Decades after US President Joe Biden disappears as a footnote to a turbulent chapter of American political history, his authorisation of the use of US-supplied ATACMS tactical ballistic missiles for strikes inside Russia will remain a mystery.
First, the timing. Biden waited till November 6. He had a Plan A in case Kamala Harris won and a Plan B in the scenario of a Donald Trump presidency. Biden has initiated Plan B, which dares Russian President Vladimir Putin to respond with nuclear retaliation.
Biden sees it as a win-win. If Putin acts as promised, a nuclear confrontation ensues, which would disrupt Trump’s hopes to normalise the Russian-American relationship. But if Putin doesn’t (re)act, Moscow’s nuclear deterrence increasingly looks like a bluff and the Ukraine war gets ‘Trump-proofed’ till 2028. Indeed, if Trump confronts Biden now, he risks resuscitating the moribund ‘Russia collusion’ hypothesis that hobbled his first term. So, Trump plans to get away to his new golf course in Scotland.
Biden’s villainous plot may look smart. But that’s only as smart as his original plan that Western sanctions would ruin the Russian economy. In October, the IMF ranked Russia as the fourth largest economy after the US, China and India based on purchasing power parity, the most accurate measuring scale for GDP, surpassing Japan.
The Russian economy’s upgrade in recent years, overtaking European competitors one after another—the UK, France, Germany and Japan—was driven by Western sanctions, which compelled Putin to implement aggressive import substitution and establish domestic production.
Russian people rallied behind Putin, which created political space to wage a prolonged attritional war, whereas Biden kept measuring the success of the proxy war with near-term territorial objectives. Russia is on the brink of a military victory and even Western policymakers admit Ukraine is on the verge of collapse. The entire Western narrative has unravelled. Biden’s worst fears are coming true as Russian generals accelerate the offensive and go for the kill to reduce Ukraine to a rump state. Biden hopes to kick the can down the road to avoid the stigma of a strategic defeat worse than Vietnam.
The Russian defence ministry has announced that on Monday night into Tuesday, Ukraine fired six US-made long-range ATACMS missiles at Russia’s border region of Bryansk. Washington is playing a cat-and-mouse game. No formal announcement has yet been made on the policy shift regarding the use of ATACMS. The Pentagon has simply ducked—although any launch of ATACMS missiles would be impossible without US/NATO satellite feeds and/or personnel. Suffice to say, NATO/US has entered the Ukraine war directly.
This is a qualitatively new round of escalation. The revised Russian nuclear doctrine envisages, among other things, that Moscow will view an aggression from a non-nuclear state (Ukraine), carried out with participation or support of a nuclear state (the US, UK or France) as their joint attack, which becomes ground for the use of nuclear weapons by Russia.
Putin has a tough decision to take. It is a fair estimation that he will size up that Russia is now technically in a state of war with NATO and cannot remain passive. But equally, Putin’s statecraft shows consistently that while he is firm and decisive, he also remains judicious—and, above all, a realist.
To be sure, Russian reaction will be measured and carefully calibrated. And Russia is not without asymmetric options, which could lethally impact American interests elsewhere. Washington has shut the US embassy in Kyiv, apprehending that Russia may now begin targeting the American military personnel deployed in Ukraine. The bottomline is that the ATACMS tactical ballistic missiles are by no means a wonder weapon beyond the capability of Russia’s formidable air defence system to counter.
Russia is playing the long game. Most certainly, the Kremlin will not go back on Putin’s pledge that all the objectives of the so-called special military operation in Ukraine will be fulfilled. Meanwhile, interestingly, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has added last week that a new war is also commencing—with NATO.
As regards the big picture, French and British bravado notwithstanding, Europeans lack the grit or capacity to fight Russia on their own steam without US leadership. On the other hand, a negotiated settlement remains elusive, since Moscow insists on an irrevocable treaty document after the searing experience of successive betrayals by the West (such as NATO expansion)—which, curiously, Joseph Stalin also sought after the Second World War but the West rejected and instead opted for the exit strategy of creating NATO “to keep Americans in, Germans down and the Russians out”.
Fundamentally, the Western mindset hasn’t changed. Therefore, the crux of the matter today is that Russia, which is winning the war, also needs to win the peace, as Ukraine has been, is and will remain the very cornerstone of European security.
Trump’s attitude will be crucial here but there is no clarity yet. There are communication channels between Putin and Trump. Although Trump does not have access to secure communication channels before his inauguration, “There are aides. Mechanisms for dialogue are in place and, if there is political will, they can be easily and promptly employed,” Peskov said on Monday.
Of course, Trump, a quintessential businessman, could cleverly outwit Biden by blaming Volodymyr Zelenskyy for being intransigent and walking away, dumping the conflict on the US’s European allies who have no stomach for war. That is to say, as Financial Times put it, “in the end, the American president may well choose to give up on Ukraine altogether, and so end the war, as had been promised, by letting Russia win it”.
Such a scenario of Russia securing its interests not necessarily with a bang may eminently suit Putin. If the war is allowed to end with a whimper, it may not be a bad thing, as it allows Moscow to persuade Kyiv to see the light of reason apropos Russia’s legitimate interests, while also opening a window to engage with Europe.
Moscow will not accept any form of Western military presence in what remains of Ukraine. Biden unknowingly strengthened Russia’s case for establishing a de-militarised buffer zone along its western border.
M K Bhadrakumar
Former diplomat
(Views are personal)