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Guest Essay
Putin’s Plan for Peace Is No Peace at All
Lloyd J. Austin III and Antony J. Blinken
Mr. Austin is the secretary of defense. Mr. Blinken is the secretary of state.
President Vladimir Putin of Russia appalled the world with his full-scale invasion of Ukraine almost three years ago. He planned to topple Ukraine’s democratically elected government, install a Kremlin puppet regime and expose the West as weak, divided and diminished.
After more than 1,000 days of Mr. Putin’s reckless war of choice, he has failed to achieve a single one of his strategic goals. Russia’s power and influence are greatly diminished; it couldn’t even prop up a valued client like the regime of Bashar al-Assad in Syria. Meanwhile, Ukraine stands strong and defiant as a free and sovereign democracy, with an economy rooted in the West.
All this is a testament to the resilience of Ukraine’s troops and the strength of Ukraine’s people. It is also the product of steadfast American leadership, which has rallied allies and partners worldwide to help Ukraine survive the Kremlin’s imperial onslaught. The United States should build on this historic success, not squander it.
Mr. Putin assumed that the world would stand by when he sent his troops across the Ukrainian border. He was wrong. The United States has rallied some 50 countries from around the planet to help Ukraine defend itself — and to uphold the bedrock principle that borders may not be redrawn by force. One of us, Secretary Austin, has convened the Ukraine Defense Contact Group, a global coalition that has coordinated military support to Ukraine, 25 times. Its members have committed $126 billion in direct security assistance to Ukraine, almost half of which has come from non-U.S. members.
As a percentage of G.D.P., more than a dozen contact group members now provide more security assistance to Ukraine than the United States does. And these investments in Ukraine are delivering returns here at home, boosting our defense industrial base and creating good jobs. Mr. Putin’s aggression even spurred the very outcome he had sought to prevent: NATO is now bigger, stronger and more united than ever.
As a result, Ukraine has held off the second-largest military in the world — despite Mr. Putin’s reckless escalations and irresponsible nuclear saber rattling. Ukraine has fought brilliantly even as China, the second-largest economy in the world, has backed Mr. Putin; as Iran, the biggest state sponsor of terror in the world, has armed him with missiles and drones; and as North Korea, the most notorious nuclear-armed rogue state in the world, has supplied him with ammunition and some 10,000 troops.
Ukraine’s success to date is a huge strategic achievement, but its troops still face profound challenges on the battlefield. Russian forces have recently clawed back some of the territory that Ukraine liberated earlier in the war, and Mr. Putin’s bombardment of Ukraine’s power plants and other critical infrastructure is taking a harrowing toll. The Ukrainian people have shown magnificent defiance, but they have paid a steep price for their freedom.
Still, Ukraine’s vulnerabilities should not mask Mr. Putin’s own growing dilemmas.
In recent months, the United States and its partners have been surging even more military assistance — including hundreds of thousands more artillery rounds, additional missiles for air defense, more armored vehicles and more air-to-ground munitions — to Ukraine to help blunt Russia’s manpower advantage. We have allowed Ukraine to use ATACMS missiles inside Russia’s borders, which helped Ukraine defend itself after North Korea’s intervention in the war. Throughout the conflict, as conditions on the battlefield evolved, and as our stockpiles and readiness requirements allowed, we increased assistance at a pace that Ukraine’s forces could absorb, linking every donation with training and sustainment.
But Russia is suffering huge losses — an average of 1,500 casualties a day — to seize small slivers of territory. Russia has suffered more than 700,000 dead and injured since Mr. Putin began his war. Now he increasingly faces a painful dilemma: either endure high casualties for minimal gains, perhaps order a mobilization that triggers domestic instability, or negotiate seriously with Ukraine to end his war.
We are also backstopping Ukraine with economic support, and we’re making Russia pay for it. Shortly after Russia’s all-out invasion, Group of 7 leaders acted in lock step to immobilize more than $300 billion of Russian central bank assets held in our respective jurisdictions. In June, President Biden and Group of 7 leaders agreed to issue $50 billion in loans for Ukraine that will be paid back by the interest earned on the frozen Russian assets.
The United States has also taken coordinated action to choke off the revenue fueling Mr. Putin’s war machine. Russia’s biggest banks with major connections abroad are sanctioned. With our help, Europe has cut its reliance on Russian gas and oil to almost zero. Inflation in Russia is now over 9 percent and rising. Interest rates have soared to 21 percent. Even with some 40 percent of Russia’s budget going to the military, the Kremlin can’t produce enough materiel to replenish its capabilities. Mr. Putin has burned through nearly two-thirds of rainy-day funds that Russia built up over decades, robbing the country’s future to pursue its imperial past. Roughly a million Russians, many of them young and talented, have fled the country.
All of this has given leverage to Ukraine — and to the next U.S. administration. This leverage should be used to end Mr. Putin’s war and usher in a durable peace that ensures Ukrainians can deter further Russian aggression, defend their territory and thrive as a sovereign democracy. That is what peace through strength would look like. But because Mr. Putin retains his imperial ambitions, giving up our leverage now by cutting aid and forcing a premature cease-fire would simply allow Mr. Putin to rest, refit and eventually reattack. This would be peace through surrender, which would be no peace at all.
Not for Ukraine, which would be crushed under Mr. Putin’s boot.
Not for Europe, which would fall under the shadow of a tyrant determined to reconstitute Moscow’s fallen empire.
Not for America’s friends elsewhere, who could face new risks of aggression from other autocrats who would likely see a victory for Mr. Putin as a hunting license of their own.
And not for the United States, which would have to spend more resources and shoulder greater risks to defend not only against an emboldened Russian leader but also against other autocrats and agents of chaos bent on tearing down the system of rules, rights and responsibilities that has made generations of Americans more secure and more prosperous.
Pursuing a policy of peace through strength is vital to Ukraine’s survival and America’s security. The United States and its allies and partners must continue to stand by Ukraine and strengthen its hand for the negotiations that will someday bring Mr. Putin’s war of aggression to an end.
Lloyd J. Austin III is the secretary of defense. Antony J. Blinken is the secretary of state.
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