Going back to February 2022 - trying to deter the Russian invasion

Great Debates
1

In hindsight, of course, the best way to deter the invasion was many years before - 2014 or before. But let’s set that aside and only go back to, say, the beginning or middle of February 2022.

Even without the U.S. or NATO directly intervening in the war, Russia appears well poised to lose; Ukraine has been handing its ass to it ever since Feb-24-2022. Nevertheless, the cost has been enormous; 1/3 of Ukraine’s population has been displaced, over 300,000 have died, who knows how many wounded, a trillion dollars in economic disruption, etc. In other words, in terms of deterrence, a stitch in time could really have saved 9 - indeed, perhaps more like a stitch in time saving 99.

All the way up to the day of the invasion itself, Biden made it very clear that U.S. armed intervention was not on the cards, and that was NATO’s stance likewise. At the same time, in hindsight, it’s abundantly clear that all the political, economic and diplomatic sanctions in the world wouldn’t stop Putin from invading. The West basically threatened Putin with every non-military thing under the Sun and it didn’t work.

Arguably, the threat of armed force (U.S. and/or NATO) was the only thing that would have prevented Russia from invading. One may argue that there is no formal treaty obligation to defend Ukraine as such, but the United States and NATO have intervened in plenty of situations where there was no treaty at stake - Saddam invading Kuwait, the Serbia-Kosovo situation, etc. - and Biden has even gone so far as to say America would defend Taiwan even though China is nuke-armed and there is no formal US treaty to defend Taiwan.

So - in hindsight, would a public, serious US/NATO pledge to intervene directly with military force have prevented a Russian invasion of Ukraine, and if so, was it a blunder in hindsight not to pledge as such?

2

Ukraine is not a NATO member. You can’t just write that off.
We had only pulled out of Afghanistan in May 2021 after 18 years.
As everyone has mentioned to you every time, Nuclear exchange is the all out must prevent.
Kuwait was not a NATO mission, so why bring it up at all?
Taiwan is not a NATO issue, but a US issue and a long standing one.
Why do you think Putin would have backed down?

3

The NATO intervention in the Balkans is a historical example of NATO acting in regional interest but outside of Article 5. So there is precedent.

But Russia is a different nut to crack than Serbia.

4

I doubt the OP has read much of the professional foreign policy commentary.

A high level US delegation was sent to Moscow a month or more before the invasion. Which delegation told the Russian Defense Minister to his face that a) we have all your attack plans, b) we fully intend to arm Ukraine and prevent you winning this war no matter how long it takes, and c) quit now & go home before a lot of people die for no gain to Russia.

The defense minister’s response was to tell them to quit wasting his time with their silly ideas.

I think it’s pretty clear that the US said the “a)” part loud and clear in public. The “b)” part was pretty strongly implied in public, net of some necessary weasel-wording for US political reasons. The “c)” part was also said publicly. A lot.

The Russian high command did not care. They had already decided that a) their military was unstoppable, and b) the US / NATO / the rest of the West would bluster but fail to act in time or in the necessary quantity.


Deterrence is a rational equation involving rational actors. If any actor is irrational, deterrence is non-functional.

Just like peace requires two willing participants, but war only requires one willing participant.

5

Yeah, the US telegraphed what it knew, and what it intended to do in response. Honestly, it was a little strange that it wasn’t regarded as being a serious response. We’d actually invaded Iraq on far more tenuous (and yes, completely contrived) evidence. To think we wouldn’t provide substantial support to Ukraine was a very, very silly position. We and the Ukrainians are very lucky that they were in a position to utilize that support well, and the Russians are very unlucky to not be able to counter that as of this writing.

Really, I don’t see a good way of convincing the Russians that they can’t conquer Ukraine pre-2022 (and yeah, I still think they couldn’t conquer it with the force they had assembled without Ukraine getting western support) without insulting them and getting them to accept it. That would take a very skillful diplomat. Some folks have to learn the hard way, and I think the Russian government may be in that category.

6

Russia isn’t a functioning state in the sense we think of the term in the West. It’s a kleptocracy; it exists to serve the avarice of the thieves at the top. Vladimir Putin is not now, and hasn’t for God only knows how long, being given any sort of accurate information as to the capabilities of his OWN armed forces, much less anyone else’s. Estimates of how much of the Russian defense budget have been just outright stolen range upwards of forty to fifty percent.

7

The Russian plan was to take Kiev very quickly. Maybe in the first few weeks. If successful then the West wouldn’t have enough time to support Ukraine in any meaningful way. Maybe Russia felt Ukrainian culture was close enough to Russian that there would be no insurgency for the US to arm. The take over would be fait accompli.

Obviously it didn’t turn out that way because the Russian military was in shambles. However, I can see the logic in it.

8

Quite right.

Had the Ukrainian government & President proved as corrupt and feckless as the prior batch had been, and had Russia aimed a little more effort directly at Kyiv rather than in the east, then history could easily have taken a very different turn.

I don’t quite buy that the Russian military was so screwed up that they could not have taken Kyiv after the Ukrainian government essentially cut & ran. Which many sober Western commentators fully expected to happen.

9

I suspect that the Russians had been paying large sums to spies, pro-Russian militias, and Ukrainian politicians and generals, most of whom were completely unaware they were being bribed, if they even existed at all. If I recall correctly, there were right wing commentators with Russian ties who claimed that there would be no war because the fix was in, and the Ukrainian military had been paid not to fight. It must have been a shock for them to discover that their money didn’t buy anything, except maybe some fixer’s new yacht.

10

Preventing an invasion was not really a US foreign policy goal. Knowing what we know now, it was probably impossible. Making the war as excruciatingly difficult as possible for Russia, without direct intervention, has been the goal since day one. That seems to be working as planned.

