While the war in Ukraine may have faded from American public consciousness — supplanted in large part by the Israel-Hamas war — the conflict on the ground hasn’t changed much in recent months, as Ukraine’s counteroffensive has fizzled out. An endless war of attrition would appear to favor Russia, whose sheer manpower gives it an advantage against a depleted Ukrainian army, and whose economy is primed for a long conflict. But Russia continues to have plenty of battlefield problems of its own and seems far from any significant breakthrough. The big question about the war at this point may be a political one. In both the United States and Europe, once-unshakeable support for the Ukraine war effort is looking notably shakier, with an enormous supplemental funding bill currently stalled in Congress. (On Monday, the White House warned that it was close to running out of available funds.) Counterinsurgency expert John Nagl, a former lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army, who is now a professor of war-fighting studies in the U.S. Army War College, believes that next year’s likely Biden-Trump rematch will be key. I spoke with him about best- and worst-case scenarios for Ukraine in 2024 and beyond. (Nagl made clear that his views on the war did not reflect those of the army, or the Department of Defense.)
When we spoke in August, you predicted that the war would eventually settle into what you called a “frozen conflict.” Has your assessment changed since then?
I think the good news is I was right, and the bad news is I was right. As we discussed four months ago, Ukraine is trying to do an unbelievably difficult military task — among the hardest military tasks — in conducting an offense against a prepared defense. But they’re doing it without what, in modern war, is the first prerequisite for conducting that offense, which is having air superiority. The Ukrainians do not have the capabilities in the air that the U.S. military thinks are absolutely essential to succeeding in an offensive operation against a prepared defense. And so it is unsurprising that the Ukrainian offensive has shown as limited success on the ground as it has. It’s disappointing but not surprising.
The way people think about this war does seem to be shifting. The lede of a recent Wall Street Journal article on the war reads as follows: “As Russia’s war against Ukraine approaches its third year, Moscow holds the advantage on the military, political, and economic fronts.” And an Economist cover story concluded that Putin is currently winning. Just to focus on the military element, do you see much evidence on the ground that Russia is doing better than it was a few months ago?
No, the Russians are not doing appreciably better, and I think the Journal is exaggerating. I do think that the Russians are not losing, and ultimately if the Russians don’t lose, they win. They have three times, four times the population Ukraine does. There’s just a much bigger base to draw upon. The extraordinary fact of all of this — when there’s a talking dog, you shouldn’t be surprised that it uses grammar incorrectly, you should be surprised that there’s a talking dog. You’ve got a country of 40 million that has stood up against everything Russia can send its way short of chemical or nuclear or biological weapons for 20 months, coming up on two years, and that is an extraordinary accomplishment. They’ve been able to do that only because of extraordinary unity from the West. And I’m equal opportunity here. I give credit and blame where they’re due.
I think it’s a terrific accomplishment by the Biden administration to build support for Ukraine and maintain it internationally. What I am most concerned about is that the American support for Ukraine appears to be weakening, in particular in the U.S. House of Representatives. I will go so far as to say if Ukraine is going to lose this war, it’s going to lose it here in the United States the same way the United States lost the Vietnam War in the United States. If Ukraine is going to lose this war, it’s going to lose it in the House of Representatives, or — I continue to think Vladimir Putin is playing for November 2024, and hoping that a president is going to be elected who, to be as charitable to his expressed positions as I can, does not appear to be as dedicated to the continued survival of a free and independent Ukraine as the Biden administration has.
That’s the big change since we last spoke: Things have become even wobblier on the funding front in the Republican-controlled Congress.
The dysfunction in the House of Representatives renders the entire world less safe and has huge implications for the security of Israel, for the continued existence of Ukraine as an independent country — for everything. The world is watching as the United States government is unable to perform its most basic functions.
Let’s play out the worst-case scenario for Ukraine there. Congress doesn’t come up with a funding bill for them, and the funding is frozen and existing delays in sending ammunition and equipment become worse. How dire would the situation on the battlefield become without the steady stream, or steady avalanche, of American money and weapons that Ukraine has become used to?
It’s somewhere in between a stream and an avalanche, I think, and it’s been episodic. And often it’s been a case where they’ve asked for capabilities and we’ve said no, and then three to six months later we’ve changed our mind. I think one of the reasons for our caution has been the concern that we’re essentially fighting a proxy war against a not-very-stable nuclear-armed state. General David Petraeus was here at the Army War College this week talking about his new book, Conflict. And in his very good chapter on Ukraine, which he wrote with Lord Andrew Roberts, he states —and this is the first time I’ve seen this; I don’t doubt his sources, but I haven’t confirmed his sources — that one of the reasons we have been slow in delivering capabilities to Ukraine is that the Chinese said that if we held off and slow-rolled some of those deliveries, that they would use their influence on Putin to keep him from using tactical nuclear weapons.
I hadn’t heard that one before.
