How to Convince Putin He Will Lose

Two ideas dominate discussions about how to bring the war in Ukraine closer to an end: the West should either pressure Ukraine to make concessions to Russia or support Ukraine’s efforts to win on the battlefield. Both approaches rightly recognize that negotiations will remain futile until changing circumstances compel one side to accept peace terms that it rejects today. Nonetheless, neither approach is likely to end the war.

Withholding arms from Ukraine could eventually force it to offer concessions to Russia as part of a desperate attempt to end the war, but advocates of this approach overlook how it would also affect Russia’s war aims. Moscow would react to its newfound military advantages by doubling down on its most extreme demands—further territorial gains in places such as Kharkiv and Odessa, regime change, demilitarization, and more. Any willingness in Kyiv to make concessions would be offset by Moscow’s newly expanded war aims. The result would be Russian gains on the battlefield, not peace.

Similarly, although the U.S. Congress’s belated passage of $61 billion in aid for Ukraine should be celebrated, it is more likely to increase the amount of territory Ukraine holds a year from now than to end the war. Even in a best-case scenario in which a Ukrainian counteroffensive liberates large areas, Russia would likely continue the fight. Providing enough support for Ukraine to defeat Russia’s ongoing offensives is essential, but it will not end the war.

To end the war on acceptable terms, more is needed. Western strategy should not be based solely on determining Ukraine’s immediate need for weapons. A focus on the present is understandable as Ukraine fights to hold back Russian forces on multiple fronts, but it will never be sufficient. If Russia’s leaders believe that they will win in the end, then they will keep fighting. Reshaping Moscow’s long-term calculus is as important as winning today’s battles. Changing that calculus requires making investments to expand weapons and munitions manufacturing that are large enough to convince Moscow that the West will outproduce Russia in the years to come. The objective is to make Russian leaders fear a long war. That fear is vital to avoiding one.

THIS IS NOT A BLUFF

The key to ending the war is changing Moscow’s expectations about how its war effort will fare three, five, and even eight years from now. Influencing the perceptions that exist in the minds of Russian leaders should be a primary goal of Western strategy. Although there is no panacea that will transform these expectations immediately, more can be done to begin eroding Russian optimism.

Crafting such a strategy requires understanding why Russian leaders continued to expect victory even through the serious battlefield reversals of 2022 and 2023. Although it is inherently challenging to pierce the miasma of secrecy and propaganda that surrounds the Kremlin, the best bet is that Russian leadership is putting its faith in the country’s greater staying power. Moscow believes that it can outlast Ukraine’s willingness to fight or—more likely—the West’s willingness to back Ukraine’s war effort. The Ukrainian people and their leaders remain steadfast about fighting through to victory despite the costs. Although Ukraine must demonstrate the continued ability to replenish its ranks by recruiting and training new soldiers, the weak link on which Russian leaders pin their hopes is most likely the West. As long as they believe that Western support will eventually diminish, there is little chance that they will abandon their ambitions to conquer more Ukrainian territory. Consequently, the West must demonstrably prove that its staying power exceeds Russian expectations.

At its core, reshaping Russian expectations is a signaling problem. It requires something that scholars have long studied: signaling resolve to make credible commitments. Scholars’ initial optimism about the ease of doing this eventually gave way to a better understanding of its difficulties; in particular, there is an obvious incentive to bluff. In the case of Ukraine, the West has every reason to proclaim that it will support Kyiv for as long as it takes, regardless of whether this is true, and Russian leaders know this. Overcoming this problem requires sending signals costly enough that only a highly resolved West would send them. There are three basic approaches to sending such signals.

Reshaping Moscow’s long-term calculus is as important as winning today’s battles.

First, Western leaders can shore up their commitment to Ukraine by increasing the costs they would incur from a Ukrainian defeat, thus strengthening their motivation to avoid that outcome. The primary way to do this is to publicly commit to backing Ukraine, making it embarrassing for leaders and damaging to national reputations if Russia wins the war. Along these lines, President Joe Biden often declares that the United States will support Ukraine for “as long as it takes.” The problem, however, is that Russia knows that Ukraine’s fate is not a decisive issue in American elections, and Biden has no ability to bind a future Republican president to his policy. Statements of enduring support are worthwhile, but Western staying power must be more than a slogan.

Stronger methods of committing to support Ukraine come with escalation risks that most Western leaders will not accept. In February, for instance, French President Emmanuel Macron broached the possibility of deploying Western combat units to Ukraine—putting NATO troops in potential danger and creating pressure to intervene directly in the war if Russian forces continue to advance—but he received little support from other NATO members.

Second, Western leaders can signal resolve by continuing to arm Ukraine. If that support is costly enough or risky enough, then in principle it signals resolve to Russia while tilting the military balance in Ukraine’s favor. Together with making pledges, this method of signaling underpins current policy, and it has proved vital for Ukraine’s defense, but also inadequate to make progress toward ending the war. Plus, this approach comes with limitations. What was once unnecessarily controversial is now clear: arming Ukraine carries little risk of war with Russia. And the West’s immediate capacity for aiding Ukraine—its stocks of weaponry and current manufacturing potential—is too small to upend Russian expectations. Continuing this support is necessary, but maintaining current policies will not change Russian calculations about the war’s future.

Therefore, the West should pivot to placing more emphasis on the third approach to signaling resolve. This is signaling via a down payment—in this case, paying upfront by investing more heavily in weapons and munitions manufacturing today. A down payment on a home makes the commitment to repay a mortgage more credible to a bank. Similarly, down payments on supporting Ukraine demonstrate a willingness to pay higher costs now and make it more credible that the West will support Ukraine later, since doing so will become more economical once the resulting factories become operational.

