Impacts on Russia, Ukraine, and Beyond

Michael McFaul

The implications of the 72-hour mutiny will last much longer and extend much further beyond Rostov and Moscow, says FSI Director and former U.S. ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul.

Speaking with Madeline Brand of KRCW, McFaul outlined the difficult situation Putin now finds himself in.

“This whole series of events has made Putin look a lot weaker than he looked three or four days ago. The very fact that the Wagner group exists is a sign of weakness. Putin needs them because he couldn’t rely on his armed forces.”

Elaborating further on Putin’s dilemma, McFaul says:

“As those mercenaries were getting closer to Moscow, Putin went on TV and sounded very macho, calling Prigozhin’s men traitors and promising to crush them, but then four hours later, he capitulates and starts to negotiate. And now he’s given another speech where it sounds like he’s pleading with these mercenaries to lay down their weapons and join the Russian forces. That clearly shows he hasn’t resolved this Wagner crisis yet.”

McFaul predicts that Putin’s remaining partners are also taking note of his fumbled reaction to the rebellion.

“​​If you’re Xi Jinping watching this, the big bet you made on Putin as a partner in opposing the West is looking really problematic right now.”

What Chinese officials fear most, McFaul explained to MSNBC’s Jonathn Capehart, is instability and dissolution, both internally and amongst their neighbors. Historically, the collapse of the Soviet Union was a catastrophic event for Chinese Communist Party officials, and a lesson the current leadership is loath to repeat.

McFaul asserts that, “The longer Putin’s war in Ukraine goes, the more probable it becomes that Russia becomes more unstable. The longer this war goes on, the more likely it is we could see something like this play out over and over again. So I would hope that Xi Jinping understands that putting pressure on Putin to end the war in Ukraine is the best way to prevent chaos on China's borders.”

There are also important lessons the United States and its allies need to consider when evaluating the kind of support they are willing to give Ukraine as the war wears on.

“Putin capitulated very fast, and I think that says a lot about how he’s going to fight in Ukraine and whether he needs an ‘off ramp’ like we’ve been saying. We’ve heard all of these arguments that if he’s backed into a corner he’ll never negotiate. Well, this weekend Putin was in a corner, and he didn't double down. He didn't escalate. He negotiated,” McFaul observes.

Continuing this thought on his Substack, McFaul emphasized that, “The lesson for the war in Ukraine is clear. Putin is more likely to negotiate and end his war if he is losing on the battlefield, not when there is a stalemate. Those who have argued that Ukraine must not attack Crimea for fear of triggering escalation must now reevaluate that hypothesis. The sooner Putin fears he is losing the war, the faster he will negotiate.”

Or, as McFaul writes in Journal on Democracy, “Anything that weakens Putin is good for Ukraine. It is as simple as that.”  

Fallout on Nuclear Security and Norms

Rose Gottemoeller

Throughout the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, there have been concerns about nuclear sabre rattling by Putin and Kremlin-backed propagandists. Writing in the Financial Times, Rose Gottemoeller, the Steven C. Házy Lecturer at CISAC and former Deputy Secretary of NATO offered this insight:

“The fixation with nuclear apocalypse seems to be the symptom of a wider anxiety that the west is bent on Russian dismemberment because of its aspirations in Ukraine. The Kremlin argues that it only wanted to resume its ancestral right to a Slavic heartland, but that the U.S. and NATO are seeking as punishment Russia’s full and complete destruction as a nation state.”

Gottemoeller has been quick to condemn Putin’s casual threats of nuclear use and clear in her recommendations to the U.S. administration and its allies to find constructive ways to keep nuclear arms talks open despite the war in Ukraine and setbacks like Russia’s suspension of its participation in the New START Treaty.

The Wagner takeover of Rostov-on-Don adds a new layer to the security concerns surrounding Russia’s nuclear posture. Looking at the evolution of Putin’s nuclear rhetoric over the last 18 months, Gottemoeller writes:

“Putin embraced nuclear weapons to keep the United States and its NATO allies off his back and out of his way as he pursued his adventure in Ukraine. It did not work out that way. The United States and NATO were not ready to fight inside Ukraine, but they were willing to do everything else to support Kyiv’s cause — economic, political, security and military assistance to ensure Russia’s defeat. Nuclear weapons failed Putin as a guarantee against external meddling.”

