The West has successfully called Vladimir Putin’s bluff

The war in Ukraine has acquired a deceptive stability. The situation maps look much the same from day to day, with the Russians occupying territory in the east and the south. In reality, buildings and ground change hands multiple times in fierce tactical actions. Generals talk about the “big-hand, small map” problem, in which scales simplify major problems, foreshorten distances and reduce the obstacles to a two-dimensional plane.

The opportunity for strategic surprise seems to have passed. Satellite and signal intelligence gives ample warning of unfolding operations. Russia’s immediate intentions are clear. But one big strategic shift has occurred. Almost imperceptibly, the Russians have conceded escalation dominance to Nato.

Individual members – Britain principal among them – have proved ready to take risks that they rejected six weeks ago. They are doing so quite openly, discarding the “plausible deniability” which characterised earlier efforts to help Ukraine. They trumpet what they are doing, advertising to the world their direct support to Ukraine and signalling that they are in this for the long haul.

The dodgy distinction between defensive and offensive weapons is being put to one side. The British and the Czechs have led the way in this, but the US is following suit. It has promised heavy artillery, which will strengthen Ukraine’s ability to counter Russian attacks, but in due course it could “shape” Ukraine’s counterattack. President Biden has dropped some of the risk-aversion that characterised his initial handling of the crisis. Then he was worried by the fear of triggering what he called “World War Three”; now he talks of setting “the stage for the next phase of the war”.

Boris Johnson has denied that the actions of his own government in supplying Ukraine are escalatory. It is, he said, “the actions of Putin and his regime” that are escalatory. Yes, they were, but less so now. Putin invoked the threat of nuclear weapons at the start of the invasion but he has not since. Russia may have tested its new Sarmat intercontinental ballistic missile last week, but its procurement predates the war. Russia has refocused its campaign into a more geographically contained set of objectives in the Donbas and the south of Ukraine.

Nato powers are keeping Ukraine in the fight, increasingly at the expense of their own inventories. As they do so, they implicate and shame those allies that retain the circumspection of late February, most obviously Germany. By treating Ukraine more as an ally than a partner, they come closer to denying Putin the objective for which he launched this invasion – to keep Ukraine out of Nato.

Nato’s assertion of escalation dominance by stealth has helped the Ukrainians check the Russians and contain the war, at least for the time being. But a limited war too carries consequences. First, it will be protracted. Secondly, the death and destruction within the fighting zone are not constrained. Thirdly, geographical containment has not yet translated into limited aims for either side, with both seeing this war in existential terms.

The fighting has made compromise remote and, without negotiation, the war can expand once more. If it does, who will escalate first? And should we not recognise that escalation does not need to be nuclear, or even chemical, but geographical? Supply lines and logistics are central to the war efforts of both sides: if a Ukrainian attack on those in Russia makes military sense, so does a Russian on Ukraine’s in Poland.