How to Make the U.S.-Ukraine Security Pact Stick

The bilateral security agreement signed by U.S. President Joe Biden and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on June 13 marks a major step forward in Washington’s strategy toward Ukraine and Russia. For more than two years, U.S. support for Ukraine’s fight against Russian aggression has been doled out in one-off emergency tranches, with question marks hanging over each new package. The lack of a long-term vision has encouraged Russian President Vladimir Putin to think that time is on his side and that he can outlast Ukraine and the United States. The new U.S.-Ukraine agreement, if properly resourced and implemented, should chip away at Putin’s confidence.

Along with a latticework of similar deals Kyiv has inked with more than a dozen other countries, the agreement commits the United States to a 10-year program of support to build and maintain Ukraine’s “credible defense and deterrence capability.” The Biden administration wants this organizing concept to underpin the West’s long-term military aid to Kyiv, guiding everything from training, exercises, and weapons transfers to intelligence sharing and defense-industrial cooperation. In that way, it is like the “qualitative military edge” principle that has been the cornerstone of U.S. security aid for Israel dating back to the Cold War.

To be clear, the U.S.-Ukraine agreement is not a security guarantee. It does not commit the United States to using its own armed forces in Ukraine’s defense. Nor does it outline a path for Ukraine to join NATO, which Kyiv believes is the only way to end Russia’s aggression for good. As long as the war is raging, no U.S. president is likely to extend Ukraine a security guarantee, because doing so would draw American troops into a direct fight with Russia.

The U.S.-Ukraine agreement implicitly acknowledges that there is no shortcut to end the war: neither through a premature Ukrainian offensive nor through hasty negotiations. Instead, the baseline assumption is that the United States will need to make long-term investments in Ukraine’s military regardless of how the conflict evolves. Doing so can set the conditions for war termination by putting Kyiv in a stronger position from which to either go on offense or enter talks. But Biden and Ukraine’s supporters in Congress should be realistic that this process could take years and will require patience, bipartisan political will, and unity with allies and partners. To support Kyiv over the long term, and to win over critics of Biden’s approach at home, the White House and Congress need to start talking.

Some Republicans in Congress have denounced Biden’s approach to Ukraine as lacking direction and “endlessly funding a stalemate.” Frustrated lawmakers have mandated that the president furnish a strategy to “hasten Ukrainian victory,” along with “specific and achievable objectives” for U.S. support, multiyear cost estimates, and metrics of progress. Congress is right to press the White House for policy clarity. Yet the theories of victory and war termination mooted by the administration’s critics are as divergent as they are unrealistic.

One camp argues that Biden is deliberately hamstringing Ukraine by throttling the supply of new weapons and imposing needless policy restrictions. There are valid critiques of these decisions, to be sure. But in many cases, the hesitation to supply more or higher-quality weapons has less to do with political timidity and more to do with lack of inventory or the sheer logistical challenge of training all of the personnel required to operate them in a safe and sustainable way.

Moreover, the failure of Ukraine’s counteroffensive last year should make clear that overcoming Russia’s prepared defenses will require a lot more than a few hundred long-range missiles. After-action reports show that Ukraine was unable to conduct complex, synchronized offensive operations at the scale required to shift the front lines—let alone the fact that any modern army, no matter how well trained, would struggle to cross vast minefields and fortifications under the constant gaze of killer drones. Even as it begins to fix its manpower challenges, the Ukrainian Armed Forces will require years of training, equipping, and advising before it will have a realistic shot at dislodging entrenched Russian forces from occupied territory.

A second camp argues the opposite: that the United States should cease or significantly scale back support for Ukraine, instead pressuring the country into peace talks with Russia. These critics argue that the war is unwinnable, and that U.S. support for Kyiv is a distraction from more pressing security challenges in the Middle East and Asia-Pacific. What they gloss over, however, are the words coming out of Putin’s mouth: The Russian leader made clear as recently as a few weeks ago that he is not interested in negotiating with Kyiv on terms short of capitulation.