Turning to the events of the last week, Gottemoeller continues:

“We learned on June 24 that they are no help to him internally, either. He could not brandish nuclear weapons in the face of the Wagner Group uprising . . . Nuclear weapons are not the authoritarian’s silver bullet when his power is strained to the breaking point — far from it. In fact, they represent a consummate threat to national and global security if they should fall into the wrong hands in the course of domestic unrest.”

In light of Prigozhin’s mutiny, she urges global leaders to “focus on the problem, stop loose nuclear talk, and put new measures in place to protect, control and account for nuclear weapons and the fissile material that go into them.” 

The Unknown Unknowns of the Settlement

Steven Pifer

Major questions remain about the deal struck between Putin, Prigozhin, and Lukashenko. While Lukashenko has confirmed that the Wagner boss is now in Belarusian territory, it is unclear — and many feel, unlikely — that he will stay there in quiet retirement. 

Weighing in on Twitter, Steven Pifer, an affiliate at the Center for International Cooperation and Security and The Europe Center, and a former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine, acknowledged, “We likely do not know all carrots and/or sticks that were in play to lead to Prigozhin’s decision to end his mutiny . . . Something does not add up.”

Following up in Politico, Pifer added:

“The ‘settlement’ supposedly brokered by President Alexander Lukashenko of Belarus leaves Putin, who was invisible during the day except for a short morning TV broadcast, as damaged goods. It provided the impression that all was forgiven, likely because the Russian president feared the prospect of Prigozhin’s troops parading in Moscow — even if they lacked the numbers to take control of the capital. It is harder to understand Prigozhin. His demands went unmet, yet he ordered his troops back to garrison, accepted that they might join the Russian army that he detests, and meekly set off for Belarus. There clearly is more behind this ‘settlement’ than we understand.”

After 10 months of fighting, it does not appear the Russia-Ukraine war will end any time soon. That conflict has begun to impact US-Russian nuclear arms control efforts—first by raising mistrust between Washington and Moscow to levels not seen since the height of the Cold War.

In late 2022, Moscow postponed a planned meeting of the 2010 New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty’s implementing body, the Bilateral Consultative Commission, and the bilateral dialogue on broader strategic stability issues hangs in limbo. Even when—hopefully not if—the dialogue resumes, the consequences of the war will make achievement of US goals on arms control more difficult, particularly as regards limiting Russian non-strategic nuclear weapons.

Continue reading at thebulletin.org.

A Missed Phone Call and a New Career

Gottemoeller’s most recent government service came with a few hiccups. In December of 2008, she was living in a small, bare-bones rental unit in Moscow while she finished the last few weeks of her tenure as the director of the Carnegie Moscow Center. Just a few weeks earlier, Barack Obama had been elected to the presidency of the United States, and the interim period of administration-building between Election Day and Inauguration Day was fully under way.

5,000 miles away from Washington D.C., Gottemoeller’s American cell phone rang. Racing across the apartment to try and answer it, the call ended before she could answer. Due to technological constraints at the time, there was no way to listen back to the voicemail on the Russian network.

Recounting the experience on “The Negotiators” podcast, Gottemoeller explained, “All I was thinking was, ‘Oh man, what is that, was the White House calling, or the Obama campaign? What if I’ve just lost my chance?’”

As soon as she landed back at the Washington Dulles airport, she got her answer. A return call to the number put her in touch with Secretary of State-designate Hillary Clinton’s office, where an offer to discuss the position of assistant secretary responsible for arms control issues was still on the table.

“Before I had even collected my luggage, I was on the phone letting them know I would be very glad to come interview with her,” said Gottemoeller.

That initial interview was nerve-wracking, to say the least. Walking into a borrowed New York apartment above Central Park where Clinton had set up her temporary office, Gottemoeller was grilled on nuclear deterrence, U.S. strategic policies, and strategic arms reductions by the future secretary and her two deputies for several hours.

“I thought it was going terribly. It was an exhausting hour and a half,” admits Gottemoeller. “I was convinced I hadn’t done very well.”

But a call the next day proved otherwise. Not only did Secretary Clinton offer her the job of assistant secretary responsible for arms control matters, but also put Gottemoeller’s name forward to the incoming White House to be the chief negotiator for the next strategic arms reduction treaty, what would eventually become the New START Treaty.

The New START Treaty, Then and Now

Formalized in 2010, the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, or New START, builds on prior agreements put in place between the United State and Russia through the 1970s and 80s to actively reduce and limit the number of strategic nuclear weapons.

