The Situation: Introducing Escalation

“And the word ‘Escalation’ ...everyone just says it...It’s like a codeword...it’s not about the tens of thousands of Ukrainian soldiers who have lost their lives...I get to be afraid of nuclear war...it’s about me.” –Timothy Snyder

The Situation on Sunday offered a list of events in the past week that speak to the rule of law in the United States—and some thoughts about what story they collectively tell.

Today, the third anniversary of the Russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine, I want to talk about Escalation, Lawfare's new podcast series on the history of the U.S.-Ukrainian relations:

The idea of doing a narrative podcast series on the relationship between the U.S. and Ukraine actually came from Scott Anderson, who originally proposed a narrative series on the road that led to the full-scale war. Scott, however, could not run the project, as he was heading out on parental leave. So I turned to Lawfare's managing editor, Tyler McBrien, and a good friend in Kyiv, Anastasiia Lapatina, and asked them if they wanted to co-host it.

They teamed up with Max Johnston of Goat Rodeo and have been working for the last year on what has become our most ambitious narrative podcast project: a multi-part history of the relationship between the United States and Ukraine with respect to both sides’ efforts to manage the threat from Russia.

The first episode dropped today. I am deeply proud of this piece of work, the ending of which is right now being molded by The Situation.

Some of the story the series tells is familiar and comfortable. A plucky ally struggles against a gargantuan neighbor that threatens its existence, and the United States is there to support its struggle for independence. The two sides spat over how aggressive to be in confronting Russia, to be sure, but one expects that. Allies and friends don’t have to get along all the time, after all. In the end, there are good guys and bad guys, and the good guys ultimately have each other’s backs.

But the story turns out to be a bit more complicated than that, for a number of reasons—even before the United States upped and switched sides a week ago. The first is that the United States has always looked at Ukraine with one eye on Moscow. It was reticent about Ukrainian independence in the first instance—as the first episode details. The Soviet Union was big and scary, but it was also a stable, known, and unitary adversary. Moscow was familiar. Dealing with local nationalists, by contrast, raised all kinds of issues, so the United States hedged in a big way during the push for Ukrainian independence as the Soviet Union was collapsing. Americans don’t have a lot of reasons to remember this episode, but Ukrainians do. 

There are other such examples, which the podcast series treats in episodes to come. The so-called Budapest Memorandum—in which Ukraine agreed to give up its nuclear weapons in exchange for security “assurances,” which was translated into Ukrainian as “guarantees,” as to its sovereignty and borders—looms large in the Ukrainian political consciousness as an example of why nothing less than full-NATO membership will protect it from further Russian attack. It is hardly remembered in the United States. 

And at Bucharest, NATO offered Ukraine and Georgia a hazy promise of eventual membership without being willing to chart that path with any definitiveness.

All of which is to say that the American promises were always made haltingly and with an eye on not offending Russia too much. They were always with an eye toward avoiding “escalation.” And they primed Ukrainians to a certain degree for the notion that America was not all in on their struggle. 

But the story isn’t just one of American fickleness. Ukraine was not always the picture of stalwart democratic and anti-Russian constancy it is today. It flirted with Russia numerous times itself. It tolerated massive corruption often driven by oligarchs close to Russia. Its leaders were sometimes frankly authoritarian, even murderous. And just as Americans have now voted for Trump despite his solicitude for Vladimir Putin, Ukrainians not that long ago elected a Russian puppet themselves—one they eventually deposed and who fled, of course, to Russia.   

The relationship, in other words, was a little bit messy, even before Trump’s most recent and most dramatic betrayal, and there is no kinder word for it than betrayal. It is a relationship to which neither side committed fully—in part, because the other side did not seem fully committed and because the risks of offending Russia without arms fully locked were too high.  

The aim of the podcast is to tell the story of U.S.-Ukraine relations in a fashion that is unsparing of the follies of both sides. We tried not to skate over the times when the United States got blinded by its comfort in dealing with Moscow and its fear of “escalation” and tried to portray the sense of error—even guilt—that many officials now feel for their instincts back then. 

We also don’t skate over Ukraine’s own errors, its halting turn towards the West and the United States and the mixed messages it sent at different times. 

My voice does not appear on the podcast. My role was that of a catalyst for the project. I organized it. I recruited the creative team to work on it, and offered high-level, and sometimes detailed, editorial guidance. I acted as an editorial supervisor and wrote some portions of the scripts. But at the end of the day, this was history I mostly didn’t know—or knew only in a fragmentary fashion—and it’s not my story to tell. I learned a huge amount working on this project and hope others learn from listening to it. 

There is one episode of this series yet to be written: the last one. 

We timed this project for release at this time both because the third anniversary of the full-scale war seemed like a propitious moment to release it and, more broadly and more importantly, because we anticipated that this period would roughly coincide with whatever policy changes the new administration would try to effectuate. 

Those appear to be upon us, and they appear to be dramatic—different not merely in degree but in kind from the sometimes hesitant and cautious U.S. support in eras past for Ukrainian sovereignty and self-defense. Because when the United States did not offer full-throated support for Ukrainian independence in the past, it did not oppose it either. When it offered insufficient security guarantees at Budapest, it did not intentionally encourage Russia to attack Ukraine. 

Today, President Trump seems to have actively switched sides. He portrays Ukraine as having started the war, Ukraine’s president—democratically elected—as the dictator in the fight. He extorts mineral resources as supposed payment for services past rendered and weapons provided. 

This is something new in the relationship: A United States that is not merely looking at Ukraine with an eye on Russia, but is looking at it unabashedly through Russian eyes. 

Understanding the history of the U.S.-Ukrainian relationship will make this reality more, not less, painful. Because one striking feature of the podcast is how earnestly so many of the people interviewed for it were seeking—sometimes in error, but no less earnestly for their mistakes—to make the world better and safer, the United States and Ukraine more secure and stable, and to better the partnership between them. 

Whatever errors both sides may have made, never before has American policy toward Ukraine been rooted in malice and lies. 

The Situation continues tomorrow.