Nuclear weapons and security guarantees for Ukraine

Hello,

In this video, I discuss the types of security guarantees that Ukraine will need after the war and why it's important for the West to understand this if we want the war to end. I explain this in terms of military deterrence, and I also discuss the Ukrainian victory plan that Zelensky recently presented as an attempt to outline a process where Ukraine can get the security guarantees they need without obtaining their own nuclear weapons.

As always, you can watch the video here or read the transcript below.

Best,
Anders

Transcript:

We need to talk about security guarantees for Ukraine. Recently, the contents of the so-called plan for victory became publicly known and it's mostly about how to reach a point where Ukraine will have robust guarantees for their security after the war has ended. And the reaction to the plan in the West has been lukewarm at best. It's not received a lot of attention in the media and many Western leaders seem skeptical or even opposed to the ideas in the plan. But here's the thing: if the Western countries want the war to end, then they have to start taking the question of security guarantees for Ukraine seriously. So, let's talk about it.

Zelensky's plan for victory has made it clear that there are significant differences between Ukraine's war goals and how the West assumes that the war will end. And until now, it's been possible to at least uphold the facade that Ukraine and its Western partners are standing shoulder to shoulder even though it's become increasingly clear that beneath the surface there are significant disagreements about the strategy.

But now, it's obvious. And the disagreement essentially comes down to two kinds of questions about the types of compromises that Ukraine might have to make to eventually reach a peace deal with Russia. The first question is about territorial integrity and whether Ukraine needs to accept the fact that they can't take back all their territory. And the second question is about the kinds of security guarantees that Ukraine will receive to ensure that Russia won't start a new war in the future.

And in broad strokes, the Western approach is that Ukraine will have to compromise on both. Ukraine will have to accept that Russia gets to keep some of the territory that they've taken. So, here's an example of Joe Biden saying that in an interview with Time in June this year, where he said in his mind, a peace settlement does not mean that Ukraine is a member of NATO and that he's not prepared to support NATO membership at this point. So, he does see a need for some kind of security guarantees, but those security guarantees will involve the United States providing weapons so the Ukrainians can rebuild their army and protect their country in the future. So, that's something very different from, for example, NATO's Article 5, which would mean that the United States itself would engage in protecting Ukraine in the future.

So, the Ukrainians, their view of it is obviously very different. If we take the point about territorial integrity, then I think the Ukrainian perspective is actually less rigid than many people in the West assume. So, when you hear Ukrainian officials talking about this question of getting their territory back, then increasingly, they do not discuss this as a requirement for ending the fighting here and now. More and more, they're saying that this is a question that can also be resolved later, maybe even many years later by future generations.

It will be absolutely impossible for Ukraine as part of a peace deal to acknowledge that now those territories belong to Russia. That's just not going to happen. It's not possible. But it is possible for them to accept that for a while, Ukraine does not have actual control over these territories and that the final resolution of the issue is something that future politicians will have to deal with. So, I think they've moved quite a lot on this issue of territorial integrity and it's also worth noting that this wasn't actually even a point in Zelensky's plan for victory. The plan does not mention anything about regaining all the territory.

But on the other question about security guarantees, then we need to understand that Ukraine is very determined. Sometimes you'll see opinion polls from Ukraine where they ask people if Ukraine should engage in negotiations potentially even involving giving up some territory and a sizable part of the population will answer yes. But the premise of those questions is always that in exchange for doing that, Ukraine would receive security guarantees. If you take away that point about security guarantees, then the support disappears.

And if you look at the victory plan that Zelensky presented, then it pretty much revolves around the question of security guarantees. The plan outlines the steps that need to happen for Ukraine to achieve those security guarantees, which are a prerequisite for Ukraine being able to stop the war.

So, this is what the West needs to understand. The Ukrainians are less rigid about regaining all their territory than most people in the West assume. But there is some room there for compromise on accepting a situation where the question is unresolved. But they are much more rigid on the question of security guarantees than people in the West understand. The Ukrainians are not at all prepared to accept that the question of security guarantees is something that we can discuss after the war is over.

So, when the Ukrainians hear Joe Biden talk about how security guarantees mean that the United States will help Ukraine rebuild their armies so they can protect themselves, then what they understand is that there will be a return to the security arrangements that existed just before Russia's full-scale invasion in 2022. And that quite obviously didn't work to deter Russia from attacking because they actually did attack. So, they want something different this time. They want something that will guarantee that Russia will not attack again and that this war that they're fighting now will be the last one that they have to fight.