As the lead (and first female) negotiator of the treaty for the U.S. side, Gottemoeller knows its strengths and holes better than almost anyone. Building on the progress made by the START I Treaty in 1994, the New START Treaty has successfully reduced the number of deployed strategic nuclear weapons in Russia to 1,550, a 30 percent reduction from the approximately 6,000 deployed warheads that existed in 2000, and an astonishing 87 percent reduction from the estimated 12,000 deployed nuclear warheads available to the USSR and United States at the end of the Cold War.

New START continues to limit the number of strategic nuclear warheads that Russia and the United States are permitted to deploy, and it sets extensive protocols for monitoring and controlling such warheads in both countries. However, it has proven much more difficult to count and verify Russian warheads once they have been removed from their delivery vehicles and sent into storage.

“One of the major developments moving forward needs to be this more direct kind of constraint and oversight of warheads,” says Gottemoeller. “We’ve made some baby steps in that direction, but there’s certainly more we could and should be pushing for.”

Similarly, while New START has clear protocols for managing strategic nuclear warheads, there are gaps in constraining Russia’s stockpile of non-strategic nuclear warheads. Strategic nuclear weapons, as defined by NATO, constitute “weapons to whose use or threat of use only the highest authority of the State can resort, conceptually and structurally.” In the popular imagination, these are the weapons of M.A.D, or “mutually assured destruction,” which rests on the idea that the United States and Russian hold each other at constant risk of nuclear annihilation. A legitimate strategic calculation, this also serves as the basis for the "nuclear Armageddon" trope of Hollywood.

By contrast, non-strategic nuclear weapons, also referred to as “tactical nuclear weapons,” often carry smaller explosive yields, are carried on shorter-range delivery vehicles, and are designed to be used on the battlefield in combination with conventional forces. It is this type of weapon — not strategic missiles — which has caused concerns in the course of Putin’s invasion and ongoing bombardment of Ukraine.

The Invasion of Ukraine and Nuclear Sabre-rattling

Gottemoeller is clear on the repercussions that Vladimir Putin’s veiled threats of a possible tactical nuclear strike against Ukraine are having.

“Putin and his coterie have been extremely irresponsible in their rattling of the nuclear sabre,” she says. “There's absolutely no reason to be threatening nuclear use in Ukraine. This is a war of choice and invasion that Putin decided to undertake, not something he was provoked into by Ukraine, or NATO, or anyone else for that matter.”

Having watched and worked in Putin’s orbit on-and-off for decades, Gottemoeller believes that Putin and those in his inner circle understand that a strategic nuclear exchange of any kind would be “suicide.” But the escalatory risks inherent in a single tactical nuclear strike are still high.

“Threatening nuclear use, even if it’s a single, non-strategic use, is playing with fire,” warns Gottemoeller. “It’s dangerous. There is still far too much potential for escalation in that scenario.”

Intended or not, Putin’s nuclear posturing has also brought the discussion of nuclear weapons and the policies governing their use back to the forefront for people both in and out of government.

“In some ways, that’s not a bad thing,” Gottemoeller acknowledges. “Younger people in particular don’t pay as much attention to nuclear weapons. They’re much more gripped by environmental threats and the threat of climate change.”

The two existential threats are not unrelated, however. Citing an MIT study, Gottemoeller points out that a nuclear exchange would have a profound effect on the climate, potentially even leading to an extinction event for large portions of the global population.

“The notion that we could see nuclear escalation in this war in Ukraine is very, very serious,” says Gottemoeller. “It’s brought these issues into much sharper focus than it has been since the Cold War.”

Developing Nuclear Policies for the Future

Meaningful nuclear policy has often been born out of such moments of sharp focus. The first major treaty, the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), first came into force in 1970 following the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962. The treaty created the first binding commitments toward the goal of disarmament for the nuclear powers at the time — the United States, USSR, and United Kingdom — as well as setting policies of nonproliferation for an additional 46 party states. To date, a total of 191 states have joined and upheld the treaty, including the five current nuclear-weapon states of the United States, Russia, the United Kingdom, France, and China.

The work that Rose Gottemoeller is currently undertaking as an advisor to the Strategic Posture Commission and National Nuclear Strategy Administration aims to provide the necessary legwork and critical expertise needed to prepare policymakers for high-level negotiations on future nuclear treaties. New START, currently the last remaining nuclear arms agreement between the United States and Russia, will expire in 2026, and cannot be renewed again without re-ratification by the U.S. Senate. Given the uncertainty surrounding the Kremlin’s actions regarding tactical nuclear weapon use, the importance of providing this type of in-depth policy expertise cannot be understated.

