Waiting for a Theory of Victory in Ukraine
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You are listening to the War on the Rocks podcast on strategy, defense, and foreign affairs. My name's Ryan Evans. I'm the founder of War on the Rocks. And in this episode, I've sat down here with my friend and yours, Michael Kaufman of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Mike, thanks for joining the show again. Thanks for having me back. So we're going to have a pretty high level conversation about the war and strategy and

For those of you who subscribe to the podcast, you'll see that we put out a free episode of the Russian Contingency where Mike and Rob Lee do a really good overview of where the battlefield stood as of last week, as well as some really interesting technical issues on everything from mines to drones. But we're going to stay very high level, Mike. And...

I'd like to get some of your initial thoughts on where U.S. policy on Ukraine stands as the sun sets on the Biden administration and the Trump administration stands waiting to come back. Well, I think where current policy stands is following the result of the election, it's clear the Biden administration is now trying to figure out what they can do with the time and the funding that they have left.

They have not had a clear strategy that I think I could discern in recent months. They did not respond positively to the victory plan that Zelensky came with a couple of months ago. The trajectory of the war has been quite negative for a long time now. I think that it's clear to a lot of folks that Ukraine's been losing the war and that something needs to change and that without major corrections to the current trajectory, this will not end well in 2025.

Now, what are they actually trying to do? It's clear they're trying to spend down funding as much as they can, both the PDA, Presidential Drawdown Authority, available funding, and USAI. It's not clear that they can deliver most of this equipment or munitions in the next two months. And they're also quickly changing policy or restrictions on things that they've avoided doing before in the last couple of weeks. It's unclear how many more they're going to do. Yeah, let's talk about that last bit because I think to me it's emblematic of...

the Biden administration's failing approach to Ukraine, especially in the last year and a half. As most listeners will know, the administration lifted restrictions on the use of missiles to strike Russian territory and some other things as well. And I thought the timing of this, as the Biden administration is in its 11th hour, was kind of shameful. Some friends reached out and said, you don't understand. This is a response to the

the use of North Koreans. That's the only thing that dictates the timing. And if that's true, to me, that's even worse because it really shows how this White House has treated the war in Ukraine and particularly how we're eyeballing the Russians as some sort of a legal negotiation rather than an exercise in military power and political will. So if you're saying, well, this is just a response to the use of North Koreans on the battlefield, which hasn't happened yet,

rather than what Ukraine needs to win the war in a way that is acceptable to us. To me, it just shows that you're thinking about everything through the wrong lens. But I also think the administration is trying to have it both ways. They say, well, Jake Sullivan gave an interview. He said, what difference do these weapons even make? We gave them tanks. It didn't change anything. It's almost a nihilistic view of military power and equipment. Very unsatisfying to me.

So on the change in policy restrictions, I agree there were a couple reasons for why one might change those restrictions to achieve some kind of operational level effects. And we've discussed them before, you know, trying to get Russia to halt strikes on critical infrastructure, trying to substantially disrupt Russian offensive to buy Ukraine time. In general, though, the administration...

has made a lot of these choices by essentially being backed into them, making them out of sequence with either an offensive or defensive operation, providing the capabilities first at a slow rate so that Russian forces have had time to adapt and adjust to them, but generally not timing the deployment of capabilities with operations such that they provide a significant military advantage to at least get you some kind of operationally significant effects.

Its latest policy restrictions a bit odd because I think it's meant to be a signal to Russia not to widen the involvement in North Korea. Although North Koreans have shown up, they haven't been seen directly fighting on the battlefield yet. But as best one can tell, they haven't provided a large trench of additional missiles. And who really thinks that this lifting of restrictions on missiles to strike Russian infrastructure is

It's going to be like, oh, right, we won't field the North Koreans. I mean, there's a clear advantage. If you were in Russia's shoes, you need more people on the battlefield. And if North Korea is willing to give them to you, you're going to take it. They'd be fools not to. And to me, it goes back to this legalistic approach to military strategy.

And we do have a trained lawyer as national security advisor. And I think there's this bias towards thinking about it in this way. Yeah, look, that could be. All I'll just say is that I don't think it's going to work regarding North Korean involvement. I saw the same thing during the Russian Kharkov offensive.