That is new to me and I am still digesting it, but it provides more clarity to what I had already thought was the case, that the Biden administration was deeply concerned about the prospects that Putin might use tactical nuclear weapons, which I am as well. In the case of catastrophic success by Ukraine, for instance if they cut the land bridge to Crimea, I could absolutely see Russia using a tactical nuclear weapon to prevent Crimea from returning to Ukrainian control
The Russians view tactical nuclear weapons as a war-fighting capability. They are not nearly as enamored of the bright line that the United States has tried to set for the last 75 years, that nuclear weapons are qualitatively different. So the Russians, I think, are more willing to use nuclear weapons in war than is the United States. And I think that any violation of that makes the world an appreciably more difficult place. I think the Biden administration is right to work very hard to keep that from happening while also working very hard to keep Ukraine standing.
But not everyone’s on the same page.
As we speak today on December 1, nobody knows how long Mike Johnson, the current Speaker of the House, is going to be around, but he had been an opponent of aid to Ukraine before he became part of the Republican leadership, and he is now saying much more positive things about support for Ukraine. Mitch McConnell and Chuck Schumer in the Senate are pretty united. Both are strong supporters. I don’t think the Senate’s going to have any problem passing this, and I think the Biden administration has been really smart in asking to bundle Ukrainian aid with aid to Israel, with some money for U.S. border security and money for disaster-recovery efforts here in the United States. There should be something in there for everybody to like.
And also, they put a big number on it to try to get through this entire Congress, to take us all the way into 2025 when the Biden administration obviously is hoping it’ll be beginning its second term with a Democratic House. The numbers may be harder for the Democrats in the Senate than they are in the House, I think, going into the 2024 elections.
But the Senate presumably would continue to support Ukraine. Certainly the second Biden administration will continue to support Ukraine. But obviously there’s no guarantee that any of that is going to happen. I do believe, and this may be wishful thinking on my part, but I believe we’re going to see a bill that will get money for Ukraine and money for Israel before the Ukrainians run out of juice.
For a principled skeptic of more aid to Ukraine, the thinking goes something like this: The U.S. has provided tens of billions of dollars since the war started. Ukraine has done an admirable job and better than anyone expected. But the counteroffensive that was supposed to make a major breakthrough this year didn’t. It looks like Ukraine may have the limits of what they can do, and now we should be thinking about how to resolve this conflict and not be involved in this war for the next decade, with all its possible dangers. Does that seem reasonable to you at all?
Regardless of how it seems to me, it seems reasonable to Richard Haass and Charles Kupchan, who just published that very argument in Foreign Affairs. These are not foreign-policy lightweights, obviously. So I found that deeply concerning. I think they are afraid that the Ukrainian negotiating position will get worse in 2024, particularly if former president Trump is reelected. And so that argument has merit. On balance, I am opposed to it, but I believe that there is no chance for any kind of negotiated settlement until Putin finds out that Donald Trump is not going to be the next president of the United States.
So in your view, the most important event coming up in this entire conflict — other than continued funding for Ukraine — is the U.S. presidential election. It’s not anything on the battlefield.
Ukrainians are going to continue to fight. They will fight conventionally if they have the resources to do so; they will fight as insurgents if they don’t. I’m absolutely confident of that, although they’re getting tired. But I do believe the Ukrainians will continue to fight. The decisive factor in this war, given that assumption — and there’s a lot of support for that assumption — is whether the West is going to continue to support Ukraine in the defense of democracy and freedom against unjust aggression and in favor of the most basic principle of international law?
And the answer is we don’t know. But if it does, Ukraine will stand. Now, I said in August when we spoke last that I feared a frozen conflict. We’ve got a lot more data now, four months later, and it is approaching a frozen conflict. It is very hard to defeat a prepared defense in modern war.
One new battlefront is Avdiivka in the Donetsk region, which has been compared to Bakhmut — a lot of intense fighting.
It’s a meat grinder.
Is there anything big to be won there, in terms of strategic importance?
No. But the Russians continue to pour men into this. The Ukrainians, it looks like, are killing ten Russians for every one they lose on that battlefront. But it’s not decisive. It’s not even particularly important.
I can’t remember which queen or princess it was, but a queen or a princess liked a flower outside her castle and told one of the guards to guard that flower and make sure nobody stepped on it, and the flower lasted another month before winter came. But a hundred years later, there was still a guard there standing watch and had no idea why the guard was standing there, but it continued. That’s how this fight appears to me. The Russians have no idea why they continue to pour men in this fight, but they keep pouring men into the fight. It’s possible that it has some particular importance for Putin, but from a military strategist point of view, it’s a sideshow.
Another hypothetical: Let’s say Biden wins reelection and there’s a Democratic Congress, so funding free Ukraine is at least significantly easier than it is now. What would Ukraine’s best-case scenario be? Is it just what they have now? We spoke last time about how there’s no sort of silver bullet with weaponry — they’re not going to get the right plane or the right tank or whatever and just start dominating.
Yeah, but right now, Russia has a credible end game. According to polling, Donald Trump is winning. If the election were held today, Donald Trump would be the next president of the United States. And that is a victorious outcome for Russia. If Biden is reelected, that goes away and you’re facing at least four more years of American support for Ukraine, and Ukraine will not fall as long as America is supporting them.
