A Fight for Us All?

Zelensky’s strategy has long been to internationalize, or at least Westernize, the war, framing it as an existential struggle for Ukraine but also Europe and the United States. Yet there are signs of Western fatigue. Some EU officials discuss remilitarizing, and hence picking up the slack if Trump drops aid to Ukraine — but this is hardly a unanimous view. Ahead of Germany’s elections expected in February, lackluster chancellor Olaf Scholz instead seems to be softening his position. His phone call to Putin last Friday — the first in two years — was widely seen as a response to calls to bring the war to an end, a sentiment today driving support for the far-right Alternative für Deutschland as well as Sahra Wagenknecht’s eclectic party. Mired in budgetary dramas, Scholz seeks a position between these dissident forces and more hawkish liberals.

Western politics more broadly is divided between boosting funds for Kiev, shutting off the supply, or even using continued war as a means to kickstart reindustrialization. But even in Ukraine, there are considerable signs that the resilience that powered the mobilization against the February 2022 invasion cannot last forever or for everyone. If there is a dwindling roll call of men yet to be mobilized, the numbers deserting, refusing to enlist, or failing to update their data with military authorities also point to a deeper malaise. Millions of Ukrainians have admirably fought for the defense of their country and worked to hold together an aggrieved and wounded society. But if, as per Zelensky, “dozens of thousands” should not die for Crimea, many apparently doubt that it is worth it for the villages occasionally exchanged in the Donbas.

We can hardly propose what mutilated peace Ukrainians ought to swallow, not least given the likely dismal precedent of territory conquered by force. There is no reason on principle to prefer “talking” as opposed to “fighting,” faced with a blatantly imperialist land grab. But we should doubt that those in the West who preach war to the last are merely “lifting up Ukrainian voices.” Getting even a notional sense of the popular will is obviously difficult, particularly given the drastic fall in population during the war, the nearly seven million refugees in other countries (over one million in Russia itself), and the fact that even more millions live under Russian occupation. Yet, Gallup polling provides a snapshot of a trend: it suggests that where in the first two years of the war a large majority of Ukrainians prioritized outright victory over ending the war, now half favor immediate talks.

This is surely not because they imagine negotiations are going to bring some sort of enlightened compromise and peaceful coexistence. This is a product of a society battered by war and the fear of worse. Talks will not be about settling differences but about the logic of power, in this case the imposition of the Russian state’s will on its neighbor, presumably involving many humiliations and a deeply compromised sovereignty. If, in Zelensky’s words, Kiev will not “legally acknowledge” the mutilation of its post-1991 territory, this formula seems designed to make room for ambiguous temporary solutions. The Russian leadership may well settle for turning Ukraine into an unviable “frozen conflict” zone, the lack of a final peace also ensuring permanent turmoil in Ukraine’s internal politics.

Western pundits who call for ever-further escalation are largely unaffected by the resulting retaliation, which lands on Ukraine itself. That this is the Kremlin’s fault does not make this a viable course of action. Here in Germany, the party whose base is least willing  to join the army — the Greens — is the most hawkish on Ukraine. As I look out our window at an East Berlin prefab apartment block, I can expect it will not be hit by an IRBM before I finish this piece. Yet rhetorical and military escalation have a logic of their own, and the grandstanding over this war, even speaking of ourselves as “co-belligerents,” has pushed us toward commitments that few want to take. The war has tested to destruction the idea that the West could strangle Russian imperialism by remote control, and has made further, hotter wars more likely.

Dissent

Faced with the bleak military escalation, it would be nice to celebrate the rival power of democratic pressures from below. Yet these exist in only scattered forms, and far from the dimensions of uprising and overthrow. In the societies most directly concerned, the millions who have fled the conflict have not exactly “voted with their feet,” given the many possible reasons for leaving. Still, this has been a pressure valve, or a necessary escape from an awful situation. There surely is antiwar dissent within Russia, but it struggles to take any mass dimension and has not crossed paths with some sort of fundamental regime crisis; as for splits in the power-elite, even such an escapade as Yevgeny Prigozhin’s June 2023 coup bid today seems far-off.

Ukrainian officials have mooted elections some time in 2025: surely more democratic in form than a similar exercise in Russia but hardly likely to present good alternatives. The aforementioned difficulties in opinion polling apply also to the electoral process itself, and the political repression of those called traitors also augurs poorly for democratic probity. Electing a war-president in conditions where Ukraine is militarized, part-occupied, and hung on a string by its Western patrons is an evidently limited exercise in popular sovereignty. This would, at least, allow for the bulk of Ukrainians to have some measurable and recognized say over what should happen next, though any kind of consensus seems far from likely. Any government seeking peace talks could expect considerable, even violent resistance.

Biden’s choice to authorize ATACMS use was not just a US choice, answering as it did a call by Zelensky’s own government. Much more questionable was the wisdom, or democratic propriety, of a lame-duck president launching a historic foreign policy turn that could yet spiral out of control. Such a spectacle and the feared consequences seem unlikely to stiffen US or Western public resolve in support of more aid to Ukraine. There are forces, in Eastern Europe and across EU capitals in general, who promise a fight until victory, even presenting themselves as able to fill in should US support for Kiev become more conditional under Trump. But the polling, no longer updated on the EU Parliament’s website, suggests that the varied forces of dissent, pacifism, apathy, and fatigue have eaten away at this supposed consensus.

Biden, a man of the Cold War generation of politicians, has perhaps by now forgotten the logic of balanced terror that once led Western leaderships to refrain from clashing too directly with Moscow itself.  Still, populations in Ukraine (particularly those of lower incomes and fighting age) and in the EU are perhaps more alert to what further escalation could mean. If this war is indeed an “existential struggle” over the West and its values, then their attitudes and interests cannot be dismissed. We need more than just begging that Putin will be “reasonable” in his response to the Western war party. This means an actionable plan for how Europe can get out of this war, and fast.