At the Strategic Posture Commision, Gottemoeller is working alongside other experts on a committee chaired by Madelyn Creedon, an expert in national security and defense and former assistant secretary of defense for global strategic affairs at the Pentagon. Working under bi-partisan leadership from both the House and Senate, this commission is in the process of evaluating the long-term strategic posture of the United States. This includes nuclear weapons, but also conventional weapons, trade agreements, economic progress, arms control diplomacy, and other capabilities of United States national power.

In this realm, Gottemoeller stresses that while nuclear weapons will never cease to be important, new defense strategies need to be focused on emerging technologies rather than the nuclear standoffs of the past. Writing in the August 2022 edition of Foreign Affairs, she stresses that:

“New defense innovations promise not just to transform warfare but also to undermine the logic and utility of nuclear weapons. With advances in sensing technology, states may soon be able to track and target their adversaries’ nuclear missiles, making the weapons easier to eliminate. And with nuclear weapons more vulnerable, innovations such as drone swarms — large numbers of small automated weapons that collectively execute a coordinated attack—will increasingly define war. A fixation on building more nuclear weapons will only distract from this technological revolution, making it harder for the United States to master the advances that will shape the battlefield of the future.”

At the National Nuclear Security Administration, Gottemoeller is similarly applying her expertise to develop better policies to monitor the nuclear warheads already in existence. Launched by Jill Hruby and Frank Rose, the leaders of NNSA, the purpose of this review is to determine how to improve the nonproliferation tools and instruments, one of the Biden administration’s key missions. Working alongside partners at the National Nuclear Laboratories, the NNSA is developing innovative ways to monitor and verify constraints on warheads and their delivery vehicles, including exotic delivery vehicles such as the Russian hypersonic Kinzhal air-launched ballistic missile.

“I do really see that there has been a lot of progress in this area and I feel like we are well prepared for a new negotiation,” says Gottemoeller.

The Power of Academia for the Good of Government

Thinking about her own dual career in government and academia, Gottemoeller is quick to point out the immense value that collaboration between the two brings to the policymaking process.

“Over the years, Stanford has been very active in these kinds of discussions and it's been extremely valuable, I think. The academic community plays a super important role for the policy community in Washington,” she says.

In her own recent experience, that has included a meeting with Secretary of State Antony Blinken, alongside fellow nuclear expert Scott Sagan, also of FSI’s Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC).

Gottemoeller points out that sometimes academics and their institutions can go where governments can’t. These so-called “track-two” settings create opportunities for experts, academics, and professionals from various states to come together for discussion and discourse even if formal “track-one” government negotiations are stalled or stagnant. Even as the war in Ukraine has intensified the divide between the governments in Washington and Moscow, non-governmental experts from the U.S. and Russia continue to meet to ensure lines of communication and understanding regarding key issues remain open.

Gottemoeller believes institutes like FSI and other academic organizations can play a similarly important role in advancing discussion with China, particularly in the realm of nuclear security and weapons modernization. Some of these discussions, such as collaborations between the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and the Chinese Scientists Group on Arms control (of which Gottemoeller is a participating member), are already underway.

“I think dialogues like this are a way in which the academic community can help develop an environment in which the Chinese will then eventually be willing to come to the table in an official government-to-government way,” she explains.

As for her own academic home at the Freeman Spogli Institute, Gottemoeller is grateful for the work the institute and her fellow scholars allow her to do.

“Organizations like FSI and CISAC are a great home for practitioners as well as academic experts. The Freeman Spogli Institute attracts very senior figures with immense amounts of policy experience to come and work here. It’s clearly a resource for the government back in Washington, and I think these groups will continue to play that role very well for a long time.”

As Russia’s military faltered and lost ground in its conventional war against Ukraine, concern grew in the West that Vladimir Putin might resort to nuclear weapons.  The Kremlin, however, has real reasons not to cross the nuclear threshold, and its hints of nuclear use have not brought Kyiv’s capitulation or an end to Western support for Ukraine any closer.  In recent weeks, Moscow has seemed to deescalate the nuclear rhetoric.

Russia’s military campaign in Donbas stalled over the summer, and Ukrainian counteroffensives in the Kharkiv and Kherson regions subsequently have liberated substantial tracts of territory.  As the Ukrainian army pressed forward, the Kremlin began to grow desperate, with Putin ordering mobilization of 300,000 men.  Many in the West began to fear that the Russian leader, facing an increasingly difficult situation, might play the nuclear card against Ukraine.