They were politically isolated on strike policy, and they made a decision to allow strikes with HIMARS systems only in defense of Kharkiv, but they made it several weeks after the Russian offensive had already culminated. I think it largely came due to political isolation more than anything else, and essentially then set a new arbitrary boundary between GMLRS employment in Russia versus longer-range strike systems like ATAKOMS, refused to change policy on that when the Kursk offensive actually started.

and have then some change policy on that. Yes, it matters when you make these decisions. As we've talked about before, the difference between giving Ukraine cluster munitions before their major offensive versus after, and they didn't get them until after, that actually made a big difference because it didn't allow them to shape the battlefield and shape the rear area and limit the way Russia was able to build its defense. So it does matter when you give some of these weapons systems. That doesn't apply to everything. I think there's

certain systems that we've over-focused on in the discourse, not you and I, but F-16s, for example. But there are other things that make a difference, and it matters when you provide them. The two sides of the attack and discussion.

On one hand, ATAKMS is one of the most clearest cases of it because they provided at the end of the offensive to strike Russian forward deployed helicopter bases rather than at the beginning of it when they did it once the offensive was over. On the other hand, ATAKMS have been supplied in sizable numbers and they have been fired in the hundreds. And yeah, tactically they've achieved positive effects, but you've not seen them change or substantially shape the dynamic of the war. And so I'm often in between the folks who will kind of say, hey, these capabilities won't make a difference. They most definitely will, but

I think quite to the right of the people who expect any new capability, whether it's the Leopard tank, the F-16 or whatever it is, to alter the dynamic of the war such that it's going to either have a strategic effect or even in some case not understanding there's a piece of the puzzle of an operation that by itself, that is not the difference between a successful or a failed offensive, right? But the main through line that I think you're right about is sort of how the issues have been made. And lastly, on attack, it was a bit of a puzzle. If the issue was...

You know, on the one hand, lack of tactical benefit, then it's not clear what changed. And if the issue was concern over escalation, then it's very unclear how North Korean involvement has changed the concern of escalation either. So oftentimes I've seen that the arguments that have been made that, okay, they're not going to do this for the following reasons. They then changed their mind. The reasons for why initially they didn't want to do it hadn't changed at all. Yes, totally agree.

Theory of victory. This is something that the Biden administration has lacked. We've discussed this on the show many times before. What we often hear is, this is up to Ukraine. They have to lead in the talks. And there's no sort of positive program put forward to what kind of political settlement that we want to see beyond Ukraine keeping all of its territory, which we all want that to happen. Do I think it's going to happen? No. I'm hoping the Trump administration is able to put forward a more positive program on what sort of end state they think they can realize and how.

Part of this relates to the issue of security guarantees. You know, this issue of Ukraine joining NATO has been a driver, not the driver of the conflict. And, you know, it's been interesting when every official in the Biden administration did their confirmation hearings, including Secretary of State Blinken, when asked if they support Ukraine joining NATO, they say, absolutely.

Then I do a podcast a few months into the war with Derek Chalet, a friend of mine. But then at the State Department, he says, no, Ukraine's not going to join NATO. There's this sort of flip-flopping on what we actually say versus what we actually mean in U.S. policy. I don't support Ukraine joining NATO. But how do you think the Trump administration should look at this puzzle of what kind of security guarantees should Ukraine get, if any, and how, as a part of some sort of a peace deal? It's a good question. It's not an easy one. So...

I think the first thing Trump administration has to ask itself, do they feel security guarantees are on table at all? Second issue then, who's, I think for Ukrainians, any security guarantees that don't have the United States involved in them as one of the grantors is, you know, like a donut with a giant missing middle in it. Okay.

That's to say that they're not looking for security guarantees from, you know, Spain, Portugal, or name some other European country. No offense to colleagues there. I will tolerate no critical talk of the Portuguese, who you know I love. Well, I love Portuguese too, and I love the Spanish. I won't stand for it, Mike. All right, well, I'm sorry. Listen, with respect to the Portuguese Navy. But in all seriousness, the second part is, okay, to what part of Ukraine? The part that Ukraine just controls, because Zelensky has put out his opening position that

He's willing to accept security guarantees to only the part that they control, but he wants all of Ukraine invited into NATO within its 1991 borders. And here things get a little complicated. Here comes the third part. What would the United States or anybody else actually be committing to do? Because one thing that people aren't talking about, I think is one of the very, very important pieces of this, was the Ukraine actually want the security guarantee?

to be in practice. Do they want Western bases? Do they want Western forces? Because the United States under Trump administration is very unlikely to expand the U.S. military footprint in Europe. If anything, it might downsize it, but best case scenario, it will keep it the same. The United States is not going to be in a position to substantially expand deployments to make credible a security guarantee to the largest country in Europe with a 1,300 kilometer contact line.

