The United States has hit a wall in Ukraine. President Joe Biden’s incrementalist approach is not working. Instead, it has led to a long and tragic war of attrition. Ukraine’s faltering performance in the past year has raised the grim prospect of a Russian victory, which would see Kyiv fall under Moscow’s imperial dominion.

Former President Donald Trump has promised to change the U.S. approach if he wins reelection in November, insisting he could end the war “in 24 hours.” And Trump’s running mate, U.S. Senator J. D. Vance, has written that Ukraine should limit itself to a “defensive strategy” to “preserve its precious military manpower, stop the bleeding and provide time for negotiations to commence.” The solution both Trump and Vance seem to favor is a negotiated settlement that would allow Washington to focus its attention and resources elsewhere.

The war does need to end—and end quickly. The answer is not to cut off all U.S. aid or rush into a lopsided deal with Russian President Vladimir Putin. The United States can still get out of an untenable situation and also avoid handing Russia a win. To halt open-ended U.S. expenditures and preserve Ukraine’s independence and security, the United States and its allies need to give Kyiv one last serious chance at victory—defined not as a return to Ukraine’s 2013 borders (as Kyiv would prefer) but as a sustainable restoration of roughly its 2021 borders.

To make that outcome possible, Washington and its allies must substantially and speedily improve Ukraine’s military position with a large infusion of weapons—and place no restrictions on their use. The most realistic chance for peace will come if Ukrainian troops can launch a decisive push that sends Russian forces back across the pre-2022 lines.

A new U.S. president could catalyze the policy shift to make this happen; an incoming Trump administration, for instance, could seize the opportunity to signal American strength and put the conflict to bed, shoring up the United States’ international reputation and allowing Washington to turn to other priorities. But no matter who is in the White House, a short-term boost of unrestricted military aid offers the best chance for long-term peace on Europe’s frontier.

FOREVER WAR

The Biden administration’s current strategy is unsustainable both for the United States and for Ukraine. In 2022, after Russia attacked and Ukraine showed remarkable determination to fight back, Washington and some of its allies gradually and tentatively began to send military aid to Kyiv, placing restrictions on how and where Ukrainian forces could use the more advanced capabilities. They feared that a more resolute response would trigger Russian escalation, potentially extending the conflict beyond Ukraine and putting the West in harm’s way. Putin’s nuclear saber rattling has so terrified U.S. and European officials that even though they claim to seek a Ukrainian victory, in practice they provide Kyiv only enough support to keep it from crumbling under the Russian onslaught. The apparent goal is not to defeat Russia on the battlefield but to sustain Ukraine “as long as it takes”—that is, hopefully, until Moscow concludes that further aggression will be self-defeating and ends the war itself.

More than two years into the fighting, Kyiv has not folded, but neither have its Western partners given it the tools to win. A long war of attrition is likely to end in Ukraine’s collapse. Kyiv does not have enough manpower to send reinforcements into the trenches for years to come, and away from the frontlines, the rest of the country is struggling. Three-quarters of Ukrainian businesses are experiencing labor shortages because of emigration and military conscription (and the casualties that follow). The agricultural sector has lost fertile acreage: for some crops, the amount of harvested land has decreased by about a third. The loss of ports, such as Mariupol, has caused serious problems for producers looking to export. A February report cosponsored by the World Bank estimated that rebuilding Ukraine’s housing, infrastructure, and industry will require close to half a trillion dollars. As time goes on, the situation will only get worse.

Time is not on the side of Ukraine’s Western partners, either. European countries have claimed that Russia’s war is an existential menace to the continent, but for the most part, their recent military investments have been modest and they have been reluctant to disburse large sums of money to prop up Ukraine’s economy. Countries on Europe’s eastern frontline are the exception; Poland will spend more than four percent of its GDP this year, and Finland, a new member of NATO, plans to double its artillery ammunition production by 2027. But even these countries will be forced to recognize that every artillery shell they deliver to a weakening Ukraine is one fewer that will be available to their own forces. If Russia makes further gains in Ukraine and ramps up its threats to the West, those countries may no longer accept such a tradeoff.

For the United States, there is no benefit in bankrolling a protracted conflict. Biden’s strategy of providing incremental aid will not prevent Ukraine’s eventual destruction, and it will keep United States bogged down in a war without a path to victory. It is also politically unsustainable: in the wake of decades of deeply unpopular “forever wars,” American leaders can no longer promise indefinite financial outlays and weapon supplies on the basis of a strategy with no prospect of success.

The United States is also taking larger strategic risks by restricting its support for Ukraine to incremental armament. Moscow can lean on its war economy and has no need to negotiate as long as it is confident that it can bleed Ukraine to a surrender and outlast Western support for Kyiv. And Ukraine cannot afford to negotiate from its current position of weakness, either, having lost territory and access to the Sea of Azov, a crucial waterway for its agricultural exports, and lacking the means to reverse either loss. This means the war will drag on—and the longer it does, the more time Russia has to create problems for Europe and the United States in other parts of the world. Moscow may expand its cooperation with North Korea by sharing satellite and ballistic missile technologies, devote more military forces to destabilize countries in sub-Saharan Africa and the wider Mediterranean region, and jam GPS signals across an increasingly large region in Europe. China, meanwhile, is building up its own military, and it could take advantage of persistent volatility in Europe to advance in the Pacific.

