“Partitioned, Neutral Ukraine” Could Draw Russia Away From China, Green Says
Biden’s strategy of fighting “to the last Ukrainian” has damaged U.S. interests. Success depends on forging a new bipartisan consensus.
[“America has a positive role to play in advancing freedom and democracy in the rest of the world,” is one of the themes here at The Editors. How that will evolve in Ukraine has been a question at the top of the news lately. To understand it better, I’ve been reporting it out by soliciting, from a variety of thoughtful voices, answers to this prompt:
Trump wants to end the war in Ukraine. Is there any way for him to do it without severely setting back American interests? How? If not, what’s your proposed alternative and what are the advantages and risks or costs involved?
Today’s response—we’re working our way ahead in alphabetical order by last name—comes from Dominic Green (DrDominicGreen on X), who is a Wall Street Journal contributor, a Washington Examiner columnist, and a fellow of the Royal Historical Society.—Ira Stoll]
How you understand American interests in Ukraine depends on how you see the function of the United States within today’s global system. If you believe that the United States retains the hegemonic status it enjoyed after the end of the Cold War, then it follows that the United States can impose its will as it likes, wherever it likes. You will see President Trump as a reckless vandal, destroying a “rules-based” and “liberal order” that works to the American advantage.
If, however, you believe that the world system has already changed, you will see the Ukraine war and Donald Trump differently. You will recognize that America’s post-1991 hegemony was a historical blip, a dividend derived from the absence of serious competition. The Soviet Union had fallen. China was yet to rise. The result was a brief primacy whose scale and reach were unparalleled in global history.
That primacy ended in 2001. In security terms, the 9/11 attack notified Americans that our ideology was not history’s last word in providential politics. Economically, China’s entry in the WTO opened the period in which the global economy’s center of gravity would, for the first time since the early 1800s, swing back to its historical location, somewhere in Asia.
As the ground shifted and the world became less controllable, America’s expert class broke the social compact on which a stable foreign policy must rest and inflicted three injuries on American society: the War on Terror, the subprime crisis of 2008, and the Covid-19 panic of the early 2020s. America’s two parties promised the voters that they would manage or even reverse the related trends of domestic decline and global disorder, but they could not agree on how to do it.
The result was a further loss of prestige and leverage abroad. The United States now has two foreign policies, each with its preferred clients and enemies: Israel and China for the Republicans, Iran and Russia for the Democrats. A resentful perplexity at an outside world that refuses to obey orders, and a panicked rage at the blatant decay of domestic society, has fed a neo-isolationist rejection of the very idea of foreign policy—at the very moment when Americans most need to be thinking about the world.
We are back in the multipolar world of great-power competition. The war in Ukraine is not just a proxy war in which the United States uses Ukraine to weaken Russia. It is a two-way proxy war, in which China uses Russia to weaken Europe and the United States. The same dynamic recurs in the war between Israel and the Iranian-led axis. The American interest lies in ending the Ukraine war on terms that favor a global strategy for this new era.
The Biden administration acted correctly by backing Ukraine’s war of defense against Russia’s brutal imperial revanchism. That said, Henry Kissinger’s warning of June 2022 has been vindicated. The Biden administration’s strategy of “fighting Russia to the last Ukrainian” has, apart from hastening the devastation of Ukraine, damaged American interests.
Adding Finland to NATO roughly doubled the length of NATO’s eastern frontier with Russia. Resupplying Ukraine drained money and weapons from budgets and arsenals. Prolonging the war has pushed Russia onto a war footing, and excluding Russia from the SWIFT interbank system and dollar-denominated exchanges pushed Russia into an open alliance with China and warned the world that the U.S. dollar is no longer a safe harbor.
China, not Russia, is the prime challenge to American interests. The Trump administration is right to attempt a “reverse Kissinger,” and draw Russia away from its deepening alliance with China. It is preferable that Russian energy is exported westward to America’s European allies than eastward to America’s Asian rival.
Europe’s share of global population and economy are shrinking, and its militaries are atrophied. Americans should understand that dumping NATO, tempting as it may seem, would be an error. If the Europeans honor their promises of rearmament (and I doubt they will), it will take years before they can defend their eastern frontier. Again, stabilizing European-Russian relations is an American interest. That means hardening NATO, and, to use President Obama’s terms, recognizing Russia’s “equities” as a European power.
A partitioned, neutral Ukraine is the only way to do this. The question is how to guarantee it. The Europeans are talking up a military presence they cannot provide without American guarantees. That plan, which Vladimir Putin has dismissed, would make it harder for the United States to focus on the global picture, and it might invite Putin to call the American bluff.
The Trump administration’s alternative is also to put boots on the ground, only this time worn by mining engineers. As with the problem of maintaining Europe’s defense while the Europeans are unable to defend themselves, there are obvious risks in this policy. Trump’s domestic fans will cheer it, but even if it works, will a future Democratic administration sustain it or reverse it? There will be no success in American foreign policy unless Americans settle our domestic differences, recognize the changes within the global system, and forge a bipartisan consensus for the long haul.
Other, earlier answers: Ukraine Is Lost. But NATO Can Rebuild and Recover, Goldman Says, by David P. Goldman.
My late brother, Gerald Segal, was a UK-based political scientist who specialized in relations among the 3 superpowers, with an emphasis on China (https://www.amazon.com/stores/author/B001HPXRDO). He died in 1999, near the end of what Dominic Green calls the hegemonic period. It would have been good to have his insights in the past 2 decades. He and Dominic Green would have moved in similar circles.