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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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SubscribeRussia 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.
Ukraine was “an independent country”? So not owned by Blackrock and friends…and not having had a duly elected President overthrown….
That President had to go! He was a Russian stooge!
So concerned was the West about Eastern Europe it, via Roosevelt and Churchill, gave Polish territory to Ukraine and allowed Russian territory to leap a hundred miles eastwards…
Such concern Eastern Europe could probably do without. The concern is now allowing the devastation of Ukraine and the killing of huge numbers of young Ukrainians because it disliked the peace agreement that was imminent.
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.
Escalation now which can be used as a bargaining chip when trump gets in.
I think it’s a stretch to say the least.
I think what the Americans and UK forget is that, short of all out nuclear war, Russia’s endurance of the consequences of escalation will be far greater than the West’s as demonstrated by 27 million Russian dead in the World War 2.
“…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 ?
Iraq and Afghanistan were allowed to bomb us. Their governments never had any such policy forbidding it nor did anyone else. They just weren’t able to bomb us because of the massive difference in military capability. It’s not the same at all. Wars where one side possesses an overwhelming strategic advantage tend to be fought almost entirely on the weaker nation’s territory and are fairly common. In Vietnam we had a similar advantage but disallowed ourselves from many offensive actions that might have altered the outcome of the war and ensured that most of the fighting actually took place on the territory of our allies in that conflict. See the difference?
There was no restriction on Vietnam bombing the US, other than its logistical inability to do so. The term “allowed” doesn’t come into it.
The Viet Cong and North Vietnam were backed by both the Soviet Union and the PRC. Both those countries chose not to take the risk of sending bombers to attack South Vietnam for fear of escalating the conflict into a larger war.
You confuse allowed with “being able to”.
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.
Yes Russia would do a lot of damage, but it would also be turned into a catastrophic wasteland.
If both sides lose then Russia still loses. The population of America and Europe is also much more geographically spread, it would take a lot more missiles to inflict the same levels of damage as NATO could do with a few missiles aimed at Russias western border
Lavrov: “what use is the world without Russia?”
That’s perfectly clear. He is an old style Soviet diplomat, and if Russia loses it will ensure everyone loses. Europe would be a radioactive wasteland and the USA crippled. China wins without having even “played”.
No sane person would risk this.
Exactly right!
Well, he may have meant that everyone loses a nuclear war, and he may have been extrapolating the likely effectiveness of decades old ICBMs from the performance of other decades old military ordnance in the Ukraine conflict or from the overall effectiveness of Putin’s military, which is not very. They’re barely winning a war in which they have nearly every tactical and economic advantage and very little of the old Soviet era stuff that both Ukraine and Russia have been very ineffective. The reality is neither US nor former Soviet weapons are as effective on a per cost basis as strapping explosives to hundreds of cheap commercial drones, but at least the hideously expensive American weapons do actually work and do the thing they’re supposed to be able to do, which is more than we can say of much of Russia’s military hardware.
Then again he may be under the delusion that the missile defense systems that we use to protect Israel will save the US from an all out ICBM attack, which would be a pretty foolish assumption. It’s an apples and oranges comparison between the short range missiles used by terrorist cells and the long range or space based ICBMs that carry the real threat of nuclear annihilation.
Finally, he may assume that when he says a ‘nuclear’ war he means that both sides will use tactical battlefield nuclear weapons for legitimate military targets only but refrain from using their ICBMs en masse against civilian targets and population centers of the opposite side, which, when you stop and think about it, is a reasonable possibility. Neither side can launch a massive ICBM strike without the other side knowing about it soon enough to fire their own ICBMs and triggering MAD, but either side can make isolated use of tactical nuclear weapons against battlefield targets without the other side necessarily knowing immediately or being able to counter with an ICBM strike. Still that does nothing to deter them from launching ICBMs afterwards, but they’d be destroying themselves as well. Its far more likely they’d respond with a similar strike against the other side. The logistics for that scenario work regardless of which side goes nuclear first. In that narrowly defined possibility, if either of the two sides are willing to push the envelope that far, he’s probably right. US weapons are by and large still better than their Russian equivalents, nuclear or otherwise.
If nuclear weapons are used, the final scenario is the most likely given the motivations and strategies of all involved, but war is uncertain, and the risk of triggering annihilation is real. It’s more likely that even tactical nuclear weapons wouldn’t be used at all and both sides would fight a traditional, tactical warfare with limited strategies and goals designed to force the other side to negotiate rather than the doctrine of ‘unconditional surrender’ as in WWII. A full scale nuclear exchange is unlikely, but not impossible. In that event, the US is in a slightly better position to survive in some form for some period of time given that our population is more evenly distributed over a wider area (Russia is larger but a significant percentage of that is harsh and barely populated wasteland), our military forces are spread across bases all over the map and our infrastructure isn’t as concentrated into a few targets, but even discussing such things seems insane. We’re playing a dangerous game.
If you’ve read news reports on Russia’s war with Ukraine, you’ve undoubtedly seen many articles pointing out the deficiencies in their conventional arms, e.g.: tanks, aircraft, dud artillery shells, etc. That’s why Ukraine has been successful in thwarting Putin’s efforts to conquer their entire country.
