If those leaked documents from the Pentagon are to be believed—and I think they are—the United States needs a plan B for Ukraine. As much as we’d all like to see the swift liberation of Ukrainian territory, the under-equipped, under-trained Ukrainian forces now gearing up for a spring offensive are unlikely to make far-reaching gains against Russia’s defenses. The administration’s bold promises of an eventual Ukrainian triumph will probably not be borne out, and Ukraine will suffer additional damage in the meantime. What Ukraine needs is peace, not a protracted war of attrition against a more populous adversary whose leader does not much care about how many lives are sacrificed in the maelstrom.
I suspect most top officials in the Biden administration understand this cruel reality, whatever they may say in public. Although anything is possible in wartime, they don’t expect Ukraine to achieve a dramatic breakthrough or the Russian army to collapse. Instead, they are hoping that Ukraine’s armed forces do well enough to convince Russian President Vladimir Putin to move toward a cease-fire and eventually negotiate a full peace agreement. (For an unofficial version of this view, see Raj Menon’s thoughtful and relatively optimistic analysis here.) If the Ukrainian offensive goes poorly, however, Putin will be in no rush to negotiate. Although Russia would also be better off if the war ended, he is unlikely to stop until his main war aim—the strategic neutralization of Ukraine—is achieved.
What to do? Since the start of the war, outsiders have hoped that China might use its influence and leverage to get Moscow to cut a deal and end the fighting. Those hopes have been disappointed thus far, in part because China has benefited from the war in several obvious ways. Western sanctions made Russia even more dependent on China, provided Beijing with oil and gas at discount prices, and prevented the United States from focusing more attention on Asia. But letting the war drag on endlessly presents problems for Beijing, too. China is eager to mend fences with Europe; get trade, investment, and advanced technology flowing unimpeded; and gradually drive a wedge between Europe and the United States. Although China’s leaders have tried to portray themselves as a disinterested party to the conflict, being one of Russia’s best friends while it assaults Ukraine undermines every one of these goals.
There is some reason to believe, therefore, that China’s leaders might like the war to end sooner rather than later, and that in the right circumstances, they would be willing to use their influence toward that end. That possibility alone ought to worry U.S. policymakers: What if Beijing followed up on its successful mediation effort between Iran and Saudi Arabia by positioning itself as the broker of peace in Ukraine? If China could pull that off—admittedly, a very big “if”—it would strengthen its efforts to portray the United States as a declining power that is better at sowing strife and conflict than at fostering cooperation, and it would burnish China’s image as a rising power genuinely devoted to peace and harmony.
So here’s a wild idea: Given that both Beijing and Washington have an interest in ending the war, the Biden administration should invite China to join it in a joint effort to bring the two sides to the bargaining table. In effect, the United States would offer to use its influence to deliver Kyiv, and Beijing would agree to use its leverage to deliver Moscow. If they succeeded, the two states would share the credit and neither could claim a propaganda victory over the other.
Sound far-fetched? Of course it does, but there are some historical precedents for this sort of great-power collaboration. At the height of the Cold War, for example, the United States and the Soviet Union jointly supported the U.N. Security Council resolutions that ended the Six-Day War in 1967 and established a cease-fire during the October War in 1973. The circumstances were somewhat similar to the situation today, insofar as both superpowers wanted the fighting to stop and each had to pressure their clients to agree. Indeed, as Galen Jackson shows in a superb new book, The Lost Peace, Soviet leaders repeatedly tried to get Washington to convene a comprehensive peace conference on the Middle East in which each would play an equal role, only to be stymied by U.S. opposition.
An agreement jointly mediated by the United States and China would also be more likely to endure, as Moscow and Kyiv would be less likely to renege on a deal arranged and blessed by their principal patrons. Thus, if China and the United States genuinely wanted to orchestrate a peace settlement in Ukraine, there is some reason to think that such an effort could succeed.
Which is not to say that it would be easy. A cease-fire might be comparatively simple to arrange, but that would leave Russia in control of most of the territory it claims to have annexed and produce an unstable frozen conflict. A genuine peace treaty would require agreement on a host of thorny issues (e.g., borders, reconstruction aid, repatriation of prisoners, accountability for war crimes, security guarantees, transit arrangements for the Black Sea and Sea of Azov, etc.), and none of them would be easy to sort out. The Biden administration would have to walk back its earlier triumphalism, and any such effort would undoubtedly prompt harsh criticism from more hawkish NATO allies, especially those in Eastern Europe, as well as resistance from some if not most Ukrainians.
Furthermore, U.S. officials might be loath to grant Beijing equal status in this endeavor, and they would undoubtedly worry that giving Beijing a role in ending the war would facilitate its re-engagement with Europe and undercut the long-term effort to unite the world’s democracies against Beijing. There are obvious risks on China’s side, too: Ending the war would leave the United States free to focus on Asia, which is probably the last thing Chinese President Xi Jinping wants.
But keeping a war going—or, more precisely, not making a serious effort to end it—is a hard position to defend in the eyes of the rest of the world. Which is why the Biden administration should take this idea seriously. At a minimum, asking China to work jointly on a peace settlement would force Beijing’s hand: Instead of limiting itself to meaningless “peace proposals” that nobody takes seriously, a U.S. offer to work with China on a joint peace initiative would force Beijing to put up or shut up. Were China to reject a sincere U.S. proposal along these lines, its purported commitment to peace would be exposed as hollow. For that reason alone, Beijing might take it seriously and agree to help. And were this initiative to succeed, it would provide a much-needed reminder of the benefits of great-power collaboration.
Would this work? I don’t know. Frankly, I suspect the circumstances aren’t propitious—at least not yet—and such a proposal would require the sort of imaginative leap that has been in short supply among American diplomats in recent years. But the main alternatives look worse and the costs of trying and failing would be modest. And if the Biden administration doesn’t like this idea, I sure hope they have a better one in mind. I can’t wait to find out what it is.