Russia’s recent military advances and ferocious bombardment of Ukraine have led the country to renew calls for Western allies to lift their ban on the use of their long-range missiles to hit military targets in Russia.
But despite the urgency, with Russian forces approaching the strategically important city of Pokrovsk in the east of Ukraine, nothing is likely to change this side of the US presidential election.
There remains the distinct possibility that Donald Trump will win in November and immediately withdraw US aid to Ukraine, forcing Kiev to seek a termination of the conflict on Russia’s terms. This prospect currently dominates political and military calculations in the conflict.
Zelensky’s decision in early August to launch a counterpunch against Russia by invading the Kursk region was made when a Trump victory looked all but assured. His logic had several elements.
First, taking Russian territory would give Kiev leverage if Ukraine were forced to bargain with Russia. But the attack was also designed to demonstrate that the Ukrainian military was neither defeated nor lacking in the ability to go on the offensive.
This was intended both for domestic consumption, as a morale booster, and for the benefit of Kiev’s allies. Opinion in the US was beginning to doubt the ability of Ukraine to prevail. The Kursk offensive was designed to reverse that perception.
Further – and more interestingly – the Kursk assault was also launched to test the assumption that Russia would not use the attack on its sovereign soil with Western weapons as a trigger to escalate the conflict. This was always Putin’s threat, but Kiev decided to call his bluff in the context of the looming American election.
If Putin believes an incoming Trump administration will hand him victory in Ukraine on a plate, the logic goes, why would he risk a wider conflict for the sake of a few months.
But Russian restraint in the expectation of a potential Trump victory in November is also matched by caution on the part of the Biden administration for similar reasons. The overriding priority of the US and its allies in their support for Ukraine has always been the desire to avoid the conflict between Ukraine and Russia escalating into a wider war with NATO.
This has led the West to increase only incrementally the scale and scope of the military equipment and assistance supplied to Kiev. Through the initial supply of the shoulder-launched missiles – manpads – in the first days of the conflict, stepping up to main battle tanks and eventually F-16 strike aircraft, Western support has been gradual but instrumental.
The quiet support and approval of the Kursk offensive from Kiev’s Western allies is probably the latest iteration of this approach. Like Zelensky’s logic, it’s informed by the same imperative of improving Kiev’s bargaining position ahead of a possible Trump victory, and the calculation of Russian restraint ahead of the election.
A risk too far
Allowing Ukraine to attack targets deep within Russia with Western missiles, however, is clearly seen – by Washington at least – as a risk too far this side of the election.
While there are some members of the US Congress – both Republican and Democrat – who support lifting the prohibition, the administration is aware that this could amount to giving ammunition to Trump.
It would enable him to repeat his alarmist rhetoric that the administration is dragging America into a third world war. If this contributed to a Trump victory, the calculation goes, then it would be self-defeating.
The presidential election is so pivotal that all considerations are affected by its gravitational pull. A Trump victory would be likely to see a dramatic reversal of US military, intelligence and political support for Kyiv.
If Harris wins
But a Harris victory would also change the dynamic of US support. Most importantly, the removal of the threat of a Trump presidency tearing up the US internationalist foreign policy would greatly strengthen the US position.
Biden would no longer be a lame-duck president. Instead, for the last two and a half months, Biden would be free to run a transition administration unaffected by domestic constraints and focused on his legacy.
To name just one policy change we could expect, the US could tighten its leaky sanctions on Russian hydrocarbon exports, which have been tolerated due to the need to keep gas prices low ahead of the election.
If Harris is elected, it will force the Kremlin – and, by extension, China and others – to reevaluate who they are dealing with. Trump has argued that Putin decided to launch his full-scale invasion of Ukraine based on an assumption, in the wake of America’s disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan, that Biden was weak and indecisive.
Now Putin would be forced to confront a new president, with what could be an altogether different administration. Although she is a relatively unknown quantity when it comes to foreign affairs, Harris’s internationalist and alliance credentials are not in doubt. She has served on the intelligence and homeland security committees and traveled extensively as vice-president.
And her national security adviser, Philip H Gordon, has said he believes “there are often practical things that the United States can and should do to reduce conflict.” The likelihood that a Harris White House will have a new set of policy principles at least raises the possibility of a different set of responses to Kiev’s calls for help.
David Hastings Dunn is a professor of international politics in the Department of Political Science and International Studies, University of Birmingham.
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Russia is AMUSED with the US bankrupting itself on Ukraine, after hundreds of billions, Ukraine will eventually RETURN into Russia again as the only way to avoid complete economic meltdown.
🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
The US goose is cooked, time to stand down, restrategize and refit. Hopefully Americans have had enough of the US military industries BS and just NATIONALIZE THEM. That would shut all of the these authors up, who seem to have never understood the concept of the sunk cost fallacy. All of the freaking dead people, and newly minted FOREIGN, CORRUPT millionaires and billionaires, courtesy of US taxpayers makes me never want to see a US intervention again. And BTW- Gillian and the Skipper blew up Nord Stream, not Biden.
I enjoy reading pieces like this. I think AT editors post them to keep readers entertained. They are an exhibition of the joke thinking that pervades western academia.