Why did deterrence fail in Ukraine?

By Daniel W. Drezner, Professor of International Politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was a lose-lose outcome. Could it have been deterred?

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has not gone well for anyone. Russia’s perceived power has been badly diminished. Ukraine has suffered incalculable losses. Russia’s economy will suffer a lot, and the global economy will suffer a little. With no end in sight, this was an outcome that no one wanted.

Weirdly, the one actor who thinks it has gone well is the Pentagon, according to my Post colleagues Greg Jaffe and Dan Lamothe: “Senior Pentagon officials are brimming with newfoundconfidence in American power, spurred by the surprising effectiveness of U.S.-backedUkrainian forces, Russia’s heavy battlefield losses and the cautionary lessons they believe China is taking from the war.”

This elides the fact that the Biden administration’s “integrated deterrence” framework failed to stop Russia. We know this because Russia invaded despite U.S. warnings. The question is whether this failure was preventable. Specifically, could the Biden administration have prevented it?

When Jaffe and Lamothe asked their sources for this story about why Russia was not deterred, they had a range of answers:

Pentagon officials contend that there was little they could do to deter [Russian President Vladimir] Putin, who expected a quick and easy victory in Ukraine, and argue that their broader strategy of “integrated deterrence” — which leverages economic, diplomatic and military power to dissuade potential aggressors — has so far worked to stop Putin from expanding the war into NATO territory. The Biden administration has made integrated deterrence the cornerstone of its soon-to-be released National Defense Strategy, which was delayed as the threat of an invasion grew. …

Others pointed to Putin’s Ukraine invasion as proof of the concept’s failure. Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.) said in an interview that he “completely and strongly” disagrees with anyone who cites Ukraine as an example of the success of integrated deterrence. “I cannot fathom how they can make that argument with a straight face,” he said. “Their whole deterrence strategy rested on the idea that the threat of limited sanctions could deter Putin.”

It is possible that both Gallagher and the Pentagon are correct. Gallagher is correct that the sanctions threat did not deter Putin. Indeed, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov admitted that he was surprised by the extent of U.S. sanctions on Russia’s central bank, saying, “No one would think, out of those who made predictions, what sanctions the West might apply.”

If Lavrov was surprised, that means the Russians underestimated the costs of invasion. That is a problem: For deterrence to work, Russia needed an accurate perception of the costs and risks of its actions. At the same time, the precise nature of these sanctions could not have been communicated in advance — otherwise, Russia could have acted to limit the damage.

Could President Biden have done anything further? Listening to Russia experts, I have heard some surprising statements. Timothy Snyder told my Post colleague Greg Sargent that “the Russians really have been fixated on Jan. 6. They thought a successful military operation in Ukraine would be that nudge: We’d feel helpless, we’d fall into conflict, it would help [Donald] Trump in the U.S.”

I have heard other Russia experts make similar arguments, but with a twist — they also add the haphazard U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan as a contributing factor. According to this line of thinking, Putin felt he could act because he believed that NATO was fractured and a move on Ukraine would send the alliance into tatters.

These narratives might possess a grain of truth — but not much more than that. The crux of the problem is not that the Biden administration failed to deter Russia. It is that it failed to deter Putin.

There has been a rash of recent analyses of Putin’s thinking: Roger Cohen or Mikhail Zygar in the New York Times, Dmitri Alperovitch in Foreign Affairs. They express similar themes: Over time, Putin has become more paranoid, insular and resentful of the United States. As Condoleezza Rice told Cohen, “I’ve seen Putin go from a little shy, to pretty shy, to arrogant, and now megalomaniacal.” He believes that Ukraine is not a real country. His motivation to act was high.

Deterring Russia would have required penetrating that worldview, and I do not see how it could have happened. There are too many data points showing that Putin believed the war in Ukraine would follow the pattern of Russian interventions in Syria, Georgia and Crimea: quick, painless victories (and the Russian military has behaved likewise). As Rob Lee tweeted, “I doubt Putin would have decided to invade Ukraine if he thought it would become a war of attrition.”

I am not as giddy as the Pentagon about it, but its assessment probably holds up: Putin could not have been deterred from going into Ukraine. U.S. actions over the past month, however, have functioned as effective deterrence for any other great powers contemplating irredentist territorial claims.

This piece is republished from The Washington Post.