So, we need to talk a bit about deterrence. In military theory, we generally talk about two types of deterrence. So, there is deterrence by denial and there is deterrence by punishment. Deterrence by denial means that you have a strong military that makes it difficult for an attacker to achieve their immediate goal. And in the case of Ukraine, this would mean that Russia can attack, but the chances of them successfully taking over all of Ukraine are very small because Ukraine has a strong defense. So, the deterrence works by making it very difficult and costly for Russia to achieve their goals. So, Russia decides that it's not worth it and therefore they don't attack.

Until February of 2022, Ukraine had a military strategy that was based on deterrence by denial. They had built a strong military force that would make it very difficult for Russia to succeed with a full-scale invasion. And they assumed that this would be enough to deter Russia from attacking and yet Russia still attacked.

So, the lesson the Ukrainians have taken away from this is that deterrence by denial alone is not enough to guarantee their security. So, they need the other leg in this as well, which is deterrence by punishment. And the way deterrence by punishment works is that you don't focus so much on making it difficult for the enemy to achieve their goals by having a strong defense to counter the attack. But you have a way to retaliate where you can inflict severe pain on the attacker in some other way. And in our day and age, that means nuclear weapons.

So, in practice for deterrence to work, you need to have both deterrence by denial and deterrence by punishment. For a long time, NATO actually had the opposite problem in the Baltic states. Our deterrence strategy there relied too much on deterrence by punishment and the threat of nuclear weapons. And we did not have a strong enough presence of soldiers in those states. But for Ukraine, the problem is that they lack the means for deterrence by punishment.

So, the way we should understand the Ukrainian demand for security guarantees is that when the war finishes, they want to be protected by nuclear weapons. And there are really only two ways that this can happen. Either they can join NATO and they can get the protection from the American nuclear umbrella like the rest of the NATO countries have. Or they can build their own nuclear weapons. Those are really the only two realistic options.

And I think that it's also in that light that we should understand the news that came out shortly after Zelensky had presented the victory plan. Apparently, it was leaked from some meetings that Zelensky had told Donald Trump that if Ukraine is not accepted into NATO, then they're going to build their own nuclear weapons. It was slightly disguised as something that Zelensky had told Donald Trump. But the reality is that this message is just as important for Joe Biden and the rest of the Western leaders that either the Western countries start taking the Ukrainian requirements for NATO security guarantees seriously, or we will see Ukraine pursuing nuclear weapons.

And just to be clear, Ukraine has everything it needs to build nuclear weapons. They have the know-how, they have the technology, they have the production facilities. And if Ukraine starts going down this path, then we're probably talking about a timeframe that should be measured in months before they have a working prototype of a low-yield nuclear weapon. So, this is something that they could do pretty quickly.

But of course, the downside to this is that there is a general consensus that the proliferation of nuclear weapons is not a good thing. It's bad for world peace. And if Ukraine takes this step, then there is a high likelihood that other countries that are facing similar security dilemmas are going to do the same.

So, the way I think we should understand the Ukrainian plan for victory is that it's their suggestion for how they can get the security guarantees that they need in a way that avoids proliferation of nuclear weapons. It's designed as a five-step process for how we can move from the situation right now where there is a war in Ukraine to a stable security architecture for the future of Europe.

In many places, it's described as if this plan for victory is a kind of wish list where Ukraine might get some of the things that they want, but they shouldn't expect to get all of them. But I think that's a misunderstanding of the plan that has been outlined. It's not a list of things where you can pick and choose. It's a process where each step depends on the previous one.

I won't go deep into all five points in the victory plan, but I'll quickly just highlight how I see that flow. And the first point in the plan is that Ukraine needs to receive an invitation to join NATO now. They understand that it's not possible to finish the process and become a member of NATO while the war is still going on, but they want the invitation now. And the reason why this is important is that Ukraine understands that to succeed, it is necessary to separate the discussions about Ukrainian NATO membership from discussions about a peace deal. Because it requires consensus among the NATO countries to extend such an invitation to Ukraine. And it will be impossible to achieve that while the peace talks are happening because Russia will put all kinds of levers to get countries like Hungary or Slovakia to block that process. So, it's necessary to finish the discussion about inviting Ukraine into NATO before it's possible to proceed with peace talks.

And then, once the internal resistance to Ukrainian NATO membership has been sorted out within NATO and basically the Western leaders have twisted the arm around on Orban, then it's possible to move on to the question of how to get Russia to accept the deal. Because Russia will be vehemently against it. It's one of the main reasons Russia started the invasion: to prevent Ukraine from joining NATO.

