Big Risks Outweigh Modest Benefits of Greenlighting Ukraine War’s Escalation
As President Biden grapples with whether to give explicit permission for Ukraine to use long-range Western-supplied precision weapons to strike targets inside Russia, he should be asking whether the benefits would be worth the risks.
If he were to ask me, I’d say Nyet, they’re not.
I bring the perspective of an American who lived and worked in Moscow in the 1980s and 90s, first as a diplomat and later as an NGO leader. Russians were struggling to create a new national identity from a crumbling Soviet one, which in turn had been scaffolded onto centuries of Tsarist rule. It was a time of “friendship and partnership.” I was putting my graduate degree in Soviet military affairs to work managing U.S. government-funded programs to help “build democracy” and strengthen Russia’s fledgling civil society with training and other support. Many Russians and Americans alike were hopeful about the future.
I fell in love with a people’s deputy to the Moscow City Soviet, we married, and a year later I gave birth to our son in a Moscow hospital. A year after that, in the wake of NATO’s bombing of Kosovo, my husband – who had been a founding member of Russia’s “Liberal Party” – began espousing increasingly anti-American views, as he was drawn to the “Red-Browns,” a new form of Russian nationalism then emerging in the wake of the Soviet Union’s collapse. I left Russia with our toddler. Back home in Minnesota, I met and married a foreign exchange student who had been born in Kyiv to a Russian mother and Ukrainian father. His parents are still in Kyiv, along with the rest of his family. For me and people I love – as is true for millions of others – the impact of Putin’s war in Ukraine is personal.
On the day the war began, I called my ex-husband in Moscow. I told him that our now twenty-three-year-old son was confused about Putin’s “special operation,” and worried about his step-grandparents’ safety in Kyiv. He suggested I explain to our son that it was too bad his grandparents had to suffer because their elected leaders had betrayed them by fomenting fascist anti-Russian ideology and betraying the pledge of neutrality enshrined in Ukraine’s original 1991 constitution.
Six weeks later, I flew to the Polish-Ukrainian border to help war evacuees reach safety in Europe. One was a ninety-two-year-old Jew who was fleeing war for a second time, only now Germany was his sanctuary rather than his enemy. He was one of more than thirteen million Ukrainians – over three in ten – who have been displaced by the war. Not to speak of the wounded and dead. Here in Minnesota, my church was one of many to sponsor families fleeing devastation in Mariupol, Sloviansk, Kramatorsk, and elsewhere.
My conversations with Russians and Ukrainians about their experience of the war throw into sharp relief the complete absence from American discourse of any willingness to take seriously Putin’s stated reasons for sending troops into Ukraine, a decision most Russians continue to support.
Like my son’s father, many Russians agree that Putin’s “special operation” was a necessary response to mounting threats to their national security and the security of Russian-speakers in Ukraine. They point to NATO’s promise to admit Ukraine, thereby expanding the military alliance East to Russia’s very border (recall America’s response to the USSR’s moves to place missiles in Cuba). They point to billions of dollars of NATO military assistance and training for Ukraine’s army, and to the banning of Ukraine’s pro-Russian political opposition and crack-down on its leaders, to restrictions on the Moscow-affiliated Ukrainian Orthodox Church, and banning of the Russian language from Ukraine’s official public sphere. Many Ukrainians, especially in the East and South (along with my in-laws in Kyiv), also deplore these developments.
This Russian view of Putin’s attack and NATO’s role is as much an anathema to the West’s orthodox narrative of Putin’s reasons for starting the war as MAGA’s world view is to Never-Trumpers and Harris supporters.
Regrettably, the Overton window within which America’s foreign policy debate currently takes place is so distorted by partisan politics and neo-con hawks that observers and scholars who seek to unpack Russia’s worldview are labeled Russian apologists and propagandists.
Willful ignorance of an adversary’s interests and motives is dangerous. As any seasoned diplomat knows, to avoid miscalculation, Biden must contemplate his decision through Putin’s eyes.
Putin has made clear that the stakes involved in the decision of whether to lift restrictions on Ukraine’s use of western-supplied weapons are very high. As U.S. Secretary of State Blinken and British Foreign Secretary Lammy huddled recently in Kyiv and Washington D.C. to weigh Ukraine’s request, Putin warned, “If this decision is made, it would mean nothing less than the direct participation of NATO countries – the United States and European countries – in the war in Ukraine.”
The Russian President is not wrong to suggest that greenlighting the use of these weapons to strike targets inside Russia would involve NATO forces more directly in the fighting than ever before: with their GPS targeting, these ballistic missiles are dependent on a dedicated system of U.S.-controlled satellites and require U.S. military assistance to operate. As Putin reasoned, “this changes the very nature of the conflict.”
Putin may be bluffing when he says that a decision to green-light the use of these weapons inside Russia would trigger a direct war between NATO and a nuclear-armed Russia. But the chances he is not are greater than zero.
Would authorizing the use of these weapons inside Russia have a material impact on the battlefield?
U.S. Secretary of Defense Austin says No: “Long-range strikes into Russia would not turn the tide of the war in Ukraine’s favor.” The Pentagon reports that Russia already has moved bombers back to positions beyond the missiles’ range. And although moving them further away will tax Russia’s warfighting effectiveness, their use inside Russia is unlikely to materially advantage Ukraine in the long run.
Given the modest benefits and monumental risks involved in lifting restrictions on the use of Western-supplied precision missiles to attack targets inside Russia, it seems clear why Biden and his Defense Department so far have resisted pressure to do so.
As the war grinds into its third year, the overall situation on the ground is beginning to look as “frozen” as the coming winter. Ukraine’s incursion into Kursk has gotten Russia’s attention, but the associated supply lines are challenging and costly to maintain, and Ukraine has had to divert resources from defending its eastern border, where Russia’s offense continues. Enlistee recruitment is increasingly difficult and costly for both sides. Neither side can win unconditionally: only a negotiated settlement will end the war.
Rather than agree to an escalation that portends only modest benefits for unacceptable risks, Biden should use the months remaining in his presidency to put America’s considerable influence behind helping shape an off-ramp to this war. For Biden, and for the world, championing negotiations instead of escalation would be a legacy worth fighting for.
Bernadine Joselyn spent the first fifteen years of her professional life in Soviet (and then post-Soviet) Affairs. She served seven years as diplomat with the U.S. Department of State, including tours in New Delhi, Moscow, and Washington DC. After the collapse of the Soviet Union Bernadine left the diplomatic corps to work on international academic and cultural exchange programs with the International Research & Exchanges Board (IREX) and subsequently to open and lead Eurasia Foundation’s first Moscow office.