U.S., Russian decisions on Ukraine are coldly logical

When the Ukrainian military made rapid advances in its autumn campaign, the fears of Russian nuclear retaliation were connected to a long-standing American interpretation of Russian strategic theory: “escalate to de-escalate,” the idea of using a limited nuclear strike to raise the stakes of conflict so high that your enemies see no choice but to bargain.

In the months since, the return to a war of attrition and various Russian disavowals have eased nuclear anxieties somewhat. But an “escalate to de-escalate” theory remains relevant because it seems to inform both the U.S. and Russian strategies — conventional, not nuclear — for the spring campaign.

Note that I said U.S. strategy and not Ukrainian. Ukraine’s desired strategy remains what it has been for the entire war: escalate to win. Kyiv wants as many weapons as the West can send, it wants to reclaim every inch of territory, and it doesn’t want to entertain terms that would concede anything to the invading Russians.

The formal White House position is that Ukraine will have our support all the way to victory. But the cautious approach that President Joe Biden and his team have taken to armaments that might radically change the balance of the war, the nudges encouraging Kyiv to show openness to negotiation, the concern about investing too heavily at the expense of our Asian commitments — all of this indicates that the White House’s proximate goal is a favorable armistice, not complete Russian defeat.

To get to that imagined peace, though, you need to convince the Russians that a true armistice is in their interests, that if they keep the war simmering they will continue losing men and materiel at a brutal, regime-destabilizing pace.

One hope was that the Ukrainian counteroffensive last fall and Europe’s so-far successful endurance of the winter months would be decisive in pushing Moscow toward accepting this reality, and even toward elaborating its own proposals for a negotiated settlement.

But instead the Russians seem to be not just digging in but also girding for their own renewed offensive. Which explains why the Biden White House and our European allies are cautiously turning up the dial of escalation, enabling an increase in tanks and heavy armor flowing into Ukraine.

So far this is not a policy designed to completely overwhelm a Russian mobilization or drive the Russians out of Ukraine. It’s a policy seemingly intended to blunt any new offensive, and to show Moscow that it can’t win a grinding war any more easily than it initially hoped to win a short one. It’s an escalation that assumes the Russians need a little more convincing, and then they’ll be open to the de-escalation we haven’t been able to achieve.

But from the assumed Russian perspective, Ukrainian gains in the fall and European resilience in the winter have made military success only more urgent. There’s no point in elaborating peace proposals so long as the Ukrainians are convinced that they can win a total victory, and they’re more convinced of that than ever.

So only once that hope is broken by force of arms can a settlement acceptable to Moscow begin to emerge. Which makes it necessary to prove militarily that stalemate is absolutely the best that Kyiv can hope for, that U.S. and European support may suffice to hold ground but not to sweepingly reclaim it. And such proof can be delivered only through escalation, with de-escalation hopefully waiting on the other side.