The Biden administration secretly signed off on Ukraine using U.S. weapons to strike inside Russian territory, Politico reported last week.
Though the change is limited to short-range strikes, this is "a dramatic
reversal of a long-standing precautionary measure," as a subsequent Washington Post report
summarized. It's an escalation, moving the U.S. "even deeper into a war
in which Russian President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly raised the
prospect of a nuclear strike."
The trouble, as Stimson Center scholar Emma Ashford argued on her Substack,
is that "escalation is not a substitute for strategy"—nor, as Rand's
Samuel Charap and Jeremy Shapiro of the European Council on Foreign
Relations wrote at the Post, is it an endgame.
Escalation in Ukraine …
- In
closed-door meetings, a bipartisan group of lawmakers reportedly
"pressed senior Defense Department officials to loosen U.S. restrictions
on Kyiv using U.S. weapons to strike inside Russia." [Politico / Lara Seligman et al.]
- The
Kremlin first responded to the policy change by castigating the U.S.
and "NATO allies, saying the alliance was responsible for setting off 'a
new round of escalating tension.'" [WaPo / Michael Birnbaum et al.]
- In
a subsequent statement, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov
warned the U.S. of "fatal consequences" for the change. [Reuters]
- This
all comes shortly after a Reuters report, citing four unnamed Russian
sources, claimed "Putin is ready to halt the war in Ukraine with a
negotiated ceasefire that recognizes the current battlefield lines." [Reuters / Guy Faulconbridge and Andrew Osborn]
- Meanwhile, France is already working on a plan to get Western military trainers into Ukraine. [WSJ / Stacy Meichtry et al.]
- And
the U.S. is reportedly "close to signing a new bilateral security pact
with Ukraine," with "commitments on long-term support, including
military training, intelligence sharing, and economic assistance." [FT / Christopher Miller et al.]
… is not a substitute for strategy and a diplomatic endgame
- "America's fundamental problem in Ukraine is the lack of a coherent strategy." [Ashford]
- This "new escalation in the conflict—and the White House's continued willingness to romp freely across its own red lines—only suggests that the substitution of escalation for critical thinking continues apace." [Ashford]
- "This
isn't the first time the [U.S.] has crossed a threshold previously
deemed too escalatory. Past decisions on HIMARS launchers, cluster
bombs, long-range munitions and F-16s were also driven by perceived
Russian gains on the battlefield." [Charap and Shapiro]
- Next,
Ashford worries, may well be some form of boots on the ground, which
could happen via the French plan or, more seriously, with U.S. troops.
- And
make no mistake: these strikes "might slow military operations around
Kharkiv, but they will not be a game changer" for Ukraine's defense. [Charap and Shapiro]
- More
likely, this "marks another turn of a tit-for-tat spiral that has
continuously raised the risks of a broader war without offering a path
to ending this one." [Charap and Shapiro]
- "Without
a bargaining process, [this spiral] might continue for years to come.
And someday, one side or the other might finally stumble over an actual
red line, which could lead to exactly the major escalation the Biden
administration has been trying to avoid." [Charap and Shapiro]
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