The Ukraine war is lost. Three options remain.
George Beebe, long-time head of Russia analysis at the CIA, a 27-year veteran of the agency and now the current head of Grand Strategy at the Quincy Institute in Washington, is just the kind of American the world needs right now. Understated, immensely knowledgeable and decent, he understands the Russo-Ukraine war in its widest sense and says three options remain open, only one that does not risk disaster for us all.
I started listening to George Beebe a few years ago when he was warning about tensions in Ukraine, the real risk of escalation to nuclear war and the dangers of groupthink. Back in 2021 he assessed that Russia was likely to invade Ukraine given the combination of the US’s determination to bring the country into NATO and the fact that it was a “now-or-never moment” for Moscow to stop this happening. Years earlier, US Ambassador to Moscow, and now CIA director, William Burns had urgently cabled Washington to warn that the Russians regarded Ukraine as ‘the reddest of red lines’:
“Ukrainian entry into NATO is the brightest of all redlines for the Russian elite (not just Putin),” Ambassador Burns wrote. “In more than two and a half years of conversations with key Russian players, from knuckle-draggers in the dark recesses of the Kremlin to Putin's sharpest liberal critics, I have yet to find anyone who views Ukraine in NATO as anything other than a direct challenge to Russian interests."
I quote all this because if Ukraine, all of Europe, and quite possibly all of us, are to be spared worse, we have to get past one very unhelpful word: “unprovoked”.
It stands in the way of doing what is utterly essential: deep, constructive and ongoing discussions between Russia and the West to create a security framework for all of Europe that is acceptable to all parties.
Since February 2022 Western propaganda has drummed into people’s minds that the invasion was “unprovoked”. Very few outside the West, however, share this perspective. George Beebe doesn't support the invasion, estimates that Russia has a lot to answer for, but rejects this kind of simplistic rhetoric as unhelpful and potentially disastrous. He was interviewed this past week by Professor Glenn Diesen and Alexander Mercouris on The Duran and, in my estimation, gave a masterclass in responsible statecraft.
“There has been a lot of narrative management, a lot of policing of public discourse.” Beebe said. “Anybody who suggested that there may have been some element of provocation that affected Russian decisions on this was immediately anathematized.”
Prolonging the war is not in the interest of the Ukrainian people. Peace is needed to attract millions of Ukrainian refugees home to rebuild the country.
Beebe says the West has an erroneous idea as to the very nature of the conflict. The US and the Europeans defined the Russian invasion as a “deterrence model problem” rather than a “spiral model problem”. In the former, the adversary is a kind of Hitler that must be stopped at all costs.
“We have internalised that model as a universal truth in international relations. We believe every problem that we're facing is that deterrence model problem and we can't possibly negotiate.”
In reality, Beebe says, the conflict conforms to what Robert Jervis defined back in the 1970s as a “spiral model problem” – where you have one state that attempts to enhance its own security by taking measures (for example, Ukraine joining NATO) that another state (Russia) believes are threatening. You get into a dynamic of action and reaction that can spiral to the point where you get into a conflict.
“When you attempt to deal with a spiral problem by refusing to negotiate, you make the problem worse on both sides. It's like pouring gasoline on a fire,” Beebe says.
The former head of the CIA’s Russia desk argues that if we are to think our way out of the disaster that is Ukraine, the West needs to rediscover diplomacy and the ability to negotiate with geostrategic opponents. US triumphalism after the fall of the Berlin Wall led, he says, to the US feeling it could abandon statecraft.
“We no longer felt that we had to engage in normal diplomatic give-and-take, attempting to balance interests as well as balance power – the kinds of things that statecraft has involved for thousands of years. We thought that wasn't necessary. Number one: we know we're right. And number two: US power was just so disproportionately greater than any other country's power, we could simply impose our views, whether they liked it or not.”
That moment - the Unipolar Moment - has passed and we are now in a multipolar world. There is no sharper confirmation of this altered geopolitical landscape than the fact that Russia, by force of arms, has almost certainly defeated US plans to extend NATO into Ukraine.
Russia’s slow, grinding use of attrition warfare has paid off: the eastern front is buckling before them and the Ukrainian army, which has put up an astonishingly stout and courageous resistance, is increasingly unable to hold the line.
This week the fortress city of Selydove fell with scarcely a mention in the mainstream media. A couple of weeks ago Vuhledar, another key in Ukraine’s defences, fell after months of pressure from the Russians. Every day villages and towns are tumbling at a quickening tempo. Chasiv Yar, one of the toughest nuts for the Russians to crack, is close to collapse. The Russians are closing in on Pokrovsk, a key logistical hub in Donetsk.
The Ukrainians face a terrible dilemma. Most seem to realise the war is lost. Any attempt at negotiation with the Russians, however, would unleash internal pressures inside Ukraine that could lead to a coup, assassinations or other upheaval. The US won’t want the war to end before President Biden leaves office in January 2025 - and may prolong the agony, loss of life and the ceding of yet more territory to Russia for US domestic reasons rather than the best interests of Ukraine. Where is all this leading?
George Beebe sees three options. NATO escalates and becomes directly involved in the fighting – action that could have unspeakable consequences. More likely, Ukraine could suffer a collapse - a combination of military and political failure as the ability to put an effective army in the field is lost.
“If I am wearing my analyst hat, I would say the more likely scenario is Ukraine collapses and becomes some sort of dysfunctional ward of the West. We then have more or less a security black hole in the middle of Europe that causes real problems.”
Absent an agreed framework, other hot spots could flare at any time - including Georgia, Moldova, Belarus, Kaliningrad.
The third option, and clearly the preferable one for Beebe, is that the West changes course and “picks up the phone”, ending its refusal to negotiate.
“The West has got to recognize that it is important for us to find a negotiated settlement,” Beebe says.
“We can't simply say to the Russians, let's freeze the conflict in Ukraine, and someday we'll get down to talking about broader European security – ‘trust us’. That's not going to work. We're going to have to indicate that we understand that these issues are important and that it is in our self-interest to address them in a way that accommodates Russia's core security interests. The Russians are not going to get everything they want out of this. Neither will we. Both sides are going to have to get their most vital interests protected in all of this. That's a truism in diplomatic agreements.”
And that is how grown-ups talk.
Eugene Doyle
