Colin Kahl: ‘We’re All In’ on Supporting Ukraine

Last October, when the Pentagon released its National Defense Strategy, scholars and policy wonks pored over the document for signs of the long-term thinking behind the Biden administration’s day-to-day decisions. And one thing emerged quite clearly: that the White House sees Beijing as its “most consequential strategic competitor.” China is described in the document as a “pacing challenge”—a competitor not just in the immediate term, but also a growing one in the medium and longer term.

How does Washington plan to deal with this challenge? How does it prioritize this alongside more pressing immediate concerns, not least with Russia’s war in Ukraine, but also regarding North Korea, Iran, and beyond?

I spoke with one of the architects of the National Defense Strategy—one of the Biden administration’s senior-most policymakers—on FP Live, the magazine’s platform for live journalism. Colin Kahl is the U.S. undersecretary of defense for policy. He has in the past served as a deputy assistant to President Barack Obama, and between 2014 and 2017 served as Vice President Joe Biden’s national security advisor.

FP subscribers can watch the hourlong discussion on video in the box atop this page. What follows is a lightly edited and condensed transcript, exclusive to FP Insiders.

Ravi Agrawal: I have to start with the leaked Department of Defense documents. When did it first come to your attentions?

Colin Kahl: We first had word of the unauthorized disclosures on April 6, and ever since then, it’s been all hands on deck. It’s been a 24/7 exercise to understand the scope and scale of what happened and what we can do to make sure it doesn’t happen again.

RA: How would you assess the damage from these leaks?

CK: Any disclosure of material purporting to be top secret in nature is a significant challenge for our national security, which is why we’re taking it so seriously.

RA: Well, to get a bit more specific, the leaks suggested that Ukraine’s air defense system is close to collapse, and that the Pentagon is actually more pessimistic about Ukraine’s chances in the war than it has been publicly. Anything you’d like to say on that?

CK: Air defense has been a top priority for us for the entire war. Ever since the fall and winter, we have really been surging air defense capabilities to Ukraine to include a U.S. Patriot system alongside one that Germany is providing. We’ve contributed NASAMS (National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile Systems) and other short-, medium-, and long-range air defense and missile defense systems. We’re doing everything we can to both make sure that Ukraine’s Soviet legacy air defense systems remain viable and that Western systems arrive so that Ukraine can stay in the fight. I’m confident that we and our allies will be able to do that. This week, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin will convene yet another Ukraine defense contact group meeting with 50-odd countries at Ramstein Air Base in Germany, and I expect air defense to be a top priority there, too.

RA: What’s the Pentagon doing to make sure we don’t have another Jack Teixeira-type incident in the future?

CK: What happened was a criminal act. People with security clearances have an obligation to protect that information. That’s why there’s a criminal investigation underway that the Department of Justice is leading.

We already have a lot of procedures in place dating back to previous leaks like the Snowden incident. And so one question really is, were all the procedures that are already in place followed in this instance? If not, why not? And what can be done to make sure things are buttoned up? What additional vulnerabilities have come to light as a consequence of this incident? And how can we get after closing those vulnerabilities? The secretary of defense has been meeting on this issue with his senior leadership multiple times a day since the documents started to appear online. And he’s asked his senior leadership to give him concrete proposals in the very near term to make things safer and reduce vulnerabilities. You should expect to see some of that in the coming days.

RA: Are there any strategic changes that are being put in place because of anything that’s been leaked, whether or not you can verify any of those leaks?

CK: We have reduced the circulation of certain types of documents during this period, and we’ll do a comprehensive review to make sure that only people who have a need to know actually have access to the types of documents we’re talking about.

RA: Let’s discuss Russia’s invasion of Ukraine more broadly. There’s little question that the Biden administration has done more than any other nation—in material terms—to keep Ukraine in the fight, but there’s a line of criticism that argues that the White House policy is essentially one of incrementalism. The White House often says no to certain kinds of weapons requests, and then a few months later, it goes ahead and sends those weapons in. With the forthcoming spring offensive, how do you see this moment? Is it a moment to go all in? Why hold off on more ATACMS (Army Tactical Missile Systems), for example?

