Opinion: Russia has been clamoring for escalation for some time

Editors Note: Keir Giles (@KeirGiles) works with the Russia and Eurasia Program of Chatham House, a UK international affairs think tank. He is the author of it Russia’s War on All: And What It Means for You. The views expressed in this comment are his own. read more opinion on CNN.

CNN
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Nearly 10 months after Russia’s full-scale invasion, the vital battle for Ukraine’s future is not on the front lines.

Rather, it is to protect the civilian population from the Russian drone and missile campaign against critical urban infrastructure, a campaign designed to end Ukrainian resistance by rendering the country uninhabitable.

Air and missile defense are Kiev’s greatest needs at this stage of the conflict. And mentionted US plans to supply Ukraine with the advanced Patriot missile defense system are essential to keep Kyiv in the fight.

Of course, Russia and its supporters around the world will present this as a massive and dangerous escalation. This is nonsense, but it is highly effective nonsense.

Since well before the February invasion, dangerous but vague threats from Russia for unspecified but unsettling responses have been enough to act as a huge brake on Western support for Ukraine.

And for almost a year after that, Western powers were careful not to give the Ukrainian armed forces weapons that could threaten Russia itself.

In doing so, the West played along with the Kremlin’s pretense that it is not at war, but only conducting a special military operation. In fact, it has protected Russia from the consequences of its own aggression.

In fact, repeating the narrative that any of a wide range of events would displease Russia will ensure guaranteed escalation to World War III has been particularly effective in shaping the behavior of the US and the West.

The US in particular has felt its way forward through incremental increases in the capability of the weapons it supplies to Ukraine, wary at every stage of alleged red lines from Russia, but finding in each case that the red lines evaporate and all its threats of Russia are licenses.

But Russia will continue to do this because it works. And US President Joe Biden and other Western leaders have consistently assured Russia that it is working by specifically referring to fear of escalation exactly the fear Russia wants to stoke.

Russia’s most effective deterrent remains nuclear threats. The loose talk from Russia about using nuclear weapons has died down a bit recently, but a decade or more that drove home message the inevitable nuclear response, if Russia is cornered or humiliated, has already had its effects.

Russia’s efforts at deterrence continue to bring success in the form of arguments for a ceasefire as a preferred outcome to a Ukrainian victory based on fear of the consequences of a Russian defeat.

The advanced Patriot long-range air defense system that is highly effective at intercepting missiles offers an extremely expensive means of defending a very limited number of high-value targets. But it is neither a comprehensive solution to the problem of Ukraine’s air defense, nor a quick one, with the shortest possible date of entry into service in Ukraine is appreciated in February 2023.

He does not meet the Ukrainians immediate needs for dispersed defenses in large numbers to counter the wide range of air and missile threats from Russia. However, the expected US decision to procure the system may be a pre-emptive response to a possible new emerging threat arrival of Iranian ballistic missiles to further accelerate Russia’s campaign of destruction.

Meanwhile, Russia will continue to look for replacement sources of weapons scrapes the barrel for reused or modified missiles for launch in Ukraine. And Iran may not be the only country willing to supply Russia in the future.

But all of these weapons are effective at absorbing Ukraine’s limited air defenses in the same way that Russia dropped untrained soldiers on the front line to absorb bullets and shells. In a race of attrition, the Patriot system is simply the most capable (and most disproportionately expensive) countermeasure that Russia could possibly exhaust in a much lower-tech and cheaper campaign.

Providing a high-tech capability like the Patriot missile defense system to Ukraine is a firm sign of US commitment, and thus another step for the US to firmly overcome Russia’s successful efforts to prevent it from helping Ukraine.

But increasing air defense support and supporting Ukraine’s vital civilian infrastructure address the symptoms of the problem, not its cause. The only answer this way is to play Russia’s game by Russian rules and tell Moscow that the West finds the way of war acceptable.

Sanctions have not been enough to shake Russia’s determination to restore its empire at the expense of peaceful neighboring states. Instead of continuing to set more targets for Russia, the US and Ukraine to bring down, other Western backers should change the terms of the conflict. The international community must do more than simply tolerate Russia’s bare-bones aggression and the ferocity with which it continues its war of colonial reconquest. More immediate intervention is long overdue.

It is long past time for the West to tell Russia that if it continues down this path, its fantasy of a hostile West seeking to overthrow Putin will come true. Russia could also hardly claim that this was an escalation, when it has long told the world and itself that it is already at war with the West.

It is hard to imagine any other country in the world allowing the kind of campaign that Russia has in Ukraine (and Syria before that). even less so with overts extermination agenda the Ukrainian people.

And yet Russia’s veto in the UN Security Council and the fear it has instilled through nuclear propaganda have given it a free pass to behave as it pleases, without fear of interference from a global community that looks on either with ambivalence or helpless paralysis.

This sets a devastating precedent for other aggressive powers around the world. He says that having nuclear weapons allows you to wage genocidal wars of destruction against your neighbors because other nations will not intervene.

If this is not the message the US and the West want other aggressor states to receive around the world, then the Patriot procurement should be followed by much more direct and powerful ways of deterring Moscow.