The NATO summit in Vilnius, Lithuania, could mark the beginning of the end of the war in Ukraine. This does not mean that the war has to end soon. So long as Russian troops are on Ukrainian territory and the fighting is contained within Ukraine’s borders, the war can continue for as long as the country is willing to fight Russia to the last Ukrainian. But Vilnius, like all summits, marks a watershed.
The summit declared that “Ukraine’s future is in NATO.” Ukraine’s future is in pieces. Russia has dismembered Ukraine. All the Abrams tanks and presidents' words cannot put it back together again. The Czech president said the quiet part out loud in Vilnius. The spring offensive is Ukraine’s “window of opportunity.” If there is no breakthrough, then “war fatigue” may set in.
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Ukraine’s soldiers may be fatigued, but they have no choice. They are fighting for their homes and their freedom. Ukraine’s problem is donor fatigue. The peevish public statements from senior American and British officials in Vilnius suggest that Volodymyr Zelensky’s patrons are getting tired of him. The hero of democracy is now a freeloading ingrate, always asking for more and better weapons systems.
“We’re not Amazon,” British Defense Minister Ben Wallace complained in Vilnius, adding that “people want to see a bit of gratitude” from the Ukrainians. White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan used the same language before Zelensky’s audience with President Joe Biden: Zelensky owes “a degree of gratitude” to the United States, which has spent billions on Ukraine’s defense.
Zelensky knows his window of opportunity is closing. Ukraine’s spring offensive has yet to make significant gains. A few weeks ago, American media were talking up a breakthrough, and even a Ukrainian recovery of Crimea. Now, the same voices are adjusting expectations with talk of “attrition” and artillery ratios. Like the poor craftsman who blames his tools, unnamed American officials blame the Ukrainians for underperforming.
As one window of opportunity closes, another opens. As the Vilnius summit convened, Zelensky discovered that NATO, which means the U.S., intends to defer the future in which Ukraine is an alliance member. Even after the war is over, Ukraine would still have to make “democratic and security sector reforms” and improve its shady economy and shaky legal system. It is rumored that President Joe Biden insisted on these terms.
Zelensky called this “unprecedented and absurd.” It seems, he said, that there is “no readiness” to make Ukraine a NATO member. “This means that a window of opportunity is being left [open] to bargain Ukraine’s membership in NATO in negotiations with Russia.” After Sullivan and Wallace had reminded him to remember his manners, Zelensky produced the required words of gratitude. Meanwhile, Sullivan said that the “inescapable fact” is that Ukrainian membership of NATO would bring the alliance into direct conflict with Russia.
Biden promised in Vilnius that NATO’s support for Ukraine “will not waver,” but words cost less than munitions. And munitions cost more when you send them in an election year. The window of opportunity for the White House to declare a proxy victory in a proxy war for democracy will close by the end of 2023. If Biden’s team fails to close it, then former President Donald Trump’s quiff may well loom through from outside. Trump claims, not without basis, that Putin would not have invaded Ukraine if he, not Biden, was the president. He also claims that if he regains the presidency, he would negotiate an end to the fighting “in one day.”
Trump is trumping as usual, but his claims would focus attention on whether the Biden administration’s Ukraine strategy has benefited the U.S. in the long term. Russia’s invasion was a direct challenge to the American-led order in Europe. The Biden administration responded by rallying NATO. In this, he succeeded where his two predecessors failed. President Barack Obama grumbled about “freeloaders,” and Trump gave the alliance a collective panic attack when he demanded that its members pay their way. Biden has squeezed spending commitments, especially from Germany.
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All this is a strategic gain. But the administration has voluntarily increased America’s burden of strategic pain. Putin has twice invaded Ukraine because he sees a NATO member state on Russia’s southwestern border as a threat to Russia’s survival. This is not hyperbole: Look how quickly Yevgeny Prigozhin’s Wagner Group turned from fighting Ukrainians to marching on Moscow. The administration’s tit-for-tat admission of Sweden and Finland into NATO replicates that threat on Russia’s northwestern borders. Just when the U.S. is supposed to be focusing on the Indo-Pacific, it is returning an overstretched military to a Cold War-era commitment to the Baltic.
The U.S. never quite makes its “pivot to Asia,” but America’s Ukraine policy has encouraged Russia to make its pivot to China. The Ukraine war will become a contained, low-intensity, long-running conflict (which might suit Putin and embarrass Biden), or it will be resolved by negotiation and partition (which would suit everyone except Zelensky). When that happens, the answer to the key strategic question will become obvious. Who really won in Ukraine: Russia, the U.S., or China?