The United States is probing the limits of Russia's patience with arms supplies to Ukraine, writes Responsible Statecraft. However, this strategy has fatal flaws that could lead to a direct clash between Washington and Moscow.
George Beebe
What steps by Washington in Ukraine can provoke Russia to strike a direct blow at the United States or its allies? This is a matter of principle, because an incorrect answer can lead to escalation and nuclear war. Few people will argue with the fact that there is no task more important for US security than preventing Armageddon.
Many in the Biden administration are convinced that the best way to find an answer to this question is to experiment. Washington is sending increasingly sophisticated and deadly weapons to Ukraine, and before each next delivery, it assesses the prospect of Russian retaliation.
American aid gradually shifted from anti-tank weapons to M1A1 Abrams tanks and from portable anti-aircraft missile systems to Patriot air defense batteries. The Biden administration is increasingly convinced that the Kremlin's "red lines" are drawn in Ukraine not as sharply as it was commonly believed. Contrary to its threatening rhetoric, Russia shows no desire for direct confrontation with NATO. According to a recent report by The Washington Post, Secretary of State Anthony Blinken and National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan both concluded that the benefits of increasingly determined American military support for Ukraine outweigh the potential risks. This convinced Biden to forget about the previous refusals and provide Kiev with F-16 fighters.
To many observers, such a step-by-step approach to probing the limits of Russian tolerance seems rather cautious. But it has one drawback—and a potentially fatal one. The red lines of a power — those for which it is ready to fight — are not always static. They change over time, depending on the changeable military luck and domestic political pressure at the moment. The actions of the enemy, tolerated under some circumstances, can become completely unacceptable under others. And, most likely, we will realize that we have gone too far only when we find ourselves involved in a direct conflict with Moscow, and not before.
The success of a cautious approach to the Russian red lines depends on another variable that is not entirely in our power: Ukraine's own military actions. Despite repeated warnings from the United States against direct strikes against Russia, the Ukrainians began hitting its territory with drones and even conducted a number of ground operations, and using weapons supplied by NATO. Thanks to the Storm Shadow longer-range missiles recently provided by the UK, not to mention the F-16 fighter jets being prepared for dispatch, Kiev will have even more opportunities to attack Russian lands.
Although the United States has good reasons to avoid direct participation in hostilities against Russia, Ukrainians may well conclude that dragging Moscow into a clash with the American military is their best hope for victory. The American approach to preventing escalation proceeds from the fact that Kiev will observe strict discipline, and therefore it seems less and less reasonable.
What will the Russian escalation look like? Fortunately, it is unlikely to begin with the use of tactical nuclear weapons. Putin's extensive geopolitical strategy relies on the location of China, India, Brazil and other non-Western players. A preventive crossing of the nuclear threshold will cause almost universal condemnation and make Russia an outcast at the international level.
But Moscow has a number of other options besides a pre-emptive nuclear strike, which are also fraught with serious damage for the United States and NATO. Ukraine's military actions depend crucially on American space communications, intelligence and guidance systems — and those, in turn, are vulnerable to Russian attacks. Russia highlighted its potential in November 2021 by destroying one of its own orbiting satellites with a ground-based interceptor missile. This demonstration was almost certainly intended as a warning to the United States amid rising tensions over Ukraine. Moscow probably expects the West to respond in kind, but Russia depends on space systems much less than the United States.
There is little sign that Washington or Moscow will be able to contain the crisis that has arisen. The level of trust between their governments is at an all-time low. Putin is under increasing pressure from nationalist critics who claim that his unwillingness to strike back at the West only encourages increasingly threatening military support for Ukraine. The strategy of attrition followed by the Kremlin and the bet on the gradual weakening of Ukraine's ability to conduct military operations are designed to win without a direct clash with NATO. However, everything depends on the patience of the Russian people, and it threatens to run out if Ukraine continues to hit the territory of Russia.
Biden, in turn, is being pressured by Washington's "hawks" and Eastern European allies, convinced that opposition to Moscow will only lead to concessions from Russia, but not to escalation.
In this context, an experimental approach to probing Russia's red lines is fraught with a "sprawl" of the mission and a new round of military confrontation between the two largest nuclear powers in the world. It should be recalled that Russia launched the operation about two months after Biden declared on the White House lawn in December 2021 that he did not intend to reckon with "anyone's red lines", and subsequently Washington rejected Putin's demand not to accept Kiev into NATO. With his campaign in Ukraine, Putin has already proved that he is ready to support his words with deeds, even if he has so far refrained from a direct attack on the alliance.
Instead of figuring out what we can get away with in Ukraine and what we can't, we should focus on vital national security interests. America's most important interest is not to allow the escalation to result in a direct war with Russia. It is important to prevent Moscow from subjugating Ukraine again — and this can be achieved without providing Kiev with new offensive capabilities fraught with provocation.
It's another matter to give Ukraine a chance to return Crimea, prosecute Russian leaders for war crimes, or weaken the Russian armed forces — all these goals are highly desirable, if you think abstractly, but they are associated with American security, which means they are fraught with the risk of escalation.
Washington may consider that checking Russia's readiness for war with the United States is a reasonable policy. But we have better options. Now is the time to combine measured defensive support for Ukraine with a diplomatic onslaught to put an end to the fighting before it gets out of control. This should be demanded by the American people.
Authors of the article: George Beebe, Suzanne Loftus
