In recent days the outgoing Biden administration has lifted its prohibition on Ukraine using US and allied-supplied weaponry to hit targets deep inside Russia. This has been interpreted by some prominent commentators in the west as a move towards what they term “World War Three” – an interpretation no doubt heightened by a subsequent Russian announcement that the Kremlin was, once again, shifting its stance on when it might use nuclear weapons.
All of this, I must say, strikes me as a little bit over-excited, and indeed very dangerous.
In the first instance, the US’s lifting of its restrictions on the Ukrainians seems to me to be less about escalating the war than it is about preparing for inevitable de-escalation. The incoming Trump administration has given every indication that it intends to pressure the Ukrainian state into some kind of peace negotiation. That is a position that both the Russians and the Ukrainians clearly understand.
It also seems at least likely that any peace negotiation will begin around the current frontlines of combat. A ceasefire, for example, would likely freeze the conflict in place with both sides de facto retaining the territory it presently controls, with the probable exception of any pre-war Russian territory held by the Ukrainians.
Given that such a scenario is about two months away (Trump takes office on January 20th) it seems likely that the American thinking here is that Ukraine should be strengthened as much as possible on the battlefield in that period, in order to ensure that it enters any peace talks in a position of maximum strategic strength.
The second point is that escalation of the conflict makes little strategic sense for the Russians on the face of things, and absolute strategic sense for the Ukrainians. Estimates of Russian losses in the conflict vary, but it seems relatively clear that a country presently relying on North Korean cannon-fodder to supplement its front-line regiments is not in any immediate position to engage in a wider land war in western Europe. It is also the case that the Russians can read the position of the Trump administration as easily as anyone else can, and that it therefore makes more sense for them to wait out any Ukrainian escalation and wait for the new White House to apply pressure on the Ukrainians to come to terms.
The third point is that Russian threats of Nuclear War are as common as Irish complaints about the weather. The Biden administration has little reason – or had up to now – to take them seriously.
Those threats, however, come with a particular calculation about western public opinion. The Russians do have one major advantage there, which is in the willingness of a certain sector of western opinion to blame everybody but the Russians for the actions of the Russians. This is what the entire “World War Three” narrative is about.
For example, consider this from first principles with your own gut-check answer to the following question: If the Russians were to launch tactical or strategic nuclear strikes on Ukrainian targets, who would be to blame?
The only morally correct answer here is “The Russians”. Using a nuclear weapon is a choice and would generally – up to now at least – be done in the full knowledge that using such a weapon would be to invite a nuclear war. The country that chooses to break the nuclear taboo would bear full responsibility for so doing.
However, the Russians may believe that they have shifted western public opinion so far as to be confident that many people would not blame them at all. That there would be enormous western public pressure not to respond in a nuclear fashion. That the Ukrainians and NATO would be blamed by that slice of public opinion instead for “forcing Russia into it”.
This is where things get dangerous, because western public opinion – or at least the peacenik element of it – is actively incentivising Mr. Putin to break the nuclear taboo. Consider the following scenario: Russia launches limited tactical nuclear strikes against Ukrainian military targets in the weeks before Trump takes office. The outgoing US administration protests, but does not escalate in the knowledge that it is about to be replaced. What, in that scenario, does the incoming Trump administration do?
If your answer is “peace talks”, then that’s rational in terms of avoiding global thermonuclear war in the moment, but highly irrational in terms of deterring further nuclear conflict in the future. The “nuclear deterrent” only works if all parties are entirely confident that using nuclear weaponry in war is to invite their own destruction. Once that precedent is broken, what is to deter an Israeli tactical nuclear strike on Iran, or a Pakistani tactical nuclear strike on India?
That is the real risk of WW3, not what might happen in Ukraine.
All of this is being enabled, I fear, by a strand of public opinion in the west that is eager for peace at all costs, and is eager too to blame everyone but the Russians for Russia’s own actions. When your disposition is that Russian demands must be catered to at all costs, then the inevitable risk is that the Russians will decide that you are entirely serious about that. Up to and including allowing them to break the nuclear taboo without cost.
None of this is an argument against peace in Ukraine, which is clearly an imperative. But the idea that the Ukrainians or the Biden administration are the ones provoking that by simply acting rationally and attempting to strengthen their position ahead of any peace negotiation is bizarre. If there’s a third world war, it will not happen in Ukraine. It will happen because of a western determination for peace at all costs.