Ukraine - In the National Interest? - August 31st 2025

  Frederick the Great defined strategy as that which connects your assets to your goal. It is a simple, yet elegant definition of any strategy - any plan. But, as Fredrick would also say, several things were required before you could make a sound plan. On one side of the equation, you needed to state clearly what it is that you were trying to do. The goal needs to be clear.

Anyone who has ever engaged in any sort of planning effort knows how true this is; if the goal is not clear, the plan is going to get very complicated or confusing very quickly. Something as simple as building a deck off the back of your house can become very complicated if you keep changing what you want to do with the deck: Size? Shape? Hot tub? Barbecue pit? Wet bar? Is your wife aware of your design criteria? Did your wife agree as to all the parameters?

How much more complicated is a war? What was the US goal in Vietnam? Even a cursory review of various policy discussion from the 1960 shows that there were multiple goals, some of which sound similar, some of which are pretty far apart: Survival of South Vietnam, survival of South Vietnam as a liberal democracy, defeat of communism, containment of China, access to the South China Sea, etc. Each of the above would yield a different plan, and in some cases a substantially different one.

And then there is the question of assets, of cost. In a simple situation (building a deck, for example) assets are the cash necessary to buy the material to build the deck, and your time (the time needed to actually construct it). And skills necessary (do you have them all?). And perhaps obtaining a license from your town. And or your homeowners association. And how long will that take, additional time also being a cost)?

What about a war? What will be the cost? I have participated in a large number of planning evolutions and I have to say that is the part to which is devoted the least intellectual effort, and about which the most assumptions are made.

There are a number of reasons for this but it’s fair to say that no planner wants to put down on paper a number labeled: “maximum number of casualties we are willing to accept to win this battle;” lest that number become public. Those thoughts may percolate through the system, but no one writes them down. To be sure, there are always casualty estimates, and they will be debated, but you’ll look in vain for sometime to say: that’s too many. In the case of Operation Downfall (the overall planned invasion of Japan (Operations Olympic and Coronet)), some estimates ran as highs as US forces taking 1 million casualties (essentially the same total number of casualties the US had already taken in WWII); Admirals King and Nimitz were opposed to the landings (confident that Navy “strangulation” of the Japanese islands, while slow, would eventually force a surrender), but no one stated “too high a cost.” 

As a practical matter, most planning evolutions place fairly short time windows on any plan. Again, no one wants to draft the plan for the 10 year occupation (or longer) of Japan or Germany (or Iraq or Afghanistan). And while discussions will inevitably lead to recognition that such time frames are to be expected, there is a certain intellectual dishonesty involved in avoiding the discussion of how long a war lasts, that is, how it really, finally ends, and how we then withdraw.

All that said, the other day a friend of mine made an excellent case for US involvement in Ukraine, and made 5 points on why Ukraine does, and should, matter to the US, why Ukraine is in the national interest:

The UN Charter (and the associated treaty obligations)

The Budapest Memorandum - and the value of US promises 

Nuclear Proliferation and the signal sent to the world if Ukraine falls

The increased uncertainty, instability and heightened risk if we fail to defend what is right

Ukraine’s independence - or subjugation - and the impact on NATO and Europe 

I would add a sixth: the sense of loss of initiative to Russia (and by extension China) if Russia wins in Ukraine.

These are significant arguments in defense of supporting US involvement in Ukraine; that said, I would ask a few questions - for which my answers aren’t terribly important. But these questions should be asked inside the White House, and inside the Pentagon, and should be asked by the Armed Services Committee members in order to figure out what in fact we should be doing. 

It should go without saying (though it won’t) that these questions are not partisan. Rather, they are serious issues that every citizen should consider. The ramifications of getting this wrong are potentially catastrophic.

Beginning with the UN Charter. Should the US try to make that work when most of the member states only act when it plainly serves their interests? Has the UN as a whole called for action against Russia for its actions in Ukraine? And if not, why should the US struggle to make this system work, when we carry a disproportionate share of the cost, only to be manipulated by other members, in particular China?

The Budapest Memorandum - President Clinton has said, in the last few years, flat out, it was a mistake. What are we willing to spend to undo this mistake? Does there come a time when you need to accept a loss? In 2014, when Russia seized Crimea the administration barely registered the event. What would need to be done to force Russia out of Crimea? The answer, of course, is tied up with the next issue:

Nuclear proliferation and the “signal” sent by failure to honor the Budapest Memorandum. This “horse" is, arguably already well out of the barn. Libya agreed to turn over its nuclear weapon program, and other WMD programs, to the US and UK in December 2003 (which they did over the course of the next decade), and yet in 2011 the US led strikes on Libya that ended with Qaddafi’s death and the reducing of Libya to “failed state” status; more than a decade later the country is still struggling. It would seem that, in light of the Obama administration’s “defenestration” of Libya and its non-response to the Russian movement into Crimea in 1914, that the signal has been sent loudly and clearly: as DeGaulle noted: “No country without an atomic bomb can rightly consider itself independent.” How do we walk that back? Are we willing to spend the time and effort to revitalize the US nuclear umbrella and make it clear to other countries (South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, et al) that they do not need their own nuclear arsenal, that they can, indeed count on the US for the rest of this century?

It is decidedly necessary to reconsider what Eisenhower said, that conventional forces, no matter how large, will not deter a great power. He spoke at a time when the US was spending more than 10% of GDP on defense. The Korean War had ended because he threatened the use of nuclear weapons. What must we do today to recover the level of deterrence that we have lost in the last several decades?

As for uncertainty and risk, arguably, the rebuilding of our industrial base, and our conventional forces, is only a first step to reducing the risk. Any answer must also address the now well public problems of US industrial capacity, the presumed low levels of US stockpiles after 3 years of war in Ukraine, the sadly limited European capacity to defend beyond its borders despite the large population and large GDP (10 times larger than Russia), and the European political predilection to very slow and minimalist decisions, and reliance on the US to solve their problems. How much of that cost can we continue to carry?

And, the question of initiative. The current, very active, administration has recaptured some of the initiative, but can that carry over into Asia? Can - Must - the US carry the ball in Ukraine AND in the western Pacific? 

And I would add one final thought as we think about costs: consider casualties. Not just US casualties, but civilian casualties. Imagine for a moment that we could fight the Russians in Ukraine, and even over Russian territory, without nuclear escalation, what level of civilian casualties are we willing to inflict on Russia? In Korea 3 million civilians were killed. In Vietnam numbers are bit fuzzier, but certainly more than 600,000 civilians were killed. In Iraq somewhere between 110,000 and 1 million civilians were killed (really fuzzy numbers) and in Afghanistan civilian death estimates run between 46,000 and 230,000.

Now, add in the very real possibility of nuclear escalation. 

Again, how many deaths - US and European and Ukrainian military deaths - are we willing to accept? How many civilian deaths are we willing to accept?

None of these questions end the debate. But we need to ask the questions.