And Zelensky's tried to sell this as we will be the plus-up of forces in Europe. The Ukrainians will do that. That's how he's trying to appeal to the Trump team. Yeah. Well, that's going to have to be made explicit, right? And if it's not us, then maybe it's European forces. I think the challenge for Trump administration is...

First, they are going to inherit a war on a very negative trajectory and actually without a tremendous amount of time to stabilize the situation. Second, they're going to inherit it without a clear theory of success. The idea was to achieve war termination for Ukraine on favorable terms. The pieces of that puzzle have not come together over the course of 2024. I won't get into who I think is more to blame for that, but to say that that's not the path we're on. So,

Then comes the challenge for Trump administration as they come in. They're not going to have a lot of funding to work with. They're not going to have a great situation they've sort of inherited. And they're going to have to try to come up with a plan. The first problem is how do they get Russia to negotiate? Okay. A lot of folks will mistakenly believe that something happens on January 20th. It's just because Trump wants to negotiate than Putin will too. See zero reason for that. Actually, Russians don't want to negotiate at all. They think they're winning the war.

And the longer they keep winning without having to negotiate, the better off they are. So how do you compel Russia to the negotiating tables? Question one. I mean, Russia does express a willingness to negotiate. I don't think it's sincere because I do believe they believe they're winning and they are winning.

And I think it's important to talk about what winning means for Russia. It doesn't just mean taking the Donbass. Russia has not given up on its original war aims, which is some sort of control over the government in Kiev and control over Ukraine through some sort of a proxy. Yeah, right. So one, Russia wants to either destroy or subjugate Ukraine. And people keep forgetting that their demands on imposition of limited sovereignty over Ukraine, neutrality, substantial, I would say,

and imposition of limits on Ukrainian military a la Weimar Republic style. They're serious about those. For whatever reason, people don't think that Putin and the Russian position is what it is, but I think they're actually quite serious about them. It's not just about territory. And maybe some of those things don't end up being flexible on, but I

But actually, worst case scenario is Trump's team comes in and Russians say, yeah, we'll be happy to negotiate. In fact, we'll be happy to engage in several months of envoy negotiations and to set up a summit sometime in the summer. Okay. And then it looks like they've agreed to some kind of process while in practice having no intention really. Yeah, the war grinds on. The war grinds on. The war grinds on. The Korean War ground down for two years as negotiations were taking place. The decisive phase of the war was really the first year.

And so you could have both. You could have the optics sort of negotiation process taking place while the war grinds on and Trump administration actually is increasingly playing with a losing hand as the war continues. As we've discussed on the show before, there's an assumption out there that Trump's just going to pull the plug on Ukraine and leave him high and dry and try to force a peace. I think it's also very plausible that Trump actually authorizes the ratcheting up of support for Ukraine and lifting of more restrictions to try to

maximize Ukraine's ability to stabilize the front. So I think we need to be prepared for that happening as well, which of course affects the way we approach negotiations. Yeah. So I don't think at all Trump administration is going to show up and immediately start throwing away what cards they've left, right? By pulling the plug on Ukraine and doing that is going to achieve what it will just enable Russia to win the war much faster. It's pointless on the one hand.

I think if anything, they are going to come in and they are going to escalate, lift what restrictions are available, try to send maybe capabilities we were unwilling to send before, assuming the buy demonstration doesn't already do that in the next two months, to

The challenge I think they're going to have is I've heard a bunch of talk about, well, we can threaten to pump Ukraine up and all that. So two issues. First, Ukraine's key problem is manpower. It is not at this point equipment and ammunition. Those are issues. They are lesser issues, but the structural problem is manpower. And if that is not addressed, it is very hard to see a sustainable path forward in the war. And the second issue, the Trump administration may have a rude awakening moment.

