Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has set the stage for a proxy war between the United States and Russia, which could inflict severe casualties on Russian forces, in a high-stakes bid to use NATO capabilities to thwart Putin’s schemes without hurtling into a direct clash.
“It could be incredibly escalatory,” Rep. Mike Waltz, a Florida Republican who deployed to Afghanistan as a Green Beret, told the Washington Examiner. “How far is Putin prepared to go? This will be the ultimate test of brinksmanship.”
Washington and Moscow have a long history of avoiding the kinds of operations that could lead to a direct war between the militaries that possess the largest nuclear arsenals in the world — from the Cold War to the recent “deconfliction” of U.S. and Russian forces fighting at cross-purposes in Syria’s civil war. Yet the invasion of Ukraine, which is not a NATO member, has brought the bulk of the Russian military to the borders of several NATO member states who perceive the invasion as a threat to their own security, creating the conditions for a major effort to help Ukrainian forces repel the invasion.
“Putin has made a lot with a little, but now that he has 100% revealed himself, our assets outnumber his, and I think we need to begin to employ those,” House Armed Services Chairman Adam Smith, a Washington Democrat, said during a Thursday event with the Wilson Center. “This is now a full-on conflict even if we’re not actually shooting at each other.”
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Putin invoked his nuclear warheads and other “cutting-edge weapons” while announcing the Russian assault on Ukraine, as he vowed “defeat and ominous consequences” if anyone should “directly attack our country.” President Joe Biden has vowed that American troops “will not be engaged in the conflict with Russia in Ukraine,” but he has received “a menu of options for the U.S. to carry out massive cyberattacks” to interfere with the Russian offensive, according to NBC.
“We need to be more aggressive in the cyber and the information warfare arena,” Smith said.
That assessment derives from bipartisan suspicions that Putin might not be content with the subjugation of Ukraine, a misgiving stoked by the fact that he justified the operation in part by arguing that it is “the historical destiny of Russia and its peoples” in the states “on the outskirts of the former empire” to be unified.
“If this is relatively easy for Putin … he’s not going to stop. And I do believe the Baltics should be incredibly nervous,” Waltz said. “The crown jewels [of the Russian Empire] were Belarus, Ukraine, the Baltics. And he [would have] two out of the three.”
Smith broadened that point to argue that a Russian victory in Ukraine would attract attention in Beijing, where Chinese General Secretary Xi Jinping hopes to bring the island democracy of Taiwan under mainland control.
“If he is successful in what he launched yesterday, that sends an ominous message to the world that … blunt military aggression is the only way to go,” Smith said. “If he fails in Ukraine, I think it sends a strong message to others similarly inclined … and, certainly, China is the other country in all of this.”
Russia has launched a multifront offensive across Ukraine with the stated goal of overthrowing Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s government and destroying the Ukrainian military. Russian forces have substantial advantages in a conventional war against the Ukrainian military, but Western officials doubt nonetheless that Russia will be able to occupy Ukraine.
“History has shown time and again how swift gains in territory eventually give way to grinding occupations, acts of mass civil disobedience, and strategic dead-ends,” Biden said Thursday at the White House.
Idaho Sen. Jim Risch, the top Republican on the Foreign Relations Committee, has drafted legislation that would establish a “Ukraine Resistance Fund to support Ukrainian resistance against Russian efforts to occupy or subdue territory under the authority of the internationally recognized Government of Ukraine.” The legislation would also authorize the Defense Department to “accept and retain contributions, including assistance in-kind, from foreign governments” in an apparent bid to streamline the provision of equipment from NATO allies in the region.
The proximity of the war zone to NATO allies creates risks for both Russia and the West, as lawmakers acknowledge.
“Now that lethal aid will have to go over land, as opposed to being flown in, what countries will support it?” Waltz said. “I would look to Poland and Romania, in particular. Will they step up to serve as conduits and sanctuary for what could devolve into guerrilla warfare?”
Waltz’s reference to “sanctuary” evokes the American experience in Afghanistan. NATO forces endured the frustration of fighting a Taliban insurgency that had the option of retreating into Pakistan, and Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s team has said the United States would not object to European countries providing safe haven to Ukrainian resistance forces.
“Countries are going to make their own sovereign decisions,” State Department spokesman Ned Price told reporters Wednesday. “But when it comes to the decision that NATO allies or other countries in Europe might make along those lines, I’d need to refer you there.”
Price declined to “make battlefield comparisons” between Afghanistan and Ukraine, but Smith showed less reserve.
“The United States can speak with experience about how limited [an] effect 150,000 troops can actually have in a country, and Ukraine is a bigger country than Afghanistan, certainly in terms of population,” Smith said. “And we need to be prepared to support them in that fight. I think we need to be prepared to support that insurgency in a similar way that we supported the insurgency in Afghanistan.”
The scale of that challenge might allow Ukrainian forces to wage a resistance even without retreating into neighboring safe havens. “Most likely, the Russians don’t have the force necessary to actually take and occupy the entire country of Ukraine,” a senior European official said. “The areas that they are not going to try to get under their permanent control is the west of the country, [so] even in the worst-case scenario, there will still be a large part of free Ukrainian territory.”
Putin’s main target in western Ukraine is Kyiv, the capital city. The other two Russian “axes of advance” are unfolding further east. Ukraine doesn’t have Afghanistan’s Himalayan topography, but the Russian prioritization of cities such as Kharkiv, in northeast Ukraine, and the major Black Sea port of Mariupol, further south, could put his military in a difficult position.
“I think the chances of an extremely violent conflict for cities is very high,” British lawmaker Tom Tugendhat, another veteran of the war in Afghanistan who now chairs the Foreign Affairs Committee in the House of Commons, told Atlantic Council senior fellow Ben Judah. “I’m sure that the Russian generals are trying to find ways of avoiding that because it’s likely to be very expensive for them.”
In that case, even the Ukrainian path to victory runs through a great tragedy.
“Kyiv and Lviv, they’re modern, burgeoning cities,” Waltz said. “Do they end up, a year or two years from now, [as] another Syria, where they’re shells of their former selves and look like a war zone?”
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The consequences of an efficient Russian victory are also high, according to Smith.
“It is, I think, the greatest imperative thus far in the 21st century that Putin fail in Ukraine,” he said.