At the same time, Washington and its partners should not be overly worried about provoking Russia. Western fears of a Russian escalation have been exaggerated. Throughout his rule, Putin has been careful to avoid a direct clash with the West, conscious perhaps of Russia’s economic and military inferiority. Now, Moscow has an interest in containing the fight to Ukraine because it would have a hard time matching Western firepower and combined forces in an expanded war. Russia threatens to escalate but backs down when confronted with strength. Still, there are limits to what the United States and its allies should do; namely, they should not challenge the Russian army on the frontlines by sending their own troops to Ukraine.

DECISIVE ACTION

Instead of dragging out this war, the United States’ goal should be to end it quickly, helping Ukraine defeat Russia and in the process deterring Moscow from pursuing further imperial ambitions. Stabilizing Europe first would allow Washington to concentrate its efforts in the Asian theater, where it faces a looming threat from China, sequencing its strategy rather than risking confrontation with two revisionist powers at once.

The most plausible way to achieve this goal is to surge weapons to Ukraine and place no restrictions on their use. Ukraine needs artillery, armor, and airpower, and it must be able to strike military targets in Russia, such as airports, ammunition and fuel depots, and military factories. By lifting usage restrictions on Western weapons, especially medium-range missiles, Washington would give Kyiv the opportunity to degrade Russian forces and prevent large-scale attacks on Ukrainian cities and infrastructure. Ukraine cannot defend itself from behind a trench and with a dwindling supply of expensive antiair capabilities.

This surge would give Ukraine one last chance at a tactical breakthrough to restore or approximate its pre-2022 territorial status. From this position, Ukrainian forces could continue to threaten the gains Russia made in its 2014 invasion, especially Crimea. Although Kyiv’s longing to reclaim the country’s pre-2014 borders is understandable, its horrific losses and national exhaustion make a less ambitious definition of military victory much more realistic.

By degrading and pushing Russian forces from the territory they took since early 2022, Kyiv would win itself political options. Such a military achievement could impose sufficient material and reputational costs to force Russia to the negotiating table. Even without negotiations, which in any case may not quell Moscow’s desire to restore its empire in Europe, a rapid and decisive battlefield victory would inflict enough damage on Russian forces to buy Ukraine time to rebuild its infrastructure and industry, regain fertile lands for agricultural production, and strengthen its military capacity to deter further Russian offensives.

The United States and its allies will have the resources to implement this strategy by the time the U.S. election in November has passed or a new president takes office. By early 2025, Western production capacity will have ramped up enough to supply Ukrainian forces with sufficient quantities of artillery shells. U.S. plants are on track to produce 80,000 shells per month by the end of 2024 and 100,000 shells per month sometime in 2025. Add that to the 100,000 or more shells per month that European industry is expected to produce by late 2025 and Ukraine could not just maintain its defensive positions, which requires an estimated 75,000 shells per month, but also initiate offensive action. The U.S. army also has plenty of excess equipment, including older models of tanks and other vehicles, sitting in storage. So far, the United States has sent only 31 tanks to Ukraine, mostly to force Berlin’s hand at providing tanks, but there are hundreds more in storage that could be refurbished and shipped. Ukraine clearly needs more than it has received, as losses quickly thin out its armor stock. A small number of Western fighter jets in the hands of Ukrainian pilots is also scheduled to join the fight in the next months, but there are scores more that European countries could offload to Kyiv. Greece, for example, is considering giving several dozen jets.

Although Washington and its allies cannot send their own soldiers to Ukraine, they can provide additional military training for Ukrainian troops. Manpower is a growing problem for Kyiv. Conscription-age Ukrainians who have emigrated abroad should be called on to come home and join the fight. In the European countries where many of them now reside, governments could form Ukrainian military units and train the new recruits before sending them back to Ukraine.

The decisive factor would be the speed and quantity of lethal aid. If Ukraine can manage a breakthrough on the frontline and force a return to the territorial status quo ante February 2022, it could deal Russia a clear defeat. Crimea would remain under Russian occupation, but it would also remain a weak spot that the Ukrainian military can target to deter Moscow from resuming a large-scale war. The port of Sevastopol, several Russian military bases, and the Kerch Strait Bridge (which connects the Crimean Peninsula to the Russian mainland) have already proven to be vulnerable to Ukrainian sea drones and, in the case of the bridge, a truck bomb. Ukraine should be given more capabilities—such as U.S. ballistic missiles and British, French, and German cruise missiles—to strike these places now and keep them under threat in the event of a cease-fire. By internationally recognized law, they are part of Ukraine’s own territory, so military operations there would not carry the same escalation risks as hitting targets in Russia proper. Only Moscow (and a handful of minor powers) considers Crimea to be part of Russia, and when Ukraine has attacked it in the past two years, Russia’s response has not been any different than its response to Ukrainian attacks on the frontlines.

Even in the best-case scenario, there is no reason to expect a defeat of Russia so dramatic as to fundamentally alter Moscow’s strategic outlook. Russia will remain a powerful nuclear state, nurturing deep aspirations to restore its imperial greatness. But to achieve that goal, it needs Ukraine, which would give it the ability to threaten the rest of Europe and hold sway over European politics. Without Ukraine, Russia is only an Asian power, swiftly losing ground to China. Kyiv cannot change Moscow’s strategic imperatives with victories on the battlefield, but it can deny Russia control of its lands. A rapid and significant supply of Western arms would give Ukraine its best chance to push back Russian forces and create the space and the time it needs to rebuild, refit, and deter another Russian advance. There is no strategic rationale for Washington to prolong the conflict with drop-by-drop delivery of supplies; policies designed primarily to avoid escalation will not save Ukraine or stabilize Europe’s eastern frontier. Instead, it is time for the next U.S. president to take decisive action.