Robert Kagan in the Atlantic:
"Trump Is Facing a Catastrophic Defeat in Ukraine
Vice-president Elect J. D. Vance once said
that he doesn’t care what happens to Ukraine. We will soon find out
whether the American people share his indifference, because if there is
not soon a large new infusion of aid from the United States, Ukraine
will likely lose the war within the next 12 to 18 months. Ukraine will
not lose in a nice, negotiated way, with vital territories sacrificed
but an independent Ukraine kept alive, sovereign, and protected by
Western security guarantees. It faces instead a complete defeat, a loss
of sovereignty, and full Russian control.
This poses an immediate problem for Donald Trump. He promised to settle
the war quickly upon taking office, but now faces the hard reality that
Vladimir Putin has no interest in a negotiated settlement that leaves
Ukraine intact as a sovereign nation. Putin also sees an opportunity to
strike a damaging blow at American global power. Trump must now choose
between accepting a humiliating strategic defeat on the global stage and
immediately redoubling American support for Ukraine while there’s still
time...
The end of an independent Ukraine is and
always has been Putin’s goal. While foreign-policy commentators spin
theories about what kind of deal Putin might accept, how much territory
he might demand, and what kind of security guarantees, demilitarized
zones, and foreign assistance he might permit, Putin himself has never
shown interest in anything short of Ukraine’s complete capitulation.
Before Russia’s invasion, many people couldn’t believe that Putin really
wanted all of Ukraine. His original aim was to decapitate the
government in Kyiv, replace it with a government subservient to Moscow,
and through that government control the entire country... Today, after almost three years of fighting, Putin’s goals have not changed: He wants it all.
Putin’s stated terms for a settlement have been consistent throughout
the war: a change of government in Kyiv in favor of a pro-Russian
regime; “de-Nazification,” his favored euphemism for extinguishing
Ukrainian nationalism; demilitarization, or leaving Ukraine without
combat power sufficient to defend against another Russian attack; and
“neutrality,” meaning no ties with Western organizations such as NATO or
the EU, and no Western aid programs aimed at shoring up Ukrainian
independence. Western experts filling the op-ed pages and journals with
ideas for securing a post-settlement Ukraine have been negotiating with
themselves...
Some hopeful souls argue that Putin will be more flexible once talks
begin. But this is based on the mistaken assumption that Putin believes
he needs a respite from the fighting. He doesn’t. Yes, the Russian
economy is suffering. Yes, Russian losses at the front remain
staggeringly high. Yes, Putin lacks the manpower both to fight and to
produce vital weaponry and is reluctant to risk political upheaval by
instituting a full-scale draft. If the war were going to drag on for
another two years or more, these problems might eventually force Putin
to seek some kind of truce, perhaps even the kind of agreement Americans muse about. But Putin thinks he’s going to win sooner than
that, and he believes that Russians can sustain their present hardships
long enough to achieve victory.
Are we so sure he’s wrong? Have American predictions about Russia’s inability to withstand “crippling” sanctions proved correct so far? Western sanctions have forced Russians to adapt and adjust, to find work-arounds on trade, oil, and financing, but although those adjustments have been painful, they have been largely successful... Today, Russia looks outwardly like the Russia of the Great Patriotic
War, with exuberant nationalism stimulated and the smallest dissent
brutally repressed... The Russian people have historically shown remarkable capacity for
sacrifice under the twin stimuli of patriotism and terror. To assume
that Russia can’t sustain this war economy long enough to outlast the
Ukrainians would be foolish. One more year may be all it takes. Russia
faces problems, even serious problems, but Putin believes that without
substantial new aid Ukraine’s problems are going to bring it down sooner
than Russia.
That is the key point: Putin sees the timelines working in his favor.
Russian forces may begin to run low on military equipment in the fall of
2025, but by that time Ukraine may already be close to collapse.
Ukraine can’t sustain the war another year without a new aid package
from the United States. Ukrainian forces are already suffering from
shortages of soldiers, national exhaustion, and collapsing morale.
Russia’s casualty rate is higher than Ukraine’s, but there are more
Russians than Ukrainians, and Putin has found a way to keep filling the
ranks, including with foreign fighters. As one of Ukraine’s top generals
recently observed, “the number of Russian troops is constantly increasing.” This year, he estimates, has brought 100,000 additional Russian troops to Ukrainian soil. Meanwhile, lack of equipment prevents Ukraine from outfitting reserve units.
Ukrainian morale is already sagging under Russian missile and drone
attacks and the prolonged uncertainty about whether the United States’
vital and irreplaceable support will continue. What happens if that
uncertainty becomes certainty, if the next couple of months make clear
that the United States is not going to provide a new aid package? That
alone could be enough to cause a complete collapse of Ukrainian morale
on the military and the home front. But Ukraine has another problem,
too. Its defensive lines are now so shallow that if Russian troops break
through, they may be able to race west toward Kyiv.
Putin believes he is winning. “The situation is changing dramatically,” he observed
in a recent press conference. “We’re moving along the entire front line
every day.” His foreign-intelligence chief, Sergei Naryshkin, recently
declared, “We are close to achieving our goals, while the armed forces
of Ukraine are on the verge of collapse.”... Putin today sees victory within his grasp, more than at
any other time since the invasion began...
