Will Vladimir Putin intensify the war?

For the first time since President Joe Biden gave them permission to do so, Ukrainian soldiers fired a U.S.-supplied weapon at a target in Russia. Will Russian President Vladimir Putin respond by escalating or expanding the war? Probably not. If officials fear it, they don't say it.

Yet, until now, Biden had barred Ukraine from taking this step, fearing that it would cross a “red line”, pushing Putin to launch missiles against the territory of a NATO country or even to fire a tactical nuclear weapon.

Why did Biden abandon his concerns? Was it wise to do so? If that was the case, should he have given up on them long ago? Does Putin really have “red lines” or is he – and always has been – bluffing? Have Biden and other Western leaders been too cautious? Should they now let it go all restrictions and let the Ukrainians shoot at will with everything they have?

It should first be clarified that Biden's order does not give the Ukrainians carte blanche. This does not allow them to fire weapons supplied by the West at any target in Russia. Rather, it allows them to do so only at sites from which Russia has launched missiles toward northeastern Ukraine, primarily in and around Kharkiv, the country's second-largest city.

For some time now, Ukraine has been shooting her own weapons, mainly drones, on targets in Russia. Biden has denied any association with the strikes, without condemning or condoning them. However, few would dispute Ukraine's right to retaliate against missiles launched against its territory from Russia. So what is the distinction? Why is Ukraine allowed (or at least prohibited) to strike Russia with its own weapons – but not with weapons supplied by the United States or other NATO countries?

Since the beginning of this war (at least since the United States began sending Ukraine billions of dollars in weapons in response to Putin's invasion in February 2024), Biden has drawn a line very firm red against sending American or NATO armed forces to the country. wage war directly. That, he repeatedly said, would mean the start of a Third World War – and, as vital as that was to help Ukraine ward off Russian aggression, it was not vital enough to risk such a cataclysmic global conflict.

From that moment when Biden pledged to help Ukraine with reservations, Western leaders, advisors and commentators have debated, publicly and behind closed doors, the extent of those reservations. Where exactly were Putin’s so-called “red lines”? Inserting American troops (boots on the ground or pilots in the air) would clearly cross these lines, mark a declaration of war – but what other forms of intervention could also trigger Putin? For a time, Biden and other Western leaders refused to send Ukraine the most modern tanks, fighter jets or long-range missiles – fearing that Putin would even view these actions as government involvement. NATO in the war and reacts accordingly. Gradually these limits were relaxed or abandoned: first came tanks, then planes (a few anyway), then long-range missiles (at first with strict limits on how they could be used, then these limits were gradually relaxed). GOOD).

Whatever the verdict of history, Biden and other Western leaders had reason at the time to impose these limits. Putin threatened to respond to these escalatory acts by launching tactical nuclear weapons. His army held exercises to rehearse their use. Maybe he was bluffing, but no one could be sure. Dropping nuclear bombs would be a crazy and self-destructive move, but who can say whether it would be enough to deter Putin? (Many, myself included, doubted he would invade all of Ukraine, in part because it also seemed crazy and self-destructive.) That's the problem with nuclear deterrence: It works both ways. (Russia is deterred from attacking us, but we are also deterred from doing things that might resemble an attack on Russia's vital interests.)

In any case, the strategic situation has now changed. When Biden and other leaders first imposed limits on the types of weapons to send to Ukraine, or how Ukraine should use them, the fear was that Putin could expand or intensify the war if it looked like Ukraine was about to win. (There were times during the first year of the war, after Ukraine had pushed back the Russian invaders and pushed them back, when people thought this might be possible.)

But today there are fears that without these more advanced weapons and more permissive rules regarding their use, Ukraine will lose. In other words, there are now competing risks: the risk that letting Ukraine fire NATO-supplied weapons at Russia could prompt Russia to escalate violence. against the risk that not letting them fire their weapons could allow Russia to win, with all the geopolitical calamities that would ensue.

As has been widely reported, until the House of Representatives finally passed the spending bill for increased military aid in April, Ukraine lacked artillery shells, air defense missiles and even basic ammunition. (A NATO military advisor recently told me that at one point, for a few weeks, the Ukrainian army had No stocks in reserves; (it only had shells stored on the front lines.) Even today, as bullets and shells flood in again, Ukraine has very few weapons with the range to reach – and therefore neutralize – firing positions inside Russia.

At present, the first risk, the one which until recently motivated the restrictive policy, is no longer compelling. One could imagine Putin launching missiles against Poland (as a transit point for NATO weapons to Ukraine) or firing a few tactical nuclear weapons (to shock and intimidate the West into ending the war before out of control) if he thought he was about to. lose. But it is hard to imagine him taking such extreme measures if Russian troops simply lost the light, steady momentum they had gained in recent months and the war once again descended into a stalemate. (That's all Biden's new relaxed rules would allow Ukraine to accomplish: hamper Russia's offensive capabilities and buy time.)

Finally, there is the 2024 US presidential election to consider. If Donald Trump wins back the White House, Putin will have every chance of winning all the chips. Trump told Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán (orbán later said) that his plan to end the war quickly was to cut off all aid to Ukraine – in other words, to let Putin win. However, if Putin has in the meantime attacked a NATO country (prompting all other NATO members to respond under Article 5 of the treaty, which says that an attack on one is an attack on all) or has fired nuclear weapons (breaking the “nuclear taboo” since 1945), so even Trump might have a hard time letting this Kremlin man do it.

There have been times when a president's allergy to escalation has been salutary – and other times when it has been dismal. In 1962, John F. Kennedy rejected the Joint Chiefs' plan (which almost all of his advisors supported) to attack Soviet missiles in Cuba and invade the island, in part because he believed that the Soviets would respond by seizing West Berlin. Instead, he negotiated a secret, mutual withdrawal of Soviet missiles from Cuba and American missiles from Turkey. A good thing since, as we later learned, some of those Soviet missiles were loaded with nuclear warheads and 40,000 Soviet troops were hidden on the island to ward off a possible American invasion. JFK's reluctance might well have prevented World War III.

By contrast, in 2014, Barack Obama rejected pressing requests from his advisers (including Vice President Joe Biden) to send anti-tank missiles to Ukraine after Putin annexed Crimea and made his first foray into the is Ukraine – because, as Obama said in a national Security Council meeting, Ukraine mattered more to Russia than to us, so Russia would live up to anything that we did militarily, and even a little. It is possible that Putin thought he could invade all of Ukraine in 2022 because he had managed to invade part of it in 2014. If some of the first Russian invaders had been “sent home in body bags”, as Veep Biden and others said was necessary at the time, would Putin subsequently change his risk-benefit calculation?

History seems clear in the rearview mirror. Sometimes, however, events are not at all clear as they unfold. It was unclear at the time whether Kennedy was right not to attack Soviet missiles, or whether Obama was right not to send anti-tank missiles to Ukraine. (Top advisors to both presidents thought they were wrong at the time.)

Biden's restrictions over the past two years may be seen as excessive, or fair, over time. But right now we are experiencing a rare moment when the decision to ease these restrictions seems unequivocally a good idea: when the benefits of such a decision are high and the risks of a dangerous escalation – albeit non-zero – are very high. weak.