US intelligence support of Ukraine is a calculated risk
Jules Witcover
WASHINGTON — American intelligence agents have reported they helped Ukrainian defenders sink Russia’s prize Black Sea flagship. Doing so enabled President Biden to say he is avoiding a “third world war in Europe,” by refraining from escalating a direct confrontation with Moscow.
His commitment against sending Americans into combat against Russians walks a very thin line, however, in actively participating on Ukraine’s behalf in hostilities. The U.S. is a NATO member and thus is a critical partner in the alliance’s collective action against the Russian offensive in Ukraine. The resulting dilemma puts Biden in a torturous position. How can he provide critical intelligence information to Ukraine without openly acknowledging the American contribution to such an attack on Russia?
His early declaration that he was determined not to send Americans to fight Russians may have seemed to be good domestic politics. After all, NATO was created in large part as just such a Western mechanism, with the United States in the driver’s seat.
But the United States is providing Ukraine artillery, air defense radar systems, loitering drones armed with explosives and armored personnel carriers, and our soldiers are training Ukrainians how to use them, albeit in places like Germany instead of Ukraine, as they did before the invasion.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has lately characterized his “special military operation” in Ukraine as a struggle against NATO, and it seems increasingly likely that a strike against NATO forces or targets could be an outcome. What sort of further confrontation would that lead to?
If President Biden can indeed avoid a general clash between two of the greatest powers, it will be to his credit. In the meantime, he can be credited with galvanizing the West into action and giving new purpose to NATO.
It was not long ago that Donald Trump and his followers were casting doubt on the future of the alliance. But Putin, by making the fateful decision in February to invade Ukraine, cast the die making Russia the expansionist heir to the Soviet Union, inviting NATO to take swift countermeasures to frustrate its plans to absorb Ukraine.
Indeed, the episode has invited a thorough rethinking of security risk among NATO member nations and has inspired Finland and Sweden, two longstanding neutral nations with borders with Russia, to express interest in joining the alliance.
True, the capabilities of NATO as a functioning military alliance have yet to be demonstrated in the current context. If the Cold War was the era of proxy wars between East and West, with the limits of escalation understood, it’s not clear how direct conventional warfare between principal powers in Europe today can be limited, given the nuclear arsenal at the disposal of Russia.
Russian government and media elites have already explicitly invoked the use of nuclear weapons, and even if Russia only at first seeks to limit itself to tactical nukes on the battlefield in Ukraine, the threat of a nuclear exchange between superpowers would reach a critical stage with likely catastrophic consequences. It’s precisely this possibility that responsible national leaders must work to prevent, while also decisively defeating Putin’s efforts to extirpate the Ukrainian state. Biden is taking his crack at doing so amid increasingly trying conditions at home, and there are signs he’s succeeding.
Helping Ukraine defend itself against the Russian invasion with our best military intelligence may strike some as unacceptably reckless. But our hand has been forced, and Biden must continue to thread the needle no matter what the domestic political consequences.
Jules Witcover’s latest book is “The American Vice Presidency: From Irrelevance to Power,” published by Smithsonian Books. You can respond to this column at juleswitcover@comcast.net.