If Trump cuts off or reduces aid to Ukraine, as he has recently suggested
he would, then not only will Ukraine collapse but the divisions between
the U.S. and its allies, and among the Europeans themselves, will
deepen and multiply. Putin is closer to his aim of splintering the West
than at any other time in the quarter century since he took power.
Is this a moment at which to expect Putin to negotiate a peace deal? A
truce would give Ukrainians time to breathe and restore their damaged
infrastructure as well as their damaged psyches. It would allow them to
re-arm without expending the weapons they already have. It would reduce
the divisions between the Trump administration and its European allies.
It would spare Trump the need to decide whether to seek an aid package
for Ukraine and allow him to focus on parts of the world where Russia is
more vulnerable, such as the post-Assad Middle East. Today Putin has momentum on his side in what he regards, correctly, as
the decisive main theater. If he wins in Ukraine, his loss in Syria will
look trivial by comparison. If he hasn’t blinked after almost three
years of misery, hardship, and near defeat, why would he blink now when
he believes, with reason, that he is on the precipice of such a massive
victory?
A Russian victory means the end of Ukraine.
Putin’s aim is not an independent albeit smaller Ukraine, a neutral
Ukraine, or even an autonomous Ukraine within a Russian sphere of
influence. His goal is no Ukraine. “Modern Ukraine,” he has said,
“is entirely the product of the Soviet era.” Putin does not just want
to sever Ukraine’s relationships with the West. He aims to stamp out the
very idea of Ukraine, to erase it as a political and cultural entity... Putin’s call for “de-Nazification” is not just about removing the
Zelensky government, but an effort to stamp out all traces of an
independent Ukrainian political and cultural identity.
The vigorous Russification that Putin’s forces have been imposing in
Crimea and the Donbas and other conquered Ukrainian territories is
evidence of the deadly seriousness of his intent. International
human-rights organizations and journalists, writing in The New York Times,
have documented the creation in occupied Ukraine of “a highly
institutionalized, bureaucratic and frequently brutal system of
repression run by Moscow” comprising “a gulag of more than 100 prisons,
detention facilities, informal camps and basements” across an area
roughly the size of Ohio. According to a June 2023 report
by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights,
nearly all Ukrainians released from this gulag reported being subjected
to systematic torture and abuse by Russian authorities... Hundreds of summary executions have been documented, and more are
likely—many of the civilians detained by Russia have yet to be seen
again. Escapees from Russian-occupied Ukraine speak of a “prison
society” in which anyone with pro-Ukrainian views risks being sent “to the basement,” where torture and possible death await...
Putin has decreed that all people in the occupied territories must
renounce their Ukrainian citizenship and become Russian citizens or face
deportation. Russian citizenship is required to send children to
school, to register a vehicle, to get medical treatment, and to receive
pensions. People without Russian passports cannot own farmland, vote,
run for office, or register a religious congregation. In schools
throughout the Russian-occupied territories, students learn a Russian
curriculum and complete a Russian “patriotic education program” and
early military training, all taught by teachers sent from the Russian
Federation. Parents who object to this Russification risk having their
children taken away and sent to boarding schools in Russia or occupied Crimea, where, Putin has decreed, they can be adopted by Russian
citizens. By the end of 2023, Ukrainian officials had verified the names
of 19,000 children relocated to schools and camps in Russia or to
Russian-occupied territory. As former British Foreign Secretary James
Cleverly put it in 2023, “Russia’s forcible deportation of innocent Ukrainian children is a systematic attempt to erase Ukraine’s future.”...
These horrors await the rest of Ukraine if Putin wins... Russian-occupation authorities will seek to stamp out this resurgence of
Ukrainian nationalism across the whole country. Hundreds of thousands
of Ukrainians will flee, putting enormous strain on Ukraine’s neighbors
to the west. But thousands more will wind up in prison, facing torture
or murder. Some commentators argue
that it would be better to let Ukraine lose quickly because that, at
least, would end the suffering. Yet for many millions of Ukrainians,
defeat would be just the beginning of their suffering.
This is where Ukraine is headed unless something changes, and soon.
Putin at this moment has no incentive to make any deal that leaves even
part of Ukraine intact and independent. Only the prospect of a dramatic,
near-term change in his military fortunes could force Putin to take a
more accommodating course...
Which brings us to President-Elect Donald Trump, who now finds himself in a trap only partly of his own devising... Trump himself seemed to think that his election alone would be enough to convince Putin that it was time to cut a deal... Trump’s first moves following November 5 exuded confidence that Putin
would accommodate the new sheriff in town. Two days after the election,
in a phone call with Putin that Trump’s staff leaked to the press, Trump
reportedly “advised the Russian president not to escalate the war in Ukraine”... Days after the phone call in which Trump “advised” him not to escalate,
Putin fired a hypersonic, nuclear-capable intermediate-range ballistic
missile at Ukraine, and he’s been escalating ever since. He also had his
spokesmen deny that any phone call had taken place. Even today, Putin
insists that he and Trump have not spoken since the election... In a message clearly aimed at Trump’s pretensions of power, Putin
suggested that the West make a “rational assessment of events and its
own capabilities.”...
