Ukraine and the West’s ‘Lack of Will’

The New York Times published an odd op-ed from Anastasia Edel today. Among other things, Edel complains that “the West” isn’t doing enough for Ukraine and that Russia is winning only because of a lack of Western will. She writes, “Despite having the resources to end this war on Ukraine’s terms, the West clearly lacks the will to win.” Needless to say, Edel doesn’t precisely define what she means by Ukraine’s terms or winning, but she seems confident that victory would be possible if Western governments weren’t so half-hearted. The reality is that Western governments are not going to act as if they are engaged in an existential fight when they are not, and it is a mistake to try to build a policy around the hope that they might.

Hawks frequently complain that Washington hasn’t given Ukraine enough assistance to “win,” but this has never made much sense. Given Ukrainian manpower shortfalls and the inherent difficulty of retaking all lost territories from entrenched Russian forces, winning on Ukraine’s terms isn’t a real option. While “the West” has substantial economic resources it can draw on, Western states are not directly fighting in the war and they are not going to dedicate resources to it as if they were. The “lack of will” that Edel criticizes is unavoidable when the U.S. and its allies have much less of a stake in the conflict. The heart of Edel’s argument is that the U.S. and its allies should pretend that the war is far more important to them than it really is.

Edel chides Western leaders because they “continue to treat the war as a localized conflict in which they have few obligations,” but the reality is that Western governments have gone above and beyond any obligations they had to Ukraine by sustaining the war effort for all this time. She criticizes the “equivocal West” for not matching Russia’s war mobilization, but this simply reflects the imbalance in interests and resolve that have been present in this conflict from the beginning. Some Western leaders have tried to mask that imbalance by exaggerating the stakes in their rhetoric to make it seem as if the entire world hung in the balance, but the resources they are committing to the war don’t line up with what they say is on the line.

The second part of Edel’s argument is mostly a litany of all the terrible things that will supposedly befall the U.S. and the world if the war doesn’t go well for Ukraine. I don’t find most of these predictions all that plausible, but the purpose of the litany is to try to browbeat Americans into…well, it’s not clear what Edel thinks we are supposed to do to avert this outcome. She seems to think that it is “only” a problem of political will, as if we can summon more of it out of nowhere. Even so, it’s not clear what the U.S. and its allies are expected to do with all this new willpower beyond delivering military assistance more quickly and with fewer conditions.

Edel faults sanctions enforcement for not being strict enough, but cracking down on trade with Russia would have far-reaching negative consequences of its own. I would have expected her argument to end with a demand for direct intervention of some kind, but she doesn’t call for this. This is the flaw of a lot of hawkish “do more” arguments in which the author denounces the current policy for not being aggressive enough without being willing to endorse the escalation that the argument clearly implies. That is usually because even the hawks know that there is no appetite in the U.S. or anywhere else for the costs of waging a major war.

Edel writes, “By first casting its lot with Ukraine and then failing to follow through, America has lost its place as the bulwark of the West that can guarantee protection and peace to its allies.” That greatly overstates the case. Ukraine isn’t even an ally of the United States, but it has received an extraordinary level of military assistance anyway. Charging the U.S. with “failing to follow through” is a strange accusation when the U.S. has gone far beyond what anyone might have reasonably expected before February 2022. What does Edel think following through would have looked like?

The right course for the U.S. now is to encourage the Ukrainian government to lock in the gains it has made by pursuing a negotiated compromise to end the fighting. That won’t be the resounding victory that hawks demand, but it would halt a devastating conflict and give Ukraine the time and space to begin to recover from its losses. Restoring peace is its own kind of victory, and we should pursue that goal when we can.