What is the most consequential issue facing the American electorate on Nov. 5? Is it inflation, immigration, abortion, or climate change? No, the most important question to be answered on Election Day is whether the United States will seek a negotiated settlement to its proxy war with Russia or pursue its current policy of serial escalation in Ukraine. That is the only choice that involves an immediate and potentially existential threat to the nation.
The calculus of this war has always been obvious to any honest observer. Without major American intervention, a nation of 38 million with a GDP of $160 billion cannot defeat a nation of 150 million with a GDG of $2 trillion, especially when only the larger nation has nuclear weapons and a robust defense industry. Two years ago, we wrote in these pages that Ukraine has as much chance of defeating Russia as Mexico does of defeating the United States. That remains true today. President Volodymyr Zelensky‘s only hope for victory is to induce increased American involvement in the conflict.
He has already been quite successful. The U.S. has provided Ukraine with an array of increasingly sophisticated weapons, including Patriot missiles, HIMARS missiles Abrams tanks and F-16 aircraft. After initial hesitation, the Biden administration has in each instance chosen escalation. Now Zelensky wants to launch ATACMS missiles at targets deep inside Russia. There are many in both Europe and the United States who support his dangerous request. The fact that Russia has not responded to previous American escalations does not guarantee that it will not respond to the next because when push comes to shove not losing the war is far more important to Russia than it is to the United States.
This photograph shows damaged cars and buildings in the town of Kurakhove, located near the front line in the eastern Donetsk region, on Oct. 8.
ROMAN PILIPEY/AFP via Getty Images
The fighting is taking place 300 miles from Moscow, but 5,000 miles from Washington. Russian cities have been targeted. Thousands of Russian soldiers have been killed. Russian President Vladimir Putin has been heavily criticized at home for not responding to previous NATO escalations. After two years of sacrifice, he now faces a rising tide of nationalist anger demanding Russian victory. Losing the war would likely cost Putin his job.
Putin understands that ATACMS missiles cannot hit Russian cities, airfields, or energy infrastructure without American authorization and technical assistance. He also understands that public outrage over such attacks would demand a response. Putin has stated clearly that attacks deep inside Russia would substantially change the nature of the conflict. and require “corresponding decisions”.
We do not know Putin’s intentions and are not predicting the immediate outbreak of nuclear war if the U.S. continues to escalate. We expect that Russia would first expand the conflict horizontally and geographically rather than vertically. That could mean a wide variety of sabotage and cyber-attacks on defense industries, energy infrastructure, communication systems in the United States and Europe. The destruction of the Nordstream 2 pipelines and the Israeli pager attack on Hezbollah make the potential for such incidents all too obvious.
However, the first principle of international relations is to base policy not on estimates of your adversary’s intentions, but on his known capabilities. We know that the European Union has a population three times as large as Russia’s and a GDP 10 times as large as Russia’s. Thus, Russia is not going to invade Europe. However, we also know that since the end of the Cold War Russia has continued to invest heavily in nuclear armaments. Today, Russia possesses roughly 10 percent more nuclear warheads than the U.S. Some can be mounted on hypersonic missiles against which there is no effective defense. Others come on unmanned submarines designed to swamp coastal cities with enormous radioactive tidal waves. The Russian Sarmat missiles carry a warhead equivalent to 600 Hiroshima bombs.
Weapons like this have never been used. Their effect on populations and climate are unknown. However, a modern nuclear exchange would certainly not resemble those of the Second World War. Comparing today’s nuclear weapons to the bombs dropped on Japan is like comparing a Model T to a Tesla. Both are cars, but that is about as far as the resemblance goes. A single Sarmat could depopulate the entire Northeastern United States. Is there anything at stake for the United States in Ukraine to justify taking such an enormous risk?
Ukraine is not a democracy. In 2014, its elected president was overthrown in a coup. It is notoriously corrupt and increasingly authoritarian, having recently canceled both presidential and parliamentary elections. With severe restrictions on freedom of the press and religion it is no bastion of human rights. Ukraine is in fact an impoverished, half destroyed nation that relies on foreign aid to pay the salaries of its civil servants. It hard to see how admitting Ukraine to NATO and thus committing America’s sons and daughters to die for every inch of Crimea would make America safer or be worth risking a nuclear confrontation.
During the Cold War, two generations of Western leaders avoided a direct confrontation with the Soviet Union by respecting Moscow’s sphere of influence. Today, Putin will not accept Ukraine joining NATO any more than President Biden would welcome a Chinese naval base in Nova Scotia. However, Democratic presidential candidate Vice President Kamala Harris and Republican nominee former President Donald Trump advocate very different responses to Putin’s objections. Harris has repeatedly praised Biden’s Ukraine policy of serial escalation and has repeatedly pledged to provide more support for Kiev. Trump has repeatedly called for an immediate negotiated settlement.
History provides many examples of nations sleepwalking into wars that proved far more destructive than they had anticipated. Shiloh was the painful wakeup call for Americans that their Civil War would be far bloodier than either the public or the press had expected. In two days, more Americans died there than George Washington had in his entire army. Confederate President Jefferson Davis later said, “The South went to war without fully counting the costs.” We do not need another Shiloh. We need to elect a candidate committed to ending, not prolonging, the war in Ukraine. There is only one, Donald Trump.
David H. Rundell is a former chief of mission at the American Embassy in Saudi Arabia and the author of Vision or Mirage, Saudi Arabia at the Crossroads. Ambassador Michael Gfoeller is a former political advisor to the U.S. Central Command and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
The views expressed in this article are the writer’s own.
