The situation in Kyiv, Moscow, and beyond, strategic considerations in Ukraine, drone strikes in Africa, and more.

Mr. Zelensky goes to Washington

The state—and future—of the war in Ukraine as Zelensky visits America

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is traveling to Washington this week, where he will meet with President Joe Biden and congressional leaders to request additional U.S. military and financial support for his country's rebuff of Russia's invasion.

This is Zelensky's second trip to the U.S. since Russian President Vladimir Putin's attack in February of 2022, and he is expected to receive a more mixed welcome than that of last December. Then, Zelensky was riding the momentum of a strikingly successful fall counteroffensive. Now, he arrives in Washington after a summer counteroffensive with far fewer victories to its credit.

The situation in Kyiv

Zelensky and his advisers are now hoping to do more than make the Russian bear bleed for attacking Ukraine; they imagine they can rout Russia's army and bring about Putin's demise." [Harpers / Michael C. Desch]
"Ukraine's army has shifted away from the aging infrastructure and antiquated doctrines that defined it during the post-Soviet era, becoming heavily reliant on Western equipment and strategic planning." [Foreign Affairs / Liana Fix and Michael Kimmage]
Ukraine has reported some impressive wins, but overall, the summer counteroffensive, very near its expiration date, has not performed as hoped, and "idea that there is a shortcut to victory"—especially via the right equipment provision—"raises expectations for a quick end to the carnage that Ukraine is unlikely to fulfill." [FP / Franz-Stefan Gady]

The situation in Moscow

"Meanwhile, Russia is waging war on Ukraine's economy, which would struggle to function without international help." [Foreign Affairs / Fix and Kimmage]
"Putin [has] indicated he [is] bracing for a long war in Ukraine, saying that Kyiv could use any ceasefire to rearm and that Washington would continue to see Russia as an enemy no matter who won the 2024 U.S. election." [Reuters / Guy Faulconbridge]
The West has failed to convince key emerging economies—including India, Brazil and South Africa—to join in its isolation of Moscow. [WSJ / Laurence Norman]
Unsurprisingly, then, "Russia has managed to overcome sanctions and export controls imposed by the West to expand its missile production beyond prewar levels." [NYT / Julian E. Barnes et al.]

The situation in Washington

"Continued Western commitment to Ukraine cannot be guaranteed. Political constituencies in Europe and the United States are questioning long-term support for Ukraine." [Foreign Affairs / Fix and Kimmage]
"Skepticism is growing among House Republicans on the approval of more Ukraine funding as Congress faces its first test on America's role in the war against Russia." [The Hill / Brad Dress]

The implications

"Western policymakers would be well-advised not to automatically assume that Russia or any other adversary is non-rational, as they often do. That only serves to undermine their ability to understand how other states think and craft smart policies to deal with them." [UnHerd / John Mearsheimer and Sebastian Rosato]
"[T]he West's gradual approach has served a vital strategic purpose. It is no accident that the war has avoided certain forms of drastic escalation." [Foreign Affairs / Austin Carson]
- "A direct conventional or nuclear clash between Russia and NATO would clearly be ruinous for both sides, inflicting tremendous economic, political, and military damage."
- However, "[e]scalation control measures that have worked today may need to evolve to keep working tomorrow." [Foreign Affairs / Carson]
"[T] he United States could be doing more to enable diplomacy. […] Laying the groundwork for eventual negotiations could reduce the risk of … dangerous outcomes." [Foreign Affairs / Samuel Charap and Miranda Priebe]
- But peace seems unlikely for the moment, and the major U.S. policy focus should be to limit its own risk, by continuing to avoid escalation and avoiding any purported solution that entails giving Ukraine security guarantees, which is likely to prolong war and increase the danger of the U.S. being drawn into one, all without offering meaningful protection to Ukraine. [DEFP / Benjamin H. Friedman]
- Washington should not cut off Ukraine but should push the burden of supporting it increasingly to European allies. [DEFP / Rajan Menon]

DEBATE

"This thing has played out almost exactly as I expected it to—actually, Ukraine has achieved slightly less than I thought they might at the beginning, but I didn't think they would get any more than this. And the reasons are very practical. It's that if you don't have air superiority, you don't have sufficient air defense, if you don't have a superiority in artillery, and, most crucially, if you don't have sufficient mine-clearing capacity, there's just almost no chance for you to defeat a well-equipped, dug-in enemy force. […] So then you have to ask the bigger question, at least for this operational concern: Then what?"

— Ret. Col. Daniel L. Davis, a DEFP senior fellow, speaking in "Ukraine's offensive: Too slow to triumph?" [BBC / The Real Story]

DATA

Exactly what are U.S. troops doing in Africa? In short, they are fighting terrorist insurgencies to a degree most U.S. citizens are almost certainly unaware of.

As U.S. troops have become more engaged in ground operations in Africa since 2006, U.S. drone and air strikes against terrorist groups have naturally expanded in kind to support those operations. Most of this activity has come in Somalia and Libya.

The numbers of civilian deaths from drones in these two countries are murky because of poor reporting by AFRICOM, but reliable estimates put deaths in the thousands. Whether this type of collateral damage aids terrorist recruitment is a debatable topic, but it certainly can't help the U.S. cause.

Read more about increasingly militarized U.S. counterterrorism policy in Africa here.

Related report: U.S. resumes drone operations in Niger

Sober Analysis

Why does the U.S. oppose Taiwanese independence?

[The Diplomat / Seamus Boyle]

[It is a critical error to conflate] Taiwanese independence (a term that refers to the de jure establishment of a new "Republic of Taiwan" in place of the island's current constitution) with the idea of plain Taiwanese autonomy and self-governance, a "lower case" independence. Understanding the difference between the two is critical for understanding the United States' approach to cross-strait politics, and how U.S. policy can continue to prevent conflict over Taiwan. […]

The Taiwanese people are, as they have been for generations, content to live in the liminal space of nebulous yet functional self-governance. While the United States' opposition to Taiwanese independence is painful for the movement's fiercest proponents, the general Taiwanese populace's willingness to abstain on the issue for the foreseeable future enables the U.S. to continue making a vital assurance to China at comparatively little cost to Taiwan.

Ultimately, U.S. opposition to Taiwanese independence is not an act of undue interference nor abandonment, but a shrewd and critical piece of policy, largely agreeable to all parties, which has been fortunately preserved amid the freefall of China-U.S. relations, and which must be kept intact for a peaceful status quo to endure.

Read the full analysis here.

Zelensky goes to Washington