CK: The Biden administration has contributed more than $35 billion of security assistance to Ukraine in a little more than a year. That is an extraordinary amount of security assistance. The mere fact that we could do that bureaucratically and logistically is a miracle. The reality was we didn’t have $35 billion the day that Russia invaded. In the first six weeks of the war, we had a few billion dollars. You have to prioritize. You don’t have unlimited amounts of money. The taxpayers provide this money. We have to be good stewards of it.

At every stage, as Congress has provided us resources, we have prioritized what Ukraine needed most in that moment. In the beginning of the war, the priority was understandably on anti-tank systems like Javelin and manned portable air defense systems and artillery and ammunition for Soviet legacy equipment. As the conflict shifted to the east, we shifted toward transitioning them away from Soviet legacy artillery to NATO’s standard artillery system. So we started to send them the howitzers, the 155-millimeter guns, as well as the HIMARS (High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems). What that allowed them to do was to hold the line in the east and then make a breakthrough in the northeast, in Kharkiv and also down south in Kherson. As we transitioned into winter and we knew that the conflict was going to transition into a slog, we made two priorities. One was to bolster Western air defense systems. I already mentioned the Patriot systems, but also to make sure that they had sufficient artillery and that we were providing them the armored and mechanized systems that we knew they would need and would need to be trained on for the upcoming spring and summer offensive.

We are all in. We have trained thousands of Ukrainians on how to use systems like the Bradleys and the Stryker vehicles, as well as the Leopard tanks and the Challenger tanks and others that have flowed into Ukraine. The Russians supposedly started their offensive back in January, but if you actually look at a map, you can measure their progress in very small increments, sometimes in blocks in places like Bakhmut. They have suffered horrendously for those gains. We’re putting the Ukrainians in a position where once the counteroffensive launches, they have a good chance of changing that dynamic on the front lines.

RA: But the recent leaks seem to have validated some of Ukraine’s concerns, that they’re not equipped enough. Is it just that the funding restrictions from Congress are holding things back?

CK: We have obviously had an extraordinary amount of money that Congress has given us to provide security assistance to the Ukrainians, but it’s not unlimited. So every single time we have to make a decision, one has to ask the question, you know, was it more important to provide a Patriot system on day one of the war, knowing that it wouldn’t arrive for months because of the training and the time it would take, or to use that same money because there’s a zero-sum relationship to provide them Stinger manned portable air defense systems. Well, the answer is obvious. You needed to give them the Stinger missiles. And right now, a good example is the question about F-16s. We have about $3 billion left in presidential drawdown authority. We could spend all of that money on F-16s and those aircraft would arrive about a year and a half from now. And they would be something that Ukrainians would welcome, but they would be completely irrelevant to the spring and summer offensive. If you have to prioritize that $3 billion, you are going to spend it on air defense, artillery, and the mechanized forces that they actually need to be successful in the spring and summer. We have to make those hard choices each and every day. As a general matter, we have not held things back.

RA: Some Republican leaders say that America should focus more on China instead of Ukraine. There are also polls that suggest that there is a declining appetite among Republican voters especially for supporting Ukraine. It could get harder to raise additional funding for Ukraine. How do those facts change your thinking about aiding Ukraine?

CK: There remains bipartisan consensus that the United States has a compelling national interest in assisting Ukraine. I hear the same voices that you’ve heard. I think sometimes they are loud, but I think they represent a minority, including on the Republican side. I think that there is substantial bipartisan support for Ukraine, and I hope that that will be sustained going forward. A lot of people have predicted that support would fall off internationally as well, not the least of which in Europe. It hasn’t happened. And in large part that’s because Europe obviously has a strong stake in this conflict and because of the leadership of the United States.

RA: A year has gone by in the fighting and [Russian President Vladimir] Putin hasn’t used nuclear weapons. Does that fact change your risk assessment regarding nuclear escalation?

