Democracies' support for Ukraine needs to know "no limits", just like the Russia-China partnership
The West's support has been impressive, but it has so far sacrificed the so-called "strategic ambiguity" deployed as deterrence over Taiwan
Russia and China declared boldly in early February that what they call their “strategic partnership” knows "no limits". As The Economist has said in its latest edition, "The war in Ukraine will determine how China sees the world" and what sort of alternative order to the existing one might be created. We too in the democratic world are waiting to see what kind of Sino-Russian alliance we are truly up against and whether China’s support for Putin’s military actions is truly limitless, but meanwhile we would be wise to start copying their language and its boldness.
What I mean is that following his virtual summit today with China’s President Xi Jinping, President Joe Biden and European leaders would all be wise to declare that there are likewise “no limits” to the support and friendship we will provide to Ukraine, or in fact to any other democratic country likewise subjected to unprovoked military aggression.
How could Russia or China object to us copying their words? Such limitless support also fits the democratic values our political leaders frequently talk about. As Americans say, we need to “walk the talk”. Self-flagellation about our failures to do so during the past decade is justified but ultimately pointless. What we need to do is to act differently now and in the future.
Offering limitless support would anyway be the most moral course of action in response to the death and destruction Ukraine is enduring. In practice, if as we hope Ukraine wins this war by emerging as still a sovereign and independent nation, we are certainly going to want to provide it with everything it needs to rebuild its cities and repair the damage that has been done. But there are also both tactical and strategic reasons to do this.
The tactical reason is to counter an expectation in both China and Russia that western solidarity will decline as time passes, and especially once some sort of ceasefire occurs. That is the way democratic public opinion and politics have generally worked, in the past. And it is true that some hedging of bets can already be seen among businesses dealing with Russia: while prominent firms have withdrawn fully and ended trading, a lot of other American, European and Japanese companies that are not otherwise subject to the sanctions are keeping quiet, hoping eventually to be able to resume trading and protect their investments.
While pressing forward with the serious and urgent task of eliminating Europe’s purchases of gas and oil from Russia, on a much faster timetable than actions so far would indicate, our governments will also therefore need to make clear to their countries’ businesses that it is no longer acceptable for them to operate in Russia and thereby support the Putin regime.
All government support for such businesses, especially export credits and insurance, should be stopped. It is understandable that countries such as India which have long depended on Russian sales of weapons and technology cannot afford to cut off their noses to spite their faces and so have remained as neutrally silent as they can. But that does not apply to countries in the main western security alliances, ie NATO, US-Japan, US-South Korea and others. Only once fundamental changes have taken place in Russia’s governance and approach to foreign affairs will normal operations be permitted to resume, those governments should say to their nations’ businesses.
The severity of western sanctions already implies this conclusion, especially the cutting off of Russian banks from the international Swift payments system. But the Western message, being sent both domestically and internationally, needs to make it clear that these sanctions are not going to fade away, as time passes. In fact, they are going to get tougher.
The strategic need for deterrence
The strategic reason is a more basic, if difficult, one: we need to re-establish a strong form of deterrence against future wars of conquest, in Asia as well as Europe. After all, the conduct of the war in Ukraine carries clear and worrying implications for the future of Taiwan, a thriving Asian democracy.
Our support so far for Ukraine has been very impressive, in the form of weapons supplies, humanitarian aid, reception of refugees, technological and financial support, as well as the punitive sanctions we have joined together to impose on Russia. Most likely, our support has been stronger and more united than either Vladimir Putin or Xi Jinping expected. It does have some deterrent power. But it has not been unlimited.
The West’s self-imposed limits have been sensible yet also damaging. John Raine, senior advisor at the International Institute for Strategic Studies and a former senior national security official in the UK, laid out the dilemmas and difficulties in a very clear and eloquent article for IISS on March 11th, in which he said it is "Time for NATO to find a way out of the escalation trap in Ukraine".
As John Raine explains, the self-imposed limit is that we have ruled out direct military involvement in order to avoid turning the conflict in Ukraine into a war between nuclear powers, with the huge risks that would entail. President Putin has known from the start that the West would provide Ukraine with arms but would not send its own forces into combat. He has deliberately made threats about the use of nuclear weapons in order to keep us out.
So far, those threats have failed to deter the West from supplying Ukraine with the means of defence. But those supplies have also, so far, failed to deter Russia. They have greatly strengthened Ukraine’s defence, but the Russian invasion has continued.
The Ukraine invasion has thereby shown that Russia’s nuclear arsenal provides a ruthless autocrat like with a kind of cover, a sense of impunity. The Cold War principle of “mutually assured destruction”, known as MAD, which served to discourage conflict between the Soviet Union and the United States, has been turned upside down: I can invade my neighbours as I please, Putin is saying, because you cannot take the risk that I might use Russia’s nuclear weapons.
There is truth to this, but the risks posed by a nuclear exchange clearly work both ways, as the “MAD” term described. Contrary to some loose talk that Russia might consider seemingly lesser uses of the nuclear threat, there is really no such distinct thing as a “battlefield” or “tactical” nuclear weapon. All nuclear weapons share the same status and characteristics. Any use of a nuclear weapon would bring an automatic and inevitable retaliatory response from the United States, of which Putin must surely be aware. He has certainly long looked like a man who is keen on his own survival.
In Asia, the United States has for decades now practised a policy towards Taiwan that has been known as “strategic ambiguity”: deliberately, successive American administrations have avoided making clear statements about whether the US would help defend Taiwan if China were to invade it or attack it in any other way. The US sells Taiwan modern weapons, but is otherwise ambiguous about its military intentions, leaving doubt in Chinese minds.
The risk for the West is that Putin’s Ukraine invasion has destroyed that policy of strategic ambiguity. If the ownership of nuclear weapons allows countries to invade others without risk of Western response, then one of the big obstacles to a Chinese invasion of Taiwan has disappeared. All the practical obstacles remain, of course, as Russia’s difficulties in conquering Ukraine have shown. But any Chinese belief that to invade Taiwan would be to risk war with the United States and its allies will have been disproved, forever.
To some in Europe, that prospect may seem rather hypothetical. Russia has shown, however, that the hypothetical can quickly become very real and present. President Xi has made even more speeches declaring China’s intentions of absorbing Taiwan than Putin has made about Ukraine. We need to take the words of dictators more seriously.
There are also immediate, practical reasons to reconsider how to exercise deterrence. As the Ukraine war continues, it is evident that Putin may be tempted to use even more brutal methods to try to achieve his conquest, short of use of nuclear weapons. John Raine provides some initial guidelines for how to proceed in his IISS article. It would probably be a mistake to be overly specific about which Russian tactics would bring a direct military response by NATO. But it would be wise, very soon, to make it clear that NATO’s self-restraint is not, itself, limitless. We have acted responsibly, but we are not fools. And that message can usefully be shared with China, too.
Democracies' support for Ukraine needs to know "no limits", just like the Russia-China partnership
As always thought provoking and erudite commentary from Mr. Emmott. There is one further possibility that China sensibly recognizes that Putin has handed China a golden opportunity to act as the responsible global actor (the way they would like to be viewed) by helping to shape a resolution on Ukraine, together with the US and Putin. Everyone becomes a winner and Ukraine can live and rebuild in peace (and neutrality) with strong financial support from all the key actors
Your Global View is just what is needed to remind us that intelligence not force is the key to our survival as a civilization.