The war goes on, and then …?

It used to be said that Europeans would fight for their independence from the Soviet Union (and now Russia?) to the last American soldier. Uncharitable, yes, but with more than a grain of truth. And it is likewise said that Americans will fight Russia to the last Ukrainian. Also uncharitable, and also with more than a grain of truth.

The war in Ukraine has now (September 2023) lasted for a year and a half. What from the Russian side was probably envisaged as a short, surgical operation to eliminate the government in Kiev has now turned into a quagmire. Most Europeans were probably taken by surprise by the fact that Zelensky’s government endured. Quite a few were probably also disappointed. How much better it would have been to be able to continue buying oil, gas and fertilizer from Russia after a short lamentation, just for the record, of Zelensky’s annihilation. After that, business as it used to be. But that was not to be. Instead, Europe, and the United States not least, were saddled with the problem of living up to their own rhetoric.

The response to the Russian invasion has borne all the hallmarks of this. The first aid to the Ukrainians was timid. The German helmets have become legendary. Then came guns, bombs, air defense, artillery, and short range rockets, all after some hesitation, and tanks after a still longer hesitation, all with a clear condition that nothing should be aimed at Russian territory, from where have come uncounted assaults by rockets and airplanes. Now, finally, modern fighter jets and training of pilots are on offer. The Russians have been put on the spot, but they have dug in well and the Ukrainians’ reconquest of their own territory is slow in the extreme.

The charitable interpretation of the western strategy is that it has been studiously cautious. We’re dealing with a nuclear power, it is all-important not to provoke Russia into using her nuclear bombs. The piecemeal cautious strategy aims at establishing how far we can go without provoking the Russians to throw their bombs. We’ll go as far as we can without risking that, and we’ll find out how far it is by cautious escalation.

The uncharitable explanation is that the western powers never have been prepared to go very far. They have been happy to see the Ukrainians spill their own blood in the western powers’ interest and in the hope to get the latter onboard to help Ukraine to regain at least some of her lost territory. But Russia is not interested in her own self-annihilation, as would inevitably follow if she emptied her nuclear arsenal on western cities. The Russian nuclear bluff has revealed itself as precisely that—a bluff—for every escalation of the western help to Ukraine. But by its piecemeal approach the west has lost momentum. Time is not on Ukraine’s side. The Russians have more blood to spill than the Ukrainians do. Besides, Putin knows that the west will tire of the war and a new president in the United States might swiftly end the support to Ukraine. The western powers will get increasingly tired of supporting Ukraine the more the war morphs into a stalemate and the more the assistance costs them, cash-strapped and indebted as they are.

There could in the near future be seismic shifts in the political realities in the west. In a little more than a year Donald Trump could be the president-elect of the United States. He would quickly end the support to Ukraine. Without the military support of the United States the war would quickly fizzle out and the Russians would have their way. The Europeans are in no position to assume the role the United States has played in supporting Ukraine. The United States alone has supplied about a half of the military aid that Ukraine has got from the west. Besides, Europe is too disunited to be able to offer much on its own. Despite outward unity there are deep faults hiding below the surface, and in fact quite visible on the surface. Orban of Hungary is an ally in spirit of Putin. The Poles and the Balts are willing to go far in aiding the Ukrainians, they know from bitter experience what it means to be governed from Russia. The Germans, on the other hand, long for Russian gas, and the French and the Brits are far away. There was a time when European powers dominated the rest of the world and thought they could afford to fight one another on the side. No longer. European peace is partly a peace of the impotent, a virtue of necessity, but of disunity there is plenty. We have had Brexit already. Cooperation on the immigration problem (so-called refugee problem) is virtually non-existent; the Italians and the Greeks and the Spanish are left to defend their coasts and front-line borders as best they can. It is not a pretty sight, and in the hypocritical North they get a bad press. The surprise is that the European Union has not proceeded in falling apart, but what keeps it together is the richer members’ willingness to part with their money to pacify the poorer ones. But adding the 36 million Ukrainians with their land devastated and in an uncertain peace with their aggressive and uncouth brother to the east will pose a new challenge. And on top of that the EU is trying to save the climate of the world, which it could not possibly do even if the need was there.

Should Biden or some other Democrat be elected president, there are still questions about how this war will end. The Ukrainians are unlikely to reconquer all the territory they have lost, and in particular the Krim peninsula (and Krim was given to them by Khrushchev in 1954 and was populated by Russians ant Tatars). How much will they have to give up to be persuaded to end the war? And what will that end be like? A cease fire that would allow the Russians to regroup and reinforce for the next assault is not even a Pyrrhic victory. A cease fire of a Korean type where each army stays on its own side of the border? That would only happen if the Russians consider themselves served by that kind of agreement. What would it take? A reintegration of Russia into the world economy, treating Russia ever so reluctantly and undeservedly as a civilized country? It would probably take a formal peace treaty with Russia whose willingness to ignore her signature on pieces of paper is well illustrated by the war, so it again boils down to the incentives Russia has to live in peace with her neighbors. The only incentive which seems to cut the grade is that Russia would face a military and economic devastation otherwise. That would seem to imply admitting post-war Ukraine to both NATO and the EU. But if NATO is to continue as a peace-maintaining organization it requires that the US is still interested in pursuing her imperial interests and sees NATO and the nuclear umbrella as a still useful instrument for that purpose. Membership of EU requires that the EU can continue to exist as a coherent organization rather than fall apart under the pressure of the diverse interests of its members. Not only are their interests diverse, the basic unit people of the EU identify with is their ethnic group, which in most cases has its own nation state. European identity is an abstraction and nothing that Europeans identify with, not even the bureaucrats that have been feeding at the EU-trough all their professional life. Such things are not the source of coherence and strength, and certainly not of military operations should that be necessary.