What if the Ukraine victory scenario falters?

The buzz inside the Beltway is that Ukraine is winning and victory is on the horizon. The thinking goes that if we give them everything they need, inflict maximum pain on Russia Ukraine will win. Certainly, that would be heroically earned justice. But is victory possible, or even likely — and are current economic warfare efforts to isolate and cancel Russia long-term the mostly likely scenario, or should the U.S. also prepare for other outcomes?

Despite the horrific barbarism inflicted by Russian President Vladimir Putin’s army, both real and rented, Ukraine denied Moscow its aims of taking Kyiv and installing a puppet regime, inflicted enormous losses and forced Putin to retreat. From the beginning, the ultimate danger has been that it’s difficult to see how Putin can “win,” yet he is also unable to accept defeat.

As the quantity and quality of U.S. and NATO military equipment to Ukraine increases, heed a warning from CIA Director William Burns, ex-ambassador to Russia and veteran Putin-watcher, last week that: “Given the potential desperation of President Putin and the … setbacks that they’ve faced so far, militarily, none of us can take lightly the threat posed by a potential resort to tactical nuclear weapons or low-yield nuclear weapons.”

Now, with his aim of a subservient Ukraine denied, a more desperate Putin is trying to define “Plan B” goals to avoid absolute defeat. The next phase of the war, centered in the eastern Donbas region, will likely be much more difficult and ruthless with no bottom. 

Putin hopes to separate Luhansk and Donetsk into independent republics, build a land bridge to Crimea, extend west to take Odessa and Russian forces into Moscow-dominated Transnistria in Moldova. That would partition Ukraine as a land-locked, economically crippled rump state. Or if Kyiv resistance blocks that, Putin might settle for the Donbas and a land bridge to connect with Crimea. Adjacent to Russia and Moscow-dominated areas inside Ukraine, this phase of the war offers Moscow easier logistics and more difficult flat terrain for Ukraine to fight in.   

Putin is massing troops and will likely throw everything he’s got left at Ukraine for as long as he can. His model may be Chechnya, where in 1999 he leveled its capital, Grozny. In effect, killing Ukraine and Ukrainians, echoing an unnamed U.S. Army officer who said during Vietnam, “we had to destroy the village in order to save it.”  

Already, Putin’s propaganda machine is making ominous genocidal noises, a state TV commentator talks of putting Ukrainians in concentration camps, defining all Ukrainians as Nazis, thus seeking to eliminate not just the Ukrainian state but Ukrainian national identity.

The next phase of the war could go on for weeks or months. Despite the demonstrated failures of the Russian military, short of direct U.S. or NATO intervention, it would be difficult for Kyiv to completely drive Russian forces out of all Ukraine’s sovereign territory.

Two other possible scenarios are 1) weeks of bombing by Putin seeking a Ukrainian surrender and 2) Ukrainian military efforts stymying Putin, resulting in a protracted stalemate and a frozen conflict. It is conceivable that under the latter scenario, the damage from economic and financial sanctions to Russian life after a year or so could force Russia to agree to a compromise Kyiv would accept, perhaps some variation of the Minsk 2 deal resulting in a neutral Ukraine.

All wars end. Clearly, the current circumstances are not ripe for diplomacy. The moment for serious negotiations will arrive when the battlefield situation tilts decisively in one direction. Even total victory brings new risks. Will the outcome be a stable peace, or a tenuous, vindictive result, fueling anger and resentment  that seeds the next conflict?

Contrasting historical examples that come to mind are the Treaty of Versailles that ended World War I, which led to a resentful Germany and World War II; and the outcome of World War II, after which the unconditional surrenders of Germany and Japan led to their rehabilitation and new post-war international political and economic arrangements, which resulted in 73 years of peace among major powers and unprecedented prosperity.

The Ukraine war is a world-historical event altering the global order, already wreaking havoc on the world economy. How it ends will shape the world next.

Putin’s savagery and false narratives make it difficult to contain moral outrage and the urge to be rid of him. But repeated emotional, off-the-cuff outbursts from President Biden about war crimes, genocide and that Putin “can’t remain in power” are a luxury a major power can’t afford. Such crimes, however apparent, have precise legal definitions to adjudicate. Pushing a rat into a corner, especially one with nuclear weapons, is dangerous.

The U.S. and its allies may get lucky, and Ukraine may totally defeat Putin or he may be deposed. But luck is not a policy. Apart from the threat of nuclear weapons used against Ukraine, depending on the results on the battlefield, Ukrainian President Zelensky and his U.S. and NATO allies may be obliged to negotiate with Putin. As former Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin said of recognizing the Palestine Liberation Organization, “You don’t make peace with  friends, you make it with very unsavory enemies.”

Even if Putin is eliminated, a defeated Russia would not disappear. It will still have 6,000 nuclear weapons and be a major energy, wheat and metal producer. And it will still have a 500-year political tradition of military expansion. And what of efforts to permanently cancel Russia if Putin falls and improbable, but not impossible political change follows? If a transformative opposition figure, such as Alexei Navalny, becomes president, how would the U.S. and NATO rewrite plans for Russia?

Of course, no solution should be imposed on Ukraine. Any deal it can live with will be Kyiv’s call. In failed talks earlier in the war, Zelensky indicated that he may accept neutrality. He made clear that would require credible security guarantees. That would need coordination with that U.S. and NATO and backing by the UN Security Council and would imply new understandings about security arrangements between the U.S./NATO and Moscow.

Serious peace talks are hard to imagine currently. But planning for the future is not. Before the end of World War II, there were a plethora of preparations for a post-war order: Yalta and Potsdam meetings on who gets what in Europe, Bretton Woods on creating a new trade and financial system and the San Francisco conference creating the United Nations. All occurred before Japan’s August 1945 surrender.

In the case of Ukraine, it is not too soon to begin planning for: war crimes tribunals; Ukraine reconstruction (estimates: $220-540 billion); Russian reparations and what actions it must take to lift sanctions; Ukraine defining a Swiss-type armed “neutrality” as well as post-war U.S./NATO – Russian force postures – and post-Putin change in Russia. Biden has been too passive in this regard.

In the face of the unspeakable daily horrors inflicted on Ukraine, and the global economic disruption from the war and sanctions, it is natural that the world’s attention is fixated on Ukraine. But foresight into where events may lead can help avoid worst-case outcomes and shape a more stable future.

Robert A. Manning is a senior fellow of the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security and its New American Engagement Initiative at the Atlantic Council. He was a senior counselor to the undersecretary of state for global affairs from 2001-04, a member of the U.S. Department of State policy planning staff from 2004-08 and on the National Intelligence Council strategic futures group from 2008-12. Follow him on Twitter @Rmanning4.