It is understandable that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is asking the West for all the help they can deliver. It is the primary responsibility of a nation’s leader to protect the citizens of his nation. But by the same accounting, it is the primary responsibility of U.S. President Joe Biden to protect the citizens of his country.
It is partly for that reason that the Biden administration has, from the beginning, formulated its goal in Ukraine as protecting its territory and sovereignty while avoiding direct conflict with Russia that could lead to a larger Russia-NATO war.
But, from a Russian perspective, the recent incursion into Kursk inside Russia’s borders with Western tanks, American mobile Patriot missile batteries and U.S. provided HIMARS rocket launchers looks a lot like a NATO attack on Russia using Ukrainian troops.
Assuaging that perspective is not helped by the lack of condemnation of the invasion from the United States, the absence of any visible attempt to rein it in, the assessment that Ukraine’s invasion into Russian territory with Western weapons does not cross any U.S. red lines and the now evident American cooperation with the provision of “satellite imagery and other information about the Kursk region” to help the Ukrainian invading force “to better track Russian reinforcements that might attack them or cut off their eventual withdrawal back to Ukraine.”
The American stance on the Ukrainian invasion puts Biden’s primary responsibility at risk. And it puts that responsibility on a slippery slope to even greater risk.
Zelensky has argued that the risky invasion into Russia was only made necessary by the West’s red line against Ukraine firing long range missiles into Russia. That has led to his increased call for the erasure of that red line. He has further argued that that red line no longer needs to be respected. His invasion of Russia has crossed “the strictest of all the red lines that Russia has.” Putin’s failure to enforce it, Zelensky argues, has exposed “the whole naive, illusory concept of so-called red lines regarding Russia.”
“A sick old man from the Red Square, who constantly threatens everyone with the red button,” Zelensky argues, can no longer “dictate any of his red lines to us.” That has led to a greater call from Ukraine to allow its armed forces to fire long-range Western missiles deep into Russian territory: “We talk about this every day with our partners. We persuade. We present arguments,” Zelensky recently said in his nightly video address.
But that logic threatens the foundational logic of America’s guidelines for the war. The prospect of American long-range missiles being launched into Russia and the reality of the recent U.S. aided incursion into Russia create, from a Russian perspective, the landscape for a wider war. Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov has said recently that “Washington’s escalation course is becoming more and more defiant.” He says that “The impression is that our colleagues [in Washington] have discarded the remnants of common sense and believe that they can do anything…. The consequences [for the United States] could be much harsher than those they are already experiencing.” Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov warns that the U.S. is “asking for trouble” and that “we are now confirming once again that playing with fire… is a very dangerous thing.”
These developments challenge the U.S. policy of providing any aid to Ukraine that won’t lead to direct war between the U.S and Russia. U.S. involvement in the incursion into Russia, if proven, and U.S. long range missiles flying into Russia, if permitted, could lead to direct war. Biden’s primary responsibility is to make that impossible.
But Zelensky has a different risk assessment because he has a different primary responsibility. Zelensky may be quite willing to create the terrain that draws the U.S. into the war because that may be the only way that Zelensky can win the war with his maximalist goals of pushing Russia out of all Ukrainian territory, including the Donbas and Crimea. David Sanger has even reported that Biden has expressed the fear to his aides that Zelensky might be deliberately trying to pull the U.S. into a direct war with Russia and a third world war.
These risks created by competing risk assessments due to different responsibilities are becoming even more amplified by the Kursk invasion. Though Ukraine’s strategy for invading Russia may have been to draw Russian troops away from the Donbas front, it now seems to have had the opposite effect of drawing Ukraine’s best trained and best armed troops away from the Donbas front. The result has been a rapid advance of the Russian armed forces toward the town of Pokrovsk and what may be the beginning of the collapse of Ukraine’s front line in the Donbas.
The loss of Pokrovsk would not be the same as the loss of other small cities. The loss of the key strategic location could mean both the loss of the Ukrainian armed forces’ ability to supply its troops in the Donbas by rail or road and an open field to the west beyond its fortifications over which Russian forces could pour. The loss of Pokrovsk could contribute significantly to the loss of the Donbas.
The loss of the Donbas brings the risk of the loss of Zelensky’s promised criterion for victory. That brings with it the increased call for long range missile and the erasure of red lines. And that brings with it the increased risk of a wider war.
As Deputy Pentagon Press Secretary Sabrina Singh has reminded, “just because Russia hasn’t responded to something doesn’t mean that they can’t or won’t in the future.” But even Singh’s poignant reminder is too soft because Russia has responded. The belief that it hasn’t is build on the lack of Western imagination and subtlety that there is no Russian response between not responding and deploying nuclear weapons. Russia has enforced its red lines by removing any hope that Ukraine had for peace talks or that the seizing of Russian territory would pay off as bartering chips in upcoming peace talks. Lavrov has said that “after the reckless move in the Kursk Region,” recent Russian readiness for talks “is no longer relevant.” Current and future peace talks have been suspended by Russia.
Coupled with the intensified and accelerated advance west toward Pokrovsk and beyond, the removal of peace talks is a response and an enforcement of Russia’s red lines, if a subtler and more responsible one than the nuclear one the West was watching for.
Confronted with the risk calculus for a wider war and direct war with Russia, there are reports that the U.S. remains unmoved and will not change its red lines on long range missiles, both out of caution about provoking direct conflict with Russia and because they may believe that there is insufficient strategic advantage in allowing long-range strikes into Russia to justify the risk.
But reports as early as the middle of August that the Biden administration was now “open” to sending long range cruise missiles to Ukraine. Sending the long-range missile implies permitting the use of the long-range missile. The long-range missiles, identified as Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile, or JASSM, have a range of over 200 miles.
On September 3, reports emerged that the U.S. is now close to an agreement to provide Ukraine with the JASSM missiles, though delivery could take several months and no final decision has been made.
Such an agreement would be consistent with Zelensky’s risk calculation and primary responsibility, but it defies Biden’s.
Such an agreement would not be consistent with Biden’s primary responsibility to the citizens of the U.S. or to the many other Western nations that could be drawn into war with Russia in America’s wake. Biden’s primary responsibility is to go only so far in helping Ukraine – protecting its territory and sovereignty – so as not to place the U.S. and the world at risk of war with Russia. The erasure of red lines on long-range missiles would seem to have the potential to cross that line.
Hopefully, sanity will prevail, and Washington will, this time, stand up to Zelensky, recognize that their responsibilities and risk assessments do not always align, draw the line, and say no to long-range missile strikes into Russia with U.S. missiles.
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.
