The missiles of September

The missile story that gripped Western attention last week is very revealing for the state of our “strategic” thinking. On this one question — of whether to permit the Ukrainians to attack Russian territory with allied-supplied Storm Shadow cruise missiles — the arguments on display have allowed a clear view of the intellectual pitfalls involved in the crucial issue of escalation risk with Russia. 

This is not a matter of “hawks vs doves” as it’s often portrayed. Doves don’t really exist in the mainstream conversation that affects Western policy in relation to this conflict. All supporters of arming Ukraine, and of actively helping it to resist the illegal Russian invasion, are just different variations of hawks. They effectively support a policy of engaging in a proxy war with Russia, given that Ukraine is not a treaty ally and that Western nations are not bound by any actual legal obligations to help Kyiv. 

This doesn’t make the aid illegal, let alone “wrong.” Nor is any of this to argue against backing Ukraine to the hilt in its valiant defence — a course of action that this column has always supported. But it is worth reminding ourselves of the legal and political outlook of the situation, to understand why the label of “hawk” is technically rather broad in this case. Even the MAGA blockers of the Ukraine aid package in Congress did not dissent from the principle, but from the means of achieving it.

By contrast, properly speaking, “doves” would be those who reject the very notion of taking part even indirectly, by proxy, in Ukraine’s war with Russia. They might support giving humanitarian and even non-lethal aid. But they would point out that Russia did not attack any NATO country, and their starting position would be that this is an international armed conflict strictly between Russia and Ukraine in which the West’s role should be that of a mediator, using diplomacy to stop the fighting. They would argue that NATO’s role is to defend its own members, not risk dragging them into a war they are not party to. This is what a dovish stance is — and, thankfully, it hardly has any real place or voice in the Western conversation, being relegated to the status of “Russian propaganda.”

It was important to lay out this distinction because we tend to forget just how strong and hawkish the baseline of Western official policy on the war really is. The idea of helping Ukraine on this scale may seem obvious now, but technically there is no reason why the politics of responding to Putin’s 2022 assault should have played out any differently than in the case of Georgia which Russia also invaded in 2008, or even Armenia, attacked by Azerbaijan in 2020 – two recent state-on-state wars where the West did nothing.

It is against this background that the British government, in particular, has tried to press the US to approve Storm Shadow strikes into Russia. There is little doubt that this would be an escalatory step. Russian interpretations aside, these are clearly offensive weapons and they would require Western support — in terms of active targeting intelligence, perhaps even guidance — in order to be used. The exact reasons for that requirement are not fully clear given the classified nature of the weapon’s core technology; but this point is not seriously in contention. US approval is needed because the missiles use American components (and, some speculate, unique US navigation datasets), but also for political reasons as the US is in charge of the pro-Ukraine coalition.

The real debate has revolved around the political aspect of this potential move, billed as yet-another “message” of resolve to Putin. By allowing Kyiv to attack Russia with our missiles (and our help), the West would supposedly signal that it does not believe in Russia’s threats and it is calling Putin’s bluff. The thinking of the pro-missile lobby is that Russia can’t really “do” anything too drastic in response to this Western escalation, and once it sees that the West is willing to go to such lengths to support Ukraine as even to risk war, Moscow will finally understand that it cannot “win,” and will have to seek peace. 

There are two problems with this thesis. One is that Putin doesn’t seem to have gotten any of the West’s previous “strong messages.” Indeed, he went to war in the first place despite them. The notion that a relatively few Storm Shadows (stocks are low to begin with) are going to change the military situation, let alone his overall political calculus, is not credible. In fact, he has already announced a massive expansion of the Russian Army in response to this whole affair (and the missiles have not even been approved). And the Russians have now had enough time to relocate key target assets out of range.

