Stagnant front lines and shifting politics around Ukraine, the danger of the Iraq AUMF, Nagorno-Karabakh, and more.
Cracking coalition
Strategic implications of battlefield stalemate and rising ambivalence on Ukraine aid
"MAGA wants to betray Ukraine," blares the headline of a Paul Krugman column at The New York Times this week, a melodramatic rendering of a somewhat more mundane reality: that Western enthusiasm for providing military and financial support for Kyiv's fight against Moscow's invasion is less uniform than it was a year and a half ago.
Yes, there's more vocal ambivalence on the subject from the American right than among their counterparts on the left, but across the political spectrum—and across the Atlantic, too—backing for an open-ended, blank-check commitment to Ukraine aid is visibly wavering. What does that mean for Ukraine's defense, and how should it affect U.S. strategy?
Stalemate in Ukraine
The "Ukrainian military is facing an enemy that impedes maneuver. As a result, the Ukrainian army is pursuing an attritional approach" which is foreign to U.S. tactics and training. [WOTR / Robert Rose]
That approach may be Kyiv's best option, but it is not taking much territory.
Neither Ukraine nor Russia have gained significant ground this year. The fight is effectively stalemated.
"Although both sides have launched ambitious offensives, the front line has barely shifted. After 18 months of war, a breakthrough looks more difficult than ever." [NYT / Josh Holder]
Czech President Petr Pavel argued in July that whatever Ukraine achieves "by the end of this year will be the baseline for negotiation." [NYT / Matthew Mpoke Bigg]
Will the spigot stay open?
That doesn't preclude actively pursuing pragmatic diplomacy, which serves U.S. interests by keeping open lines of communication even when it produces no dramatic wins at the negotiating table.
"You don't just talk to your friends," Secretary of State James Baker once said. "You talk to your enemies as well," and this doesn't somehow "reward" them, especially "if you are tough and you know what you are doing." [Newsweek / Daniel R. DePetris]
Or, as the famed American diplomat (and containment advocate) George Kennan more memorably mused in 1963, "We should be prepared to talk to the devil himself, if he controls enough of the world to make it worth our while." [Foreign Affairs / Andrei Kolesnikov]
Strategic implications
The prospect of Ukraine aid becoming politically infeasible should only increase the urgency of pursuit of a diplomatic resolution to this war, as RAND scholar Samuel Charap has argued. [Foreign Affairs]
If Pavel's forecast proves correct—and if current trends hold—the diplomatic baseline is already foreseeable and basically identical to where things stood after Ukraine's successful counteroffensive last fall.
Accepting only a battlefield resolution "discounts how the war's structural realities are unlikely to change even if the frontline shifts, an outcome that itself is far from guaranteed." [Foreign Affairs / Charap]
"Perhaps Zelensky's biggest moral failure will prove to be prolonging a war that in a year or two won't look any different on the ground, save for much larger cemeteries on both sides." [Harpers / Michael C. Desch]
For Kyiv, if international—and especially European—support is soon to wane, it would be wise to realistically assess whether a stronger negotiating hand is likely in the foreseeable future.
For Washington, avoiding U.S.-Russia escalation should remain the priority. In practice, that will entail burden-shifting to Europe and rejecting a security guarantee for Ukraine.
Sober analysis
Why the Iraq AUMF is still dangerous
At first glance, a repeal of the [2002 AUMF that authorized the U.S. invasion of Iraq] may seem like a symbolic gesture. After all, the main body of U.S. troops in Iraq withdrew more than a decade ago, and the small force that remains ceased combat operations in 2021. And the Biden administration, which supports the repeal, has made clear that it would have no impact on ongoing U.S. military operations.
But focusing on current operations misses what repeal would accomplish.More than20 years of practice has substantially expanded the effective scope of the 2002 Iraq AUMF, making it susceptible to unexpected uses beyond its original motivationof removing Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein from power—including in ways that could allow a future president to bypass Congress while pursuing another major war in the Middle East. Repeal is the only way to ensure this doesn't happen, and a prudent step that the House should take regardless of where the broader debate over AUMF reform might lead.
Read the full analysis here.
DATA
U.S. military aid to Ukraine, by type
"More than a year and a half into the conflict" in Ukraine, "U.S. public support for funding the war is wavering, particularly among Republicans," The Washington Post reports. It was "a central issue in negotiations over U.S. spending," so much so that the temporary funding bill signed by President Joe Biden over the weekend "left out $20 billion in assistance to Ukraine."
On Sunday, Biden urged Congress to "stop playing games" and approve additional assistance to Ukraine as quickly as possible, and OMB chief Shalanda Young expressed confidence that will happen. If lawmakers do indeed fall in line, they'll be adding to the more than $43 billion in military aid Washington has already sent to Kyiv.
Debatable
What does Nagorno-Karabakh's fall mean for great power influence?
[FP / Emma Ashford and Matthew Kroenig]
ASHFORD: It's also true that the ability of U.S. policymakers to shape outcomes here is very slim, and when they do try, they mostly mess it up—see then-U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's controversial visit a few years back. The 2020 war was ended only through Russian mediation. But it doesn't speak well of U.S. foreign policy that all the principles U.S. officials claim are overridingly important elsewhere just don't seem to apply in Nagorno-Karabakh. […]
Actually, this whole incident should be a warning to those in Washington—and more so in Eastern Europe—who argue that the collapse of Russia should be the goal of the war in Ukraine. A lot of these frozen conflicts might have gone the way of the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s—ethnic cleansing, civil war—if Russia hadn't intervened with peacekeepers. Now, those peacekeepers were also Russia's way of keeping influence. But it wasn't all bad. A weaker Russia will offer regional revisionists more scope for their intentions.
Read the full debate here.
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