Is imperialism negotiable?

Despite modest gains in east Ukraine, June was not a good month for Russia. Within a single week, European Union leaders offered Kyiv candidacy for membership, NATO reached an agreement to bring Sweden and Finland into the alliance and Great Britain’s defense secretary, Ben Wallace, called for a 20 percent hike to his budget.

These historic developments are sure to rile Kremlin officials, but the future of Western support to Ukraine’s fight remains uncertain. As public interest in the war continues to dwindle, appeasing Russia’s extortionate demands could become more desirable. Such concessions would do more than disfigure Ukraine and impose devastating new realities on Western security institutions — they would declare to the world that imperialism is negotiable.  

The debate over policy toward Ukraine has split experts into two camps. One side believes this war will end only when Russia is humiliated and exhausted militarily by a stream of Western arms packages. Until now, the Biden administration has pursued a strategy along these lines.

The other camp sees that option as far-fetched and too costly, and instead seeks diplomatic solutions to Russia’s war. Proposed remedies typically include allowing Russia to expand its borders into Ukraine and insisting that Kyiv amend its constitution by swearing never to join NATO. These conditions echo Moscow’s demands to the letter. In exchange, Russia might stop leveling Ukrainian cities. While this bargain is clearly an example of political extortion, it tends to moonlight under the cover of various euphemisms. 

Among them are the terms “diplomacy,” “negotiations” and “realist international relations theory.” Veteran diplomat Henry Kissinger, scholars John Mearsheimer and Barry Posen and the New York Times editorial board have all argued for solutions in line with such euphemisms. Admittedly, as the war wears down the pocketbooks and attention spans of Western governments, even some Russia hawks have crept slowly into the appeasement camp. French President Emmanuel Macron, who only months ago reminded Putin slyly that France too was a nuclear power, has since said that Russia must not be humiliated in Ukraine.

These arguments have merit, but they miss the underlying question that appeasement poses to the world: If Ukraine is not worth saving from an overestimated and supposedly crumbling power, who is? 

Such inquiries give shape to the type of global power competition described in U.S. strategic documents of the last two presidential administrations. The question is essential not only to resolving the war in Ukraine, but also to enabling the Biden administration’s integrated deterrence concept aimed at competing with powers such as Russia, China, Iran and North Korea — each of which jockey for leverage over the West.  

For them, this jockeying process involves convincing observers that the U.S.-led security infrastructure established after the Cold War is in a twilight and can no longer sustain the existing international order. Fear plays a role in driving the point home.

Bringing Finland and Sweden into NATO might strengthen the alliance, but their desire to join after seven decades of neutrality is proof that nations external to NATO feel remarkably vulnerable. Former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s political party won a super majority in Japan shortly after his July 8 assassination. He was perhaps most famous for his role as architect of the informal Quad alliance, what some consider the early phase of an Indo-Pacific NATO. 

Aside from its paternalistic nature, appeasement fails to see the bigger picture. The idea of the free world as a conglomerate of nations that share liberal democratic values has animated political campaigns and national security policies for generations. This concept is rooted in the assumption that a rules-based international order prevents tyrants from doing exactly what Putin is doing. If the existing order cannot serve this purpose, it will suffer a severe blow to its credibility, especially in places where diplomats and military advisers such as myself work to assure foreign partners of our commitment to those principles.  

Condoning Russia’s extortion further undermines the diplomatic process because it corrodes the legitimacy of existing treaties upon which many countries rely for materiel and political support. Clearly, Moscow has thrown out the Russo-Ukrainian Treaty of 1997. But the 1994 Budapest Memorandum – bearing the signatures of the United States, Russia and United Kingdom – offered Western-backed security guarantees in exchange for Kyiv relinquishing its nuclear arsenal. If that parlay ultimately contributes to Ukraine’s disintegration, the West could face a credibility crisis in future diplomatic exchanges. Putin’s statements amplify this erosion of trust and nest it conveniently within the twilight narrative. 

Realists want the West to shake off the war in Ukraine and focus on China, even as Belarusian president and Putin ally Alexander Lukashenko uses terms like “moral cleansing” to describe his vision of Europe’s future. But if Moscow can leverage its atrocities in Ukraine to bludgeon the free world into conciliation, it will signify a terrifying new beginning, not the end of a war.  

As argued by Lt. Gen. James Dubik in these pages, forcing Ukraine to the negotiating table in a position of weakness is a recipe for disaster. Considering the 2014 annexation of Crimea, the ongoing use of genocidal tactics in Ukraine and the likelihood of a protracted insurgency in Russian-occupied territories, it is folly to assume that a sacrificial land offering will produce anything resembling stability.  

Russia’s incursion presents to the world a troubling question that it must answer collectively: Is imperialism negotiable? Outside Ukraine, appeasement is an easy option because it creates the mirage of reconciliation while demanding nothing from those conjuring the illusion. On the other hand, generating the political will to explore new frameworks of burden sharing in support of Ukraine’s fight is much harder, but it is the only solution that clearly answers the question of how much imperialism Europe will tolerate this century.

If the answer is anything more than zero, then Moscow is at liberty to continue exploiting that ambiguity with its imperial interests. Public officials from Washington to Canberra must consider the long-term effects of Russia experiencing anything less than abject failure in Ukraine.  

One calls to mind the 1805 “Plumb-pudding in danger” cartoon in which Napoleon Bonaparte and British Prime Minister William Pitt are depicted at a dinner table carving up the globe. A rising tide of authoritarianism over the last decade means the situation in Ukraine might determine who now gets a seat at that table. The United States and its allies spend billions each year persuading foreign partners that the West can help deter, and, if need be, stop modern Napoleons. Now is the time to prove it. 

Capt. Michael P. Ferguson is an officer in the U.S. Army with decades of experience working alongside foreign partners throughout Europe, Africa, Iraq and Afghanistan. He contributes defense and national security analysis for various publications. 

The views expressed are those of the author and do not reflect policies of the U.S. Army, U.S. Department of Defense, or U.S. government.