Ukraine says its war is at a "stalemate". What should the U.S. do next?
Liberals need to stare some realities of power in the face
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In an interview with The Economist this week, the commander-in-chief of Ukraine’s armed forces delivered a message that no senior Ukrainian government official had delivered before. Western media outlets have mostly focused on the general’s admission that the war is “stalemated”, but the full interview is an even more shocking indictment of Ukraine’s prospects. Here are just a few choice quotes which, trust me, are worth reading at length:
“There will most likely be no deep and beautiful breakthrough,” he said. “Just like in the First World War we have reached the level of technology that puts us into a stalemate.”
Zaluzhny pointed out that the offensive plans of the Ukrainian Armed Forces had initially anticipated a rapid advancement of 30 kilometres per day, with the aim of overcoming Russian defensive lines.
"If you refer to NATO textbooks and our initial calculations, it should have taken us just four months to reach Crimea, engage in combat, withdraw from Crimea, and re-enter and exit the region," the commander-in-chief quoted as saying by the Economist.
However, as The Economist reported, the Ukrainian army, equipped with Western technology, finds itself mired in minefields while facing the onslaught of Russian artillery and drone attacks instead.
“First I thought there was something wrong with our commanders, so I changed some of them. Then I thought maybe our soldiers are not fit for purpose, so I moved soldiers in some brigades,” says General Zaluzhny.
“The simple fact is that we see everything the enemy is doing and they see everything we are doing. In order for us to break this deadlock, we need something new, like the gunpowder which the Chinese invented and which we are still using to kill each other,” he added.
According to his assessment, the Ukrainian military is in dire need of advancements in drone technology, electronic warfare capabilities, and equipment for clearing mines, including the integration of innovative robotic solutions.
“It is important to understand that this war cannot be won with the weapons of the past generation and outdated methods,” Zaluzhny insisted. “They will inevitably lead to delay and, as a consequence, defeat.”
However, General Zaluzhny noted that there are no indications of an imminent technological breakthrough in these areas.
The interview - deemed “stunning” by both Politico and yours truly - has come just as the U.S. Congress is debating whether and on what terms to provide a massive new tranche of aid to Kiev. Republican senators who have long been skeptical of sending more aid are jumping on the general’s words as evidence that Ukraine has no long-term plan to win the conflict and that America cannot continue to provide large-scale support indefinitely. They argue that if Ukraine can’t break out of its military stalemate without a technological breakthrough on a par with the invention of gunpowder, then surely all parties need to accept the political consequences which flow from this and look for an alternative way to end the conflict.
In the spirit of my last piece arguing that Republicans ought to be more honest about how Biden’s foreign policy actually already reflects many of the priorities they say they want, I feel compelled to say that these Republican critics have more of a point than many liberals let on.
The right, the left, and Ukraine
As long-term readers or listeners to my podcast will know, I have always adopted a somewhat heterodox position on the war in Ukraine. On the one hand, I completely condemn the vile regime of Vladimir Putin - which counts some of my friends among its victims - and its illegal invasion and occupation of Ukraine. The way that admiration for Putin has become a mark of belonging on the right, both in America and Europe, sickens me. On the other hand, I think that many liberals - both foreign-policy internationalists and liberals in domestic politics - have misread some of the long-term material factors to do with power and geography which make this an incredibly difficult conflict for Ukraine and the West to “win”.
Back when I used to teach at the UK Defense Academy, we talked endlessly about strategy - the relationship of available military means to concrete political goals. It makes no sense to envisage the ideal political end-state you want to achieve if you lack the military means to make it happen. Even worse is to not really think about political end-states at all, which is a surprisingly common failing that wartime leaders make.
Now, Ukraine’s leaders are not starry-eyed liberals - they are a tough and resilient bunch of people fighting for the survival of their homeland. They have understandably adopted the goal of liberating every last inch of it, and in his interview General Zaluzhny let on that the goal of the current counteroffensive was to reach Crimea, which has been ilegally occupied by Russia since 2014. When you’re fighting for your very survival, to paraphrase Volodymyr Zelensky, you need ammunition, not a strategic studies lecture. We shouldn’t expect Ukraine’s leaders to publicly articulate the compromises that they envisage having to make if the war doesn’t go as they planned.
