This article was originally published by Haaretz on March 14, 2022. View it here.
The West could have averted this war, but now, Putin has responded to the worst demons of his nature and unleashed indiscriminate destruction. We can’t know what level of risk he will take to achieve his goal. A tragic war has been inflicted on Ukraine by a leader in Moscow who appears willing to destroy that country and his alleged Slavic "brethren," in order to get his way. Adding to the tragedy is that it was avoidable. For more than a year, Russian President Vladimir Putin had been calling for a conference at which NATO and Russia would discuss the foundations for mutual security, as opposed to Ukraine and Georgia (and any other state of the FSU) joining NATO. He got silence in response. Then, several months ago, he threw down the gauntlet, demanding a formal assurance that Ukraine will never join NATO and that the forward positioning of NATO troops in East Europe and the Baltics be reversed. The latter was likely a throwaway demand, while the former was totally serious and consistent with what Russia has been demanding since 2008.
The West summarily dismissed both demands, but called for Putin to act responsibly by engaging with the "diplomatic path." We, in the West, and they, in Russia, talked for several months, but we showed no receptivity to his original demands, treating them as off the table. Ultimately, Putin lost it.
He had been angry since 2007, before which he had largely accommodated himself to the NATO expansion of 2004, which brought in more East European states as well as the Baltic states. Moscow didn't like it, but did not push the issue. Not so regarding the invitation to Ukraine and Georgia in 2008 to prepare for eventual membership. As the French and Germans warned, this would cross Russia's very bright red line and could result in a fierce reaction, and it did – Russia invaded Georgia in 2008 and seized Crimea in 2014, while stoking an eastern insurgency in Ukraine. Most recently, Putin proposed the European security dialogue, followed by the two demands of last fall. When these got nowhere, he decided to ferociously throttle Ukraine, while warning the West that it dare not intervene lest the war escalate to the nuclear level. But had we offered Putin the formal or tacit neutralization of Ukraine (on the models of Austria and Finland, respectively) several years ago, as even Henry Kissinger proposed in 2014, I believe he would have been receptive.
So now, Putin has responded to the worst demons of his nature and unleashed a war that is criminal in its tactics. Frankly, I had thought he would just take more territory in eastern Ukraine, but apparently he became determined to force a more comprehensive resolution. He is morally responsible for the indiscriminate devastation he is inflicting as he tries to occupy Ukraine at whatever price to civilian casualties and life. And it has all been accompanied by bigger and bigger lies coming out of Moscow. Some people would argue that my saying this war was avoidable is a case of blaming the U.S. for it. I do blame us for pushing Putin into a corner, but I blame Putin for the way he is fighting his way out of that corner. I’m not claiming moral equivalence, but I am claiming that this was an avoidable tragedy. That said, I think we are now faced with a series of practical and moral dilemmas and trade-offs as we support the Ukrainian resistance. Ominously, the United States intelligence community has concluded that, to Putin, this is a war that "he cannot afford to lose." Are we willing to keep supplying the Ukrainian resistance with ever-more-lethal weaponry so that they can fight to the last Ukrainian? What if Russia bombs the supply lines within Ukraine? Are we willing to escalate our involvement, at the risk of a direct military clash with Russia?
I think this whole mess holds great potential for inadvertent military escalation. In some respects, it is more dangerous than was the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962. The "fog of war" increases the risks of, and pathways for, misperceptions and accidental escalation; Russian attacks on supply lines for armaments flowing into Ukraine from NATO countries could breach borders; cyberwarfare beyond Ukraine as a Russian retaliatory step introduces a new and escalatory possibility to the conflict; the nuclear threshold could be breached through Russia’s desperate use of tactical nuclear weapons, just as the weapons of mass destruction (WMD) threshold could be breached through the introduction of chemical weapons. And a major hit on a Ukrainian nuclear power plant could irradiate both invaders and defenders.
These possibilities could be triggers for either horrified de-escalation or enraged escalation. Pundits throughout the West pretend to know exactly what is on Putin’s mind, usually dreamt up to support their preferred policy response. Some say he is motivated by a determination to reconstitute the Soviet Union or, more modestly, the "Russian-speaking world." Others see him attacking Eastern Europe to break apart NATO and destroy Western liberal democracy. Western policymakers who buy into this way of thinking might run ever-increasing risks of escalation to keep the Ukrainian insurgency from losing. My own intuition is that Putin has his hands full in Ukraine, and that he was driven to this point by a determination not to allow Ukraine to join the West in what is (let’s face it) an anti-Russian military alliance. We cannot know what level of risk he is willing to assume to achieve this goal. Thus far it looks like he plans to do to Kyiv and Kharkiv what he did to the capital of Chechnya (Grozny) in 2000 – flatten them through a combination of urban warfare and siege. Do not look for the oligarchs to unseat Putin. He controls them, not vice-versa. The security officials and military command are his main support, and they helped to design this rape of Ukraine.
I support the sanctions and the near-global condemnation, and I hope they have a sobering effect on Putin. But if there is to be a diplomatic off-ramp from this war, before hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians are killed, and millions more flee, the contours of such a deal are worth exploring, rather than assuming that we are facing a 21st century Hitler. If Putin in his current state retains rationality, and decides that the price of occupation exceeds the price of striking a diplomatic deal, the contours remain of what could have been negotiated several years ago: Russian withdrawal for the formal neutralization of Ukraine on the Austrian model.
Crimea is gone; Russia won't give it back. The status of the eastern provinces would have to be negotiated, were they to return to Ukraine. Then we in the United States and Europe can launch a Marshall Plan, perhaps funded with Russia’s frozen assets abroad, to help Ukraine rebuild. All this may be the most we can hope for.
George Breslauer is professor of political science at the University of California, Berkeley, where he is Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost, Emeritus. He is the author, most recently, of "The Rise and Demise of World Communism" (Oxford University Press, 2021)