What Should We Do About Ukraine?

What makes me think I know?

As soon as news broke of the Trump administration’s peace proposal for the war in Ukraine, the usual suspects lined up to declare it a literal translation of Russian demands into clumsy English. It was an abject surrender, a betrayal of Ukraine, Europe, NATO and the rules-based international order that will give Russia an unearned victory and guarantee another war in the not-too-distant future. In response, a good friend and fellow pundit texted me to say, in so many words, that if the best pro-Ukraine voices can do in response is shout “Munich!” a few more times then they deserve to lose.

I took his point. Long-time opponents of the war rebutted angry critics by arguing that the proposal is the best deal Ukraine could plausibly get, that it doesn’t stop them from joining the EU or from retaining a large and well-equipped army, that they are losing the war on the battlefield and could well lose their independence entirely if they keep fighting, and that pressure from America is what Zelensky actually needs to sell an unpalatable deal domestically. And yet, while European countries are busy trying to amend the proposal to make it more favorable to Ukraine, there’s also the possibility that Russia had no intention of agreeing to the deal even in its original form, regardless of whether Ukraine did. If Zelensky were to agree to give up the rest of Donetsk in exchange for peace, and Russia refused a deal anyway, then Russia would have won a key war objective diplomatically, and Ukraine could be profoundly demoralized. Indeed, the doves made similar arguments about the need to pressure Ukraine early in the Trump administration, on the premise that Russia would readily do a deal that got them most of what they wanted. That turned out not to be the case.

The last time I wrote about the war was at that juncture, in February. Back then, I argued that the sudden turnabout in American policy under the new Trump administration reflected less a desire to switch sides and make Russia an ally, much less an earnest desire for peace, than a cold, businesslike plan to extract as much value from a bad investment as possible before it goes belly up. I’m not sure that take has aged particularly well either; since then the Trump administration has poured more resources into Ukraine, and facilitated European efforts to pour in additional resources, in what appears to have been an effort to apply pressure to both sides to try to get a deal that will end the war. But does it even matter? I’m largely guessing as to what this administration is after—but the honest truth is that we in the pundit class were always guessing, even before Trump came along.

What, after all, was the Biden administration’s strategy for Ukraine? Their initial response, building an unprecedented sanctions regime and directing a flood of aid Ukraine’s way, was impressively coordinated, and Ukraine’s own battlefield efforts massively exceeded most observers’ expectations. The Biden team, along with the Europeans, would have been happy to see Russia simply lose on the battlefield, but for very sensible reasons were not willing to risk entering the war directly to assure the latter outcome, and after only a few months it was clear that the war was entering a grinding phase, which has continued since, with the main development being the increased dominance of drone warfare on both sides. We continued to help Ukraine fight so that Russia paid a serious price for their invasion, and then hoped that at some point Russia would decide that the price was high enough to sue for peace on some kind of compromise terms that would demonstrate that they’d learned their lesson and wouldn’t try anything like that again. Hope, though, is infamously not a strategy.

An asymmetry of interest has always been central to the realist case against the war. Ukraine matters more to the Ukrainians than it does to the Russians, but it matters more to the Russians than to us, and Russia is far more powerful than Ukraine, and powerful enough for America to consider a direct conflict between us and them off the table. So for realists, who think national interests are what drive relations between states, it was always clear that while the war could continue as long as Ukrainians were willing to fight, there was no plausible way for Ukraine to win. But if Ukraine matters more to Russia than to America, it’s not clear that it matters more to Russia than to Poland, who very reasonably worry that a Russia that cannot tolerate an independent Ukraine might get grouchy about an armed and hostile Poland. And what matters deeply to Poland cannot be a matter of indifference to Germany. For years, various people in the Trump orbit have been saying that the only way Europe will ever properly take care of its own defense is if America actually abandons them; a month after I wrote that piece in February, Germany amended its constitution to allow for greater borrowing to finance a substantial military buildup. Now the prospect of that buildup is making the French nervous, if not yet the Poles—yet preserving some level of Ukrainian independence and deterring Russia from further adventures depends more than anything on Europe rearming while sustaining—or, rather, building—something like a common defense and foreign policy.

That’s a daunting task, but if you look at the complexion of the current governments of key European nations it doesn’t seem inconceivable. Yet in a few years, Britain, France and Germany—the three countries busily trying to amend the current peace proposal to make it more favorable to Ukraine—could each be headed by right-wing populist/nationalist governments that might well favor a more dovish policy toward Russia. Is it even possible to construct a coherent foreign policy, much less coordinate it with your neighbors, when your country is torn between a decaying centrism, a rising populist-nationalism, and an angry sectarian leftism, as all three of these countries are? And if it isn’t, then how can America make any kind of coherent policy?

So I don’t know what to do about Ukraine, not only because I don’t know what to do about Ukraine, but because I don’t know what to do about Europe—or about America, which is similarly riven but with a populist-nationalist government currently in charge. That government, as it proposes peace in Ukraine, appears to be preparing for a baffling war in Venezuela which it has done little to even try to legitimate. You could say that we’re just policing our sphere of influence the way we’re willing to let Russia police theirs, that both our retreat from Ukraine and our aggression in Venezuela are two sides of a strategic retreat to hemispheric defense. Yet what happens if Vice President Vance loses his bid to succeed his boss? Will the next president seek good to be a good neighbor again in Latin America while rebuilding the Atlantic alliance?

This is the standard knock on democracies’ ability to conduct foreign affairs: that the people are fickle and ignorant and cannot discern the true national interest. But history is littered with autocrats who were fickle, ignorant and could not discern their own interests, much less those of their people, about whom they might not give a flying fig. Democracies are perfectly capable of fighting and winning wars, even long and bloody ones. But when it’s not clear what to do, democratic deliberation does not provide any oracular powers unavailable to the autocrat, only the opportunity to course correct—perhaps sometimes too soon, but I’ll take that risk over the opposite, of persistence in madness and folly unto destruction.

But in the meantime, I genuinely don’t know what to do about Ukraine. I envy those pundits blessed with a greater certainty.