The Biden administration is making a final push during its last weeks in office to put Ukraine in the “strongest possible position” in preparation for negotiations. Their latest move, according to press reports and confirmed privately by administration sources (though not yet confirmed by U.S. announcements), is to authorize Ukraine to use its U.S.-supplied Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS) to hit targets inside Russia in defense of Ukrainian forces fighting in Russia’s Kursk Province. The United States previously limited the weapons to be used only against Russian forces and installations inside Ukraine, such as in Crimea. The Ukrainians now may have mounted strikes inside Russia today using ATACMS, amid angry complaints from Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov.
The shift is a good move and may lead the French and British to lift some comparable restrictions on their own long-range weapons. But it’s late in coming, like other Biden administration decisions to supply advanced weapons systems to Ukraine. And the Biden administration won’t be around long enough to manage any end game to the war. The incoming Trump administration is apparently pushing fast-track negotiations to end this phase of the conflict on terms that risk favoring Russian President Vladimir Putin. All the outgoing Biden team can do at this point is push weapons out the door and ramp up economic pressure on Russia (they do have good options for the latter) and hope for the best.
The Biden administration did a lot to support Ukraine’s defense, rallying European and other nations to do the same. I don’t share the cynical view that the Biden team was stingy with assistance to stymie Ukrainian victory. But the administration’s decisions were often slow, made at a deliberate pace not always commensurate with need. Mixed messages about lifting ATACMS restrictions created the impression of hesitation, even dithering. Similar cycles of hesitation and long deliberation accompanied earlier decisions about sending Ukraine F-16s, certain armored vehicles, High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) missiles, and other weapons systems.
According to administration sources, the reason the restriction on use of ATACMS was finally lifted was the appearance of North Korean forces in Russia, apparently making preparations to join Russian troops against Ukraine in Russia’s Kursk region; that gave administration proponents of lifting the restrictions an argument that it was Putin who had escalated the conflict by bringing in those forces and that lifting the ATACMS restrictions was only a response.
Failure to Press Advantages
An internal administration dynamic that lifting restrictions on Ukraine’s use of weapons required some rationale other than helping Ukraine defend itself speaks to a lack of determination to push potential advantages and an overthinking about “escalation.” Administration officials make the case that no one weapons system would change the course of the war. That may be true, but the cumulative impact of many slow decisions about weapons systems might have had impact at the margins, and it is at the margins that some wars are decided. Indeed, Putin sought to escalate at least rhetorically again today by announcing the formal signing of a revised nuclear doctrine that already had been announced in September.
President-elect Donald Trump’s team is setting the stage for rapid moves on Ukraine, apparently planning a big push to end the conflict. That may include a ceasefire along current lines, and some sort of security support for Ukraine. That is not necessarily a radical approach. The Biden team had privately acknowledged that Ukraine might not regain all its territory for some time and that, in the interim, a ceasefire might be needed, supported by serious security guarantees. The Biden version of security guarantees for Ukraine has started out with a set of parallel, bilateral memoranda of understandings between Ukraine and NATO and other nations, including the United States. However, again privately, some in the Biden administration acknowledged that this was inadequate and, with reluctance, recognized that Ukrainian membership in NATO, with only “free” or “unoccupied” Ukraine covered by the alliance, could be the most viable way to end the war. Senior European officials at NATO privately say that they have come to that conclusion as well.
The Risk of a Phased Conquest
But rather than striving for Ukraine’s NATO membership, which is currently the stated NATO-accepted goal, the Trump plan seems to involve some sort of forced neutrality for Ukraine or a moratorium (perhaps for 20 years) on any moves toward Ukraine’s NATO membership. This reported sketch of a Trump plan raises one fatal problem up front: without serious security support for Ukraine, this could set the stage for a phased Russian conquest of the entire country — first, Western acquiescence to Russian conquests up to the ceasefire line, and second, a signal that there would not be much response to another, subsequent Russian invasion of Ukraine, probably after an interval for Russia to refit its forces. For decades, analysts have used (and sometimes misapplied) the lesson of the 1938 Peace Conference in Munich in which the British and French acquiesced to German occupation of a portion of Czechoslovakia in exchange for Hitler’s promises of subsequent peace. Within months of that ill-conceived concession, Germany occupied the rest of Czechoslovakia and Hitler started planning the invasion of Poland, assuming that Britain and France would never stand up to him.
A Trump “peace plan” that essentially abandons Ukraine would mirror the bad deal at Munich, which has served for generations as an example of Western fecklessness in the face of a dictator’s will. Like the Munich deal, it could encourage Putin or other aggressive leaders to launch new wars, perhaps in Asia against Taiwan.
Some in Trump World appear to be well aware of the dangers of a bad deal on Ukraine. They privately acknowledge that the Trump administration might own the terrible images of Ukraine falling to a subsequent Russian attack made possible by a bad deal, a sort of giant version of the images of Kabul falling to the Taliban in 2021 with millions of refugees, a new wave of atrocities, and indications of U.S. weakness.
During the presidential campaign, Senator J.D. Vance, now Trump’s vice president-elect, offered a plan that would include freezing the conflict on the current ceasefire line but also heavily fortifying that line to prevent further Russian aggression. Vance did not specify what that meant, but his formula opens the door to continued U.S. military assistance to Ukraine and, potentially, foreign forces on Ukrainian soil to back up a ceasefire. The possibility of European and other countries’ forces on the ground in Ukraine to support a ceasefire is a longshot but not fanciful: at the Berlin Koerber Conference on Nov. 12, where I was present, German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock raised such a possibility. Potential contributor nations would likely demand, understandably, contingency U.S. air, intelligence, and logistic support.
In short, a Trump administration push for a rapid settlement in Ukraine need not be worst case if — but only if — it includes serious security provisions for Ukraine. NATO membership would provide the best security for Ukraine and for Europe, and any gap between NATO’s security provisions and what Ukraine gets would be temptation for Putin to exploit. But a Trump plan for Ukraine that includes something stronger than the Biden administration’s bundle of bilateral MOUs could hold some promise.
Putin, however, gets a vote. So far, Kremlin-tied Russians have treated early signals of the Trump plan for Ukraine with scorn, demanding Ukraine’s surrender. Should the Kremlin maintain a maximalist line, the Trump team will have to decide whether to cave to it or push back, the latter possibly by increasing support for Ukraine and pressure on Russia.
After many months of stasis, events in Ukraine could move quickly. The Biden team will do what it can as it prepares to leave; the Trump team will have challenges putting its ambitions to end the war to the test. All the while, the stakes will be high.