Stalemate in Ukraine raises the risk of escalation; putting U.S. special forces in Kyiv compounds it

(Originally published May 23 in “What in the World“) Ukraine has rejected a ceasefire or the prospect of surrendering any territory to Russia. “The war must end with the complete restoration of Ukraine’s territorial integrity and sovereignty,” Ukraine’s presidential chief of staff Andriy Yermak tweeted Sunday.

Though completely justified, this position is likely to escalate the war and increase the risk of direct involvement by the West. Not only must Ukraine capitalize on its success so far in using Western military support to hold back the Russian invasion, it must go on the offensive to expel Moscow’s forces. But as The New York Times opined last week:

“A decisive military victory for Ukraine over Russia, in which Ukraine regains all the territory Russia has seized since 2014, is not a realistic goal. Though Russia’s planning and fighting have been surprisingly sloppy, Russia remains too strong, and Mr. Putin has invested too much personal prestige in the invasion to back down.”

The Times makes the sensible point that the U.S. public isn’t prepared for the costs of restoring the status quo in Ukraine. On the contrary, as Mitt Romney warns in a Times op-ed, the risk remains that Russian President Vladimir Putin resorts to unconventional weapons to avoid defeat. That’s the option if you subscribe to the Putin-is-a-madman theory. If you believe that Putin is behaving like the ruthless tactician he always has been, he may simply be aiming to wait out the West’s interest. As this newsletter noted in early March, Covid demonstrated to Putin that the West cannot muster the collective willpower necessary to win an intractable and costly conflict. The war in Ukraine is already exacerbating inflation, particularly in food prices, and causing real pain to the American and European public. Inflation and market volatility, moreover, are battering the next eggs of the most politically influential demographic in both: older savers.

If Putin can maintain his own public support for a simmering war until next year, the West may have moved on. In some ways, it already has. News on the war has already started to slip down from atop the home pages of The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal in favor of domestic news.

Any stalemate in Ukraine will quickly lose interest from a public already suffering from collective attention deficit disorder. To keep Americans sufficiently outraged to justify continued investment in reversing Russia’s gains, the White House will need a Netflix-worthy cliffhanger, i.e., some outrageous plot twist like a U.S.S. Maine or Gulf of Tonkin incident—a pretext for escalating. Russian use of a tactical nuclear weapon would service nicely. But Putin likely understands that.

Rather than rely on Putin to behave so rashly, the U.S. need only put Americans in harm’s way. The Pentagon and other U.S. officials are reportedly weighting sending U.S. special forces to protect the American diplomats in Kyiv. These personnel would immediately violate U.S. President Joe Biden’s promise not to send U.S. forces into Ukraine, even if they stick largely behind the embassy gate. Anyone who’s lived near a U.S. embassy knows that the resident Marines and other military personnel regularly venture beyond the embassy to exercise, shop and otherwise live their lives. Anyone who thinks U.S. personnel in Kyiv will confine themselves to the relative safety of the embassy is deluded. Once one American is shot or killed in a missile strike, restraint will be in short supply.

Biden is meanwhile on his way to Tokyo to meet with America’s Australian, Indian, and Japanese allies after a stopover in Seoul, where he discussed countering North Korean missile tests with expanded military exercises with South Korea. Biden said the U.S. was prepared for what officials believe is an imminent test by Pyongyang of its missiles or nuclear capability, despite the fact that the North seems preoccupied with a widening outbreak of Covid.