The examples demonstrate that Russia’s defense industry is both corrupt and incapable of fielding effective weapons systems they’d previously claimed were of the premier, first tier sort.
Russia’s GDP is about the same as that of New York State in the United States. They’ve had to recondition ancient tanks to supply their troops, as they can’t build modern ones to replace their losses.
What does this all mean?
It means that, like the Soviet Union near the end of the Cold War, Russia’s strategic weapons are certainly in a sad state of repair. The Soviets seldom, if ever, had 10% of their ICBM equipped submarines deployed outside their ports due to insufficiently trained crews, lack of spare parts, and overall poor maintenance. Recently one of Russia’s front line submarines showed up in Cuba as part of a four ship task force with large sections of its outer plating falling off, or absent altogether.
Nuclear weapons themselves require regular maintenance. You can search recent articles that show the United States is planning to spend tens of billions of dollars over the next ten years simply to insure their nuclear delivery systems work. Russia has nowhere near the money or expertise to maintain their nuclear arsenal. And, more importantly, the rampant corruption in their defense industry evident in their war with Ukraine undoubtedly extends to the special materials (like tritium) needed make hydrogen bombs go BOOM! Most, if not all, of that stuff, plus the electronics and fuel have been sold off by the military and the oligarchs to fund their retirements.
Putin would be lucky if any of his strategic weapons work as designed. I suspect he knows this which is why he continues to bluster.
No one is his right mind would ever want to risk a nuclear confrontation. Nevertheless, it would be foolish to fail to appreciate that the Russian leader’s bluster is just that. And considering the war crimes of which the Russians are guilty in their war with Ukraine, one would hope the world can muster sufficient courage to confront a toothless tiger’s ongoing monstrous aggression without taking undue counsel of its fears.
Yeah, it’s okay for the civilized world to sacrfice a nation, one more, again. That’s why Putin continues Russia’s assaults on various nations and ethnic groups. Keep in mind that Putin doesn’t want to perish just as much as you do, if not more.
Like most dictators, he seems particularly scared of meeting his end in the same way that Mussolini of Gaddafi did.
Judging by the parlous state of the rest of Russia’s military, there is every chance that many of those ICBMs won’t work.
Would you bet your life on it, Martin?
Well, I’m not prepared to bow down to a barbaric people ruled by a warmongering tyrant, so sure. Bring it on.
Do you even hear yourself?
When have you ever had to bow – figuratively or literally – to anyone except maybe your British monarch? When? Give me a date?
And is it now the ridiculous talking point that the Russian people are ‘barbaric’? What evidence do you have of this? Like, seriously, do you even know what the words you use mean?
How about this?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_crimes_in_the_Russian_invasion_of_Ukraine
or this?
https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2022/10/un-commission-concludes-war-crimes-have-been-committed-ukraine-expresses
or this?
https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2024/11/ukraine-russian-strikes-amounting-to-war-crimes-continue-to-kill-and-injure-children/
or this?
https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/R/R47762
Obviously, this last one from the Congressional Research Service is merely Ukrainian propaganda.
Trump must put an end to the Obama-Biden administration’s reckless proxy war against Russia in Ukraine ASAP. Americans overwhelmingly chose Trump to halt this dangerous game of Russian roulette between NATO and Russia—a conflict that benefits no one, least of all the poor Ukrainians being used as cannon fodder.
Even if that happens, somebody needs to keep up the proxy war against Russia. I guess it will fall to Europe in future. Fortunately, Europe is under no illusions as to what Russia is – a nation of barbarians led by a warmongering tyrant.
I agree totally, if we are not man enough, or not believe enough in Ukraine’s freedom, that we are not prepared to commit our own blood in the conflict directly with Russia then please stop using Ukraine’s young men as cannon fodder – it is a disgusting pretension.
How many of the people on this site are armchair warriors, this war is a tragedy for Ukraine.
These armchair warriors will not be the young men forced to kill each other.
Sorry, Ukraine ain’t worth it – neither side is blameless in the lead up to this conflict – stop picking sides as if one is completely blameless and the other a completely culpable.
More important that it helps the Ukrainians than that if helps Trump. And how can we know if it helps Trump when we don’t know what he has in mind?
Nah. The Dems just want to saddle the anti-war Trump administration with World War III and entrench the flow of money to the military-industrial-complex for the next four years. The establishment needs to keep the feed troughs full.
In my most cynical mind, I would agree. It’s hard to imagine the depravity of such a strategy but it cannot be ignored. It would certainly be a parting gift to the military industrial complex by the moth eaten sock puppet.
What about the depravity of what the Russians have inflicted on the Ukrainians?
Dubious argument. I suppose you could argue that the Trump administration could ride in and prevent the full destruction of the Ukraine in Russia’s retaliation for these long-range missiles.
The American people were clear that the Democrats would continue to set the world on fire if left in power.
It would be good if Ukraine could use the missiles to destroy the Kerch Bridge at some point in the next two months.
Just a thought but maybe Trump encouraged Biden to lift the restrictions to give him more leverage
It is all about posturing. Biden should have made the decision a year ago, but likely did not, as it would threaten his re-election. Now that the Democrats have lost, the correct decision has been made. Putin would lose any conflict with the West and he knows it. Now, the threat of war must be believable. Putin’s nuclear threat is a bluff.