Arming Ukraine seems to be seen as the right thing to do as well as the best policy option. It might be a bit more complicated than that.
Escalation has been on my mind a lot lately. Every week the news reports on how different European countries and their Western allies are considering to, or actually sending weapons to Ukraine to aid in the struggle against the Russian invaders. I keep coming back to the dilemma that these weapon shipments represent. Is arming Ukraine a good idea if it risks escalation with Russia? On one hand it’s a moral duty to help Ukraine, Russia is the aggressor and has committed terrible crimes during the invasion, from bombing hopsitals to the Bucha massacre so on a moral plane it’s almost a black and white decision. On the other hand arming Ukraine against Russia seems an awful lot like a proxy war where Russia has good reason to think that the EU and NATO are taking a clear political side which directly leads to more Russian soldiers dying in the field. How do we weigh the risk of escalation against the moral responsibility to prevent civilian casualties and standing up for Ukraine’s sovereignty?
When listening to what European leaders have to say about the war in Ukraine they’ll usually mention Russia’s belligerence and how we have to stand up for the people of Ukraine, but it’s relatively rare for them to speak about the risks of escalation that standing up for Ukraine brings. Arms transfers to Volodymyr Zelenskyj and his troops are seen as a clearly good decision and the fact that it’s not meant as an aggressive move against Russia is obvious. But escalation takes two, and what one’s intentions are when making a decision isn’t all that important in the context of escalation; what really matters is how that decision is interpreted by the other side. In the West it is obviously politically difficult to talk about how Moscow’s perspective, and as I’ve lamented before in some quarters Putin is characterised as deranged and irrational which makes it even more difficult to put oneself in his shoes. But it’s crucial to understand Russia’s perspective to decrease the risk of escalation.
The prism through which we view wars says as much about us as about the conflicts themselves. Consider how when Russia invades Georgia and Ukraine they’re wars of aggression from a revanchist Russia which dreams of restoring the Soviet Union or the Russian Empire whereas when the USA invades Iraq and Afghanistan it is liberating the oppressed masses from tyrannical regimes. Obviously, those aren’t perfect parallels and my goal isn’t to make a moral equivalency of these different conflicts, but imagine if the Russian Federation decided to send anti-tank and anti-aircraft weapons to Iraq in 2003 a month after American troops invaded. Most in the West would see that as an aggressive move by the Russians but fail to see how the current military support for Ukraine could be seen as an escalation by the Russians.
It’s also important to consider that escalation isn’t always an intentional policy but a process that can spiral out of the hands of decision-makers to gradually transform a small conflict to a large one. The Austro-Hungarian Empire didn’t mean to start a world war when they sent an ultimatum to Serbia but a succession of decisions the other side considered aggressive forced each side to take a harder stance until the relatively small crisis between Austria-Hungary and Serbia ended up being a massive continent spanning war. My point with this isn’t to suggest that the war in Ukraine could or will lead to another world war, only to illustrate how things can escalate even though neither side wants a bigger war.
I hope that the war won’t escalate further, but I think the way we frame the conflict in moral terms can distract from the important practical questions of how to help Ukraine without angering Russia. The consensus at this early stage in the war is that doing what’s right and making the right policy is one and the same; I wish for a bit more nuance. After all, it was Russia’s fear of Ukraine joining NATO and thus getting Western arms which started this whole conflict back in 2014.
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I've always been interested in politics, economics, and the interplay between. The blog is a place for me to explore different ideas and concepts relating to economics or politics, be that national or international. The goal for the blog is to make you think; to provide new perspectives.
Written by Karl Johansson
Cover photo by Liliāna Legzdiņa from Pexels, edited by Karl Johansson
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