Biden fears sending weapons he considers ‘escalatory,’ demonstrating the very restraint Putin counts on consistently from democrats, who think ‘escalation’ is dangerous and therefore must always be avoided. Escalation is dangerous. But such restraint likely emboldened Putin, which led to his original miscalculation and overextension in Ukraine. Our ‘defense-only’ strategy guarantees that the Ukrainians will fight hard on Ukrainian land … but then will eventually run out of ammo. President Biden sends many advanced weapons – but not the very advanced ones that might win the war by escalating the conflict or imposing unacceptable cost and exposing Russian weakness.

So what are President Biden’s wartime goals today? The longer the war continues, the less coherent such goals seem.

If Americans wake up tomorrow and learn that Ukrainian President Zelenskyy were killed in an airstrike, we would be appalled but not surprised. The Russians no doubt want him dead. But is the United States helping Ukrainians threaten Putin (or at least his reputation inside Russia) or Russians in return? If not, how can we expect this war to end favorably to anyone but Putin? At present, Putin can conduct an endless war, fearing no threat to himself, as long as he can divert public focus elsewhere and control information internally.

The Biden Administration and NATO seem intimidated by Putin and his military threats. Yet Russian forces attack civilian targets almost daily. Why isn’t Putin threatened by U.S. and NATO capability?

Putin perceives Biden as weak – not likely to act unpredictably or risk conflict with Russian forces; convinced that consistency is more likely to accrue advantage than guile. He likely sees Biden as not his equal – too inured by decades of Foreign Affairs Committee sophistry; too intimidated to escalate the war; and certainly not willing to confront Putin directly or threaten him. Putin has called Biden a career politician – a slur in his mind, someone predictable and risk-averse.

Democrats and the isolationist wing of the Republican party consistently fear ‘regime change,’ noting (correctly) that regime change invites ‘instability’ (meaning to them ‘danger’). Democrats and the isolationist wing of the Republican party also consistently fear ‘escalation’ and thus pull back from prosecuting a war to its coherent end. They are constantly reacting to Russian operations with weapon systems designed only to defeat Russian operations (meaning Ukrainian forces are forever going to be ‘defeating’ Russian operations.)  But one cannot win anything if nothing is risked.

Putin’s war exposes President Xi of China as another dictator, curious and privately supportive of a revanchist Russia attempting to extend its empire through force. Xi issues nonsense public statements, ignoring Russian war crimes, and attempts to legitimize an outrageous and illegitimate war, which has caused the deaths of thousands of civilians. The war exposes Xi as another autocrat, likely willing to conduct violence to further communist Chinese goals.

The United States cannot help Ukraine win this war if it fears escalating it. And it certainly cannot win the war if it cannot conceive of a favorable war end.

Since it is hard for the Biden Administration to discern and explain to the American people what an acceptable end to the war is, perhaps we can discern what ends would not be acceptable:

1. Putin returning to the G20; business as before
2. Putin forever prohibiting Ukraine’s progress toward joining the EU and NATO
3. Putin and his military escaping war crime charges
4. Russian businesses returning to business with the West as before
5. European states buying Russian oil and gas as before
6. Russia rejoining Western institutions as before
7. Russia emerging stronger than before the war

The Putin (autocracy) strategy of keeping border states weak, unstable, and subservient to Moscow must end forever. Authoritarianism is cheap governance and incompatible with modernity. Russians must come to terms with their history and reject authoritarianism forever. Any ‘frozen conflict’ or any degree of status quo ante rewards authoritarianism and emboldens both Putin and President Xi of China, who thinks that China’s ‘near abroad’ must also remain weak and subservient.

But no ‘frozen conflict’ solution can ever allow Putin to return to the G20, sell oil again to any liberal democratic state, or be free from Western sanctions. Regardless of where the violence in eastern Ukraine ends, Putinism is fundamentally incompatible with the Western liberal democratic states – forever. As soon as U.S. and NATO leadership state this, the better.

Putin likely invaded because a democratic, economically successful Ukraine would suggest to the Russian population that it can someday be both economically successful and politically free – something Putin cannot allow. But since Ukraine has been deeply hurt, Putin could argue to himself and his constituencies that he has succeeded:  Ukraine today poses no threat of emerging as an economically and politically free state on Russia’s border anytime soon. Putin can claim that he has set back Ukraine a decade, destroyed its military to a significant degree, and kept the United States and NATO away from the Russian border.

Let Putin claim this. Over time, Russian weakness from Putinism will become more and more evident. Both military sacrifice and economic sanctions will come closer to the Russian people if the conflict were to be frozen today. In other words, as long as Putin does not return to status quo ante, he has lost much.

The United States finds itself (whether it realizes it or not) at a George Kennan moment. Since 2000, the United States has told itself that involving the autocracies of Russia and China in a web of entangled trade, economic, and military regimes would eventually pull them into the West and lead to liberal democracy inside both states. This policy of ‘entanglement and enlargement,’ pursued by majority segments of both U.S. parties, was naïve and has utterly failed. But to date, no American political leader has fashioned a replacement. The Biden Administration seems disinterested or intellectually incapable of perceiving something to replace it – and so continues it, despite the near consensus that it has failed. Yet recognizing that autocracy is incompatible with liberal democracy and modernity is today a self-evident insight.

Today, Russia and China agitate for political change around the world, while the United States remains a status quo power. This dynamic must be flipped. The current Russian and Chinese governments want Americans to be afraid to demand political progress from them. They achieve this through intimidation, influence operations, the corruption of U.S. academia and journalism, cyberspace operations, and scaremongering. That is why the United States and NATO must muster the political strength, will, and leadership to advance the only coherent national strategy left. We are in an era of zero-sum political competition, whether we like it or not, with the global autocracies, which work to advance U.S. decline as we naively hope that they will somehow develop into liberal democracies.

James Van de Velde, Ph.D., is a Professor at the National Defense University and an Adjunct Faculty Member at Johns Hopkins University. The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not reflect the official policy or position of the National Defense University, the Department of Defense, or the U. S. Government.

This article was first published by RealClearDefense.