A Better Peace

I have a two part argument up at National Security Journal on the question of security guarantees vs. armed neutrality for Ukraine. I don’t think it will surprise anyone to learn that I think the latter requires the former in order to have any chance of working:

The security dilemma looms over these negotiations. Ukrainian concerns are obvious; if the end of the war enables Russia to consolidate its gains and work its way back into the international economy, Moscow could initiate another conflict on more favorable terms.

But Moscow has also not displayed a sense of humor regarding the idea of a Ukraine with a “large, advanced army and a formidable defense industrial base with extensive external support.”

The damage inflicted by Russia since 2014 has virtually ensured the virulent hostility of any democratic Ukrainian government towards Russia, a situation that most any country in the world would regard as a core security threat.

This reality is not lost upon the Russian national security apparatus, which is why Russia launched a war in February of 2022 intended to replace the Ukrainian government and permanently degrade Ukraine’s warmaking capacity.

And on security guarantees:

All of this is to say that some formal security guarantees can be regarded as credible, and, to a great degree, the formality of the guarantee can ensure its credibility. Evidence from the current conflict attests to this point.

Despite its engagement with Ukraine, Russia still enjoys a substantial 1-to-1 military advantage over several NATO allies along its border, especially the Baltics and Finland.

If Russia believed that NATO guarantees for Eastern European members were specious, it could engage in a campaign of militarized coercion designed to deter those countries from their substantial material support for Ukraine. But Russia evidently believes that London, Paris, and Washington will react differently to attacks on Latvia or Poland than to attacks on Ukraine.

Moreover, policymakers in Helsinki and Stockholm also quite clearly believe that a formal security commitment is worth more than an informal condominium of interests, as they rushed to join NATO following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. All of these people may be wrong, but the balance of evidence demands something more than sophistry.

Almost everyone understands this, but a great many people in the analytical community would prefer to pretend NOT to understand it because they are ideologically opposed to further extension of US security guarantees to Europe, either because they have latched onto some odd definition of “Restraint” or because they want to keep the powder dry for war against China.

It’s altogether exhausting.