This Administration’s Final Decisions on Ukraine could be its most important

By Rob Dannenberg

Rob Dannenberg served as chief of operations for CIA's Counterterrorism Center, chief of the Central Eurasia Division and chief of the Information Operations Center before retiring from the Agency.  He served as managing director and head of the Office of Global Security for Goldman Sachs, and as director of International Security Affairs at BP.  He is now an independent consultant on geopolitical and security risk.

An Open Letter to U.S. National Security Advisor, The Hon. Jake Sullivan

Dear Sir:

The world is still at a critical inflection point in history. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine continues and despite the important initiative shown by Ukraine in taking the fight to Russia, Russian forces continue their slow but methodical advances in eastern Ukraine. 

At the same time, Russia continues its terrorist bombing of Ukrainian civilian targets and energy infrastructure and now is increasingly using ballistic missiles and will soon be using ballistic missiles from Iran. 

I hope sir, that you are beginning every staff meeting with two questions:  1) What are the consequences (for the U.S. and the world) if Ukraine loses this war? and 2) Are we doing everything we can to prevent that possibility?  There are practical and moral imperatives to getting the answer to those questions right.  As you likely assess, your personal (and this administration’s) place in history depends on getting those answers right.

As a former Intelligence officer who served as Chief of CIA’s Central Eurasia Division, I wanted to share my thoughts first, on the question of consequences.

Think of what the world will look like if Putin wins this war he started—by any definition of his own twisted sense of “victory”.  He will appear to the world, vindicated in his decision to invade Ukraine and will be emboldened to continue press further to achieve his ambition of rebuilding the empire of Imperial Russia. 

This almost certainly would create security risks for Moldova and the Baltic States.  Putin’s assessment that the West has a short attention span and is too timid to commit the resources—economic or military—to support the victim of his aggression will have been proven correct. 


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And Putin’s victory would certainly embolden other autocratic regimes to pursue their own imperial ambitions, confident that any support that their intended victims might receive from the U.S., would be similarly restricted and transitory. 

Certainly, this has consequences beyond central and eastern Europe.  Hard liners around Chinese President Xi Jinping will encourage him to take the steps necessary to return Taiwan to its “proper and historic” place as part of the People’s Republic of China. 

Before or after this action, China would be emboldened to try and secure its imperial ambitions in the South and East China Seas. The current tensions between China and the Philippines would likely increase. 

Iran, confident of the strength of its relationship with Russia may decide to test a nuclear weapon of its own.  There could be consequences on the Korean Peninsula. 

Even Venezuelan President Maduro, likely encouraged by the recent Russian naval excursion to the Caribbean and the high-level political support it’s getting from Russia, may decide to take action to settle the Essequibo territorial dispute with Guyana. 

No doubt, Cuba would be happy to support and possibly participate in that adventure.  While none of the possible geopolitical consequences of Putin defeating Ukraine may happen immediately thereafter, the risk of their occurrence increases.

Perhaps as consequential as the international implications of a Putin victory are the consequences within Russia.  CIA Director Bill Burns recently said that Ukraine’s Kursk offensive, which he characterized as a “significant tactical achievement,” has triggered doubts among Russia’s elites about the course of the war. 

A few weeks ago, Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska was publicly critical of the war in comments he made in Japan.  Although polling in Russia is imprecise at best, there is some suggestion that support for the war is softening among the general population.  Putin is quietly but increasingly referred to derisively as “the Moth.” 

If Putin wins this war, it will reinforce the view among the siloviki and oligarchs who have and continue to support Putin, that they have backed the right horse.  Any chance of elite or population sentiment forcing an end to Putin’s autocracy would vanish.


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The answer to the second question is critically important at this juncture.  Yes, the United States and the West have provided a tremendous amount of military, economic and political support to Ukraine.  This support has been key to Ukraine surviving the first nearly 900 days of this phase of the war (let us not forget the current war started with the “annexation” of Crimea in February of 2014). 

But the support that the U.S. and West have provided has often arrived late and with important restrictions limiting its use, particularly the ability of Ukrainians to use this equipment to strike targets inside the Russian Federation – they very places from which Russia continues to launch its terror attacks on Ukraine. 

On September 5, a representative of the U.S. Department of Defense said lifting restrictions on Ukraine’s ability to carry out strikes deep inside Russia would have ‘very little strategic value’ because the country’s military has already moved almost all of is armaments out of range.

