Is the Biden Administration ready to put a cap on the Russia-Ukraine war?
John Mearsheimer and various other military and political analysts have been pointing out for months that with the failure of Ukraine’s 2023 counteroffensive to recapture large amounts of territory or to deliver major military setbacks to the Russian forces, that Ukraine is stuck in a 1914-style war of attrition. And that Russia has major advantages over Ukraine in such a war: number of soldiers, size of the economy, population, arms industry.
Apart from the legalities and practical motivations that led up to the war, and regardless of how many hostile adjectives the West can apply to Vladimir Putin, this war in which Ukraine is fighting at a serious disadvantage is being fought on Ukrainian territory. And the longer the war of attrition continues, the more damage that Ukraine will suffer in lives, destruction of property, and continuing harm to their economy (even though economic stabilization of Ukraine in 2023 seems to have gone well under the circumstances).
It’s a long-standing line for defenders of Israel’s foreign policy to say that “some problems just don’t have a solution.” It’s often paired with comments such as, “Americans like to think that all problems have a solution, but …” What that means, of course, is just that Israel has no intention of resolving whatever particular problem is at issue in a way that the US or other allies will find acceptable.
That kind of comment sounds cynical when it comes from the militarily more powerful player in a conflict - which is certainly the case for Israel in the current Israel-Gaza War - than it does when applied to the unquestionably weaker side, which is the case with Ukraine in relation to Russia. At some point, saying that we can’t achieve all that we need to achieve in any short term and/or at a cost we are willing to accept may be the best option to the current problem. North and South Korea provide an obvious case of that. So do Taiwan and mainland China. None of those four entities would say today they are completely happy with the results even decades later. But those agreements ended the wars involved.
Wars also have a huge subjective element: patriotism, rage, hate, fear, pride, bravery. It has been common, even for people who long ago thought that Ukraine’s prospects were dim for retaking the territory it lost in 2022 and/or 2014 to point to the practical reality that when wars come to an end short of one side completely defeating the other, a formal armistice or peace (or at least an end to fighting) would come when both sides decide that continuing the war would be more disadvantageous than ending it. Like all such broad generalizations, it doesn’t always match up neatly with real-world events. But in cases like North and South Korea, that’s pretty much what happened.
NBC is reporting today that NATO now seems to be at that point in the Russia-Ukraine War:
U.S. and European officials have begun quietly talking to the Ukrainian government about what possible peace negotiations with Russia might entail to end the war, according to one current senior U.S. official and one former senior U.S. official familiar with the discussions.
The conversations have included very broad outlines of what Ukraine might need to give up to reach a deal, the officials said. Some of the talks, which officials described as delicate, took place last month during a meeting of representatives from more than 50 nations supporting Ukraine, including NATO members, known as the Ukraine Defense Contact Group, the officials said.
The discussions are an acknowledgment of the dynamics militarily on the ground in Ukraine and politically in the U.S. and Europe, officials said.1 [my emphasis]
The ritual declarations from NATO capitals that Ukraine and only Ukraine get to decide on how to negotiate an end to the conflict were a standard but transparent piece of routine diplomatic hypocrisy (and actually a mild one since it was so obviously phony).
This article could be a “trial balloon” to test public opinion reaction. But it looks like the Biden Administration may be ready to “cut bait” on continuing the war indefinitely. Of course, like the old saying that even LBJ knew before committing to a full-on war in Vietnam puts it, "It's a hell of a lot easier to start a war than to get out of one."
Even if Ukraine's government agrees with that position, they will have to take a public position that the gutless NATO countries let them down. Which wouldn't be hard even with continuing cooperation with the US, since NATO members Poland, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania are constantly officially grumbling that the other NATO countries aren't doing enough. The US and Germany are the ones they typically accuse of being slackers. Here’s a current example from Krisjanis Karins the Foreign Minister of Latvia.2 It’s notable here that he is pushing for a two-state solution in Israel-Palestine at the same time he is calling for more support for Ukraine against Russia:
Still, this NBC story is the clearest indication I’ve seen since Russia’s invasion last year that the US wants to put the Russia-Ukraine conflict into the deep freeze:
Some U.S. military officials have privately begun using the term “stalemate” to describe the current battle in Ukraine, with some saying it may come down to which side can maintain a military force the longest. Neither side is making large strides on the battlefield, which some U.S. officials now describe as a war of inches. Officials also have privately said Ukraine likely only has until the end of the year or shortly thereafter before more urgent discussions about peace negotiations should begin. U.S. officials have shared their views on such a timeline with European allies, officials said.
This is what “realists” like Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt have been stressing for months and months. So have “restrainers” like Anatol Lieven and several others at the Quincy Institute’s Responsible Statecraft.