PARTNER-IN-ARMS

To reshape Russian perceptions and bring Moscow to the negotiating table, the United States and Europe should visibly, publicly invest in the expanding arms and munitions manufacturing to prepare for a war that could last many more years. New factories, increased production, long-term orders, and multiyear planning demonstrate staying power in a way that words alone cannot. The recent opening of a new General Dynamics factory in Texas to make 155-millimeter shells is a step in the right direction and an example of the kind of policy that could make a real difference if scaled up further. The goal is to change Russian perceptions of the West’s resolve to back Ukraine through a long war. Investments that presuppose and fund such support in advance will contribute the most to achieving that goal.

These investments would remedy a serious flaw in Western strategy to date: assessing decisions about how to support Ukraine in terms of fulfilling current battlefield requirements. This perspective seems logical; that is, if the war ends before the factories are finished, one could view them as a waste of resources. But this perspective is wrong. Instead, every dollar and euro will have been well spent. Indeed, ending the war before these factories come into operation is the ideal way for them to fulfill their purpose. The mere fact of investing in weapons manufacturing matters far more than the resulting battlefield effects. Such investments are a strong signal of Western staying power, and sending the right signal can shorten the war. What might seem at first glance to be overcapacity is in fact essential for changing Russian expectations about a long war.

NATO’s combined economy is dozens of times the size of Russia’s. It will take time, but NATO can match and eventually exceed Russia’s arms production at an acceptable cost.

Such a policy may evoke fears of another “forever war” reminiscent of costly U.S. failures in Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq, but such an outcome is unlikely. Civil wars and counterinsurgencies often linger, but high-intensity interstate wars like the one between Russia and Ukraine are different. The standard list used by scholars reveals that no interstate war since at least 1815 has lasted longer than a decade. The Iran-Iraq War endured from 1980 to 1988, largely as a brutal stalemate. Japan’s 1937 invasion of China, which arguably marked the beginning of World War II, ended with Japan’s surrender in 1945. Even wars from earlier centuries such as the Thirty Years’ War and the Hundred Years’ War, whose names suggest drawn-out conflict, in fact consisted of multiple connected wars in succession, not continuous wars. This history suggests that the war in Ukraine is likely to last years, not decades. Eliminating the Taliban was not achievable, but stopping Russia from occupying more of Ukraine is.

EVERY EURO COUNTS

But even these investments will not be enough if Russia believes that new leaders will come to power in the West and abandon Ukraine. Grappling with Russian perceptions of Western domestic politics is just as important as addressing Moscow’s expectations about weapons and munitions production.

Democracies have distinctive advantages and disadvantages when attempting to signal resolve. Enabled by free speech and a free press, opposition parties decide whether to support or oppose policies such as arming Ukraine. When they offer support, it sends a strong message that the entire country is firmly committed to the policy. Dictatorships lack this ability. But when the opposition rejects the policy, as many Republicans have in the United States, this undermines national signals of resolve.

As a result, no one can do more to change Putin’s calculus than the Republican leaders who are seen as least committed to Ukraine. Clear statements of enduring support for Ukraine from Republican leaders would be of the utmost value. Unfortunately, many of these leaders have shown no signs that they are open to changing their tune, which means that Moscow has good reason to doubt U.S. staying power. Republican opponents in the House of Representatives delayed U.S. assistance to Ukraine for months, and slightly more than half voted against it in the end. Although Republican support for Ukraine is stronger in the Senate, it only takes obstruction in one chamber to block legislation. All of this undermines attempts to signal staying power.

Preparing for a long war in Ukraine is the key to avoiding one.

Worse still, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, Donald Trump, once responded to a question about continuing to arm Ukraine by falsely complaining, “We don’t have ammunition for ourselves right now”—before declining to promise that he would continue U.S. support and even refusing to say that he wanted Ukraine to win. These are alarming indicators of what Trump might do if he wins the election, but the damage is more immediate than that because they encourage Moscow to continue to fight today.

Regrettably, there is no clear path to curbing Russian optimism about American partisan politics until at least November, and perhaps not even then. But Republican opposition need not be cause for total despair; rather, it should be a reason for Europe to redouble its efforts.

Each dollar spent today on arms for Ukraine counts for as much as each euro, but each dollar pledged for the future counts for less. Russian leaders will discount promises of future American support as long as they remain hopeful that U.S. aid will eventually lapse. Consequently, the only sure path to changing Russian expectations about a long war is for Europe to make the necessary investments to expand weapons production. This should take place across Europe, including in Ukraine itself. Doing so will insure Ukraine—and, indeed, all of Europe—against a prolonged suspension of U.S. support. It will also better position the West to balance both Russia and a rising China as the United States shifts its military focus toward the Pacific. Only European investments can force Russian leaders to accept that Western support for Ukraine will remain strong for as long as the war continues.

GREAT EXPECTATIONS

Wars are fought when two sides disagree about who will win, and diplomacy to end them becomes possible only after those expectations converge. Undermining the reasons why Russian leaders believe they will ultimately win is crucial for getting them to accept a peace that is not to their liking. That is why preparing for a long war in Ukraine is the key to avoiding one.

Absent catastrophic events on the battlefield, the war will end at the negotiating table. Because neither Moscow nor Kyiv appears willing to concede territory the countries claim as their own, the war will more likely end in a cease-fire, a truce that could collapse quickly or last for many years. This fragile peace might resemble the demilitarized zone dividing North Korea from South Korea or the Line of Control between India and Pakistan in Kashmir.

The goal for those who support Ukraine should be twofold: to bring about that cease-fire as quickly as possible with as much territory as possible on Ukraine’s side of the line. Achieving this outcome requires changing Russian expectations about the West’s staying power. Ukraine can win only when Russian leaders worry about how the war will progress in the coming years. The West must invest to produce enough weapons and munitions to sow that fear in Moscow.