Where is the Statecraft on Ukraine

Moral outrage is a dangerous alternative to statecraft

The responsibility for the war in the Ukraine, and the resultant suffering, lies firmly with Vladimir Putin. But the war also represents a significant failure of western statecraft. The West, including both the US and the EU, has had eight years in which to do something about Ukraine since Russia seized Crimea. Eight years in which some 14,000 people have died in the East of the country. Options ranged from reaching some form of accommodation with Russia which recognised Russian sovereignty over Crimea in exchange for wider security guarantees to finding a formula to enhance Ukraine´s military capabilities and create deterrence against a Russian invasion. The West instead has largely preferred to pretend that the problem does not exist leaving the crisis to fester until Putin decided to take advantage of a weak US President and a divided Europe. The question is now whether the West possesses the statecraft to find a way out of the crisis.

There is little doubt that Putin massively miscalculated with the military action against Ukraine, both in terms of Ukrainian resistance and the willingness of the West to respond. He appears to have thought that a minimal application of force would cause the collapse of Ukrainian resistance and bring down the Zelensky government. Instead, Ukrainian forces have resisted valiantly and Russian forces have performed poorly. The sight of Ukrainian cities coming under rocket and artillery attack has forged a unity within the West that Putin has spent the last twenty years trying to undermine. The West has gone beyond sanctioning individual Russian leaders to freezing the assets of Russia´s central bank and expelling some Russian banks from the SWIFT international payments system (although ensuring loopholes remain to allow Europe to continue buying Russian energy). But so far these and other measures appear to be emotion driven responses to Russia´s actions rather than carefully thought through statecraft. The European Union in particular has moved from appeaser in chief to belligerent supplier of arms to Ukraine with scarcely a thought for the consequences.

It is not clear what will happen next. We could see a new Winter War. In 1939 the Soviet Union invaded Finland. At first the Finns were able to resist, inflicting heavy casualties on the Soviet forces. But then the Soviets redeployed confronting the Finns with massive superiority of force and the Finns were forced to negotiate, ceding territory to maintain their nominal independence. Zelensky may face the same dilemma. Confronted by overwhelming Russian force and the reality of massive civilian casualties, and with the Ukrainian military steadily degrading, Zelensky may be forced to secure whatever terms he can from Putin. It is conceivable that this would mean conceding territory in the south and east in exchange for maintaining a neutral rump Ukraine nominally independent. How would the West respond to this? Would the current sanctions be maintained, even if their lifting formed part of the deal Zelensky had negotiated with Putin? How long would western unity continue as the economic costs of sanctions began to bite in Europe?

This is of course only one possible scenario. The war could go so badly for the Russians that Putin is removed from power in an internal coup. How would the west respond to a successor who agreed to withdraw Russian forces from Ukraine but wanted to retain Crimea? Would the West insist on rubbing in Russia´s humiliation or seek to engage with a new Russian government? Would the moral outrage in which western diplomacy now seems to specialise insist on punishing any Russian leadership with ties to the Putin era? Alternately the Russians may refuse to negotiate grinding the Ukrainians down in a longer lasting conflict. Would the West really be willing to arm and support a Ukrainian insurgency with the risks of escalation to a wider European war this would imply? How long would Europe be able or willing to sustain the economic costs of sanctions and a long running Ukrainian insurgency?

Emotion is understandably driving much of the debate about the Ukraine crisis. Proposals such as imposing a no-fly zone or providing Ukraine with fighter aircraft are emotionally satisfying but dangerously impractical. Statecraft, however, is a harder task master and demands not just moral judgements but colder analysis of the match between ends and means. The West was not willing to secure Ukraine when it had the chance. NATO is not willing to go to war with Russia to secure Ukraine now. Offering only military equipment without fuller military support is a way only to extend and expand the suffering of the Ukrainian people. There are likely no good outcomes to the Ukrainian crisis. But then the tragedy of foreign policy is that it is condemned always to finding the least bad of miserable options. Getting through the Ukrainian crisis will require skilled statecraft, not emotional responses. There is little evidence of such statecraft at the moment.