Book for Lagerstorper presents Leadership in Statecraft.Studies in Power.Edited by Kurt Almqvist, Alistair Benn, and Matthias Heserus.Read by me, Helen Lloyd.Ukraine and the Future of U.S.Global Leadership by Alina Polyakova.
On the eve of the first anniversary of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, President Joe Biden declared the U.S.would support Ukraine for as long as it takes.As the war enters its second year, the U.S.maintains its support under this motto.
American leadership has brought the Western Alliance together in support of Ukraine's fight for freedom.Europe and the United States are more united on Ukraine than on any other issue, including China.
Russia's brazen and brutal war has not only produced new-found Western solidarity, it has also forced European policymakers to prioritise security after years of neglect and divestment that left Europe's armies strained at best and completely inept at worst.
Russia's invasion was a wake-up call to Europe.
In a historic speech, three days after the event, German Chancellor Olaf Schultz called this critical moment a Zeitenwende, or turning point for German defence and security, committing 100 billion euros to Germany's defence budget.
At the 2022 NATO Summit in Madrid, the Alliance committed to a significant reinvestment in its presence on its eastern flank, including a more than sevenfold increase to 300,000 troops on high alert.
Finland and Sweden, two countries with a long history of neutrality, petitioned to join NATO, transforming the security dynamics in the Nordic-Baltic region.
Countries that had sounded the alarm on Russia's imperial ambitions, most notably Poland and the Baltic states, have been shown to be justified in their views.
Even France, where President Macron advocated for Russia's integration into Europe's security architecture, has made a U-turn, going as far as to support Ukraine's membership in NATO. For its part, the U.S.
has led the way on military and security assistance.
Since the war began, it has provided about $46.6 billion in military assistance to Ukraine, as well as weapons systems such as cluster munitions, javelins, Abrams tanks, and the Patriot air defense system.The U.S.
has also stepped in to authorize more than $110 billion of economic support. including direct assistance to Ukraine's government and economy.Even though military assistance is less than 6% of the overall U.S.
defense budget, when combined with economic assistance, its investment rivals its post-Second World War Marshall Plan outlay of approximately $150 billion in today's prices.
When faced with criticism of slow response, delayed weapons deliveries, and hand-wringing about whether one system or another would present an escalation, U.S.
government officials respond with the fact that this is the fastest release and supply of military equipment the Pentagon has carried out in decades.The hard truth, though, is that the best the U.S.
has been able to do is still not enough for Ukraine to win. Rather, as Ukraine fights to win, which for Ukrainians means a full restoration of all territorial integrity, the country only has enough resource to defend what territory it still controls.
Ukrainians feel they have no choice but to fight and to win.Yet the Western alliance, and the US in particular, has no common vision on the outcome they want to see on the ground.
In other words, the slow pace of weapon deliveries and political debates between allies send the signal that the West is not committed to their victory.
Simply put, the West made its choice to focus on avoiding escalation with Russia rather than fully supporting Ukraine to win.U.S.leaders seem yet to realize that the consequences of failure in Ukraine will be profound and deeply damaging to U.S.
global leadership in the long term. Russia's actions present a critical inflection point for the future of the U.S.-led international order.
When Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, it unleashed the first conventional war in Europe since the Second World War, and replicated tactics used in Chechnya, Grozny, and Syria against Ukrainian civilians.It challenged the underlying tenet of U.S.
grand strategy, which, at least since the Obama administration, has seen China and the Indo-Pacific as the key area for competition and contestation.It heightened the risk of nuclear escalation,
now once again a major concern for Western policymakers, and reopened discussion about NATO expansion.
Russia's violent act has made it clear that Western security rests in the security of Europe, and Europe will never be secure unless Ukraine, Europe's second-largest country by landmass, is secure.
As the history books are written, this moment will be seen as an inflection point.It will either lead to continued U.S.
global leadership, rooted in a liberal democratic vision, or it will be the moment that marks the decline of the global liberal order.Any assessment of the U.S.policy response to Ukraine must be looked at through this lens.
Presently, there are three potential ways to judge and understand U.S.policy response to Ukraine and its implications.The U.S.has done too much, done too little, or got it just right.