CK: It is a misnomer that we have somehow held back on a large number of things out of concern for escalation. We have expressed our concern about U.S.-provided equipment and materiel being used to strike targets inside of Russia. But by and large, we have not held things back because of a concern for escalation. After all, if Russia is worried about the consequences of the war for Russia’s security, Vladimir Putin can stop the war tomorrow and that problem is solved. In the exchanges that we’ve had with Russian officials, they have constantly made the point that Russia’s nuclear doctrine is not changed, that they would only use nuclear weapons in the event of an existential threat to the Russian state. We don’t think the war poses that threat.

President Biden has also made clear that while we will do everything we can to support Ukraine, the United States does not have an interest in directly entering the conflict and seeing the conflict escalate to World War III, either. So we will continue to measure what we do against the risks, not only for what’s going on in Ukraine, but for the conflict spilling over and having broader implications for U.S. national security.

RA: How does the Pentagon think about the potential for a negotiated settlement?

CK: I don’t think that negotiations are imminent. You’re likely to see quite intense fighting in the coming months as both sides jockey for advantage on the battlefield. In the event that Ukraine’s expected counteroffensive proves successful, that will put them in a better position. Now, at that point, whether the parties pivot to negotiations will ultimately be up to the two sides. But we are not going to impose that outcome on the Ukrainians. Our position has been that if Ukraine is ready to sit down and negotiate and they have a willing partner on the other side with the Russians, that the Ukrainians are in the best position to negotiate from a position of strength.

RA: What are you expecting from a forthcoming spring offensive on Ukraine’s part?

CK: As the weather turns and is more favorable to using the type of armored and mechanized equipment that have been provided to them, I do think the Ukrainians will have opportunities to change the kind of dynamic that you’ve seen on the front line since the winter, which is kind of been this Bakhmut-ization of the conflict where the two sides have fought over very small slivers of terrain, trading city blocks and small parts of towns and countryside. But the map is not fundamentally different than it was three or four months ago. They will be in a position to change that dynamic.

The other thing that we can be certain of is that regardless of the outcome of the counteroffensive, Russia has already lost by every measure. Putin’s objectives have not been fulfilled and they will not be fulfilled. He wanted to wipe Ukraine off the map and absorb it into a broader Russian empire. That didn’t happen. It’s not going to happen. A sovereign, independent, democratic Ukraine will survive and endure. He wanted to invade Ukraine to demonstrate Russian power. Russia is going to emerge from this conflict weaker than it was going in. He wanted to go in and divide the West and weaken NATO. He has generated the exact opposite effect.

RA: Let’s move to China. There’s little doubt that China’s actions contribute to fears in the United States about a great-power competition. Your administration calls it a “pacing challenge.” Isn’t some of this a self-fulfilling prophecy, though? How do you think through policymaking with an eye to not creating an escalatory spiral with China?

CK: First of all, those two words—“pacing challenge”—were chosen intentionally. It’s a challenge because China is the only country in the world that increasingly has the military, technological, economic, and diplomatic capabilities to challenge the United States; it also has the intent to do so and displace the United States as the world’s leading power.

Conflict with China is not imminent or inevitable. Just because they are a challenge does not mean that we should invite a conflict. It would be devastating for everybody involved and create unbelievable collateral damage to the world economy. It would be a conflict between two nuclear powers. Nobody wants or should invite that outcome. But the reality is that China has ambitions to establish a sphere of military and political influence in the Asia-Pacific and abroad that threatens U.S. interests and also those of our allies and partners. And we’re going to defend ourselves and our allies and partners.

