Realism Must Guide Our Reaction to Russia’s Invasion
Mr. Greer is an essayist and strategist who frequently writes about security and international affairs.
The Russian invasion of Ukraine has transformed the face of global geopolitics. Two weeks ago, the West stood distracted, uncertain and divided; now it has embarked on a determined, even frenzied, effort to stymie Russian power. The list of Western actions grows longer by the day: Some 20 countries have sent weapons to Ukraine. More than 17,000 foreign-supplied antitank weapons now flood the battlefield. Even more countries have united to levy more than 3,600 sanctions against Russian individuals and companies. Seven of Russia’s largest banks have been removed from the SWIFT interbank messaging system. The dollar and euro reserves of the Russian central bank have been frozen. American, Canadian and European airspaces have been closed to all Russian planes.
The extraordinary actions of the Western powers are a natural and proportional response to Vladimir Putin’s reckless resort to force. Yet it is precisely their naturalness that should make us wary. When disaster breaks, leaders do not have time to dissect the fine print of every policy option presented to them. Crisis cascades: Each update from the front presents decision makers with a new demand for action. In such circumstances, it is natural for the snap assessment or the emotionally charged judgment to eclipse the careful calculation of cost and benefit.
In columns and Twitter threads across the Western world, we read equally charged demands that Western governments do more to stop the Russian advance — and do it now. This too is natural, but it is also not prudent. Failure to slow down and examine the assumptions and motivations behind our choices may lead to decisions that feel right in the moment but fail to safeguard our interests, secure our values or reduce the human toll of war in the long run.
Americans should be particularly sensitive to the dangers of moral fervor and intuitive judgment overwhelming the slower, more bureaucratic processes behind most foreign policy. As the political scientist Michael Mazarr recounts in his book “Leap of Faith: Hubris, Negligence, and America’s Greatest Foreign Policy Tragedy,” an exhaustive study of the decision-making process behind the invasion of Iraq, this was exactly the reason the Bush administration blundered its way into catastrophe two decades ago.
Dr. Mazarr contrasts two modes of foreign policy decision making: The first follows what he calls a “logic of consequences.” Policymaking in this mode is concerned with the ultimate outcomes of a proposed policy; it is obsessed with managing the costs and benefits needed to secure its goal. The second approach, “the logic of appropriateness,” is driven instead by the moral imperative to do the right thing.
Even very experienced officials — such as those that led the Bush administration — can fall prey to the “logic of appropriateness” when the circumstances conspire against consequentialist thinking. Sept. 11 imbued the administration’s debates with a moral outrage that, though justified by the horror of the attacks, clouded officials’ long-term thinking. The Bush team was seized by an intuitive conviction that securing the United States from future terrorist attacks could occur only by disrupting Middle Eastern society as forcefully as the terrorists had disrupted America’s. But this judgment was never exposed to careful scrutiny. Fear of a repeat terrorist attack led the Bush administration to speed up the decision-making cycle and suspend the review process that would have forced the administration to question faulty assumptions about Saddam Hussein’s intentions or more carefully weigh the potential consequences of war. The result was that the administration seriously engaged with the consequences of its decisions only long after they had been made.
This is a danger policymakers forced by crisis to act outside formal decision-making processes face, especially if the crisis inspires the sort of indignation and horror that powered American policy after Sept. 11. The invasion of Ukraine is exactly this sort of event. Mr. Putin’s invasion is a violation of the moral norms upon which the European order stands. The maximalist language emanating from some Western capitals is a natural, if unwise, response to this sort of atrocity.
Consider the declaration by Prime Minister Boris Johnson of Britain that “Vladimir Putin’s act of aggression must fail and be seen to fail.” Language like this is more concerned with what must happen for justice to be realized than with the realistic assessment of the range of scenarios that might happen if Mr. Johnson’s preferred policies are followed. In times of crisis, pronouncements like these are a dangerous foundation for policy.