Putin set the stage for this early on. In February, just three days after the Russian army invaded Ukraine from the north, south and east, he ordered a “special combat readiness” for Russian nuclear forces.  In September, the situation deteriorated for Russia, and Putin set in motion his desired annexation of four Ukrainian oblasts (regions), none of which his military fully controlled.  His language, and that of other Russian officials, hinted at nuclear use.

Announcing the mobilization on September 21, Putin stated “In the event of a threat to the territorial integrity to our country and to defend Russia and our people, we will certainly make use of all weapon systems available to us.  This is not a bluff.”  Many observers read “all weapons systems” as including nuclear arms.  Russian Security Council Deputy Chairman Dmitry Medvedev on September 27 said that it certainly “was not a bluff” and went on to “imagine” a Russian nuclear strike on Ukraine.

In a September 30 speech, Putin proclaimed Ukraine’s Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson oblasts to be part of Russia and asserted “We will defend our land with all the forces and resources we have.”  In case anyone missed the point, he cited the U.S. nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 as having set a “precedent.”

Those remarks got attention.  On October 7, President Joe Biden commented in a private setting that he saw a direct threat of nuclear use for the first time since the Cuban missile crisis in 1962.  Shortly thereafter, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley had conversations with their Russian counterparts.

The Kremlin may want Ukraine and the West to believe that Russia is prepared to escalate to the nuclear level, but it does not want a nuclear war.  Moscow has real reasons not to cross the nuclear threshold.

First, Ukraine does not mass its forces in a way that would create a tempting target for nuclear attack.  More importantly, a nuclear strike is unlikely to achieve the political objective of intimidating Kyiv into capitulation.  The Ukrainians understand all too well what Russian occupation means.  For them, this is an existential fight, and nothing suggests that the Russian threats have undercut their resolve.

Second, the same is true for the resolve of Ukraine’s Western supporters.  The flow of arms and other support for Ukraine continues, and Western officials have pushed back on the nuclear question.  Meeting on November 4, G7 foreign ministers stated “Russia’s irresponsible nuclear rhetoric is unacceptable.  Any use of chemical, biological or nuclear weapons by Russia would be met with severe consequences.”  That echoed the message following Biden’s October 7 phone conversation with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz that consequences would be “extremely serious” and NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg’s October 13 warning that Moscow not cross the “very important [nuclear] line.”  Russian officials—the senior military leadership, in particular—likely understand that, if they open the nuclear Pandora’s Box, no one can tell what would happen.

Third, Russian officials have to consider the reaction of other countries.  Putin’s close friend President Xi Jinping of China has been very clear in recent meetings.  Xi and Scholz on November 4 “rejected” the threat of nuclear weapons, and Xi and Biden on November 14 condemned Moscow’s nuclear threats.  The G20 leaders’ declaration issued on November 16 said “The use or threat of use of nuclear weapons is inadmissible.”  Given his isolation from the West, Putin can hardly afford to alienate Xi or other countries in the Global South.  Few would like the precedent of Russia, a nuclear state, using nuclear arms against a smaller, non-nuclear neighbor after its conventional aggression had failed.

There are indications the Kremlin understands that it has overplayed its hand and in recent weeks has sought to tone down the nuclear rhetoric.

Speaking to the Valdai Discussion Club on October 27, Putin raised the question “that Russia might theoretically use nuclear weapons,” called “the current fuss” a “very primitive” attempt to turn countries against Moscow, and commented that “we have never said anything proactively about Russia potentially using nuclear weapons.”  While not exactly true, it was very different from the Russian leader’s September pronouncements.  A November 2 Russian Foreign Ministry statement said Russia is guided by the principle that “a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought,” reiterated commitment to the January 3, 2022 statement by the U.S., Russian, Chinese, British and French leaders on preventing a nuclear war, and noted that provocations with nuclear weapons could entail “catastrophic consequences.”

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi reported that, in their November 16 meeting, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov had stated that nuclear use was “impossible and inadmissible.”  Representing Russia at the G20 summit, Lavrov agreed to the leaders’ declaration that included the language about the inadmissibility of the use or threat of use of nuclear arms.

Russian officials have backed away from the nuclear hints and threats of September and sought to tone down the rhetoric.  This does not mean they might not reemerge, but it does suggest that the Kremlin understands that the use of nuclear weapons would have significant consequences for Russia, and that its nuclear threats failed to achieve their desired political objectives while proving counterproductive for Russia’s image abroad.