On the other hand, you don’t want to take actions that overheat the situation and spiral. We’ve been trying to emphasize that we will be responsible. We do not look to unilaterally change the status quo. We don’t support others unilaterally changing the status quo. We do not want a conflict with China. In all of his interactions with President Xi Jinping, President Biden has emphasized the importance of putting guardrails around our competition or emphasizing strategic stability and crisis communications. Xi often leaves those meetings saying the right things, but the reality is Beijing is not picking up the phone when we’re calling them. When you have crises around a speaker of the House visit to Taiwan or the recent transit by the president of Taiwan through the United States, our outreach to China is largely ignored. It’s incumbent upon both sides to make sure that we build these guardrails so that we don’t have the spiral and self-fulfilling prophecy that you referenced.

RA: So, when you call China, no one picks up the phone? Can you tell me a little bit more about that? During the Cold War, the U.S. and the Soviet Union had a hotline to diffuse crises. You’re saying there is some sort of a mechanism with China, but they’re just not responding?

CK: The problem is not a technological one. A call can happen at a moment’s notice in military channels or political channels. That’s not the problem. The problem is political will on the other side.

A couple of things are going on here. First, China has a very centralized system. Xi Jinping doesn’t like to empower his subordinates to have contacts with the United States without his explicit permission. That slows down connections below the very top and requires getting permission all the way up to Xi Jinping himself for those contacts to happen. Second, China has a different theory than the United States and the Soviet Union had during the Cold War. Coming out of the Berlin crisis, but especially the Cuban missile crisis, there was a sense in both Moscow and Washington that the two sides had to communicate with one another to prevent Armageddon. China has a very different view. They seem to have the view that crisis communications will be an excuse for the United States to create more crises so that we can then manage them, and that if we want to avoid crises, there’s a simple solution, and that’s to get out of the Western Pacific and to abandon our alliances and partnerships and leave that part of the world to be an exclusive sphere of influence lorded over by Beijing. That’s a theory that’s very incompatible with the types of robust crisis communications. This is an issue that President Biden has raised with Xi Jinping on a number of occasions. Xi has said that he’s committed to improving these types of communications. We just haven’t seen it manifested yet.

RA: When it comes to U.S. policy on China, I often wonder, where is all of this headed? What kind of outcome would strike you as a good outcome for Washington?

CK: The Department of Defense’s primary job vis-à-vis China is deterrence. It’s important that the Chinese leadership wakes up every single day and says “today is not the day” to launch an invasion across the Taiwan Strait or to challenge U.S. allies in the South China Sea or the East China Sea, or to engage in other aggression that could threaten the rules-based international order or the global economy, U.S. interests, and the interests of our allies and partners.

Our deterrent remains robust today. I do not think the leadership in Beijing doubts that for one moment, and when they look at the military that we are building over time, I think that that deterrent will remain real for years to come.

RA: You used the phrase “today is not the day.” It’s similar to another phrase I often hear in discussions about Taiwan, which is to “raise the costs” so high that China wouldn’t consider attacking Taiwan. But all of this just sounds like kicking the can down the road, doesn’t it? So China will eventually take Taiwan, and all you can do is delay that?

CK: I don’t think that’s true. China is going through the most breathtaking military modernization any country has gone through since the 1930s, certainly in the post-World War II era. In many respects, China has seen the United States as their pacing challenge probably since the 1990s from the Gulf War.

The reality, though, is that our deterrent right now is real. I do not think that the Chinese leadership believes that their military is capable of taking on the United States right now. The question is, over time, will that calculus change? And so, yes, the time scale is sliding forward, but we are also moving forward. And the investments that we’ve made in the three budgets since President Biden came into office under the stewardship of Secretary Austin are precisely to build that capability so that even as China’s capability grows, ours is pacing to that challenge and therefore today is never the day. So you’re right to some degree that we’re just sliding things in time. But we also did that during the Cold War for four or five decades. So there is the capability to maintain deterrence over time and then over time build increasing guardrails for stability such that you’re not worrying on any given day that the other side is going to commit aggression that could pull the two sides in a conflict.

RA: Why is Taiwan such an important defense priority? I ask because surely this isn’t just about democracy. If it was, Washington would care more about democracy in some of the other parts of the world as well, whether it’s India or Israel or any number of other troubled democracies.

