How long will Biden's administration support the 'private Ukraine' idea?

Since the start of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, the White House has held regular meetings with members of the Washington foreign policy establishment in an effort to keep think tank heads and leading experts informed of what the administration is thinking and planning in its confrontation with Moscow. The goal of these regular calls is to educate, persuade, and shape the analysis produced by Washington's foreign policy elite.

Everyone who attended these White House briefings lauded the Biden administration's Ukraine policy. They wanted to give credit to the president and his advisors and praised them for saving Ukraine and acting quickly in a rapidly evolving and unpredictable conflict. But once we went off the record or spoke in the background, the truth poured out like a torrent.

It turns out that Washington's foreign policy establishment is growing increasingly dissatisfied with the Biden administration's Ukraine policy. What exactly is the source of the disappointment? On the one hand, the administration's stance on Ukraine has remained consistent: Ukraine must win, nothing about Ukraine is complete without Ukraine, this must not devolve into World War III, and we must protect and strengthen the rules-based international order.

But what does it all really mean? What does victory look like in Ukraine? Do we agree with Ukraine that this means restoring its borders from 1991? If we believe in "nothing about Ukraine without Ukraine," what did Antony Blinken—nicknamed "Tony" by the community—say to a group of experts that Crimea was Putin's red line, and thus America's as well? Is it true that our vision of victory differs from that of the Ukrainians? And what does "as long as it takes" mean in terms of providing Ukraine with more sensitive weapons systems. 

However, it appears that at least part of this policy has become less tangled in recent weeks. Indeed, it can be summed up as follows: Let us wait and see how Ukraine's spring offensive goes before reassessing.

Reevaluation

According to the administration sources, Ukraine now has everything it needs to launch a successful offensive to reclaim territory, most likely in the southeast, where Ukraine hopes to cut Russia's land bridge to Crimea. The State and White House officials have emphasized since the beginning of the year that Ukraine is not economically viable without Zaporizhzhia. If Kyiv does not reclaim control of this province, which Russia has illegally annexed, Moscow will be able to maintain its stranglehold on the Ukrainian economy by blocking its ports and cutting off Ukraine's exports. Ukraine used to feed 400 million people each year by using these ports. Since the start of the war, the agricultural industry has suffered greatly, and Ukraine has lost one-third of its GDP.

Depending on how the Ukrainian offensive goes, the administration has hinted that it will reassess and rebalance its policy. But how does that appear? “The White House has certainly said things like we need to do everything now, do whatever we can now to make this big push,” a participant in the calls said. “And everyone is like, 'What's next?””

“I think the administration's expectation has been that Ukraine has everything it needs for an offensive and if they don't get anything done, well, then we'll have to reassess,” the first participant said. “What that reassessment means, it's not clear to me. Does that mean hold our levels of support steady? Does it mean we escalate [our levels of support]? Or does it mean that we start having a conversation about how we freeze things? It's not clear which one they're thinking of. Escalation of support is very unlikely, so it's probably the first or third option.”

Another caller expressed a similar frustration: “Are we giving Ukrainians enough to win? Or does victory simply imply regaining as much as Ukraine can with the current levels of support and during this very limited window of opportunity?” According to this third participant, a Ukrainian victory at this point simply means “Whatever Ukraine is capable of producing. Then... what? I'm assuming it means taking it to a negotiating table, but that's assuming that Russia will come to the negotiating table and that Ukraine will come to the negotiating table.”

“I think we have a policy until late summer/early fall and then it'll get caught in our political process, at which point we'll say, 'Well, we tried. We helped them as much as we could," this participant added. "I don't think there's a strategy beyond the $95 billion aid package, which runs out at the end of the fiscal year [in the fall]. And then I don't know what. I don't think they will go to the Hill again in the fall to ask for more. If the Ukrainians are wildly successful, that may help. But if we are largely where we are now, if Ukraine makes some gains but it's still basically what it is today, I don't know what the administration does in the fall.”

To be clear, no one expects the Ukrainian offensive to yield a decisive victory. Everyone in Washington who is paid to think about this war is now feverishly playing out possible scenarios, both over cocktails and at more formal tabletop exercises. Regardless of how successful this year's spring offensive is, the latest drill demonstrated that all roads seemed to lead to a dead end and some sort of negotiated solution in the long run. When Chairman Mark Milley declared in November that the war would be decided at the negotiating table rather than on the battlefield, he was not speaking from the schoolhouse, but rather reflecting an emerging consensus in Washington.

“I think they want this to happen this year," the first participant of the White House calls said about the beginning of a negotiated solution. “We have elections. next year and we're in campaign season already. Ukraine might take back some territory but it won't be a massive territorial takeback. I think that's where we'll be at the end of the year. They're going to want to hold the line and Congress will support them on that.”

Stalling for time

Dmitri Alperovitch, the director of Silverado, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank, said he's been hearing from elected American officials across the political spectrum that constituents are increasingly asking why the US is spending so much money in Ukraine. “It's not just Republicans, it's also Democrats saying that big aid packages to Ukraine are not going to get support from their constituents. These are not left-wing or right-wing politicians. These are moderates,” Alperovitch said. He was frank about the likely outcome: “This offensive, if Ukraine makes progress, they'll buy themselves some life. If they don't, it'll be hard to get supplies to keep going.”

Another person familiar with the administration's thinking and who was involved in some of these conversations, on the other hand, was adamant that the White House has no intention of cutting off aid to Ukraine. Another participant said the White House made it clear to the new senior director of the NSC, Nicholas Berliner, during a phone call a month ago that they would be asking Congress for more aid in the fall, regardless of the outcome of the offensive. The question is how much they will demand and how much they will receive. “It's not that the U.S. will stop supporting Ukraine. It's that the U.S. and other Western countries may not be able to give Ukraine a decisive advantage on the battlefield. That's the issue. The U.S. is committed to supporting Ukraine, but it can't commit things it does not have. At a certain point Washington will have to reassess, including the balance between the U.S. and Europeans.”

Still, the disparity between official Biden administration rhetoric has concerned Ukrainians, who are concerned that it plays right into Putin's plan: wait out the fickle Americans, without whom the Europeans are effectively useless, and then grind the Ukrainians down. “Ukrainians have been asking if the U.S. intends to press Ukraine into some kind of negotiated settlement,” the person familiar with the administration's thinking said. “My sense is the U.S. doesn't want a false stalemate. The game plan is to provide Ukraine a window of opportunity but assume the war ends up as a natural stalemate. Then, seek negotiations or a frozen conflict.”

Even some of the administration's public allies pointed out the disparity between what Biden and his advisors were saying publicly and what they were planning in private. “We rhetorically say something and then we revert to incrementalism,” one participant in the calls said after dutifully praising the president. “That's a bipartisan comment, by the way. We engage in this really high rhetoric and we just hope no one's going to call us on it. But we're going to get called on this one. We're not playing for success, we're playing for stalemate-and stalemate is not going to be successful for us.”