Patten: What’s the U.S. Plan for Ukraine?

Time to Address the “Vision Thing” on Ukraine

Now that the Congress has signed off on what will be a running total of over $120 billion to help Ukraine defend itself from Russia, it’s past time to ask the Biden administration: “what’s the plan, man?” Absent a big picture speech from the president, the best we can do is piece together a prediction based on what we know about the Washington-Kyiv relationship to date because it is in the common interest of Americans and Ukrainians to better understand where this is going.

Beginning with former President George H.W. Bush’s infamous “Chicken Kyiv” speech in early August 1991 – three weeks before Ukraine declared its independence from the Soviet Union, a pattern of mixed and sometimes poorly-timed statements has come to characterize the U.S.-Ukrainian relationship. Then Bush the elder, widely considered the most capable U.S. president on foreign policy matters in the last half century, cautioned Ukraine against moving too quickly to assert its sovereignty and was (perhaps unfairly) ridiculed at the time for appearing subservient to Moscow. Yet that early note of caution still speaks volumes today when assessing U.S. policy towards Ukraine.

While America’s support for Ukraine’s self-defense against a Russian invasion launched in late February 2022 was initially vigorous, domestic backing for that support in the U.S. has wavered in the last year. In late April of this year, President Joe Biden was successful in winning congressional backing for an additional $61 billion assistance package for Ukraine, the first since December 2022. But it took his administration months longer than expected to get enough Republican backing for the bill, and this came only after Biden agreed to the suggestion of former President Donald Trump call it a “loan.”

Set against the background of overwhelming U.S. moral support for Ukraine in the months after Russia’s invasion, these recent equivocations point to the same pattern of words and actions being out of synch with one another over the past three decades. To understand the current relationship between Washington and Kyiv, it is critical to re-examine its foundations. Then, it becomes useful to assess the “triggers” of uncertainty in the relationship and how these play out in practical terms. Only having done so, does it become possible to discern a clearer picture of the vision of where the U.S.-Ukraine dynamic is headed, both through the end of the current war and the tenuous peace that may follow.

The Elephant in the Room

These inconsistencies have less to do with America’s embrace of an independent Ukraine than they do with Washington’s uncertain policy towards Russia. While some Republicans voiced strong skepticism about and even opposition for continuing the support of Ukraine’s war effort, the “elephant” in the room is not the Republican Party (which has long held the pachyderm as its mascot), but rather concern about what a nuclear-armed Russia’s response could be to what it perceives as “interference” in it’s “near abroad.” After all, the 1961 Cuban Missile Crisis – the closest Moscow and Washington came to the brink of direct conflict – was precipitated by the Soviets violation of America’s Monroe Doctrine in attempting to station medium-range (1,200-2,800 miles) missiles less than 100 miles from the southern tip of Florida.

A more recent example of these tensions was seen in August 2008, when Russia invaded the South Caucasus republic of Georgia – a neighbor but independent country with, like Ukraine, aspirations of joining both the European Union and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Georgia’s president at the time, Mikheil Saakashvili, was a U.S.-educated critic of Moscow who enjoyed a close friendship with hawkish, late U.S. Senator John McCain (R-AZ).  In May 2005, then U.S. President George W. Bush traveled to the Georgian capital of Tbilisi where he delivered a speech calling the tiny country a “beacon of liberty.”

Because of this closeness, passions in Washington ran high in support of Georgia, yet at an emergency meeting of senior national security staff, Bush National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley responded to suggestions of a forceful U.S. response to Moscow’s aggression by asking “are we really prepared to go to war with Russia over Georgia?” The room then reportedly fell silent. While Washington engaged diplomatically with key European capital to press for a rapid ceasefire, and subsequently approved a $4 billion aid package to Georgia, which then Vice-President Joe Biden flew to Tbilisi to deliver, the U.S. government stopped short of providing military assistance to Georgia in the midst of the conflict.

Eight years later, when Russia began its proxy war in Ukraine in early 2014 following the country’s ouster of President Victor Yanukovych over his pro-Moscow positions, Washington was again cautious in how it rallied to Kyiv’s side. “We challenged Russia with the tools we had at the time, given where Ukraine then was,” then President Barack Obama said, in defense of not having taken a stronger line against Russia’s de facto seizure of Crimea. The Obama administration had, after all, come into office promising a “reset” in relations with Russia.