When they see the inventory levels and issues that we are dealing with and find out that not everything was about Biden administration reluctance.

And that quite a bit of it was about readiness levels and issues in terms of inventory availability to provide these things. And even though there might be a lot of chest thumping about pumping Ukraine up. With what? Especially if we have to get serious about getting Taiwan ready. Oh, and with what money? Are they going to go to the house and ask for a new supplemental? And how much money do they expect to get from the house? Because that replenishment funding has to come from somewhere. Even if you do get to the Pentagon, you find a bunch of stuff in inventory.

You have to pay for it with authorized funding. Yeah. And while Trump, the first time he went in, talked a big game about defense budget and, you know, especially a bigger Navy, when push came to shove, you look at the budget submissions. You know, it matters who you put in charge of OMB. They weren't super ambitious. You know, we could see a stagnant defense budget as well in terms of filling those magazines again. You mentioned to me before we started recording that the administration is now publicly calling Ukraine out on its manpower problems.

Yeah, it's clear that they are getting more and more frustrated, right? That's why a lot of this is going into the press. But this has been widely discussed in Ukraine throughout the course of 2024, right? Mobilization was initially successful, but has not been able to deliver the numbers. The force management strategy to create new brigades, I think, has also been a misstep.

and has not led to an expansion of sort of reconstitution of Ukrainian military capability. On the contrary, the overall manning levels across the force have been declining. And the policy regarding mobilizing younger people there, I think it's a complex issue. First of all, they lowered the age, but they're not really mobilizing younger people anyway. It's a question of practice rather than what the law says. And even when they are, they're not sending them to frontline combat units. Yeah, not significantly. Second,

I find that the demographics issue, which I'm keenly aware of and discussed before, is a bit of an alibi, and I'll say why. You don't really need that many young people, okay? If you wanted to stabilize the front line and you wanted to create 30 or 40 battalions, you don't need to sacrifice Ukraine's demographic future. I'm sorry, but this is nonsense. If you look at the level of casualties and if you look at the numbers from the total cost of the war on the Ukrainian side,

These are not such tremendous casualties that you need so many young people additionally brought into the force. It's just not the case. You're talking about 30,000 more people, basically. The fate of the Ukrainian nation will not hang on these 30,000 people. I mean, it actually might, but not demographically. Right, right, right. In terms of the war termination. So if you're looking at stabilizing the front, replenishing existing combat formations, getting infantry back into maneuver battalions, you don't need that many people. This is not about sacrificing Ukraine's demographic future.

I'm sorry, it's just mathematically, it's a bit of a ridiculous conversation. It's an issue of political will. And there's a secondary issue that is, I think, a bit of an issue of trust and Ukrainian public sentiment. And I think it's very much worth asking, why do people not want to be mobilized? And it's not because Ukrainians don't want to fight. And it's not because there are other people. I'm in Ukraine pretty regularly. It's a larger issue, a more complex one.

But yeah, Ukraine's not a men and it's not a people that are necessarily willing to fight either. Last part of this is really sort of how to handle the challenge that Ukraine has, which is that there isn't much purpose for Ukraine to make an agreement without security guarantees of some kind.

And the biggest challenge is how to square that circle. And some of the plans I've heard, maybe we can offer Zelensky reconstruction money. You know, we'll take all the money being held by Europeans from the Russian Central Bank, do that. Or maybe a European force will deploy to Ukraine and they'll secure the border.

Or basically be not necessarily a security grantor, but sort of like a tripwire force there that's going to enforce peacekeeping. Peacekeeping force. Yes, yes. Which famously worked very well in southern Lebanon recently. Yeah, yeah. It's a joke, of course. Yeah, and OSCSMM famously worked very well after the Minsk II agreement.