Over the next year before the election, the F-16s are going to arrive. They’re not a silver bullet, but they are going to make a difference. The sanctions on Russia are continuing to do damage to Russian infrastructure. The Russian Civil Air Fleet is falling out of the sky — they are unable to keep airplanes moving. Petraeus told the story yesterday: So Andrew Roberts, his co-author on his new book, is the lord of Belgravia, which is an incredibly wealthy district of London. And the two houses on either side of him, the multi million-pound houses, are unoccupied because they’re owned by Russian oligarchs who can’t go to London. And so there are a lot of pressures that are going to increase on Putin over time and incline him to a negotiated settlement. This is why I so strongly disagree with Haass and Kupchan.
The counterpoint is that Putin has so far withstood things economically much better than a lot of people had predicted. Russia has managed to sell their oil to China and India and other places, and they’re boosting military production more and more. The economy is growing. It’s tough to argue now that it’s all going to fall apart in a couple years, since it hasn’t yet.
Sure. But at some point, Putin is in fact going to die.
That’s the only thing we know for sure.
We absolutely know that for sure. And I’m sure we have three-letter agencies that have a better sense than I do of how widespread the support for this war is in the ruling circle and among possible successors to Putin. But there’s going to be a lot of pressure when Putin is gone to wrap this thing up and get the sanctions lifted. Russia is losing years, decades of progress. And again, depending on the American administration, the sanctions could continue certainly until the war is over but possibly even until reparations are made as well. So this is a one-man war on the Russian side, I strongly believe. But if I’m Putin, if I’m playing poker, I feel like I’ve got at least a 50-50 shot right now of winning this war in 2025.
I do feel that’s a missing piece here for people who are urging Ukraine to end the war through negotiations. Putin doesn’t want to end it! You need a willing partner there, which is often just ignored.
The only deal Putin would take right now is he gets Kyiv. Zelenskyy is not going to do that. So the hope for Ukraine and for the West is that Biden is reelected, preferably from their perspective, with a Democratic House, and that America makes a firm commitment to Ukraine and possibly even by that point says, “We’ll go further. We’re going to start Ukraine on the path to NATO membership. We’re going to allow Poland to send military forces to defend Ukraine, not under the NATO banner but under the Polish banner. The West is firmly committed to the security of Ukraine and to the defeat of the Russian invasion.”
I think we’re likely to see incremental advances by the Ukrainians over the course of 2024, including with the F-16s. The big question I have — and again, I’m a professor at the Army War College and this is the stuff I think about — the cluster munitions do appear to be having a pretty extraordinary impact on the battlefield. And I’m not sure this fact has been adequately digested. Ukraine only got cluster munitions a couple of months ago, and they haven’t had as many of them or put them on as long range of delivery systems as they’d like to, but the cluster munitions do appear to be really chewing up and spitting out Russian units.
Which of course was controversial to send to Ukraine in the first place.
The concern is that some of the bomblets are unexploded, but unexploded ordinance is always a problem in every war zone from airplane drops, gravity bombs, or cluster munitions. There’s just more of them if they’re cluster munitions. But the Ukrainians are only using them on Ukrainian territory. They are willing to take the risk for their own people, and who are we to say, “No, you can’t take that risk with your own people and your own territory.”
We continue to put prohibitions on the use of American-provided weapons systems outside the geographic territory of Ukraine. We’re right to do so, to limit fears of Russian escalation to nuclear weapons or to horizontal escalation of conflict into NATO territory.
So, the war is sadly unlikely to change. I’ve got to say, again, I can’t tell how fragile the Russian army is. We have historical evidence from a century ago of a Russian army that has been pushed too far breaking, and breaking hard.
But also many examples of them just going on and on, spitting more people into the meat grinder, and winning.
True. But the way Russia wins is with Mother Winter, and on the defensive, yielding territory for time. Russia hasn’t been very successful on the offensive. And so, it’s not defending its own territory, the Ukrainians are defending the territory this time. I was thinking about this earlier today. It’s a remarkable parallel to Hitler’s invasion of Russia in ’41. Right? But this time Russia is Hitler.
A Ukrainian victory here, though, still wouldn’t mean re-conquering all its lost territory, right?
Yes.
You’re not being fantastical about this.
No. But, we are more likely to see Ukraine conducting a breakthrough of Russian lines than Russia conducting a breakthrough of Ukrainian lines.
Ukrainians have more to fight for. Their troops know that their country cares about them, and they are defending their homeland and they will continue to defend their homeland. There is a non-zero chance that the Russian army breaks in 2024, with a Ukrainian counteroffensive in the spring, this time with F-16s in support. There’s a non-zero chance that the Russian military breaks. I can’t say whether that’s 5 percent or 25 percent. I don’t think it’s more than 25 percent.
It goes back to your point that offensives are very difficult.
Offensives are difficult, but they’re more difficult if you’re stupid. They’re more difficult if you plan for a fast offensive, if you pack dress uniforms for the victory parade instead of ammunition and food because you’re taking your dress uniform. The Ukrainians had something to say about that victory parade and they will continue to.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
