Ukraine Is Lost. But NATO Can Rebuild and Recover, Goldman Says
”America’s gravest strategic setback since Vietnam”
[“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?
The first response—he was the first to file his draft, and his last name also comes first in alphabetical order, so it is the first to be published here—comes from David P. Goldman, who is deputy editor of Asia Times and a research fellow at the Corvinus Institute of Advanced Studies (Budapest).—Ira Stoll]
Russia is defeating Ukraine in a war of attrition, contrary to the expectation of the U.S. foreign policy establishment. American interests already have been damaged, as a result of strategic overreach and military miscalculation. The longer the war continues, the greater the damage.
This is America’s gravest strategic setback since Vietnam. After the fall of Vietnam in 1975, though, America invented smart weapons and transformed warfare, eventually winning the Cold War. Russia’s success in Ukraine in turn should focus our attention on new war-fighting technologies that can improve our strategic position in the future.
In February 2022, the Biden Administration and most Republican experts thought that economic sanctions and superior American C4/ISR—“Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance”— would crush the Russian economy and defeat Russian forces on the ground. Russia circumvented the sanctions with the help of China, India, Turkey, and others. The Russian Army came up to speed quickly in Intelligence/Surveillance/Reconnaissance and battlefield coordination. And Russia produced more ordnance and armor than the combined NATO countries, and sourced drones and artillery shells from Iran and North Korea. Contrary to tendentious data disseminated by Western defense ministries, Ukraine suffered more casualties than Russia due to superior Russian firepower.
Partisans of the Ukraine war will continue to claim that stronger support from the West might have defeated Russia. A new Dolchstosslegende will blame President Trump for undercutting Ukraine. They will argue that the war has weakened Russia and that its continuation will weaken Russia further. The opposite may be true: Russia’s industrial production rose by 8% during 2023 and 2024, while America’s remained unchanged, according to government statistics. The ramp-up of war production may have a transformative impact on the Russian economy due to the introduction of advanced manufacturing methods.
Russia will not build on its success in Ukraine by marching west. Its adult population will fall to just 48 million by the end of the century from 88 million today, according to the core UN demographic forecast. Countries with rapidly falling populations do not go to war for Lebensraum. The opposite is true: Given its demographic decline, Russia needs the 8 million ethnic Russians who became citizens of Ukraine after the collapse of the USSR.
The question is how to rebuild Western strength in the future. This has three dimensions: Restoring Europe’s military, rebuilding the Western industrial base, and improving weapons technology.
Trump’s cutoff of American military support shocked Europe into willingness to allocate large sums for defense, for the first time since the collapse of the USSR. The Europeans should emulate Switzerland, which faces no present military threat but requires military service and reserve duty of its adult male population. The 30 European members of NATO have a combined population of 581 million, quadruple that of Russia, and a combined GDP of $22 trillion, ten times Russia’s in US dollar terms. They do not require extraordinary sacrifices to deter Russia.
NATO’s failure to provide sufficient ammunition, air defense interceptors, and other military supplies to Ukraine is a scandal and a disgrace. But rebuilding defense industrial capacity to outmatch Russia simply requires the political will and funding.
Identifying and developing new defense technologies is the most challenging task before the West. The widespread use of drones has captured the attention of Western analysts, and there is extensive discussion about the application of AI to autonomous systems, for example drone swarms. Even more important is the development of weapons based on new physical principles, for example, various kinds of directed energy. These may be critical in countering China’s huge numerical advantage in anti-ship missiles, for example. The Trump Administration has proposed an “Iron Dome” for America, which is an important step in the right direction. But the entire Pentagon budget for directed-energy weapons R&D last year was less than $800 million. A shift in defense priorities to high-tech weapons development should be at the top of the NATO agenda.
What would Mr. Goldman think a victory would look like and how would that be achieved given a starting point of 1/25? It seems to me that just losing the eastern Ukraine and Crimea would be about as much as is possible at this point.
Hard to assess what shape the Russian military is in now. The fall of the Iranian regime would be a major blow. Russia and China have divergent interests. There are possibilities here.
I agree that the industrial base must be rebuilt and new weapons development accelerated.
The Trump administration believes that moves to get Ukraine into NATO triggered Russia's invasion. This makes sense because Ukraine has territorial disputes with Russia and NATO has a longstanding policy that a country applying for membership can’t have unresolved territorial disputes (https://www.brookings.edu/articles/president-trumps-instincts-on-ukraine-have-been-bad-but-hes-right-about-one-thing/). Such territorial disputes would then draw in all NATO members, and the USA was not willing to fight to have Crimea part of Ukraine instead of being part of Russia. NATO membership for Ukraine was also opposed by Russia, with similar reasoning.
Ironically, if there is a ceasefire along current combat lines and Ukraine gives up Crimea and other territories, Ukraine will then no longer have territorial disputes and will then become eligible for NATO membership.
That could be the endgame that President Trump envisions.