Imagine that a number of American cities were being bombed with Chinese missiles guided by Chinese navigational data and that, even though the missiles – Dong-Feng 15s, say – had not been fired by Chinese forces, they had been provided to the perpetrators with the express goal of bombing specified targets. Would one be justified in saying that China was at war with the US? I find it hard to believe that anyone in Washington would conclude otherwise.
It is perplexing, then, that as both the British and American governments consider authorising Ukraine to strike deep inside Russia with missiles provided by London and Washington, they simultaneously insist that there is no question of entering a war against Russia. Keir Starmer has said, “We don’t seek any conflict with Russia, that’s not our intention in the slightest.” What explains the geopolitical coyness?
One argument is that it was Russia that launched a cruel and unprovoked war on Ukraine; Kyiv’s Western partners are merely providing for its defence. The point is well taken, but it is also immaterial to the question of whether a war is taking place. Wars may be fought for the noblest of ends, as is the case with Ukraine. But I’m reluctant to call it something other than a war simply because it is just or in self-defence.
Another argument is that lifting restrictions on the use of Western weapons to strike targets in Russia is not new. Such weapons have been used to strike targets in Crimea, which Russia considers its sovereign territory. This is a much subtler idea and deserves to be taken seriously. If providing weapons to a close military partner were tantamount to entering a war, the whole world would already be in conflict. Clearly, both Britain and the US have moved a long way on the amount and type of weapons they provide for Ukraine. Does the possibility of striking targets a few hundred miles inside Russia change the military equation?
The Russian president seems to think so. When Western media outlets made those discussions public on 12 September, Vladimir Putin responded with an entirely new tone. For the first time since the war began, he claimed Britain and the US would be entering the conflict. His concern, needless to say, was not with legal definitions of war but with political and military realities. Storm Shadows are precision-guided missiles with a firing range in excess of 250 kilometres. Putin must believe that if Ukraine is granted permission to use those and similar weapons as it wishes, it will pose a challenge for Russia that differs markedly from previous supplies of equipment coming from the West.
I am always reluctant to agree with his opinions, but I’m tempted to make an exception and say that Putin has a point. Those clamouring to provide Ukraine with the capability to hit strategic targets inside Russia do so precisely because that promises to introduce a wholly new variable to the conflict, a variable capable of altering the course of the war. It is just this variable, with the new threat level it brings, that one might call an escalation of hostilities from Washington and London. To which, presumably, Putin needs to respond, as well as he can, if the threat is real and if he wants to survive. It all sounds like a euphemism for war.
The truth is that the course of the war already changed in the summer of 2023. Until then there was the hope – which I fully shared – that the conflict could both be kept within strict limits and decisively won. My models were past colonial conflicts such as the Algerian War, in which the National Liberation Front fought for independence from France, and the Cold War. In both cases, a victory became possible not through a direct clash bringing about the opponent’s destruction but through more indirect means that in the end forced the opponent to give up. Apparent stalemates were broken. Algerian militants were not forced to burn Paris in order to win independence, and the Soviet Union never used its nuclear arsenal to prevent its collapse.
Could this happen in Ukraine? Like many others, I believed that, with adequate Western support, a significant Ukrainian victory in eastern or southern Ukraine was possible, after which Russia would have to reconsider most of its goals for the invasion. Unfortunately, Western equipment and training arrived too late, at which point a golden opportunity had been missed. Russia had the time to build almost impassable fortifications and minefields across the front line, while the arrival of drone warfare on a huge scale made rapid territorial offensives inordinately difficult. The Ukrainian counteroffensive soon petered out.
By the end of last summer, many of Ukraine’s staunchest supporters had to look for a new plan. If Russia could not be defeated in Ukraine, it would have to be defeated in Russia. Military strategy and Western support would have to adapt to the new goal. These voices were reassured by their conviction that Russia was now too weak to marshal any kind of response.
Both Putin and the “hawks” dominating the Western debate agree on the importance of what is at stake: by providing Ukraine with the capacity to strike the Russian energy system, even to strike political and military decision centres inside Russia, Western democracies will effect a drastic change in the military equation. Their effort is no longer directed against the Russian invasion but against Russia itself. The hawks will argue that there is no other way to force Russia to withdraw. They have a point. On 16 September, Putin ordered the Russian army to add another 180,000 troops, which would make it the second largest in the world. It is also true – though not always publicly discussed – that the war has not been going well for Ukraine in recent months, thus sharpening the choice between increasing pressure on Moscow or accepting defeat. Perhaps not now, but inexorably as Russia’s advantages in manpower and artillery impose themselves.
Are Western democracies at war with Russia, then? Or, to be more precise, are they preparing to enter the war? Revealingly, the decision to authorise new, large-scale attacks inside Russia has been delayed, as the Biden administration ponders how momentous that step might be. When Starmer travelled to Washington in mid-September everyone took such a move for granted. But nothing was decided.
The reluctance to speak of war is understandable. But just as Putin was eventually forced to use the word – rather than referring to his invasion as a “special military operation” – it may be that the West too will be forced to stop thinking of its participation in Ukraine as a “special logistical operation”. The challenge now is to accept the risks and to remember that even wars can, and often do, remain contained – and may be fought somewhat indirectly. In the nuclear age, and between nuclear powers, they must remain contained.
If the West allows its missiles to be deployed, a new variable will have been introduced. Russia may respond in kind. For example, it may be tempted to provide Iran or the Houthis with new capacities. Is Britain prepared for the possibility that one of its warships or carriers in the Middle East might be sunk by a hypersonic missile fired from Yemen? My guess is that it is not. The first task is to prepare for those new possibilities. The second task is to think very carefully about what new limits and handrails constraining the conflict can be introduced, even as we jettison the old ones.
[See also: Is Vladimir Putin bluffing?]
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This article appears in the 18 Sep 2024 issue of the New Statesman, What’s the story?