russian and North Korean military units of all kinds to take far greater precautions in concealing their whereabouts.
At the military-strategic level, however, the benefit for Ukraine is relatively limited, as these weapons can’t make up for Russia’s far greater supply of troops and munitions. Still, the weapons offer the incoming Trump administration new leverage to pressure Russia into accepting a peace deal compatible with Ukraine’s long-term sovereignty. When he enters office in January, Trump can now tell Putin that he will keep sending missiles to Ukraine until Russia makes concessions. The President-elect has already indicated that he is aware of the need to impose this pressure on the Kremlin. But by taking this decision now, Biden affords Trump leverage while ensuring that Putin’s anger falls on his outgoing presidency rather than the one set to replace it.
Critics of this decision will warn that it increases the risk of a direct US or Nato confrontation with Russia. Yet it is not Nato which has escalated this conflict. Russia has done just that with its deliberate attacks on apartment buildings and paediatric hospitals, its enjoining of North Korea into the conflict, and its broader campaign of sabotage, arson and act-of-war plots against the West.
These critics have also forgotten a key lesson from the Cold War. Namely, that while deference toward escalation concerns is always important, this must be measured against strategic realities rather than Kremlin rhetoric alone. Putin’s nuclear threats aside, Russia is not going to start a conflict with Nato over this decision for the same reason it did not start a conflict with Nato during the Cold War. Biden’s decision does not threaten Russia’s sovereign existence or Putin’s hold on power, and the Russian President knows he would badly lose both a conventional war and a nuclear war with Nato. To restrict aid to Ukraine simply because of Putin’s rhetoric would allow Russia to secure significant US concessions; in such a scenario, America would have practically no leverage.
A viable peace between Ukraine and Russia is possible, but only if it includes guardrails for Ukrainian sovereignty and mechanisms to prevent Moscow from simply using a deal to reconstitute its forces for a future attack. In that regard, Trump should thank Biden for what he has done here. By playing the hawk, the President has given his successor a chance to offer Putin a choice: does Russia want to face a good cop, or yet another bad cop?
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Subscribe“…and the Russian President knows he would badly lose … a nuclear war with Nato.”
When I read things like this, I am truly curious – perhaps my fellow commentators can help me.
Isn’t it the case that Russia possesses a vast arsenal of ICBMs as well as a fleet of nuclear submarines, which if they launch can destroy all if not most of America’s and Europe’s cities, with no real prospect for missile interception?
So the endgame of a nuclear war with Russia is that everyone loses?
Or am I missing something here? Does Tom know something I don’t?
Or does he just say this $h1t because it fits his narrative and he doesn’t care to think?
Or perhaps he believes in the power of America’s ‘poker stare down’ so much that he is sure ‘we’ will win any bluff?
What you are missing is any anchor to reality. If you imagine this to be some hawkish neo-con warmongering article, you clearly either haven’t read it or failed to understand what it said.
If Putin wanted to start a nuclear war, he’d have done it already.
As it is, every single one of his so-called red lines has been crossed without any consequence.
I’ve never heard of a war before where one side is allowed to bomb the other, but not the reverse.
‘I’ve never heard of a war before where one side is allowed to bomb the other, but not the reverse.’
Vietnam?
Iraq, Afganistan ?
I think it’s you who doesn’t read well. I didn’t claim this was a neocon article. I made no claims about the article whatsoever.
I simply picked up on the author’s statement that in a nuclear war, Russia would lose badly. On the face of it, it’s a curious choice of words, because everything I have learned about nuclear war suggests everyone would lose badly. So I questioned why he would write such a thing.
The author didn’t say, “a nuclear war, which we would all lose, would not happen because Putin would not pull that particular trigger (we know this because his other red lines were crossed already)”, and if he had said that, my comment would have been different.
Work on your reading skills.
Russia would be foolish to trust any deal proffered by the West, as exemplified by the Minsk Agreements.
Quite how a peaceful resolution to this total eff up can be achieved remains unclear.
Is the author arguing that these escalations by both sides are escalations to nowhere? The escalations will never reach a wider war? Or, more accurately, reach a defeat of either side?
If the escalations will never reach a defeat of the other side, how much value do they have as a bargaining chip? If the escalations by one side only reinforce the claims of the other, how do these escalations help towards a negotiated settlement?
During the Cold War, NATO was unconcerned about Russian domination of Eastern Europe. NATO did not support the uprisings against Soviet power in Eastern Europe.
Those weren’t invasions of independent countries though. They were already within the Soviet empire (which ended in 1989-91). Invading independent Ukraine is in a totally different category. So it should be no surprise that the Western reaction is different.
Besides which, I think it’s far from the truth to say that NATO was “unconcerned” about Soviet/Russian domination of Eastern Europe from 1945-89. They were extremely concerned. But realised there was nothing they could practically do in the short or medium term. So they ground them down over 40 years. For which the peoples of Eastern Europe are very thankful.
What the author is saying seems eminently sensible.
And there will be no wider war.
If the escalations by one side only reinforce the claims of the other, how do these escalations help towards a negotiated settlement?
Yes, I read this article with interest, but I couldn’t really understand the logic in the 4th paragraph which assumes that this escalation will help to get a peace deal and extract concessions from Russia. To achieve either of those things, Russia needs to be willing to come to the negotiation table – which it might not be if the US keeps upping the ante.
So I thank the author for the alternative view, but I’m sticking with my existing one that this is was a shortsighted and silly thing to do that won’t bring any advantages for hthe Ukraine/the West at large. Most likely, it will simply extend the war, costing more lives and more resources.