The war in Ukraine is moving into a new phase. Biden and the West had better get ready.
Over the past month, in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, President Biden has assembled the most impressive coalition since President George H.W. Bush’s skillful diplomatic efforts preceding the Gulf War. Biden has united a fractured NATO alliance, and Europeans have responded more forcefully than Vladimir Putin could have ever imagined. Russia’s economy has been shattered by unprecedented economic sanctions, and Putin’s military has been slowed by stalwart Ukrainian fighters making deadly use of NATO-supplied weapons, which are crossing the Polish-Ukrainian border at a dizzying rate.
But Putin’s war against Ukraine is now entering a dangerous new phase. Events are moving rapidly, and it’s time for Biden and his Western allies to adjust.
The horrors of Grozny and Aleppo are being visited upon the people of Ukraine and witnessed across the free world. Russian airstrikes kill civilians and reduce cities to rubble, as Putin targets children’s hospitals, nuclear power plants, cultural landmarks and residential buildings. These attacks are not indiscriminate; they are deliberate attempts to slaughter and terrorize.
Even more ominously, Russia has started a misinformation campaign about Ukrainian biological laboratories, parroted by useful idiots in the West, suggesting Russian forces could be preparing to use chemical weapons. We must brace ourselves for horrifying images of families choked to death by Putin’s deployment of those weapons of mass destruction. If Putin crosses that moral red line, the political pressure to respond will be overwhelming. Biden and his allies need to prepare for that now, in three ways:
1. Stop playing defense: Three weeks ago, only 1 in 4 Americans supported significant U.S. involvement in the war. European allies were wary of confronting Putin on a range of issues. That made Biden’s public assurances of avoiding a hot war against Russia politically necessary and diplomatically wise.
Now, 3 in 4 Americans support a no-fly zone over Ukraine. European allies have flexed their military and economic might in a way not seen since World War II. These dramatic changes allow the U.S. president to respond more aggressively to the war crimes being committed against Ukrainians.
Biden should stop telling Putin what he will not do, stop alerting him to what weapons he will not send, stop saying what strategies he will not employ and stop declaring where U.S. troops will not deploy. It is also time for NATO to stop being reactive to Putin’s ever-changing definition of what constitutes an act of war.
First, Putin claimed that trigger would be acceptance of Ukraine into NATO. Then he added the introduction of peacekeeping troops into western Ukraine. Then the transfer of Polish jets across the border, and then the shipment of defensive weapons. And then he moved the line again, declaring to young flight attendants bearing flowers that even economic sanctions against Russia were tantamount to war.
It is as if Putin expects Americans to forget the body bags flown to Dover Air Force Base because of decades of Russian proxy wars fought over decades against U.S. soldiers. Simply put, an alliance that caves to Putin’s nuclear blackmail today would be forced to respond to his chemical weapons attacks tomorrow. Enough.
2. Be disruptive: At the height of the Cold War, then-national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski observed, the Soviet Union was confined to playing a disruptive role in the world “by the nature of its one-dimensional power and by the character of nuclear weapons.” Russia upended international norms, Brzezinski noted, because it feared “being locked into the role of the junior partner in effect committed to the maintenance of the global status quo.” Almost 40 years later, little has changed. Putin threatens nuclear war, levels cities, commits war crimes and raises the specter of chemical weapons because the West rationally moves with caution to preserve the international order.
Biden should change the dynamic by employing his own disruptive tactics. The United States should move expeditiously to have the U.N. General Assembly create humanitarian safe zones in Ukraine that allow civilians to escape slaughter. Putin would be assured that the zones would not be used for military purposes; however, any force targeting civilians there would immediately become a target of U.N. peacekeepers or even NATO. While such a plan would likely cause deep discomfort inside the Biden White House, policymakers in the West may not be able to avoid such decisions for long. The only question is whether they make the move at the United Nations before or after Putin deploys chemical weapons.
3. Guard your words: Just as nothing is gained by Biden’s declarations of what the United States will not do, the same is true of U.S. officials making statements suggesting Putin has no choice but to fight to the end. While cable hosts and opinion columnists are free to call the Russian tyrant a war criminal, U.S. ambassadors to the United Nations should be more prudent. If Putin believes his future is inside a cage at The Hague, he will have no incentive to end this war. The same holds true for senior U.S. senators calling for regime change. Providing Russia’s nuclear-armed president an off-ramp from the military catastrophe he created remains the best hope for the people of Ukraine and the world.
As psychiatrist Kenneth Dekleva recently told former CIA acting director Michael Morell, “Sometimes it is better to let the bear run out of the cage back into the forest.” In the meantime, Biden should do all he can to make sure that bear cannot slaughter millions trapped inside the cage that Ukraine has become.