Of course, this also takes place as Israel is engaged in a new, still-intensifying war against Palestinians in Gaza. It’s already very ugly and is likely to get much uglier. The Middle East for the Biden Administration is a more urgent priority than (non-NATO member) Ukraine.3 And, more broadly, the official top strategic priority for this US government is containing the expansion of China’s influence in the East.
The Republican position on Ukraine has been muddled, at best. In the most practical sense, once the 2022 invasion happened, the NATO countries’ assistance to Ukraine was a practical necessity. Which does not mean that NATO’s expansion had no role in provoking a Russian response. It obviously did.
I see the Republican reluctance on aid to Ukraine as being primarily (1) making mischief for a Democratic administration, and (2) Trumpista-style isolationist tendencies.
Old Right isolationism, a tricky element in antiwar opinion
There has always been a hardcore rightwing sentiment that even in the 1950s was opposed to the US being in NATO and was emphatically against the United Nations even existing. The John Birch Society was one part of that trend, which for a long time after the Second World War was called the Old Right, because they were a throwback to the prewar rightwing isolationists like Charles Lindbergh.
Ron Radosh wrote a history of some of the leading lights of Old Right isolationism in the immediate postwar period, Prophets on the Right (1975).4 Radosh was a former New Left writer who at that point was rebrandning himself as a rightwinger in the typical I-use-to-be-a-leftie-but-now-I’ve-seen-the-light fashion. The characters he sketched were mostly a real rogues’ gallery: Charles Beard, Oswald Garrison Villard, Robert Taft, John Flynn, and Lawrence Dennis. Lawrence Dennis was known in the 1930s and 1940s as the leading theorist of National Socialism in the US. Beard and Taft were quite such freaks as the rest of that group.
While Old Right isolationist positions sometimes overlap with those of more seriously peace-oriented and internationalist views, their fundamental outlook is mostly hardcore nationalism and militarism. One long-time example of this is the Antiwar.com site which still uses an old-fashioned “accumulator” format. It links to a wide variety of antiwar stories and analyses. But it is published by the Randolph Bourne Institute, a rightwing libertarian group. The American Conservative is another source that takes a similar outlook. But both sites do publish sources that someone to the left of Joe Manchin wouldn’t have to hold their noses while reading.
Emily Tankin did a brief and helpful analysis in 2019 of the left-right overlap on antiwar foreign policy.5 Her analysis presents the Quincy Institute as a substantive instance of such crossover cooperation. And I have found that to be true.
In the case of the Republicans today, I try to be cautious about picking up the persistent Democratic habit of blaming Russia-Russia-Russia for everything aggravating about Republican foreign policy position. But many Trumpistas like Tucker Carlson obviously share a lot of Putinist mode of thinking on political issues, and they tend to see Russia in a less negative light than Democrats at the moment.
In the abstract, that’s not good or bad in itself. In one sense, all of foreign policy is about picking which countries to side with as opposed to others, which fortunately is usually about other things than war. The real problem with the Republican Party on foreign policy is that they tend to be both nationalistic and militaristic. And they are actually significantly influenced by the Christian Right which supports such policies, particularly but not only when it comes to Israel.
But still…
However bad or weird the Republicans’ motivations may be, it’s notable that this latest public position by the Biden Administration comes as the Republican House voted to not include aid to Ukraine in the military assistance bill it just recently sent to the Senate. And when public opinion is shifting to at least lower enthusiasm for continued military aid to Ukraine.
I hope Democrats remember that in the future when (and if!) they are opposing some military action by a Presidential Administration.
Kube, Courtney et al (2023): U.S., European officials broach topic of peace negotiations with Ukraine, sources say. NBC News 11/04/2023. <https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/us-european-officials-broach-topic-peace-negotiations-ukraine-sources-rcna123628> (Accessed: 2023-04-11).
Latvian Foreign Minister: EU should 'raise its voice' to push for two-state solution in Middle East. DW [Deutsche Welle] YouTube channel. (Accessed: 2023-04-11).
The US also does not have a mutual-defense treaty with Israel. But in practice, there is a strong bipartisan commitment for what is euphemistically referred to as “Israel’s right to defend itself.” Official rhetoric aside, Israel has been unwilling to accept a mtual-defense treaty with the US because it would obviously require specifying what borders are going to be defended. And since 1967, that has been a chronic problem.
Radosh, Ronald (1975): Prophets on the Right: Profiles of Conservative Critics of American Globalism. By Ronald Radosh. New York: Simon and Schuste.
See also: Richard A. Melanson (1978): Book Review. American Political Science Review 72:2 (June 1978), 701-702.
Tamkin, Emily (2019): The Moral Dilemma of a Left-Right Antiwar Alliance. The Soapox (New Republic) 10/11/2019. <https://newrepublic.com/article/155348/moral-dilemma-left-right-antiwar-alliance> (Accessed: 2023-04-11).