In the months preceding Russia’s outright invasion of Ukraine, Washington warned of diplomatic consequences, sanctions, and publicly shared intelligence with Kyiv, but also sent mixed messages about what a U.S. response would specifically be. President Biden, some complained, gave Moscow a green light when he projected about possible Russian military moves in January 2022 by saying, “it’s one thing if it’s a minor incursion,” as if a minor incursion would bring a lesser or more muted U.S. response. Such garbled telegraphing of American intentions, many agree, contributed to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s assessment of how far he could go before Ukraine’s Western allies countered militarily.

Since the invasion, U.S. military support to Ukraine has been carefully limited in the main to defensive systems, largely to defeat incoming missiles and repel Russian armor with anti-tank systems. Washington does not relish a scenario in which Ukrainian forces use U.S.-supplied weapons to counter-strike Russians on their own territory. On May 6, Putin for the first time publicly ordered drills with tactical nuclear weapons in response to what his administration called “Western threats,” i.e.,  use of weapons supplied by North Atlantic allies to strike within Russian territory (though the specific threats to which Moscow seemed to be responding are currently coming from London and Paris – not Washington).

Triggers of Uncertainty

The Biden administration does not manage its relationship with Kyiv in a political vacuum. As the president prepares to face off against Trump again in November, two particular specters related to Russia and Ukraine haunt his current candidacy. In addition, the star power Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky enjoyed in the U.S. has diminished somewhat both with respect to time and Russian advances on the battlefield. Zelensky’s popularity in Ukraine is similarly vulnerable as he faces domestic political pressures that could put him at odds with his external allies.

Frustrating to both Washington and Kyiv is a mutual disconnect between words and intentions. Does Washington favor certain Ukrainian politicians over others, and if so, does such favoritism serve American interests? Is it legitimate for a Ukrainian office-seeker to campaign as “America’s man or woman”? And, does Kyiv have a hand to play in American electoral politics? In each case the answer should be a clear “no;” however the perceived realities are more muddled. In the medium to long term, this ambiguity undermines the bilateral relationship.

Key figures in the Biden administration – including National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan – played leading roles in Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign for president and subsequent efforts to promote a “Russian collusion” narrative that painted Trump as Moscow’s stooge. Though a major investigation headed by former FBI Director Robert Mueller found that Trump’s campaign did not collude with Russia in 2016, and the Clinton campaign has been forced to pay fines to the Federal Elections Commission for failing to report the funds it spent disseminating this political fiction, the persistence of these Clinton/Biden officials in painting their political opponents as Russian agents leads to growing questions in the American public about their own credibility.

All of this makes it difficult for many Americans to assess statements by the same officials Russian motivations clearly.

Conservative pundit Tucker Carlson has been the most vocal in the American media so far in criticizing the current Ukrainian government’s commitment to democratic practices. Earlier this year, Carlson even traveled to Moscow to interview Putin at length in what was the Russian president’s first interaction with an American journalist since the invasion. In recent programs, Carlson has called Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky out for postponing elections, restricting the media in Ukraine and seeking to outlaw an orthodox church in his country with historic and cultural ties to Russia.

At the same time, the president’s son, Hunter, served on the board of directors of a Ukrainian gas company while his father was the key U.S. official in charge of Ukraine policy. Against the backdrop of concerns about Ukrainian corruption, this direct involvement by a member of the Biden family raises questions about Biden’s objectivity on matters regarding Ukraine. Trump’s first impeachment in 2019 was based on the charge that he had abused his power as president by asking Zelensky to look into Hunter Biden’s Ukrainian work, and with Trump now the presumptive Republican nominee, it is inevitable there will be more debate about Hunter, the Biden family ties to Ukraine and Ukrainian corruption.

The appearance of a laptop apparently forgotten by Hunter at a Wilmington, Delaware repair shop before the 2020 election provided a treasure trove of potentially incriminating – and certainly embarrassing – details of shady business dealings and a closer father-son relationship to these than either had represented. To swat down stories arising from this, current Secretary of State Anthony Blinken honchoed a letter signed by 50 former intelligence officials asserting that the laptop story was “Russian disinformation.” Spoiler alert: it wasn’t.  Again, the credibility of current (and former) U.S. officials is strained.