It’s always rankled me somewhat, however, when people have objected to the very broaching of such considerations in Western media and policy circles. Ukraine cannot continue its fight without American and, to a lesser extent, European support. The sustainability of this support depends on the existence of some realistic relationship between the military means available - much of which is provided by the West - and the political goals sought. Yet a strange sort of omerta surrounds the very discussion of this in much of the West - an omerta which is grounded in understandable but counterproductive feelings.
Stalemate
Seeing right-wing questions about the viability of the Ukrainian war effort as grounded in a love of Vladimir Putin and a hatred of the “liberal international order”, liberals have tended to dismiss Republican critiques as grounded in bad faith. It’s a discussion that often begins and ends with righteousness - the defense of Ukraine is just, critics are simply apologists for an evil regime, and no more needs to be said. Just a few weeks before Ukraine’s commander in chief himself described the war as a “stalemate”, one prominent liberal decried the very use of this word as a moral betrayal. If only the West would do more, then the war wouldn’t be a stalemate any longer - Zelensky needs ammunition, remember?
The problem with this position is that its proponents rarely actually spell out how we will get from A to B. Ukraine’s counteroffensive was launched five months ago with broad but vague hopes, and hawks (I use the term non-pejoratively) kept up pressure on the Biden administration to send new weapon systems to Kiev as quickly as possible. Beyond this, as I wrote when the counteroffensive was launched, the West was in a position of remarkable passivity - basically waiting to see what would unfold on the battlefield and then hoping it might lead to some (still completely undefined) political solution to the conflict.
Now, we hear, the war is at a stalemate, barring a technological miracle. What is going to unfold on the battlefield is actually, in terms of changes to the military balance, not much. And the time for turning our eyes away from what this means is over.
Some prescient voices have been pointing out for a long time that we would eventually reach this point. Mark Milley, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and a chief antagonist of Donald Trump, said late last year that “there has to be a mutual recognition that a military victory is probably… not achievable through military means” and hence that the war would eventually end through negotiations. This call for a realistic strategy got him in trouble with the Biden administration, whose strategy is to not have a strategy. But the commander in chief of the Ukrainian armed forces himself just admitted the first point. How then is it possible to avoid the second?
The longer term
I think it’s also important for everyone, from Kiev to Western liberals, to realize that however twisted their motivations may be, Republicans are right when they say that American military support for Ukraine cannot last for ever.
The United States is a global superpower with interests in every corner of the Earth, most notably in Europe, Asia and the Middle East. The defense of Ukraine is an important American priority but it ultimately has to be balanced against other priorities. The Middle East is key to the global economy and the prospects of any American president because high oil prices mean difficulty getting re-elected. Asia contains China, the only semi-realistic aspirant to peer superpower status with the United States, and is likewise utterly vital for the global economy. Like it or not, the dollars and equipment and attention that America puts into defending Ukraine take those things away from these other regions. And the reverse is true too, as events in the Middle East have shown us since October 7th.
Compared to the containment of China or the protection of Israel, the defense of Ukraine also suffers from the curse of geography. Ukraine is right next to Russia, and Russian elites disparage its very claim to independence. The West’s defense of Ukraine is based on abstract principles, the defense of credibility, and humanitarian concerns. Russia’s attack, meanwhile, is based on what its leaders believe to be their key national interests. When America offered Zelensky “a ride” in the early days of the Russian invasion, it’s because Washington was acknowledging this asymmetry of concern. Russian troops were coming. American ones weren’t.
Over time, this asymmetry of interest will wear down American support for Ukraine, and eventually it will fatally undermine it. It would be better to stare reality in the face now and come up with a realistic and achievable plan to salvage as much of Ukraine’s territory and sovereignty as possible and then to deter Russia from coming back for more. The alternative - continuing to pretend that victory is just around the corner even when Ukraine’s top general tells you it isn’t - is no longer viable, and will only strengthen the narrative and hence the power of those malign forces who never wanted Ukraine to win in the first place