Any realistic assessment of the policy options available to the Western powers must begin with a sober appraisal of the situation on the ground — even if that means contemplating a settlement that falls short of justice. Despite the heroic resistance of Ukrainians and repeated operational blunders by the invading force, there are powerful reasons for Mr. Putin to remain optimistic about achieving his war aims. Ukraine is large; war, even the modern mechanized variety, is slow. But the most successful Russian advances have brought Russian troops more than 200 miles into Ukraine. This is approximately the distance that separates Baltimore from New York City.
Relative to NATO forces, the railway-supplied Russians are short on logistics support and heavy on artillery. Russia’s artillery battalions are the pride of its armed forces, often judged by defense experts to have a qualitative and quantitative advantage over their Western counterparts. As the besieged forces in Kharkiv and Mariupol can attest, the lethality of Russian forces will only rise as this artillery is brought to the front. A slower war of siege and starve may not have been Mr. Putin’s original invasion plan, but it poses severe difficulties for the Ukrainian forces. It is unclear how long forces in Kyiv can withstand a siege. By one American estimate, once Kyiv is surrounded, its food supplies will last for only two weeks. Ukrainian forces in the east face a similar dilemma. If Kharkiv or Zaporizhya falls into Russian hands, the Ukrainians will have to decide between abandoning eastern Ukraine for a more defensible position or risk having their supplies cut off and their position surrounded.
It is unlikely that mounting casualties or temporary logistical frustrations will be enough to force the Russians off the battlefield if either objective — the fall of Kyiv or a Ukrainian retreat from the east — remains in sight. Either will put the Russian forces in a favorable position when peace negotiations begin in earnest. To cease hostilities, the Russians have already demanded that Ukraine recognize the independence of Donetsk and Lugansk, acknowledge Russian sovereignty over Crimea and amend its Constitution to ensure future neutrality. These demands will grow more onerous as the Russian advance creeps forward. Left unspoken in these negotiations is the matter of Western sanctions. Mr. Putin will require at least a partial face-saving victory to end this war. A promise to decrease sanctions might meet this need. This outcome would not be just, but it would hold the best potential for saving the most Ukrainian lives.
Refusal to settle on the part of the Ukrainians or their Western backers will likely lead the Russians to commit to the permanent occupation of the territory they’ve taken. This is the most probable outcome of any policy predicated on inflexible Western ultimatums. In this scenario, sanctions would stay in place for decades. A new iron curtain would fall across Europe, separating Belarus, Russia and occupied Ukraine from the West. Though terrible for the Russian and Ukrainian peoples, this may be a strategically stable and even strategically advantageous state for the United States and its NATO allies.
A Russian economy stalled by sanctions will have trouble funding the expansion and modernization of the Russian military. This diminished Russia, forced to carry the military and economic costs of occupying and pacifying a resistant Ukraine, will find it difficult to repeat its aggression against other recalcitrant parts of the traditional Russian imperium, like Finland and the Baltic States. Maybe the West is willing to accept this outcome, but it carries its own risks.
Trapping a bear makes it more desperate, not less dangerous. Moscow, squeezed by sanctions and facing larger NATO military budgets, may resort to extraordinarily risky measures to forestall decline. It was precisely this logic — complete with the prospect of crushing restrictions by a superior economic power and weapons shipments to a weaker military foe — that led Hitler to Barbarossa and imperial Japan to Pearl Harbor. However, the authoritarian great powers of the 20th century, which gambled that escalating conventional military conflicts might bring Western rivals to the negotiating table before economic isolation reduced their own national power beyond repair, are unlike modern Russia in one key respect: Russia has nukes to gamble with.
This is not a simple problem. Our desire to punish Mr. Putin for the evil he has unleashed in Ukraine must be carefully balanced against the lives that will be lost the longer this war lasts, the real risks of military escalation, the long-term security needs of Europe and the second-order effects a new iron curtain might have on other parts of American foreign policy — such as U.S. security commitments in East Asia and the health of the dollar as the world’s reserve currency. To meet this challenge, we must keep our policy firmly rooted in the “logic of consequence.” Americans living generations from now will be grateful that in this moment of crisis, our policy was guided by careful calculation instead of emotional reaction.
Tanner Greer is an essayist and strategist who frequently writes about security and international affairs.