What is clear is that neither a quick Ukrainian battlefield victory nor a stable negotiated settlement is in the offing. With this in mind, U.S. commitments center on building up Ukraine’s long-term military strength for the twin purposes of defense and deterrence, rather than on preparing Kyiv for a specific offensive at some future date. Biden’s emerging strategy is to turn Ukraine into an impenetrable fortress with a large, well-trained army and a substantial arsenal of long-range strike assets. Over time, through a combination of denial and retaliation, Ukraine’s ability to blunt Russian advances will only grow, and Russian forces will suffer ever-cascading equipment and personnel losses.

But this long-term approach requires greater coordination between arms of government in the United States—otherwise progress could be undone partially or even completely with a change in power.

First, the Biden administration owes lawmakers a clearer picture of what Ukraine’s future force will look like and how much it will cost to build and maintain it. The NATO summit in Washington is the perfect opportunity to launch a dedicated process that will bring together American, European, and Ukrainian military planners to elaborate a shared concept and cost estimate for what will constitute a “credible defense and deterrence capability.”

By the end of 2024, the White House should present a detailed blueprint to Congress. This plan should contain concrete force development benchmarks: research and development of new technologies, investment in defense production lines, acquisition of key weapons platforms, training of personnel, and sustainment. Some of this planning work has already begun in the multinational working groups known as “capability coalitions,” but the Biden administration has yet to explain how the coalitions will link up with the web of bilateral security agreements and with NATO’s role in enhancing Ukrainian capacity and interoperability.

This planning process should also produce consensus on how Ukraine’s force will be sustainably financed. For Congress to greenlight another large aid package for Ukraine, lawmakers will want to see commitments from European allies to fund a significant share of the costs. The converse is also true: European allies will want to make sure that U.S. military aid for Ukraine will not again be held hostage by domestic politics. Without American aid, Europe does not have the defense production capacity, training capabilities, or high-end technologies to support Ukraine on its own. Other mechanisms, such as the G-7’s $50 billion loan that will be funded through the profits from frozen Russian sovereign assets, will be part of this equation, too.

Second, Congress should consider using its legislative power to strengthen the U.S.-Ukraine agreement. Commentators have noted the document’s obvious weak point: Although parts of it constitute a binding executive agreement, it has not been ratified by Congress. As a result, it contains no additional financial pledges and no guarantee that lawmakers will approve new funding to implement the agreement. One option for Congress to consider would be to craft special procedures for bringing future Ukraine-related appropriations to a vote that would both ensure proper oversight and accountability and avoid needless political delays. Enshrining a more predictable and transparent process for future appropriations would not only give lawmakers a greater opportunity to weigh in on strategy and policy; it would also help Ukraine plan more effectively and would therefore reduce costs to the American taxpayer over the long haul.

Moreover, without Congress’s explicit endorsement, it will be easier for a future president to suspend implementation or withdraw from the agreement entirely. The current text gives the president the option to terminate the agreement after providing Ukraine a six-month notification. That decision, if it is made without proper cause, would no doubt trigger an intense period of public scrutiny—but it is a weak guardrail. Congress might consider adopting implementing legislation to codify elements of the agreement into law, which a future president cannot unilaterally undo. This may seem like a long shot, especially during an election year. But the overwhelming bipartisan vote in favor of the latest aid package shows how it can be done. The fact that some House Republicans have criticized the agreement for not being legislatively binding suggests they might be open to codifying it.

Finally, the White House and Congress should start discussing what the United States would do if, after major combat operations end, Russia attacks Ukraine again in the future. During a cessation of fighting, Russia must be convinced that it cannot rearm in order to prepare for another invasion, and Ukraine must be assured that it will have the enduring support of its partners in order to rebuild its military strength.

The U.S.-Ukraine agreement, as well as the other agreements signed by Kyiv’s partners, all contain vague commitments to consult and determine next steps in case of a future attack. It is not too early for Biden and Congress to start a dialogue on what those steps might look like. Creating weapons stockpiles in Europe or deploying U.S. trainers or monitors to Ukrainian territory, for example, could help deter Russia from relaunching the war once hostilities subside. If Washington can lead its allies in articulating a credible cease-fire enforcement mechanism now, Ukraine is far more likely to win the peace—whenever that day comes.

Putin’s theory of victory is to exhaust Ukraine’s will to resist and the West’s will to support it. That strategy will no longer be viable if the United States and its allies properly coordinate and fund the commitments they have made to support Ukraine’s defense and deterrence capabilities over the long term.