While the continuing war provides Zelensky a good excuse for postponing elections that were scheduled for last month, he is not immune to internal political dissent indefinitely. Yet he faces a searing problem when it does come time for polls to open: absolute victory against the aggressor state is unlikely. In all probability, the war will end as a result of negotiations, yet war veterans who have suffered tremendous losses may feel “stabbed in the back” should Zelensky agree to terms and conditions that include the loss of territory or other national advantages, such as the right to join NATO or integrate more closely with the European Union.

Under the Minsk agreements that served as a framework for ceasefire talks in the wake of Russia’s hybrid invasion of Ukraine from 2014-22, Moscow sought greater de-centralization of authority within the Ukrainian government. This will almost certainly continue to be a Russian demand in new talks. Just as Zelensky must factor how war veterans and nationalists centered in the West of his country will respond to his moves to conclude the conflict, he must also be mindful of what voters in the East of the country – in whose backyards the war has literally been fought – will do when they have the chance to vote over their future.

The Vision Thing

It is an axiomatic rule of American politics that the longer a faraway conflict continues, the less the public will support it. For most Americans, the Ukrainian war is abstract. Indeed, when former Biden administration climate czar John Kerry ran for president in 2004, he asked American voters why they should be buying new fire stations for Iraqis in Baghdad while shutting them down for Americans in the United States (Kerry, who went on to serve as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and U.S. Secretary of State, must surely have come to regret that political cheap-shot in subsequent years). While Biden won passage of the $61 billion “loan” to Ukraine, there will be no new assistance before November’s election.

What Biden has not yet done as president, but may have to in a debate with Trump in months to come, is lay out his vision for where Ukraine and America’s relationship with the embattled country is headed.

Will Ukraine be, as George W. Bush said of Georgia, a “beacon of liberty” in the tough neighborhood of Russian peripheral states? (Georgia itself has currently been criticized for receding closer to Moscow’s orbit in subsequent years). How will NATO allies respond now to a more belligerent Russia pressing up against states that share an Article V commitment to mutual defense under the pact? Perhaps most practically, how committed can Washington continue to be to countering Russian aggression against peaceful neighbors like Ukraine while conflict rages in the Middle East and China’s influence grows globally?

Clues to this vision may be carefully hidden in plain sight. This quarter’s issue of Foreign Affairs features an article by Sergey Radchenko and Samuel Charap outlining how secret peace talks Russia and Ukraine held in early 2022 may point to the shape of a future agreement. At that time, the authors report, Ukraine would have considered neutrality on the NATO accession question in exchange for security guarantees from European allies. Still, the failure of 1994 Budapest Memorandum by which Ukraine relinquished its nuclear weapons after the breakup of the Soviet Union to ensure any measure of redoubt from aggression two decades later will make this aspect of talks especially tricky now.

According to “The Showman,” Simon Shuster’s recent biography of Zelensky, the current Ukrainian president was intensely focused on a diplomatic breakthrough with Russia from the beginning of his term in office right through the February 2022 invasion. While the bitter experiences of wartime leadership may have tempered this instinct, logic seems to dictate that Zelensky will have to return to the negotiating table with the only questions remaining when and under what terms.

For his part, Putin may feel less pressure to negotiate today as Russian forces hold their positions, but a new Ukrainian counter-offensive could change that dynamic. Insofar as Washington is concerned, he will likely wait until after November when it becomes clear who America’s next president will be. Should that be the self-professed “master of the deal,” Donald Trump, Putin could perceive an advantage – if not for the perception that Trump is in Putin’s thrall, then because the “new guy” will be incentivized to deliver.

Whoever wins the U.S. election, the next president will be less able to walk away from Kyiv than he or his predecessors were in the cases of Baghdad or Kabul because of the European alliances. Despite former U.S. Undersecretary of State Victoria Nuland’s unfortunately wiretapped instruction to her ambassador in Kyiv in 2014 to “f*%& the EU,” British, French and German heads of government and/or state may take larger roles up front in the denouement of the continuing war in Ukraine, while America “leads from behind.”