There was a time, just before and just after the war began, that Ukraine might have lost no territory but Crimea and few lives. But America said no.
In December of 2021, Putin presented the U.S. and NATO with a proposal on security guarantees. Then NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg has said that the “promise [of] no more NATO enlargement… was a pre-condition for not invade Ukraine.”
The U.S. was not then, nor are they yet, willing to offer NATO membership to Ukraine. Ukraine was then willing to abandon its pursuit of NATO membership, as signaled by both Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and by his advisors. According to polls, only 24%-39% of Ukrainians even wanted NATO membership. But the U.S. said no.
That “no,” that could have brought peace to Ukraine, instead brought the “military-technical” response that Putin promised a “no” would bring.
The U.S. sacrificed Ukraine for the principal that NATO had the right to enlarge wherever it wanted to go: even up to Russia’s border. But still, in the first days after Russia’s invasion, peace was still possible.
In the days after the invasion, Russia and Ukraine were engaged in direct bilateral negotiations that led to an initialed draft agreement. Even then, Ukraine could have maintained its prewar territory and, perhaps, even more in a return to the idea of an autonomous Donbas still as part of Ukraine.
Once again, Ukraine could have lost few lives and little land. But the United States, Britain, Poland and their NATO partners said no. Instead of encouraging and nurturing the talks and the diplomatic path that could have quickly saved Ukrainians from the horrors of the war that were to come, the West dissuaded Ukraine from pursuing that path and pushed them down the path of war with promises of whatever they need for as long as they need it.
Twice, once in the weeks before the start of the war and once in the days after the start of the war, the U.S. declined the opportunity to negotiate a peace for the people of Ukraine, prioritizing its own foreign policy objectives over the goals and interests of Ukraine. Russia is surely to blame for starting the war with Ukraine. But from the moment the U.S. and Britain blocked the promising peace talks, they shared responsibility for the suffering of Ukrainians that was to come.
As the possibility of negotiations and a diplomatic settlement faded into the past and the full horror of war came to Ukraine, U.S. officials would, once again, make decisions and encourage policies and strategies that they knew would bring suffering and loss of life to Ukraine.
Perhaps the turning point in the war was the failed Ukrainian counteroffensive of the summer of 2023. The last best hope for stopping Russia from winning the war was a devastating failure for Ukraine. It gained them no land and cost them many lives.
The U.S. encouraged and pushed Ukraine to launch the counteroffensive. They told Ukraine and the world that the Ukrainian armed forces could win. U.S. Secretary of Defence Lloyd Austin told a Senate Armed Services Committee that Ukraine now had a “significant advantage” over Russian forces that had suffered “significant losses” and that had “depleted their armoured vehicles in a way that no one could have ever imagined.” He told them that “Ukraine will have a very good chance for success” in the coming counteroffensive.
That’s what he said. It’s not what he knew. Privately, military officials knew that Ukraine was ill prepared to take on Russia in a counteroffensive. According to reporting in The Wall Street Journal, “When Ukraine launched its big counteroffensive this spring, Western military officials knew Kyiv didn’t have all the training or weapons – from shells to warplanes – that it needed to dislodge Russian forces.” Incredibly, military officials were prepared to count on “Ukrainian courage and resourcefulness.”
The Ukrainian soldiers were courageous and resourceful. But courage is no shield against Russian weapons and troops when you lack training and weapons of your own.
At the start of the war, the U.S. pushed Ukraine off the path of peace and diplomacy and onto the path of war. In the middle of the war, they pushed them to launch a counteroffensive that they knew they lacked the training and weapons for. Both times, the U.S. used Ukrainian soldiers to pursue its own foreign policy interests, and hundreds of thousands of those Ukrainian soldiers were killed or wounded.
And now, the U.S. wants Ukraine to throw even more soldiers into a war they know Ukraine has lost.
The war has not gone well for Ukraine. Already a year ago, on November 1, 2023, a close aid to Zelensky had complained that, even if Ukraine had all the weapons they needed, they “don’t have the men to use them.” One year, and thousands of deaths, injuries, amputations and desertions later, the manpower situation is much worse.
At the end of November, the Biden administration began to pressure Kiev to lower the draft age from 25 to 18. “The pure math,” one senior Biden official said, is that Ukraine needs to draft more soldiers to replace its battlefield losses. The U.S. may can send more weapons, but now “manpower is the most vital need,” White House National Security Council spokesman Sean Savett said. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said “getting younger people into the fight, we think, many of us think, is necessary. Right now, 18- to 25-year olds are not in the fight.” And National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said, “In fact, we believe manpower is the most vital need they have. So, we’re also ready to ramp up our training capacity if they take appropriate steps to fill out their ranks.”
Asking Ukraine to throw more soldiers into a losing war is a lot. Asking them to send 18-25 year old soldiers is a lot more. Through death and emigration, the war has decimated Ukraine’s population. But there is a special problem with asking Kiev to send in 18-25 year olds.
Ukraine is in a precarious position that it does not have enough of that generation. That means both that there isn’t a sufficient pool of 18-25 year olds to draw on and that losing large numbers of them on the battlefield will leave a void in the workforce and create a challenge to the future population of the country. The U.S. wants Kiev to throw young people at the Russians to win the war and risk losing Ukraine: and the former, they know, is hopeless. As The New York Times puts it, “Ukraine must balance the need to counter a relentless Russian offensive by adding more troops against the risk of hollowing out an entire generation.”
At the collapse of the Soviet empire, economic hardships led to plummeting birth rates in the newly independent Ukraine. Birth rates dropped from 1.9 per woman to 1.1 in the first year. The small number of children born then are the 18-25 year old cohort now. And many of them are either serving already, have been killed or injured, have left Ukraine or are exempt, making the small pool even smaller.
The looming population threat created by the lack of a generation has already been made worse by the war. In addition to the millions who have died or left Ukraine, the birth rate had dropped by nearly half by 2023 compared to the year before the war.
At the start of the war, the U.S. discouraged Ukraine from negotiating a diplomatic settlement, ushering in a war that has cost Ukraine so much in land and lives. In the middle of the war, the U.S. pushed Ukraine into a counteroffensive it new it was ill prepared and under armed to fight, leading to the loss of tens of thousands more lives. And now, at the end of the war, with no living chance of victory, the U.S. is pressing Zelensky to send its anemic generation of young people to prolong the war in service of the wishful thinking that it will preserve the current lines for the inevitable negotiations. Of course, the current lines could be preserved by just starting talks currently.
One day, when after all the death and debility, Ukraine negotiates a peace with Russia that it could have negotiated in the first days of the war minus all the vast land it has lost since then, Ukrainians may come to hate the States for blocking the peace, pushing the counteroffensive and sacrificing a generation of young people.
Ted Snider is a regular columnist on U.S. foreign policy and history at Antiwar.com and The Libertarian Institute. He is also a frequent contributor to Responsible Statecraft and The American Conservative as well as other outlets. To support his work or for media or virtual presentation requests, contact him at tedsnider@bell.net.
