Be Very, Very Careful (Updated)

In his New York Times column via Asharq Al-Awsat Thomas Friedman urges Americans to have more caution about the war in Ukraine:

First, The Times disclosed that “the United States has provided intelligence about Russian units that has allowed Ukrainians to target and kill many of the Russian generals who have died in action in the Ukraine war, according to senior American officials.” Second, The Times, following a report by NBC News and citing US officials, reported that America has “provided intelligence that helped Ukrainian forces locate and strike” the Moskva, the flagship of Russia’s Black Sea fleet. This targeting assistance “contributed to the eventual sinking” of the Moskva by two Ukrainian cruise missiles.

As a journalist, I love a good leak story, and the reporters who broke those stories did powerful digging. At the same time, from everything I have been able to glean from senior US officials, who spoke to me on condition of anonymity, the leaks were not part of any thought-out strategy, and President Biden was livid about them. I’m told that he called the director of national intelligence, the director of the C.I.A. and the secretary of defense to make clear in the strongest and most colorful language that this kind of loose talk is reckless and has got to stop immediately — before we end up in an unintended war with Russia.

The staggering takeaway from these leaks is that they suggest we are no longer in an indirect war with Russia but rather edging toward a direct war — and no one has prepared the American people or Congress for that.

Vladimir Putin surely has no illusions about how much the US and NATO are arming Ukraine with material and intelligence, but when American officials start to brag in public about playing a role in killing Russian generals and sinking the Russian flagship, killing many sailors, we could be creating an opening for Putin to respond in ways that could dangerously widen this conflict — and drag the US in deeper than it wants to be.

I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if we didn’t start to see clandestine operations against high-ranking U. S. military officers either here or abroad. He goes on to express an opinion that tallies pretty closely with my own:

Alas, we have to be alive to the fact that it’s not only the Russians who would like to involve us more deeply. Have no illusions, President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine has been trying to do the same thing from the start — to make Ukraine an immediate member of NATO or get Washington to forge a bilateral security pact with Kyiv. I am in awe of Zelensky’s heroism and leadership. If I were him, I’d be trying to get the US as enmeshed on my side as he is.

But I’m an American citizen, and I want us to be careful. Ukraine was, and still is, a country marbled with corruption. That doesn’t mean we should not be helping it. I am glad we are. I insist we do. But my sense is that the Biden team is walking much more of a tightrope with Zelensky than it would appear to the eye — wanting to do everything possible to make sure he wins this war but doing so in a way that still keeps some distance between us and Ukraine’s leadership. That’s so Kyiv is not calling the shots and so we’ll not be embarrassed by messy Ukrainian politics in the war’s aftermath.

The view of Biden and his team, according to my reporting, is that America needs to help Ukraine restore its sovereignty and beat the Russians back — but not let Ukraine turn itself into an American protectorate on the border of Russia. We need to stay laser-focused on what is our national interest and not stray in ways that lead to exposures and risks we don’t want.

To that end we should avoid either demonizing the Russians or idealizing the Ukrainians. Ukrainian corruption isn’t a consequence of being “economic vassals” to Russia. It’s because it’s Ukraine. Since the 2014 revolution, according to Transparency International Ukraine’s Corruption Perception Index (the most widely accepted measure of corruption) has improved—from 26 to 32 out of 100 (our score is 67—worse than France, Germany, or the United Kingdom. I don’t even want to think what Illinois’s would be).

Mr. Friedman concludes:

My bottom line echoes my top line — and I can’t underscore it enough: We need to stick as tightly as possible to our original limited and clearly defined aim of helping Ukraine expel Russian forces as much as possible or negotiate for their withdrawal whenever Ukraine’s leaders feel the time is right.

But we are dealing with some incredibly unstable elements, particularly a politically wounded Putin. Boasting about killing his generals and sinking his ships, or falling in love with Ukraine in ways that will get us enmeshed there forever, is the height of folly.

Update

I see that some of the same issues have captured James Joyner’s attention as well:

Of course we’ve been supplying intelligence. Of course we want to see Russia weakened. Putin knows these things. But actually saying them out loud serves no obvious purpose.

and echoes a point I’ve made here:

Now, it happens that the United States is fundamentally at war with Russia—we would certainly think any country supplying weapons to forces fighting American soldiers was a belligerent—but saying the quiet part out loud is unhelpful.

He thinks we “rubbing Putin’s nose in it deliberately”. I think that we’re doing so thoughtlessly, our attitude towards the Russians much as it has been since the collapse of the Soviet Union.