Fears of inflicting a humiliating defeat on Russia because of immediate retaliation from Moscow or longer-term revanchism are misplaced. Instead, a convincing defeat of Russia is essential both for European security and for change in Russia itself.
Fallacy
A wide range of Western public figures, most prominently French president Emmanuel Macron, have argued that Russia must not be ‘humiliated’ by resounding defeat in Ukraine. Russian defeat is repeatedly presented as being more dangerous than a stalemate or settlement in the conflict, or even than Russian victory. This concern is entirely one-sided – there are no calls to avoid similar ‘humiliation’ for Ukraine, while Ukraine’s desire to evict invaders from its territory is presented as unreasonable and ‘maximalist’. Fear of Ukrainian victory has constrained Western support for Kyiv, and thus protected Russia from the consequences of its actions.
Analysis
Whatever the outcome of the fighting in Ukraine, Russia will still be there and will still nurture the same ambition to expand its power at the expense of its neighbours. Therefore a vital component of the war’s outcome must be to minimize the Kremlin’s ability to undertake aggression abroad. This implies a need to inflict the maximum possible damage on Russia’s armed forces – and thus is another powerful rationale for providing Ukraine with all means by which that damage can be achieved. Front-line states donating entire sectors of military capability to Ukraine know that by doing so, they are investing in safeguarding their own future.
Those who fear defeat of Russia look to the precedent of the end of the First World War. Russia’s overt cheerleaders, as well as those independent foreign policy commentators who consistently advocate Russia’s preferred solutions, invoke the Treaty of Versailles as a cautionary tale. Like so many arguments for not confronting Russia, the analogy does not stand close inspection. Defeat of Russia will not lead to a new 1939 because we are already there – Russia has already followed a parallel trajectory to Germany’s after 1919. Russia has created its own ‘stab in the back’ myth; it has leveraged resentment based on the economic trauma of the 1990s; it has created its own brand of fascism through relentless indoctrination of its youth; and it has launched its war of expansion as soon as it felt powerful and confident enough to do so. Russia cannot be transformed any further into a revanchist power when revanchism already defines the entirety of its state policy.
Russia has also deliberately stoked fears of a nuclear response to defeat. But there are few circumstances in which defeat in the field in Ukraine could be construed as an existential threat to Russia itself, or to the leadership elite, despite Putin’s disingenuous presentation of the war as one of survival for Russian civilization. And there are even fewer grounds to suppose that that elite would wish to transform survivable defeat into an existential threat by unleashing nuclear exchanges.
Those who fear defeat of Russia invoke the Treaty of Versailles as a cautionary tale. Like so many arguments for not confronting Russia, the analogy does not stand close inspection.
For all that Russia may claim that the subjugation of Ukraine and occupation of Crimea are its national destiny, this does not mean that in reality Russia would be incapable of relinquishing captured or ‘annexed’ territory if the alternative was a real core interest, such as the survival in power of Putin and those around him. The more likely course – borne out repeatedly through history – is for Russia to swallow defeat, and trade in what is negotiable to preserve what is essential. And throughout history, the positive effect of this has been transformation within Russia itself. Another, even deeper, transformation is essential if the country is finally no longer to persist in being the only hard security threat on the European continent.
This transformation – along with the process of truth and reconciliation that Russia avoided at the end of the Cold War, and eventual justice for war crimes and reparations – lies long in the future. But it is certain that it will never be achievable in circumstances short of clear and unambiguous defeat for Russia in the current war with Ukraine. And this defeat must be not only clear but with long-lasting effects. The examples of Germany after 1919, and Iraq after 1991, show the dangers of considering the problem solved once the fighting is over.
The way forward
Russia’s onslaught on Ukraine has finally destroyed many of the West’s most cherished fantasies about Russia as a benign state with which the West can coexist. Far more politicians, officials and analysts are now willing to admit the true nature of the challenge from Moscow, that this is an existential conflict not only for Ukraine but for the rules-based international order, and that it cannot be resolved by negotiation now that Russia has, as long expected, embarked on open warfare. An ideology as fanatical and as alien to our way of thinking as that of Nazi Germany, Islamic State or the Khmer Rouge requires eradication, not accommodation.
Any reduction in Russian military capacity, including through destruction in combat, increases the time and resources that Russia will need to expend on reconstituting its military capability before launching another attack on a neighbour.
Clear and unequivocal defeat of Russia will bring both immediate and long-term benefits for European security. Any reduction in Russian military capacity, including through destruction in combat, increases the time and resources that Russia will need to expend on reconstituting its military capability before launching another attack on a neighbour. And in the long term, it is only a substantial and undeniable defeat that will cause Russian attitudes to begin the slow process of change. Russia’s leadership needs to be brought to understand that it has made a colossal blunder in launching its full-scale war on Ukraine, and the population more broadly needs to understand that the age of empires is over for Russia just as it is for other European powers. Without resolution of these two challenges, Russia will never cease to be a threat to Europe.
Thus, as well as the moral argument for backing Ukraine to victory over the Russian invader, the strictly practical reasons are compelling. Defeat for Russia will make Europe, and the world, a safer place.