Eurasia Press & News
Washington’s decision to broker an end to the ongoing Ukraine-Russia war has caused heartburn and backlash from its European allies and Kyiv. The desire for strategic flexibility, which is as much a function of power as it is of agency, explains in part why Washington has shifted its policy on Ukraine and the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO).
The Trump administration has come under withering criticism at home and from Washington’s NATO allies for abandoning Ukraine and the alliance. Some experts aver that it is an “aggressor’s peace” that Trump is foisting onto Ukraine by privileging Russia’s interests and war aims, despite Moscow being the cause of aggression. Washington, under Trump, sees open-ended support to Kyiv as prolonging the war and tethering the United States of America (US) to a policy that cannot be sustained when it has other pressing geostrategic priorities.
Although a durable ceasefire that puts an end to all hostilities, let alone a peace settlement is very distant, there are historical precedents for the US and even the erstwhile Soviet Union (SU) interceding to prevent a prolonged conflict with cut-off weapons supplies to the belligerents. One key reason why great powers seek to intercede in conflicts such as the Ukraine-Russia war is to maintain strategic flexibility, allowing them to avoid firm alignment when they lack direct stakes or when the war’s outcome remains uncertain. Even in instances where Washington has had treaty commitments, it restrained or rebuked its allies and in other instances, Washington has come to the aid of states that were either neutral or not allies.
Although lessons from history tend to be contingent, inexact and messy, the most direct, yet partial historical example comes from the Indian Subcontinent, which will provide some context and illuminate why the Trump administration is pursuing diplomacy to broker an end to the Ukraine-Russia conflict and diluting its commitment to NATO. The India-Pakistan War of 1965 broke out as a result of Pakistani aggression against India. The war itself was preceded by several key developments such as an encounter between Indian and Pakistani forces in the Rann of Kutch in early 1965.
More critically, the decade preceding the war witnessed Pakistan join multiple treaties in the 1950s, ostensibly to counter communism but primarily to bolster its military against India. These treaties included the Middle East Defence Organisation (MEDO), the Central Treaty Organisation (CENTO), and the Southeast Asia Treaty Organisation (SEATO). In early August 1965, Pakistan launched ‘Operation Gibraltar’ when the Pakistan Army crossed the ceasefire line in Jammu and Kashmir.
Meanwhile, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) threatened to open a second military front along the contested Sino-Indian border. The US made it clear to Beijing that any military action by the PRC across the Sino-Indian boundary would not be tolerated by Washington which was relayed through US envoy to Poland Amb. John M. Cabot during a meeting with a Chinese Communist representative on 14 September 1965.
For its part, the US announced a unilateral cut-off in military supplies to both Pakistan and India for the war Rawalpindi precipitated. Pakistan interpreted its membership to the treaties listed above as giving it the licence to attack India and continued military assistance from Washington, whereas India had every reason to be aggrieved for being subjected to a cut-off weapons supply. Washington saw its treaty obligation to Pakistan as only covering the fight against Soviet communist aggression or an unprovoked attack by India with the Pakistanis objecting that was the case. The effect of Washington’s military assistance cut-off was felt more by Pakistan because its dependence was greater on Washington than India and catalysed a ceasefire and, eventually, the Soviet-brokered agreement at Tashkent.
The “rules-based international order” was fragile then, and remains to be so with Trump pressuring the neutral, yet democratic Ukraine into a ceasefire despite being victims of Russian aggression and refusing to provide an ironclad guarantee for continued support to Kyiv’s war aims. He has reinforced this by diluting American commitment to NATO’s Article 5 which requires every member state of the treaty to come to the defence of any member state under attack from an adversary unless they spend 5 percent of their Gross Domestic Product (GDP). This has compelled, as is visibly evident, the European members of NATO to raise military spending and possibly a common defence that is independent of Washington. Just as Washington interpreted treaty commitments to Pakistan flexibly in the 1960s, the US has done similarly with NATO and Ukraine.
Although Kyiv is not a member of NATO, it received generous military support for three years until Trump decided to threaten its dilution and reinterpret the conditions of support to NATO. Washington’s military support for a non-treaty partner such as Ukraine is significant and remarkable because there are no examples of the US extending such assistance to any non-treaty partner. While the progress of the war is grindingly slow for Russia, there are absolutely no tangible battlefield gains evident for Kyiv.
As we have seen with our historical example, while neutral India suffered a military aid cut-off from the US in the mid-1960s, so did Pakistan. In the same war, Beijing was also deterred with a military response if it intervened on behalf of Pakistan, despite New Delhi not being a treaty ally of Washington. There is also anecdotal evidence to indicate that Washington and Moscow tacitly colluded to restrain Mao’s China against India in the India-Pakistan War of 1965. Three years earlier during the 1962 Sino-Indian war, the US came to India’s assistance when India sought it as a non-ally. Almost a decade later during the 1971 India-Pakistan War, the US flipped sides and “tilted” in favour of Pakistan—not just to support an ally, but equally demonstrate its credibility in its emerging rapprochement with the PRC that the whole of Pakistan would not be fragmented by New Delhi.
As the foregoing history demonstrates, there is one constant—Washington has interpreted its commitments vis-à-vis both ally and non-ally flexibly to influence outcomes that end conflicts. It has preserved its equities even between two adversaries such as India and Pakistan as it is doing with Ukraine and its European NATO partners on the one hand and Russia on the other. Finally, the Trump administration’s conduct on strategic or security issues and more broadly the balance of power does not represent a significant departure from the past.
European states have been luckier than other treaty states in that Washington underwrote their security under the auspices of NATO and assumed a disproportionate share of the burden for decades, which was never going to endure forever. One lesson is crystal clear, under the Trump administration and very possibly its successors that neither ally or strategic partner (especially India) nor foe can take the US support for granted when it comes to their military security and defence.