So, as things stand now, there is no way that Russia would accept a deal where they maybe get to keep a bit of territory in eastern Ukraine, but the rest of Ukraine will join NATO. That's just an absolutely unacceptable outcome for Russia as things stand today. So, it will require massive military coercion to bring Russia to a point where they would accept such a deal. And that's why the second point in the plan is about dramatically increasing the military pressure in Russia. It's all the usual things about improving Ukrainian defenses, moving the war into Russian territory, intensifying the long-range strike campaign. All that is necessary because otherwise it's impossible to bring Putin to a point where he will stop the hostilities and accept a future where Ukraine joins the Western alliance.

But once this requirement is met and Russia is willing or has been put under so much pressure that they have to accept such a deal, then we get to the question of how to protect Ukraine in the immediate aftermath of the war. Because Ukraine is still not fully a member of NATO and there is a high risk that Russia could restart the war. So, the victory plan has a somewhat cryptic formulation about a strategic non-nuclear deterrence package that will be on Ukrainian territory and that will prevent Russia from attacking.

I think that means NATO boots on the ground. I've seen a lot of speculation about what specific types of weapons this non-nuclear deterrence package might include, but I think frankly it's not about specific types of weapons. It's about NATO soldiers on the ground who are there to protect Ukraine and to function as a tripwire force. And those soldiers would come from a range of different countries, including the United States, to make it clear that if Russia ever invades again, then they will immediately face American soldiers and the United States will have to engage in the war.

So, this is something the NATO countries will have to accept. Not only will they have to invite Ukraine to join the alliance, but they will also have to be willing to commit soldiers as a tripwire force to Ukraine immediately after the war.

The fourth point is about how to secure the Ukrainian economy after the war. If Russia is unable to achieve its goal in a military way, I think the Ukrainians expect them to try to hurt the Ukrainian economy long term to ensure that Ukraine remains a kind of failed state. So, Ukraine wants measures to ensure that this does not happen and that they will have the possibility of becoming a prosperous country. And the last point is about how Ukraine envisions a future European security architecture where they see themselves playing a positive role together with other countries in the Western alliance so that they can balance militarily against Russia in the future.

So, as you can see, these things are connected. It's not like you can say, "Okay, you can have number one, but then we're going to skip number two and three. We're happy about number four and number five: Yes, please. We really want that one." That's just not how it works.

I think what's happening now is that we're getting closer to a point where it's becoming unsustainable for Ukraine and the West to keep pretending that there is alignment where there isn't. In the beginning of the war, it was easier for Western countries to say things like, "We're standing shoulder to shoulder with Ukraine," or, "We will support Ukraine for as long as it takes." But as we reach a point where we have to start thinking about the endgame of the war, then it becomes more apparent that Ukraine and the Western countries have very different ideas about what that endgame looks like.

It's a bit ironic that you will meet many people in the West who believe that Ukraine needs to be more realistic about what they can expect to get and where they have to compromise. But I think it's actually mostly people in the West who have unrealistic, sometimes even utopian expectations about what can be achieved and how peace can be established in Ukraine on terms that the Western countries will like without the NATO countries actually having to commit substantially to that peace. And that's just not how things work.

Ultimately, it's a question about the perception of Ukrainian agency. Russia doesn't believe that Ukraine has any agency at all. They believe that all the important decisions are made in the United States and that this is an American proxy war. But it's interesting when we get to the question about possible peace talks, then it's as if this same assumption is also guiding some of the Western countries in their approach to getting Ukraine to make compromises so that we can get this war over and end it. But that's not actually how things work.

The Western countries need to understand that they cannot dictate the conditions under which Ukraine will enter a peace deal. It's not only Russia that gets to decide when the war ends. Ukraine has a say too. And if Ukraine doesn't get anything from a peace deal, then the war is going to continue. So if the Western countries want the war to end, they have to find an end game that will also be attractive for Ukraine. And the reality is that while Ukraine depends on Western weapons support and supplies, the West also relies on Ukraine to keep fighting the war and to not lose the war because that would be detrimental for the security of many European countries.

So it's not actually an option for the West to abandon Ukraine. And that gives Ukraine leverage in this. And that's also why we must take it seriously when the Ukrainians say that they need strong security guarantees to end the war, that this demand is non-negotiable from their point of view, and that if we want to find a way to end the war that doesn't involve the proliferation of nuclear weapons, then we need to start thinking about how we can incorporate Ukraine into the existing nuclear umbrella that exists in Europe.

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