As the Ukrainian military made rapid strides in its autumn campaign, fears of Russian nuclear retaliation combined with a longstanding American interpretation of Russian strategic theory: “escalation to deescalation,” saying the idea of using a nuclear strike was linked to upping the ante of the conflict so high that your enemies see no choice but to negotiate, regardless of your conventional advantages.
In the months that followed, a return to a war of attrition and several Russian denials eased some of the core fears. But a scaletodescale theory remains relevant to the situation Ukrainebecause it lays out both American and Russian strategies conventional, nonnuclear for the spring campaign.
Note that I said American strategy, not Ukrainian. Ukraine’s desired strategy understandably remains the same throughout the war: escalate to win. Kyiv wants to send as many weapons as the West can send, it wants to reclaim every inch of territory, and it doesn’t want to accept terms that favor the Russian invaders.
:quality(80)/cloudfrontuseast1.images.arcpublishing.com/estadao/YXN2QTI6OZHT5NNBYVKGM2D7OQ.jpg "The logic of military escalation to cool down the war in Ukraine; Read the review 3")
The picture shows the Germanmade Leopard 2 tank during an exercise in Bergen, Germany, in 2014. Berlin confirmed the supply of armored vehicles to Ukraine to strengthen offensive power against Russia. Photo: Peter Steffen / AP 10/10/2014
This stance is shared by many other extreme voices in Europe and the US who continue to plot for Ukraine’s victory and Ukraine’s fall Wladimir Putin. But that view is not shared by the Biden administration, or at least not by key decisionmakers.
Yes, the formal position of the White House is that Ukraine will have our support until victory. But President Biden and his team’s cautious approach to weapons that could radically change the balance of the war, the nudges encouraging Kyiv to show a willingness to negotiate, the concern to invest heavily at the expense of our Asian commitments all of this points towards it pointed out that the immediate goal of the White House is a favorable truce, not a complete defeat of Russia.
To achieve that imaginary peace, however, you must convince the Russians that a real truce — as opposed to yet another “frozen conflict” where the war dies but peace is never formally made — is in their best interests. That if they keep the war boiling, they will continue to lose men and materiel at a brutal and regimedestabilizing rate.
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One hope was that last fall’s Ukrainian counteroffensive and Europe’s successful resistance so far over the winter months would be crucial in persuading Moscow to accept this reality and even put forward its own proposals (at first, arguably unrealistic) for a negotiated deal.
Instead, the Russians appear to be preparing for their own renewed offensive. That explains why Biden’s White House and European allies are cautiously and with some hesitation turning the escalation button and allowing an increased flow of tanks and heavy armor into Ukraine.
So far, this is not a policy aimed at completely suppressing Russian mobilization or expelling Russians from Ukraine. It’s a policy apparently aimed at dampening any new offensive, potentially letting the Russians lose further ground and showing Moscow that it can’t win a long war of attrition any easier than it originally hoped to win a short one . It’s an escalation that assumes the Russians need a little more persuasion to stay open to “deescalation.”
But similar logic seems to drive Russian strategy as well at least as far as we can see through the dark glass between us and Russian intentions.
:quality(80)/cloudfrontuseast1.images.arcpublishing.com/estadao/FY7JYHEXABC3NGMCUWH3IH6XCY.jpg "The logic of military escalation to cool down the war in Ukraine; Read the review 4")
A Ukrainian soldier walks over the wreckage of a destroyed Russian tank in central Kyiv, in this picture Wednesday, 25. Kyiv, with Western support, is trying to expel Russians from all of Ukrainian territory Photo: Daniel Cole/AP
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From a supposedly Russian perspective, Ukrainian gains in the fall and European resilience in the winter made military success all the more urgent. There is no point in working out peace proposals as long as Ukrainians are convinced that they can achieve total victory, and they are more convinced of that than ever.
Therefore, there will only be an acceptable solution if this hope is destroyed by force of arms Moscow can appear. That makes it necessary to prove militarily that stalemate is absolutely the best Kyiv can hope for, that American and European support may be enough to hold ground but not fully regain it. And this proof can only be provided by military escalation while “deescalation” awaits on the other side.
More reactive conservatives will disagree with this analysis, noting that we have no evidence that Russia really wants real deescalation at any point before the conquest. More diplomatic will object that I overestimate the true desire of the Biden White House to reach an agreement and underestimate how much US policy is driven by war fever, militaryindustrial imperatives, or the romance of decadent liberalism with a distant nationalism.
But the reason for seeing the situation as I have described it, that Washington and Moscow envisage escalating towards a peace deal, is simple: it is a historically familiar situation. A war begins, hoping for a quick end, but a stalemate ensues and both sides are convinced that increased engagement with the conflict on more favorable terms will bring it to an earlier end.
This mutual belief isn’t a matter of romance, fantasy, or sheer madness (although, of course, those forces play a role). Instead, escalation is accepted as a coldly logical decision, the only sensible course of action. And from that rationality one approaches the irrationality of fighting for years in a war neither side can win which leads to compromise.