Looking back at Ukraine’s year of war

One year after Russia invaded Ukraine, the geopolitical world has been transformed. The Western alliance has been revived. European nations have undertaken a revolution in their security postures, by slashing their reliance on Russian oil and gas and increasing their defense budgets. Sweden and Finland are joining NATO. Russia may be the world’s largest country by landmass but it is now a pariah state, largely excommunicated from the global financial system. Moscow’s main remedy for this isolation has been to deepen its ties to China. It has been an epochal year.

The most remarkable part of the story is in Ukraine itself. Two of the war’s biggest surprises have been the fierce will to fight of the Ukrainian people and the inspired leadership of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Both of those were uncertain one year ago. Now neither is in doubt. Such Ukrainian fortitude has imposed brutal costs on the Russian military. After shocking the world by fending off the initial Russian assault, Ukrainian forces have now recaptured some 60 percent of their territory from Russian control, and are preparing for renewed combat offensives this spring.

Russian barbarism has removed any murkiness about the war’s moral stakes. Russian forces continue to mock the laws of war through deliberate attacks on civilian infrastructure and unarmed Ukrainian citizens. The longer the war continues, the more atrocities and needless suffering the Ukrainians will endure.

There are also strategic reasons to push for a faster end to the war—but that end result needs to be a stable, free, and sovereign Ukraine. The current landscape appears to be a stalemate rather than a clear path to a Ukrainian victory. A grinding war of attrition plays to Russia’s advantage. Vladimir Putin, with his depraved disregard for human life—especially the lives of his own people—shows no interest in relenting his attack or otherwise negotiating an end to the war. He will only be stopped by force.

To its credit, the Biden administration has done several things well on its Ukraine policy, including managing relations with our fractious allies, developing an effective intelligence sharing partnership with Ukrainian forces, and building a robust program of training and weapons supply for the Ukrainians.

Yet the White House continues to hamstring its policy through self-deterrence and handwringing, undercutting its bold words with hesitant deeds. As former National Security Advisor Steve Hadley points out, “Our verbal commitment is out ahead of our ability to perform on that commitment. … We are six months behind on getting [the Ukrainians] the military equipment they need.”

This is why seven former Supreme Allied Commanders of Europe have just called for increasing the speed, quantity, and lethality of arms supplies to Ukraine. Specifically, the United States should provide weapons systems such as the ATACMS to target Russian rocket and missile launchers, F-16 fighter jets with their unique capabilities to suppress Russian air defenses, and advanced drones.

Russia may be a pariah state, but it is not completely alone. Iran and China have been giving the Kremlin vital support, and U.S. intelligence indicates that Beijing is considering providing weapons and ammunition to resupply Russian forces.

Meanwhile some voices in the United States urge abandoning Ukraine in order to focus on, variously, the threat from China, or America’s own internal and border challenges. This may be couched in terms of hard-headed choices, but it rests more on wishful thinking than strategic wisdom. Former Vice President Mike Pence put it well in remarks last week at the University of Texas-Austin’s Clements Center for National Security (where I serve as executive director): “If we surrender to the siren song of those in this country who argue that America has no interest in freedom’s cause, history teaches we may soon send our own into harm’s way.”

Sen. Tom Cotton, one of the GOP’s leading national security thinkers, points out that failing to defeat the Russian invasion now could leave Ukraine as a “festering wound” with it and other Eastern European countries at risk of renewed Kremlin predation. This would mire the United States in a prolonged “two-front posture” of deterrence in both Europe and Asia. Whereas a victory in Ukraine now would in turn allow the Pentagon to shift more military resources to Asia.

And while the United States might prefer to confine our competition with China to the Asia Pacific region, Beijing sees the world as a global contest for supremacy. China would perceive diminished American resolve in Ukraine as weakness and a strategic opening to exploit, perhaps by attacking Taiwan. (In a similar vein, Putin viewed America’s surrender in Afghanistan in part as an inducement to invade Ukraine).

As NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg warned, “Beijing is watching closely, to see the price Russia pays, or the reward it receives, for its aggression. What is happening in Europe today can happen in Asia tomorrow.”

Which is why what happens in Ukraine in the coming year will shape the entire world for years to come.