A defeat of Russia coerced by the West would be dangerous
PremiumMoscow’s nuke-rattling over Ukraine has come from a tight spot
The US and Russia are waging the most intense contest in great-power coercion since the height of the Cold War. Russian President Vladimir Putin is using nuclear threats and other escalations in a bid to avoid humiliation in Ukraine. Washington is wielding its own array of pressures to force Putin to accept just that outcome. The good news is that, so far, both strategies have been fairly carefully calibrated. The bad news is that America and Russia may still be on a collision course because only one of these strategies can succeed.
Coercion is the art of shaping a rival’s behaviour through intimidation or violence; it can occur in peace-time, war and everywhere in between. Washington and Moscow are not fighting each other directly. But from the start of this conflict, they’ve been coercing each other aggressively.
Putin’s version has been louder and more rhetorically menacing. Since February 2022, the Russian leader has talked ominously of nuclear warfare to dissuade the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (Nato) from intervening directly on Ukraine’s behalf. The Kremlin warned that even supplying Kiev with weapons like long-range strike missiles that can reach deep into Russia would cross Moscow’s red lines. Putin seeks to intimidate the West so he can wage the war he wants—a one-on-one in which Ukraine will succumb to Russia’s strength. It hasn’t worked because of a quiet but ruthlessly effective US coercion campaign. America has forced Putin to stay remarkably passive as Ukraine and its Western backers inflict once unimaginable harm on his military and the state he controls.
The Joe Biden’s administration’s pledge to defend “every inch" of Nato territory have made it too risky for Putin to interfere with Ukraine’s supply lines through Romania and Poland. US power, both conventional and nuclear, has deterred Moscow from lashing out as the West delivers the arms, data and money Ukraine needs to wreck Russian ground forces, even as America imposes sanctions that are setting Putin’s economy back by a generation and adds two new Nato members on Russia’s doorstep, Finland and Sweden.
That is a triumph of US coercion, even if it’s at a dangerous stage. Putin is spiralling toward defeat in Ukraine and may not survive that outcome politically. So he is mobilizing hundreds of thousands of troops while reminding enemies just how much harm Russia can cause. By annexing four Ukrainian regions, Putin is warning Washington as well as Kyiv that attacks on those territories are tantamount to attacks on Russia itself. And if Russia was behind recent attacks on undersea gas pipelines to Germany, as EU officials maintain, Putin may be sending a message that Moscow can take the fight to Nato countries in less conventional ways. Back off, Putin is saying, before things get really serious.
The Biden administration has opted not to listen. It responded to the annexation gambit by announcing new deliveries of weapons to Ukraine, which is liberating more of the territory Putin claims as his own. US officials are warning Moscow that the use of nuclear weapons would prove ruinous for Russia; in private, they are reportedly making threats that are reportedly more specific but still leave something to the imagination. Every time Putin has tried to bully or bluster his way out of trouble, the US has coerced him right back.
There are still moves left in this game. Putin has other non-nuclear cards to play, such as attacks on undersea fibre optic cables that connect the US and EU. He could issue a specific nuclear ultimatum or start moving his arsenal around.
The US has not yet given Kiev long-range missiles, attack aircraft, main battle tanks and other weapons. The contest is dangerous, but has not yet gotten out of hand. It is, though, reminiscent of the Cold War’s scariest moments. In the Berlin crises of the late 1950s and early 1960s, Moscow promised that rockets would fly if the US and its allies didn’t abandon West Berlin. In 1962, the US warned it might invade Cuba if the Soviet Union didn’t withdraw missiles it had placed there. Nuclear threats and counterthreats were the Cold War’s language.
Those crises were resolved peacefully. Coercion was softened with compromise. In 1961, Moscow settled for turning East Berlin into a prison behind the Berlin Wall rather than running the West out. The next year, the US pledged not to invade Cuba if Moscow took its rockets home. Today, we don’t know what a compromise would look like.
Putin remains committed to Ukraine’s slice-up, which Kyiv and Washington won’t accept. America and Ukraine have Putin headed for a defeat that is anathema to him. Both sides are betting that a basic compromise of their war aims isn’t needed because they can apply enough pressure to get the enemy to back down at the crucial moment. Both sides can’t be right.
Hal Brands is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist.
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