The other issue is that the risks are real. To point this out is not to “listen to Putin,” but to apply reason. Russia does have various escalation options of its own, with which to respond in the short term. We saw an indication of it last week, when Russian strategic bombers struck a civilian cargo ship along the “grain corridor” in the Black Sea, within the Exclusive Economic Zone of Romania, a NATO ally. This was unprecedented, and a reminder that Ukraine’s grain shipping route has so far been secure from attacks not just by dint of Ukrainian defences but also because the politics of such actions would have been too costly for Moscow, in relation to Turkey and other beneficiaries of Ukrainian grain. But if the fundamental political paradigm of the war changes – this was really the significance of Putin’s warning – then Moscow is bound to recalculate its priorities and expand its targeting.

It is not the immediate outbreak of open warfare between NATO and Russia that is the concern here, in terms of Russian retaliation for a Western missile greenlight. The threshold for such a war is still very high because both sides understand the nuclear risks and how catastrophic such a conflict would be. But at the same time it is dangerous to think – as many Western analysts seem to imply, with the confidence of the pre-WWI Imperial German General Staff – that Russia fears a war with NATO because it somehow “knows” that it would “lose.” If the Ukraine war has taught us anything – and the Syrian civil war before it, for those who paid attention – it is just how difficult it is to destroy a modern country’s capacity to fight on, and to “win” anything. When the opponent has nuclear weapons, any form of “final victory” is simply unachievable. But a war with Russia would be extremely long and costly even if it doesn’t go nuclear; and over such a long timeline anything can happen, including in the West. So a bit more soberness is needed when considering this particular risk, rather than simply dismissing it out of hand just because Putin also talks about it.

Of much more immediate concern should be all the other aggressive actions that Russia can undertake as part of an escalatory response, which would fall under the threshold of open warfare. Attacking grain ships in the Black Sea is just one example. Another Russian option is to escalate its sabotage campaign across Europe; again, we’ve been given a gradual foretaste of that this year. Arms factories and critical national infrastructures have been targeted. The Russians could also proliferate their more advanced weapons to other countries like Iran (and its proxies, like the Houthis), who would in turn use them against Allied targets. At the higher end of the scale, Moscow has already prepared to place a nuclear weapon in outer space – which would be an asymmetric move with profound consequences. And the list can go on.

The natural question, therefore, is: leaving the high-horse moral arguments aside, why exactly should the West willingly seek to dial up its involvement in the Ukraine war in this manner? What is the thinking and strategic benefit here?

In war there is no risk-free pathway to victory. A West that is committed to Ukraine’s cause – as is right – should be prepared to run major risks, given what is at stake. But this cannot be construed as a blank check for our policy-makers, let alone for Kyiv: a big risk like this one should be linked to a big potential reward. Most importantly, the Storm Shadow play should be backed by a real strategy: what exactly are we taking this risk for? What is to be gained? 

No one among the pro-missile lobby is really arguing that the Storm Shadows – and/or the US ground launched equivalent, the long range ATACMS – are “war winning” weapons. Regardless of their usefulness they will not fundamentally alter the course of the war. But, again, they are clearly escalatory, by directly involving Western military establishments in strike operations against Russia. We didn’t need Putin to spell it out; the facts speak for themselves, and they would be unprecedented. The Korean War, for example, saw Soviet pilots in Mig-15s taking on US and allied air forces; but even that was done covertly, under Chinese and North Korean colours. 

If the use of these weapons was part of a much broader and concerted allied move to grow Ukraine’s fighting power and escalate the pressure on Russia so that it is eventually forced to negotiate from a position of weakness, that would be a sound strategic rationale for embarking on this course of action. But if this is yet another half-baked, morally-driven move to get the West stuck into a new strategic bind that it hasn’t properly assessed and whose evolution it cannot control, then perhaps a bit more reflection would be in order. Biden’s decision not to go ahead with this plan (for now) is not a dovish failure; rather, it is an opportunity to work out the strategic angles a bit better – for everyone’s sake. 

Gabriel Elefteriu is deputy director at the Council on Geostrategy in London and a fellow at Yorktown Institute in Washington, D.C.