Trump has since backed off. When asked about the phone call, Trump these
days won’t confirm that it ever happened—“I don’t want to say anything
about that, because I don’t want to do anything that could impede the
negotiation.” More significantly, he has begun making preemptive
concessions in the hope of getting Putin to begin talks. He has declared
that Ukraine will not be allowed to join NATO. He has suggested
that Ukraine will receive less aid than it has been getting from the
United States. And he has criticized Biden’s decision to allow Ukraine
to use American-made ATACMS to strike Russian territory. Putin has
simply pocketed all these concessions and offered nothing in return
except a willingness to talk “without preconditions.” Now begin the negotiations about beginning the negotiations, while the clock ticks on Kyiv’s ability to endure...
What can Trump do now? Quite a bit, actually... The thing that Putin has most feared, and has bent over backwards to
avoid provoking, is the United States and NATO’s direct involvement in
the conflict. He must have been in a panic when his troops were bogged
down and losing in Ukraine, vulnerable to NATO air and missile strikes.
But the Biden administration refused to even threaten direct
involvement, both when it knew Putin’s war plans months in advance, and
after the initial invasion, when Putin’s troops were vulnerable. Trump’s
supporters like to boast that one of his strengths in dealing with
adversaries is his dangerous unpredictability. Hinting at U.S. forces becoming directly involved, as Trump reportedly
did in his call with Putin, would certainly have confirmed that
reputation. But Putin, one suspects, is not inclined to take such
threats seriously without seeing real action to back them. After all, he
knows all about bluffs—he paralyzed the Biden administration with them
for the better part of three years.
Trump has a credibility problem... Putin knows
what we all know: that Trump wants out of Ukraine. He does not want to
own the war, does not want to spend his first months in a confrontation
with Russia, does not want the close cooperation with NATO and other
allies that continuing support for Ukraine will require, and, above all,
does not want to spend the first months of his new term pushing a
Ukraine aid package through Congress after running against that aid.
Putin also knows that even if Trump eventually changes his mind, perhaps
out of frustration with Putin’s stalling, it will be too late. Months would pass before an aid bill made it through both houses and
weaponry began arriving on the battlefield. Putin watched that process
grind on last year, and he used the time well. He can afford to wait.
After all, if eight months from now Putin feels the tide about to turn
against him in the war, he can make the same deal then that Trump would
like him to make now. In the meantime, he can continue pummeling the
demoralized Ukrainians, taking down what remains of their energy grid,
and shrinking the territory under Kyiv’s control.
No, in order to change Putin’s calculations, Trump would have to do
exactly what he has not wanted to do so far: He would have to renew aid
to the Ukrainians immediately, and in sufficient quantity and quality to
change the trajectory on the battlefield. He would also have to
indicate convincingly that he was prepared to continue providing aid
until Putin either acquiesced to a reasonable deal or faced the collapse
of his army. Such actions by Trump would change the timelines
sufficiently to give Putin cause for concern. Short of that, the Russian
president has no reason to talk about peace terms. He need only wait
for Ukraine’s collapse.
Putin doesn’t care who the president of the United States is. His goal
for more than two decades has been to weaken the U.S. and break its
global hegemony and its leadership of the “liberal world order” so that
Russia may resume what he sees as its rightful place as a European great
power and an empire with global influence. Putin has many immediate
reasons to want to subjugate Ukraine, but he also believes that victory
will begin the unraveling of eight decades of American global primacy
and the oppressive, American-led liberal world order. Think of what he
can accomplish by proving through the conquest of Ukraine that even
America’s No. 1 tough guy... is helpless to stop him and to prevent a significant blow to American
power and influence. In other words, think of what it will mean for
Donald Trump’s America to lose...
Unfortunately for Trump, Ukraine is where this titanic struggle is being
waged. Today, not only Putin but Xi, Kim, Khamenei, and others whom the
American people generally regard as adversaries believe that a Russian
victory in Ukraine will do grave damage to American strength everywhere.
That is why they are pouring money, weaponry, and, in the case of North
Korea, even their own soldiers into the battle. Whatever short-term
benefits they may be deriving from assisting Russia, the big payoff they
seek is a deadly blow to the American power and influence that has
constrained them for decades... When the fall of Ukraine comes, it will be hard to spin as anything but a defeat for the United States, and for its president.
This was not what Trump had in mind when he said he could get a peace
deal in Ukraine. He no doubt envisioned being lauded as the statesman
who persuaded Putin to make a deal, saving the world from the horrors of
another endless war. His power and prestige would be enhanced. He would
be a winner. His plans do not include being rebuffed, rolled over, and
by most of the world’s judgment, defeated.
Whether Trump can figure out where the path he is presently following
will lead him is a test of his instincts. He is not on the path to
glory. And unless he switches quickly, his choice will determine much
more than the future of Ukraine."
