NATO allies are defying Putin’s nuclear threats — so should Washington

Vladimir Putin is once again rattling the nuclear saber. His latest, not-so-subtle threat that “constant escalation can lead to serious consequences” has come in response to NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg’s repeated statements, most recently one that he issued on May 28, that Ukraine’s “right of self-defense includes also striking targets outside Ukraine, legitimate military targets inside Russia.”

Stoltenberg added that “it will be very hard and difficult for the Ukrainians to defend themselves if they cannot hit military targets just on the other side of the border. These may be missile launchers. … [or] artillery … [or] airfields which are used to attack Ukraine. And if Ukraine cannot hit those military targets, it will be much harder for them to defend themselves.”

He noted that “some allies have not imposed restrictions on the weapons they have delivered. Others have. I believe the time now has come to consider those restrictions.”

On the same day, French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz further stoked Putin’s ire by echoing Stoltenberg’s remarks at a joint press conference marking their bilateral meeting in Gransee, Germany. Macron, who has also committed to sending French instructors to Ukraine — a process that has already begun — asserted that “we think that we should allow them to neutralize the military sites from which the missiles are fired and, basically, the military sites from which Ukraine is attacked.”

Scholz, who until now has not been as forthcoming as Macron on the nature of support to Kyiv, reiterated the French president’s position, however. He added that “Ukraine has every possibility under international law for what it is doing … I find it strange when some people argue that it should not be allowed to defend itself and take measures that are suitable for this.”

Several smaller NATO allies have also supported Stoltenberg’s position. These include not only the Baltic states — most vulnerable to a Russian incursion, and, along with Poland, Ukraine’s most vocal supporters — but also NATO members Denmark and the Netherlands, who are not frontline states.

On the other hand, when Stoltenberg referred to “others” and Scholz spoke of “some people” who continue to restrict Ukraine’s ability to respond to attacks from outside its borders, they were referring to the most senior policy makers in the Biden administration. Putin likewise had the White House in mind when he rhetorically pointed out that “If these serious consequences occur in Europe, how will the United States behave, bearing in mind our parity in the field of strategic weapons?”

There can be no denying that Putin has intimidated the Biden administration virtually since the onset of the conflict. The White House has consistently deterred itself, even as America’s allies have increasingly called the Russian president’s nuclear bluff.

It is bad enough that it took months for the Congress to pass a new aid package for Ukraine; it will take weeks before the weapons in that package reach what the head of the Ukrainian President’s Office has called “critical volumes.” Washington’s inability to enable Ukraine to make maximum use of those weapons will only make matters worse.

In the meantime, Russian forces continue their methodical advance toward Kharkiv, whose fall would constitute a major disaster for Ukraine. Faced with Russian gains on the ground, the White House has finally agreed to let Ukraine attack Russian targets, but only under the limited condition that fires from those targets threaten Kharkiv. Europeans have set no such limits. 

NATO allies are just as vulnerable to a Russian theater nuclear strike as America would be to a Russian strategic strike. Indeed, the allies, apart from Britain and France, could not respond in kind, as America certainly could. Yet the allies are not allowing Putin to intimidate them.

America has always prided itself on its leadership of NATO. This time, however, it is the NATO allies who are demonstrating leadership in support of Ukraine. The Biden administration should stop “going wobbly,” as Margaret Thatcher once put it to President George H. W. Bush, and emulate the allies’ true grit.

It is time for America to join them in facing down Moscow’s overbearing bully.

Dov S. Zakheim is a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and vice chairman of the board for the Foreign Policy Research Institute. He was undersecretary of Defense (comptroller) and chief financial officer for the Department of Defense from 2001 to 2004 and a deputy undersecretary of Defense from 1985 to 1987.