According To Foreign Affairs - It's Time For NATO Soldiers To Volunteer To Die In Ukraine

foreignaffairs |  As the world looks on while Ukrainians fight for their lives and their freedom, many feel a burning desire to do more to support them. The problem is not a lack of forces or resources—it is fear of provoking a wider, perhaps nuclear, war with Russia. That fear is why U.S. President Joe Biden and other NATO leaders have consistently made clear that they will not intervene directly in the conflict, instead limiting their help to weapons, money, intelligence, and sanctions. As devastating as events in Ukraine are today, a nuclear war with Russia could kill more people than Ukraine’s entire population of roughly 44 million.

NATO leaders understand that they must walk this fine line between aiding Ukraine and risking war with Russia, but they have no theory of how to do it. The German and French governments hem and haw about whether to provide Ukraine with tanks. When Poland proposed a plan to transfer MiG-29 fighter aircraft to Ukraine, the United States refused. U.S. Defense Department spokesperson John Kirby warned that it “raises serious concerns for the entire NATO alliance” and therefore was not “tenable.” Yet the United States was already shipping Javelin antitank missiles and Stinger surface-to-air missiles. Soon after, it began sending other weapons, including M777 howitzers and now HIMARS multiple-rocket launchers. What is the difference? Those weapons do more to strengthen Ukraine’s combat power than MiG-29s, so the theory cannot be that Russia reacts more strongly to policies that do more harm to its interests. Why, then, missiles and artillery but not planes? The answer is that there is no answer. It is simply arbitrary.

NATO needs a strategy predicated on a theory of what it can do to aid Ukraine without widening the war to a direct conflict between it and Russia. Lessons from past crises point to the principles that should guide such a strategy. History shows that NATO would recklessly risk war only by crossing two Russian redlines: openly firing on Russian forces or deploying organized combat units under NATO-member flags into Ukraine. As long as NATO stops short of unmistakably crossing those lines, it can do more to help Ukraine at an acceptable risk of war.

Arms transfers and sanctions are both wholly consistent with this approach, so it is tempting to conclude that NATO members are doing all they can. They are not. They should build on current policies by dispensing with arbitrary limits on the types of conventional weapons they are providing Ukraine and expanding sanctions. Moreover, there is a third way to support Ukraine besides arms and sanctions—one that NATO is neglecting. It is time for NATO to encourage, organize, and equip its soldiers to volunteer to fight for Ukraine.