The level of support given to Ukraine has produced critics who believe in a binary choice between supporting Ukraine or focusing on other strategically important areas of the world.
In this view, US support for Ukraine undermines its ability to take up the broader, long-term challenge, China. The US cannot and should not take up the burden of confronting threats to its allies.
European allies should bear the brunt of deterring Russia in their neighbourhood
Proponents of the binary choice, such as American bureaucrat Elbridge Colby, argue that the US must prioritise China as the most dangerous threat to American interests in the long run, and thus cannot continue to support Ukraine at the expense of Taiwan and the Indo-Pacific region.
This assessment is misguided, both from a strategic and tactical perspective.Strategically, the U.S.cannot compete alone with China.Washington needs allies both in the Indo-Pacific and globally.
America's strongest alliance, economically and militarily, is with Europe. As the wars of the 20th century have taught us, U.S.security is deeply intertwined with and dependent upon European security.
A Europe that is not secure means a vulnerable U.S. the U.S.can and should tackle both threats by sequencing rather than choosing one or the other.As U.S.
diplomat Wes Mitchell argues, checking the more immediate Russian threat on land weakens Russia militarily.It also deters the threat of an imminent maritime conflict in the Indo-Pacific, giving the U.S.
additional time to prepare and protecting its international credibility. Tactically, Ukraine requires different military capabilities from those needed to defend Taiwan, Washington's greatest security concern when it comes to China.
There is little overlap between the U.S.capabilities needed in Ukraine and in Taiwan, due in large part to the fact that Ukraine is fighting a ground war, while defending Taiwan would require a maritime conflict. U.S.
security assistance is not a zero-sum calculus.The U.S.can mitigate the need for prioritization where capabilities do overlap.
Yet instead of a full-throttled, values-based strategy to help Ukraine win the war, US policy has settled into incrementalism.A clear pattern has emerged in the past year.
Ukrainians request a weapons system and Western governments refuse to provide it, only to change their minds a few months later after public debates and disagreements among allies.
As a result, the Ukrainians are only partially equipped, and Kiev's full war-fighting capabilities are still unknown.
Incrementalism gives Moscow what it wants—a long, drawn-out war that gives the Russian army time to adapt, and Vladimir Putin time to expand the rhetorical wiggle room over his war aims.The incrementalist U.S.
approach increases the risk of locking the West into a forever war with Russia that makes the necessary decisive victory more difficult.
Prolonging the war has allowed Moscow to mobilise nationalist sentiment, even as casualties mount and evidence of stress in Russia's ruling circles increases.
Drawing out the conflict also allows Russia to invest in its war economy, mitigating economic effects by doubling down on war production.
Its 2023 defense spending target was doubled to over $100 billion and now accounts for one-third of all public spending.The war is propping up Russia's entire economy.
If Russia is allowed to walk away with any of its ill-gotten gains in Ukraine, the deterrent power of the United States and the transatlantic alliance will be lost.
Potential aggressors would no longer need to consider a Western response before invading or threatening a neighbor.
It is vital the West is clear that anything short of the full restoration of Ukrainian sovereignty and territorial integrity will represent a catastrophic defeat for the United States and its European allies.The bottom line is that the U.S.
has crafted its policy response through a prism of avoidance.
Despite security concerns about the Indo-Pacific, the US has managed to avoid the extremes of either a nuclear confrontation with Russia or doing nothing and has landed in the middle of the two.
Just right, however, does not guarantee success in Ukraine or a good global outcome. Ukraine still lacks a strong security commitment from its allies and the transatlantic community.
It continues to suffer from delays in the delivery of Western equipment for political and logistical reasons.There is growing skepticism about U.S.
investment in Ukraine, and a continuation of the status quo without an end in sight could result in losing domestic support for the war effort. The West has repeatedly declared that it will support Ukraine for as long as it takes.
But that is a slogan, not a policy.It does not explain what the end goal is, and indeed signals to many Ukrainians that the Allies expect the war to drag on for years, with Ukraine bearing the brunt of it.
Getting it just right will not hasten Ukraine's victory if US policy remains vague and lacking in clear commitments.Basing policy on statements such as, nothing is off the table, means that nothing is exactly on the table either.
And after a year and a half of violence and bloodshed, continuing to get it just right has not resulted in an end to the war.
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