11

That should have been the plan, but it wasn’t. IMHO the answer is more weapons of all kinds at earlier dates than which they were actually provided, and more training in western countries for the soldiers to use those weapons.

Imagine if from day 1 we had been training the Ukrainian military to use Abrams, Bradleys, and so on, in addition to the HIMARS that were sent. Ukraine could in theory have tens of thousands of trained soldiers, hundreds of Abrams, and thousands of Bradleys ready to go. Imagine if all the major Ukrainian cities had Patriot batteries and the trained soldiers to operate them from the early days of the war. Imagine if we were sending Reaper drones in large numbers. All that stuff would have made a huge difference. Probably enough of a difference that Ukraine would have already retaken all its territory including Crimea.

ETA. At the beginning of the war we were dealing with stuff like Biden vetoing the Polish sending all their MiG 29s and things of that sort. Imagine if Biden had been all in from the beginning?

12

Everything that you said is correct. But, you are assuming that the goal of US policy is to inflict a decisive, quick defeat on Russia. I am saying the goal is a long, drawn out conflict that weakens Russia in a variety of ways. If you think about it that way, it makes sense that the military aid is delivered in a very slow and deliberate manner. Another issue is, a slow escalation of military aid does not provoke a response from Russia against the providers of said aid. Russia always has the nuclear card tucked in its pocket; providing their enemies with weapons requires some finesse.

13

The US obtained serious intel about Russia’s plans maybe 6 months before the invasion occurred.

It is exceedingly implausible that at that point the US executive could have persuaded NATO or the US Congress that a full court press to arm Ukraine with the latest Western weapons was a good idea. Even if they had succeeded, stuff would have started happening on a slightly hurried peacetime timetable, not a full-bore wartime timetable.

Under those constraints the actual number of incremental HIMARS, M1s, Leopards, etc. in Ukraine by Feb 2022 would have been zero.

If the US did not have partisan gridlock, and did not have a reactionary RW party that is seemingly full of Russian sympathizers, and if Putin’s plans became clear maybe 24 months before the invasion, then, maybe, just maybe, the US and NATO might, just might, have been able to arm Ukraine effectively. Had they chosen then and there a path of unanimous highly aggressive and provocative action.

Far more likely there would have been a lot more and louder diplomatic efforts. And any arming would have been seen as counterproductive to those diplomatic efforts.

The critical thing that Putin’s actual factual invasion did was completely silence any / all critics who believed an invasion was either NATO fake intel (a la Iraqi WMD*), a simple mistaken mirage, or a Putin threat / bluff that would never actually happen. All those naysayers in all the various affected countries would have been dead set against pre-arming Ukraine. It would have been seen as dangerously escalatory in the event hostilities began, as well as quite likely to trigger the very war it was ostensibly trying to prevent. The history of mass mobilizations in WW-I & WW-II would be screaming that narrative loud and clear. And rightfully so.


* Any intel shenanigans, or even simply honest mistake becomes an albatross around the necks of the intel community for decades thereafter. Just as the Viet Nam war was an albatross for 50+ years, now mostly excised, the Iraqi WMD fiasco will be coloring the judgement of both intel folks and the senior leadership and general public who must rely upon that intel. Maybe around the year 2060 we’ll have excised those demons. To have been replaced by who-knows-which other, newer demons.

'Tis a conundrum. An everlasting one.

14

Sure. But I don’t mean before the war. I meant that once the war started, go all in on winning it from day 1. I thought about it in terms of someone getting mugged and how they could respond. Here’s some scenarios, and which responses make sense to me and which ones don’t.

Let’s say Bob points a gun at John and demands his wallet.

A) John doesn’t have his own weapon. He hands over his wallet. This is reasonable.

B) John has his own gun, but decides he is still better off not resisting. He hands over his wallet. This is reasonable.

C) John has his own gun, and decides to fight back including using that gun. This is reasonable.

D) John has his own gun. He decides to fight back, but refuses to use his own gun for fear that will provoke Bob into using his gun. This doesn’t make sense.

Scenario D is what we were doing at the beginning of the war. Fighting back but refusing to use the most effective means of doing so. It makes no sense, because from Bob’s perspective, losing the fight is losing the fight. Whether John gets the upper hand on him using his fists, a nearby brick, or his gun, losing is losing. If Bob is of the inclination to use his gun should he start losing, he isn’t going to hold back because he’s losing to someone wielding a brick, a baseball bat, or even his bare fists vs. losing to someone with a gun. Therefore if John is going to fight back, it would make sense for him to use the best weapons at his disposal rather than holding back for fear of triggering Bob.

15

I think the US and other NATO countries were nervous about arming Ukraine with lots of weapons before the invasion because if Ukraine had immediately collapsed then the Russians would simply be able to take them all.

16

Something I’ve thought a lot about is what if, once the impending nature of the invasion was known, NATO had ramped up a significant (or massive) joint exercise, under the pretence of a compatibility exercise, in Ukrainian battlespace.

If there were a few thousand troops, aircrew and naval personnel from each of a bunch of the NATO nations, manoeuvring around the country, would that have served as a deterrent. It would have been a huge gamble, however, for a variety of reasons.

17

This is a good point, it happened recently in Iraq with ISIS seizing a lot of US epuipment.

18

If your big NATO exercise ran from, say, 1 Feb to 15 Feb, the Russians would have delayed their attack until 1 Mar after the NATO forces had gone home and were busy restocking & repairing their gear.

IOW, it would have accomplished exactly zero.

19

And that was actually the main aspect of the “huge gamble” I was referring to; NATO couldn’t be doing this forever.

20

Most of the weapons being sent to Ukraine were hardly particularly advanced. Simple howitzers, vehicles, missiles, etc. Even if, say, 100 F-16s fell into Russian hands, that jet has been around for half a century.