Ukraine diplomacy in the West has long ceased to be about winning the war. It is about red lines and bargaining positions in peace talks. Joe Biden’s decision to allow Ukraine to use US-supplied ATACMS long-range missiles to strike Russian targets could take us closer to a peace deal. His more immediate purpose is to help Ukraine defend its position in the Russian oblast of Kursk, where Vladimir Putin is planning a counteroffensive with the help of North Korean soldiers. But Biden’s move will not change the course of the war. His administration leaked the news a day before it was announced on 17 November, which tells us that it’s little more than an incremental policy shift.
The Kremlin’s reaction to Biden’s decision was predictably negative, yet comparatively measured. Putin’s spokesman talked about an escalation, but he did not say Russia now considers itself to be at war with Nato. This is what Putin had threatened in September when he said that if the West allowed Ukraine to hit targets in Russia, it would constitute “direct involvement of Nato countries, the United States and European countries in the war in Ukraine”.
We are not in this scenario because neither the US nor Europe are ready for a war with Russia.
After Biden’s missile announcement, Olaf Scholz, the German chancellor, said he would not follow suit, and doubled down on his earlier decision not to dispatch Taurus cruise missiles to Ukraine. German politics may change after the February elections. But I would not expect to see any deliveries until next autumn – far too late.
Disunity and the failure to agree on military goals have bedevilled the Western alliance since the start of the war. I am struggling to discern a strategic purpose behind Biden’s latest move. Ukraine’s foray into Kursk was, in my view, a tactical mistake. Those forces would have been better deployed to defend against the Russian advance.
If the objective had been for Ukraine to liberate occupied territories, the amount of Western military aid would have to be several times what it is today. The West would have plugged the giant loopholes in its sanctions regime against Russia, such as in the Belgian port of Zeebrugge, through which large volumes of Russian liquefied natural gas reach European markets. Western support for Ukraine was always conditional, surrounded by a web of red lines. Scholz, for example, said he would not sacrifice social policies to fund Germany’s support for Ukraine.
Biden does not appear to have coordinated his decision with other Western allies, or with the president-elect, Donald Trump. The latter’s son, Donald Trump Jr, tweeted: “The military-industrial complex seems to want to make sure they get World War III going before my father has a chance to create peace and save lives.” I am not going to speculate on what Donald Trump Sr may be thinking, but that this is still the narrative in his closest circle should give us pause.
All this leads me to conclude the road towards a peace deal is more complex than Trump imagined, but we are still heading in that general direction. My hunch is that his position on Ukraine will be more nuanced compared with what he has said in the past. He will clearly not end the war in 24 hours, but he will likely break with the directionless policy of the current administration. This is why I think a deal in 2025 remains the most likely outcome.
As the Wall Street Journal reported, the outline of an eventual deal has already been delineated within the Trump team: the freezing of the current 1,100km-long battle line, with a demilitarised strip on either side. The Ukrainian territories occupied by Russia to the east of that zone would fall to Moscow. The most important part of the agreement would be that Ukraine shall not join Nato for at least 20 years. The Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, made a similar peace proposal with a Nato ban for Ukraine of at least ten years. Both the US and Germany are opposed to Ukraine joining Nato in any case, so this is not an issue likely to come up soon. Still, I am not sure it is wise to make such a big concession before negotiations even start.
For Europeans the hardest part will be to fund the peacekeeping operations after the war and Ukraine’s reconstruction. European governments will have to make fiscal sacrifices as the sums required cannot be taken out of existing budgets. I am not sure Europeans are ready for this. Everybody will find themselves confronted with the same political trade-off Scholz talked about – between domestic policies and financial support for Ukraine. Some of Ukraine’s strongest supporters seem to be living in a world in which money for weapons is unlimited. Military spending is consumption, not investment. You pay for it through higher taxes or cuts in other expenditures, not through higher debt.
You will not often hear this from me, but on this point Donald Trump is right: we need to cut a deal. This cannot go on. A judiciously executed escalation can be of help in such a situation. This may well be the upside of Biden’s decision. The change of the rules of engagement for Western missiles will not help Ukraine liberate Russian-occupied territories. But it raises Russia’s cost, and may help get Putin to the negotiating table.
The goal of our policy should be a deal, not the prolongation of a hopeless war.
[See also: Trump’s war on the “deep state”]
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This article appears in the 20 Nov 2024 issue of the New Statesman, Combat Zone