Outgoing President Joe Biden yesterday authorized Ukraine to use American missiles to attack Russian territory, reducing the limitations he had maintained on the use of long-range weapons. The last few weeks help to explain the most relevant decisions in months, and their possible consequences.
The transformation from Zelensky’s maximalist “plan for peace” to a “plan for victory” that was assessed as unrealistic and irrational by the Biden Administration, accompanied by the deployment of North Korean forces presented serious political and military challenges for Ukraine. Scholz, with a guaranteed defeat in the next snap elections, and empowered by the result of the US election, seems to have finally found his own voice in this conflict: support for Ukraine, but defense of diplomacy and negotiation, recognizing them as the only possible way out of the conflict.
The best example of this position is Scholz’s confirmation that the US decision does not apply to Germany’s Taurus missiles. The dialogue with Putin was treated by Zelensky simultaneously as opening a “Pandora’s box” and as being irrelevant, which adds to Zelensky’s already many instances of poor political communication contradictory incentives for his allies.
Donald Trump’s victory in the US presidential elections appears to have serious consequences for the situation in Ukraine. Trump rejects the preservation at all costs of the US position as a preeminent and undisputed power in the international system, through enormous security and defense commitments around the world (as historically Republicans have proposed) or the construction of a “liberal international order”. , based on international rules and organizations created and led by the USA since World War II (as mainly proposed by Democrats).
Instead, it understands, as appears to be the practice of the future Trump administration, that such a position is a waste of resources, that involvement in regional power struggles is harmful to US power and interests, that the national interest is defined in a more precisely, that the USA owes its security above all to its geography, and that, therefore, giving up on the previous strategy means ceasing to want to build a “liberal international order” that led to unnecessary, useless, ambitious and expensive wars, to promote democracy and preserve the “empire”.
Yesterday’s Russian attack, on the largest scale in recent months, against energy infrastructure and military targets, was the last straw that precipitated the decision. We do not yet know whether this possibility had been raised by Biden to Trump when they met after the elections. We also don’t know what position Trump might take on this issue. However, the results for the war are more or less predictable: an escalation of the conflict with little possibility of producing substantial changes on the ground, like what we have seen in the last year of stalemate (how many miracle weapons have they already sold us, game changers with almost zero impact?); a huge increase in insecurity on both sides, which only increases the escalation dynamics and the risk, not just for Ukrainians and Russians, but for all of us; therefore, the possibility of everyone having greater military capabilities and everyone being more invested in war, without having their security increased. At best, it will have a slight positive tactical impact for Ukraine, with all the other consequences we have indicated.
Putin had drawn a red line regarding the possibility of such action. The decision of whether these missiles will be used only in Kursk or also in the rest of the territory will be decisive for Russia’s response. Strengthening cooperation with North Korea is certain, and perhaps also with other partners in its neighborhood. The delay in the military advances that Russia is making in the East, but also the wait for Trump to come to power could mean a weaker Russian response than expected. However, with the risk that Putin wants to avoid: that the red lines, the bluff associated with military deterrence is perceived as such, and that the West invests even more in arming Ukraine, hoping not to suffer consequences from this action.
It will be up to Trump to decide the future of this conflict. It will be enough for Trump to threaten or withdraw some of the economic, political or military support given to Ukraine, for it to end up realizing the inevitability of diplomacy and negotiation, as, in fact, Zelensky has done in recent weeks, contradicting the “peace through force” he tried sell as Trump’s strategy for the world and for Ukraine.
Europe is left lacking an understanding of its own future. Delivered to a Cold War 2.0 against Russia, or managing to find some form of cohabitation with its eternal neighbor. In addition to the fact that, two and a half years after we said it for the first time, no one seriously believes in a military victory for Ukraine, the widespread fear of a more intense and eventually more widespread war, caused by a logic of deterrence that is increasingly more fragile, should make us ponder the rationality of the strategy of recent years.
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