The U.S. and its allies could soon authorize Ukraine to launch missiles deep inside Russian territory — a move which experts say would constitute an escalation of the war.
President Joe Biden is considering a Ukrainian request to fire Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS) — long-range, American-made weapons — across the Russian border, according to the New York Times. The surface-to-surface missiles, which were provided to Ukraine last year, have thus far been limited to targets inside Ukraine.
The U.K. and France are also weighing whether to permit Ukraine to use European-made missiles — including Storm Shadows and SCALPS — to attack farther into Russia.
The western deliberations come after Iran began providing Fath-360 missiles , short-range ballistic weapons, to Russia.
The U.S. condemned Iran’s actions as a “significant and dangerous escalation .”
Global security experts said that by greenlighting deeper missile strikes on Russia, the U.S. and its NATO allies would be contributing to this escalation — which carries profound risks.
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Missile strikes
“While we cannot forget that it’s Russia who launched this war by invading Ukraine, in this case it is actually NATO that is escalating to a new level of confrontation,” Robert David English , a professor of international relations, who researches Russia, at the University of Southern California, told McClatchy News.
The Iran-supplied missiles have a maximum range of 75 miles, while missiles supplied by NATO can reach targets close to 200 miles away, meaning it’s not a tit-for-tat retaliation, English said.
“We are in dangerous, uncharted territory,” English said. “Never before have opposing nuclear powers traveled so far up what strategists like Thomas Schelling and Herman Kahn called the ‘ladder of escalation.’”
Echoing this sentiment, Steve Fetter , a professor of public policy at the University of Maryland, told McClatchy News, “I do think there is a real chance of escalation.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin recently said as much himself.
By allowing Ukraine to launch long-range missiles into Russia, NATO “would substantially change the very essence, the nature of the conflict,” putting it at war with Russia, Putin said in early September, according to the BBC.
Asked to respond to these comments on Sept. 14, Biden said, “I don’t think much about Vladimir Putin.”
While authorizing further strikes on Russia would be risky, there also exist risks in not acting, James Goldgeier , a professor of foreign policy and global security at American University, said.
If the U.S. and its allies do not permit these strikes, it would leave Ukraine “vulnerable to these devastating attacks and will make it harder for it to survive,” Goldgeier said. “Iran’s supply of missiles to Russia makes this more important.”
“It should be said that such long-range strikes will not ‘win’ the war for Ukraine,” Sergey Radchenko , a professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, told McClatchy News. “What they might do is deter Russia from carrying out strikes of its own, leading to a kind of balance of deterrence, which could actually aid in bringing the war to an end.”
Russia has relocated many of its military systems out of range of ATACMS, potentially blunting their impact, according to the New York Times.
Neither the White House nor the Kremlin responded to requests for comment from McClatchy News.
Just the latest escalation
Since the war began in 2022, Russia, Ukraine and its western allies have “gradually intensified their actions,” Alex Brideau , a Russian foreign policy analyst at Eurasia Group, a political risk firm, told McClatchy News.
For example, NATO has slowly provided Ukraine with more sophisticated weapons, including tanks, anti-aircraft missiles and F-16 fighter jets .
“Both sides have crossed thresholds, but the responses have been short of those that might trigger extreme outcomes, like a direct war between Russia and NATO or the use of a nuclear weapon,” Brideau said.
“The administration has probed Putin’s so-called red lines very carefully, precisely because they understand the dangers of escalation,” Radchenko said.
Neither side desires a direct conflict between NATO and Russia, and both have enacted measures to steer clear of it, Brideau said.
For example, the U.S. has committed to keeping American troops out of Ukraine, and “Romania and Poland have not sought formal NATO consultations when Russian aircraft have violated their airspace or crashed on their territory,” he said.
Further, Putin’s remarks about increased Ukrainian missile strikes were “vague,” giving him “room to respond without binding him to actions that would be more likely to trigger a conventional conflict with NATO,” Brideau said.
Still, this slow-moving gambit of ever-increasing escalation is perilous, experts said.
“The fact that (Putin’s) ‘red lines’ have been repeatedly crossed with impunity does not mean that red lines do not exist,” Radchenko said.
While these missile strikes on their own, if permitted, are unlikely to result in Putin responding with nuclear weapons, if faced with the possibility of humiliating defeat or a significant loss of Russian troops, it’s conceivable he could resort to the nuclear option, Fetter said.
“I do worry,” Fetter said. “It’s like walking in the fog towards the cliff with each step. You say, ‘so far, so good,’ but you don’t know where that edge is.”
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