The US defense secretary’s declaration that Washington wanted to see Russia weakened militarily and unable to recover quickly, marks a shift in Washington’s declared aims underlying its military support for Ukraine.
At a press conference in Poland after a surprise visit to Kyiv, Lloyd Austin was asked if he would now define US goals differently from those set out soon after the Russian invasion. In response, he started out with the established administration line about helping Ukraine retain its sovereignty and defend its territory.
Then Austin added a second goal: “We want to see Russia weakened to the degree that it can’t do the kinds of things that it has done in invading Ukraine.” That meant Russia should “not have the capability to very quickly reproduce” the forces and equipment that had been lost in Ukraine.
The UK defence secretary, Ben Wallace, estimated those losses on Monday as a quarter of Russia’s pre-invasion strength, with more than 2,000 armoured vehicles knocked out, including at least 530 tanks, as well as 60 aircraft.
The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, who travelled with Austin to see Volodymyr Zelenskiy in Kyiv, agreed with his formulation of US objectives, saying: “I think the secretary said it very well”.
The two officials were talking as the first howitzers from the latest tranche of US military supplies began arriving in Ukraine, and $165m in supplies of “non-standard” ex-Soviet compatible ammunition was announced.
The remarks suggested that even if Russian forces withdrew or were expelled from the Ukrainian territory they have occupied since 24 February, the US and its allies would seek to maintain sanctions with the aim of stopping Russia reconstituting its forces.
It also indicated Washington is taking a position in an internal debate within Nato on whether to use the opportunity of Vladimir Putin’s strategic blunder in Ukraine to try to hobble his ability to threaten other countries in the future.
“The balance in Nato itself has shifted,” Rajan Menon, the director of the grand strategy programme at the Defense Priorities thinktank, said. “The argument now seems to be this is not just about Ukraine; it’s about a larger problem, that is the threat that Russia poses to Europe as a whole. And if you look at it that way, then these comments begin to make sense.”
“The Russians are on the retreat, so you have this flush of optimism which has moved the goalposts,” Menon, professor emeritus in international relations at Columbia University, said. “Once Washington says it, those in Nato who want the war to be about that are empowered, because what the US says matters.”
A European diplomat said it was unclear whether the remarks reflected a new decision or “a clearer articulation” of an existing position.
“I think it’s fundamentally about trying to get on the front foot in this crisis. There’s a lot of domestic criticism of the administration for being passive,” the diplomat said. “All of this is swirling around at the moment in the administration, as they work out exactly how forward they want to be.”
If the remarks do indeed represent the Biden administration’s aims, there is a separate question of whether it was sensible to declare them so bluntly. It arguably weakens Russia’s incentive to withdraw, reinforces Moscow’s narrative that Nato is waging a proxy war in Ukraine aimed at weakening Russia and even regime change, deepening Putin’s paranoia.
“If I was writing the secretary’s talking points, I would prefer he said: our goal is that Ukraine wins, rather than our goal is to weaken Russia because they are two sides of the same coin, but one would have been much more aligned with what the administration has been saying,” said Alina Polyakova, the president of the Center for European Policy Analysis, said.
“Certainly this will be used by the Russian state media to double down on the narrative that we’ve already seen from the Russian government, that the US is ‘out to get us’, that they want to destroy Russia,” she said, but added: “Frankly, I don’t think we should worry too much about how this will be spun by the Russian media, because they can spin anything.”
Ultimately, Polyakova said, Austin was voicing a widespread feeling about the long-term threat posed by Putin that is increasingly difficult to ignore.
“I think the secretary’s comments were truthful in that it will be in the greater interest of global stability and European security not to have a military aggressive state, bordering Nato or bordering Europe,” she said. “I think that’s very obvious.”