Comments like this make one wonder if and where anyone in the DoD studied or has studied military history.

John Kirby, a spokesman for the National Security Council said recently, “We are, as we have been every day…having a conversation with our Ukrainian counterparts about what they need, what’s going on on the battlefield, and what support they require to continue to have success.” 

One wonders with whom Kirby and his team are speaking, as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, his senior military team, and almost any sensible observer of the conflict have noted the importance, indeed criticality of the Ukraine being able to strike targets deep inside Russia from which Russia is and has been launching its attacks. 

President Zelensky said at the Ramstein Conference on September 6, “We need to have this long-range capability, not only on the divided territory of Ukraine, but also on the Russian territory so that Russia is motivated to seek peace.  Zelensky and Ukrainians understand Putin and Russia.  We should listen more carefully.


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This war will not end until the Putin Administration is no longer in power. Other than relying on the actuarial tables, one way to potentially hasten Putin’s departure is to allow the Ukraine to strike targets deeper inside Russia and bring a different perspective about this war to the Russian people, who have been sheltered from comprehensive, objective reporting about the war and its real purpose. 

Russian media is a one directional propaganda machine for Putin. It conceals the level of casualties Russia has suffered, the loss of Russian military equipment, the damage the conflict has caused Russia’s economy and its international standing.  But it’s harder for the Russian media to conceal the costs of the war as Ukraine strikes targets deeper in Russia, which become more obvious to the greater Russian population. 

Ukraine is striking such targets with its own resources, but they are insufficient to inflict real damage on the military infrastructure that Moscow is using to attack Ukraine.  We should help Ukraine take the war to Russia and make its costs visible to the Russian population and Russia’s elites.  Demonstrating fear through policy is not the same as leading from a position of strength.

I can only guess that the rationale within the administration for placing restrictions on Ukraine’s use of U.S. provided equipment (or worse yet, proscribing use of equipment provided by our allies Britain and France, because that equipment contains U.S. manufactured components) is a decision that’s being made in order to prevent the U.S. from being drawn into a direct conflict with Russia. Sir, with all due respect, this is legalistic nonsense and has no impact on Putin’s thinking, strategy, or willingness to escalate.  This is little more than a strategy of fighting Putin’s war on Putin’s terms. 

Putin never misses an opportunity to tell the Russian people and any of his allies who care to listen, that Russia is at war with the U.S. and NATO and that Ukraine is just a puppet state. 

Putin’s mouthpiece, former President and Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, similarly never misses the opportunity to cry that Russia is fighting NATO and that the West should beware of Russia’s “red lines” or else.  If Putin thought that he could start and win a military conflict with NATO, he would do it. 

Putin is already at war with the West by almost any reasonable definition of the term.  Interference in U.S. and Western elections, sabotage, state-sponsored cyberattacks, the list goes on.  The best way to prevent Putin from changing his algorithm about starting a direct conflict with NATO is to continue to help Ukraine put pressure on him. Eventually, the Russian people will have to solve the Putin problem and we should be encouraging them to do so.

There is also a moral dimension to this conflict that should not be forgotten. Perhaps you could ask someone on your staff to put together a refresher piece on the atrocities and war crimes that Russia has committed in this conflict, starting with the recent video of Russian soldiers murdering unarmed Ukrainian prisoners of war and going back to the systematic murder of Ukrainian civilians in Bucha and elsewhere. The U.S. has traditionally stood up and taken the necessary steps to address these types of atrocities and aggression against innocents.

With Presidents Biden and Zelensky scheduled to meet later this month in New York on the margins of the UN General Assembly meeting, I’d like to stress that there may never be another opportunity to do the right thing by giving Zelensky the authority to use U.S. provided long strike weapons to attack whatever targets they feel necessary to put Russia on the back foot in this war and to increase the internal pressure on Putin. 

Moreover, this meeting provides an opportunity for the U.S. to reassert moral and practical leadership on the world stage and state the conditions that Russia needs to accept for the war to end.  They should include the return of Ukraine’s kidnapped children, the return of all Ukrainian territory taken since February 2014, the payment of significant reparations and war damages, and an official remand of Putin and other Russian war criminals to justice. 

Such a step would secure this administration’s place in history.  For the sake of all of us, take the step.

Sincerely,

Robert M. Dannenberg

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