A sharp essay by Mark Episkopos in Responsible Statecraft, on Russia’s war in Ukraine, takes off from assumptions that I have long held, that Russia cannot swallow the whole of Ukraine and is not moving from strength to strength in this conflict. But Episkopos asks the important question of whether the West understands that Russia’s war is only partly aimed at compelling behavior from Ukraine (neutrality, loss of territory), and partly aimed at compelling behavior from the West.

There is no evidence that Moscow has any intention of launching wars of conquest against Poland, the Baltics, or other NATO states, but it is certainly seeking to extract a host of strategic concessions from the U.S. and its allies in areas including prohibitions against eastward NATO expansion and limitations on force deployments along NATO’s eastern flank.

The war that Russia is waging in Ukraine is thus a proxy for the Kremlin’s larger coercive strategy against the West, though it is not at all clear that conquering Ukraine will bring Moscow any closer to getting its desired concessions.

. . . Instead, Russia’s incentive is to use its growing advantages as a lever for negotiating with the West. The Kremlin, in light of these conditions, has previously hinted at establishing demilitarized buffer zones in Ukraine that are not under Russian control.

Indeed. The Biden administration should think seriously about its legacy, and whether it wants to negotiate for itself or potentially allow Donald Trump to step into the Oval Office with the prospect of negotiating the end of this war, and with it, the next settlement between Russia and the West.