* * * * *

Ukraine is the victim of an unprovoked and unjustified war launched by Vladimir Putin’s Russia more than eight years ago. The latest stage in this war is the ongoing full-scale invasion that began on February 24, 2022. US President Joe Biden has said the United States will support Ukraine “for as long as it takes.”

Some question this commitment in view of other US priorities and argue that Russia, given history and geography, has a greater interest in Ukraine than does the United States. That latter point may be true, but it ignores the Ukrainians, who hold understandably strong views on the future of their country and have shown that they are prepared to fight tenaciously to defend their freedom. With Russia’s full-scale invasion now in its ninth month, it is vital to recognize that continued US support for Ukraine in this war is both the morally correct position and serves key national interests of the United States.

In 1994, Kyiv agreed to give up the world’s third largest nuclear arsenal, comprising some 1900 Soviet-era strategic nuclear warheads designed, built, and deployed to strike cities and other targets in the United States. Eliminating those weapons mattered a great deal to Washington. The Ukrainian government agreed to their elimination in large part because Russia, along with the United States and United Kingdom, committed in the 1994 Budapest Memorandum to respect Ukraine’s sovereignty, territorial integrity, and independence, and further committed not to use force or threaten to use force against Ukraine.

During the negotiations that preceded the signing of the Budapest Memorandum, Ukrainian officials asked what Washington would do if Russia were to violate its commitments. US officials said the United States would take an interest and support Ukraine.

Beginning with its seizure of Crimea in 2014 and continuing with this year’s invasion, Moscow has grossly violated the commitments it made in 1994. The morally correct response from the United States is to support Ukraine, as it has done with political measures and economic sanctions to punish Russia along with providing economic assistance, arms, and ammunition to Ukraine. Supporting Ukraine until its military drives Russian forces out of Ukrainian territory or, at a minimum, reaches a point where a negotiated settlement becomes possible on terms that Kyiv can accept, is not only morally the right thing to do. It is also very much in the US national interest.

First, the United States has had a vital national interest in a stable and secure Europe going back more than 70 years. This reflects the core security, political, and economic interests that provided the rationale for the formation of NATO in 1949. A Russian victory in the current war with Ukraine would have a major negative impact on stability and security in Europe. The countries of Europe, most of whom also support Ukraine, look to Washington for leadership. An insecure Europe would command more US resources, military power, and senior-level attention than would otherwise be the case.

Second, other countries are watching how Washington responds to Russia’s aggression against Ukraine. China poses the largest strategic challenge facing the United States in the coming decades. If Putin succeeds in Ukraine, that could encourage President Xi Jinping to adopt a more hostile stance. Moreover, should Russia prevail, the resulting situation in Europe would mean that Washington has fewer resources, less military power, and less attention to devote to dealing with the China challenge.

Third, the United States has a strong interest in preserving international norms and a rules-based international order. A key norm in Europe, dating back to the UN Charter and the 1975 Helsinki Final Act, is that large states should not use force to take territory from smaller states. That is precisely what Putin is attempting now. If international norms break down, other autocratic states will likewise be emboldened. A “dog-eat-dog” world without such norms will be a much more difficult place in which to pursue a range of US political, security, and economic interests.

Moreover, respect for basic human rights is an important part of international norms. Russia has waged a brutal military campaign, committing wide-scale war crimes and atrocities such as the destruction of Mariupol. Russian occupation of Ukrainian towns and cities has meant torture chambers, mass arrests, summary executions, filtration camps, and deportations, including of children separated from their parents and sent to Russia for adoption by Russian families. The United States has an interest in opposing such grave human rights abuses and in supporting Kyiv’s efforts to hold those responsible to account.

Fourth, it is not clear that Putin’s ambitions end with Ukraine. In a June conversation with young Russian entrepreneurs, the Russian leader asserted that he was not taking Ukrainian territory but “returning” historic Russian lands to Moscow’s control. The Russian Empire once included the Baltic states, Finland, and part of Poland. If Putin were to prevail in Ukraine, would he be tempted to seek the “return” of other “historic Russian lands?”

In the case of Ukraine, the United States is contributing money and weapons. If Putin’s ambitions were to extend to one or more of the Baltic states, which are members of NATO, the United States would have to contribute money, weapons, and the lives of American soldiers. The United States has a strong interest in stopping Putin’s ambitions in Ukraine.

Originally published on Atlantic Council's Ukraine Alert