But the point I'll make here is that I think there's a bunch of ideas that are out there on the table that have yet to be road tested and have not yet engaged with the reality of this war and that they are going to get mugged by that reality. I want to run one of these ideas by you that might get mugged by reality. It might never happen. Most of my ideas never happen in terms of policy. But something I've been socializing for a year, year and a half now is this idea of some sort of security compact that can provide security guarantees for Ukraine that doesn't involve the United States, that involves Ukraine.

the UK, the Baltic countries, and Poland. Obviously, there's overlap with NATO. Those are NATO members, but it doesn't directly implicate NATO or the United States. And critically, it includes one power, the UK, with a fairly serious military and a nuclear deterrent. I think that's the kind of security guarantee

That could be brought in if negotiations are successful. It's the kind of thing Ukraine could live with. And it's the kind of thing that would have teeth and would have some overlap with NATO. And people forget that security guarantees are not, it's not some sort of a kill switch. Even article five is not like we don't automatically go to war. Yeah. It doesn't actually say that much choice. It doesn't actually say what you're supposed to do. Right.

So I do think that that kind of a midi-lateral compact, whatever you want to call it, that overlaps with NATO but doesn't directly involve NATO is something that could provide a sufficient security guarantee to Ukraine. What do you think? No, I think actually now is the time to be creative and to look at options. I think part of the challenge in Europe is that

NATO is a victim of its own success and that's sort of seen as the only game in town, right? And so there's a general belief that you're either part of NATO, you're part of the security club or you're outside of it. You're in this gray zone that's victim to predation by Russia. And so folks want to be in NATO as the only security architecture in town. And there isn't much of in the way of an alternative, right? European force is not a thing. That's something that countries that aren't in NATO talk about, but is so far to me pretty unserious.

There's the joint expeditionary force that was a British initiative that got started back in 2018 with a bunch of Nordic countries that could become something, but I don't know if it's really gone very far. I think the idea you're proposing isn't a terrible one as an alternative. Certainly not the security guarantee from the United States that Ukraine wants, but the U.S. guarantee is itself a catch-22, right? In the sense that in order to make that guarantee credible, the U.S. would have to have forces available and a real operational plan to defend Ukraine and

And we might not be willing to put the resources towards that. And Ukrainians claim that they don't necessarily want that, although they actually obviously very much do want that. So it would behoove us to try to come up with an alternative. But I think the only thing that will press Europeans into genuinely coming up with some alternative proposal would be the belief that the United States isn't going to offer security guarantees to Ukraine. But I

I genuinely believe the United States isn't going to be as, let's say, reliable an actor as the main country managing European security. It depends on which Europeans we're talking about here. Sure. I don't have high hopes. I don't really expect anything out of Germany, no matter who wins the forthcoming election, unfortunately.

And I know many of my German friends are just as frustrated as I am about that. But I do think the UK could be willing to take the lead on something like this. Yeah, the UK certainly could take the lead. And it only takes one country as sort of a framework nation to lead the initiative and to be willing to invest in it. And I think others would be willing to come on board. But Ukrainians would have to accept something less than NATO. And I don't know that they are ready to do that. But at the end of the day, it's not up to them. I mean, that's... And you and I have shared this frustration, this idea that...

Being in NATO, the right to be in NATO is like a right to free speech. It's like, if you want it, you get it. It's actually NATO's decision. Primarily, let's be honest, America's decision. Ukraine, it's not up to them what they accept. It's up to them what they have available to them. And I just don't think it's realistic to expect NATO membership from them. Unless we end up in this awful escalation where US troops end up fighting Russia, then maybe you can see out of the rubble a NATO with Ukraine. But I just don't see it otherwise. ISKRA.

My honest answer is I don't know. I certainly am skeptical that this is something that's in the cards in the immediate future for Ukraine. That's for sure. I do think that we have to find a way to address the security guarantee question, because without that, we are likely just signing up.

for a bad ceasefire armistice that will result in a third war because nothing will be politically resolved. As you've discussed, it's like the Finland situation. You have the Winter War followed by the Continuation War.

And we might be in the winter war and we don't want to end up in the continuation war. Yeah. And I say that because I learned a lot from the Minsk One and Minsk Two agreement. And I fully agree with Ukrainian colleagues that say the only thing that this agreement is going to do is lead to a rearmament period and that Russia will continue with its efforts to either destroy Ukraine or to subjugate it. I don't disagree with them at all. And it's a challenge, a bit of a Gordian knot.

Thank you for listening to this episode of the War on the Rocks podcast. Mike, of course, hosts a show for members only called the Russia Contingency. Sign up at warontherocks.com slash membership. Stay safe. Stay healthy.