CK: Taiwan is not a defense priority per se. It is a U.S. national security priority, of which the defense priority is nested under. It’s not something that the Biden administration imposed as a priority on the United States. Under the Taiwan Relations Act, there is a bipartisan agreement that it’s in the U.S. national interest to ensure that Taiwan has the ability to defend itself and that the United States maintains the capacity to prevent forced change in the status quo across the Taiwan Strait.

Our One China policy has not changed. We don’t support a unilateral move by either side to change the status quo. We don’t support forced reunification by Beijing and we don’t support independence by Taiwan. But the reason that Taiwan matters is not just because of the fact that the island could be used as a platform for the [People’s Republic of China] to further project military power deeper into the Pacific, but also because Taiwan is a vibrant democracy of 29 million people, because Taiwan is the leading producer of the most advanced microelectronics in the world, and Taiwan as an economic entity matters an extraordinary amount to the global economy. A war across the Taiwan Strait is not just something that would impact American lives and American prosperity. It would impact the lives and prosperity of people all around the world. No one has an interest in a war breaking out across the Taiwan Strait. Our national defense strategy recognizes that reality.

RA: What’s the area that you think critics misunderstand about the broader National Defense Strategy?

CK: One of the critiques that I’ve heard is that the concept of integrated deterrence, which is really a cornerstone of the NDS, is somehow passing the buck from the military to other parts of the U.S. government, and nothing could be further from the truth.

We’re making enormous investments in our military. We have to be able to deter military conflict with the might and capability of the U.S. joint force. What the concept of integrated deterrence really means is that as we do that, we need to make sure that we are folding in new technologies and domains like cyber and outer space that will increasingly define the future of warfare. We also have to fold in our allies and partners because one of the asymmetric advantages that the United States has, whether it’s in the Indo-Pacific or Europe or anywhere else, is the strength of our alliance and partnership network. So, of course, as we try to deter aggression, we have to integrate our allies and partners into that equation. And we have to integrate other instruments of U.S. power into that equation, too. That means our diplomacy, it means our intelligence, and it means our economic statecraft.

If that sounds weak and wimpy, people aren’t drawing the right lessons from the conflict in Ukraine. Yes, the provision of enormous amounts of security assistance to Ukraine has imposed tremendous cost on Russian aggression, but so has diplomatic isolation. So have economic sanctions. So has our use of intelligence in the information space. I guarantee that if you’re sitting in Beijing, you’re asking yourself the question: If I go after Taiwan, will the world react the way they did in Hong Kong or Ukraine? If it’s Hong Kong, they’ll be able to snuff out and absorb a vibrant democracy into greater China, and the world will yawn and move on. If it’s Ukraine, not only do you run the risk of a devastating conflict that leaves you weaker, not stronger, leaves the world more united against you rather than more divided. Not only do you face those military realities, but you also face the prospects of diplomatic isolation and economic costs, sanctions, export controls, etc.

Deterrence needs to be integrated across the various tools of U.S. statecraft, in addition to our allies and partners, all backstopped by the most formidable military in the history of the world.

RA: How exactly is America deterring Iran? How do you feel about Iran being closer to a nuclear weapon?

CK: The JCPOA (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action) is essentially on life support—barely. When the JCPOA was in place, Iran’s breakout time to create one bomb’s worth of fissile material would have been about a year. Now it can be measured in a small number of weeks. So, we’re not in a great place.

President Biden has made clear that Iran will not be allowed to acquire a nuclear weapon, period. He’s made clear his preference for a diplomatic solution to that problem. But we have other alternatives available to us. In January, the United States and Israel conducted the largest military exercise in the history of our relationship with Israel. I have no doubt that Iran took notice of that. You also saw the recent attacks by Iranian-backed groups against our forces in northeast Syria, and you saw the forceful counter-response by the United States that at least, for some period of time, has restored a modicum of deterrence. It may not last, and if it doesn’t and Iranian-backed groups hit us again, we will be poised to defend ourselves.