It’s not only about Ukraine

Negotiations with Russia went nowhere in this first week. The US, NATO, and the OSCE failed to budge Putin from his insistence on rolling back the NATO presence in Europe and blocking forever NATO membership for Ukraine. The Russians failed to budge NATO from its insistence that the door to membership be kept open (even if both NATO and the Russians know that Ukrainian membership is not in the cards for now). The odds of war, already high, have likely gone up, not down. What now?

Unity is strength

Above all, the US and European members of NATO need to strengthen Ukraine’s military capacity. Training and equipping should continue and expand. Stefano Graziosi and James Carafano are correct to argue that

Putin fears and respects strength. He exploits weakness. Europe must cease its dithering and give him what he fears, not what he wants.

Just today the Russians apparently launched a cyberattack on Ukraine. There are also indications they are planning a false flag operation as a pretext for invasion. Europe and the US made a pretty good show this week of unity in support of Ukraine. Let’s hope that show is backed up with real weapons and training.

Russia is vulnerable

There is still much more to be done. The Russians are more active today worldwide than the Soviets, who focused less on international presence and more on the strategic standoff with the US. In some of these places, Moscow is vulnerable. Witness what happened to the Wagner proxies in Libya, where Turkish drones forced them out of Tripoli. Some of these vulnerabilities are in Russian satellites. Witness what happened in Belarus and Kazakhstan, both of which had to rely on Moscow to protect their autocrats. And there are vulnerabilities inside the Russian Federation, where the economy is stagnant. The West needs to exploit these vulnerabilities when good opportunities present themselves.

Any Russian intervention will be limited

We also need to think realistically about what Putin is likely to do. An invasion aiming at taking all of Ukraine is unlikely. The 100,000 troops Russia has already massed are not adequate. Moscow would need to increase them by fourfold or more for that purpose. Ukraine has more and far better equipped and trained forces than when Russia first invaded in 2014. Turkey has provided its cheap but effective attack drones.

Kiev has also gained popular support. This report from Kharkiv, close to the Russian border, is telling:

The Russian Army cannot expect to be welcomed in most of a country where the Soviet-imposed Holodomor famine of 1932-33 is remembered as genocidal.

Putin presumably knows this and will keep any military intervention to limited objectives commensurate with the size of his forces. One of my more knowledgeable colleagues suggests this might be the canal that supplies water from the Dnipr to Crimea, or some expansion of the insurrectionist-controlled area in Donbas.

The US will need to lead the Western reaction

That kind of limited intervention will pose a problem for the US and Europe. Should they react with the full force of the financial and technological sanctions and military assistance to Ukrainian resistance fighters that they have threatened? Even those may not be effective. Some in NATO will want to modulate downwards to match the magnitude of any limited Russian intervention. Others will argue that a disproportionate response is appropriate, to deter further offensive efforts on Russia’s part.

The US will need to play the leadership role, whatever the Russians do. The Europeans are too fragmented and compromised to reach quick decisions and implement them with rigor. President Biden has spent a year building up credibility with NATO. He will need to draw down on those credits, especially if he reverses his own decision not to continue objecting to operation of the now completed Nordstream 2 pipeline from Russia to Germany. The Germans have paused their own decision on the pipeline’s operation, but high gas prices in Europe are bringing pressure to go ahead.

Of course it would be best if Moscow backed off and accepted some of the face-saving propositions NATO is offering: limits on military exercises, missile deployments, and other classic OSCE-style confidence building measures. But hope is not a policy. The Americans need to continue to keep the Europeans in line and the Russians concerned about what an invasion of Ukraine might portend, not only in Ukraine but elsewhere as well.