Suicidal Reluctance
Western policy toward Ukraine has been defined by a self-defeating fear of escalation. A decisive shift to active deterrence is needed urgently.
“Pacifism is to the West and the missiles are to the East—and that is an unequal relationship.” — François Mitterrand, former President of France, during the Euromissile crisis, 1984.
In June 2024, five coffins draped in French tricolours appeared near the Eiffel Tower, each bearing the inscription “French soldiers of Ukraine.” French intelligence attributed the operation to Russia as part of a broader campaign to fuel political instability and erode public support for Ukraine. The incident was a stark reminder that the war in Ukraine is neither geographically contained nor temporally isolated, but part of a Russian hybrid war already being waged against the West.
Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 constituted the most significant challenge to Europe’s security since 1945. Yet the strategic failures that enabled it predate it by a decade. Since Russia’s illegal occupation of Crimea in 2014, the West has been governed by a singular imperative: the avoidance of direct confrontation. This priority, while superficially prudent, has created a paradox where the very measures intended to thwart wider conflict have enabled its expansion.
This pattern reflects what might be called suicidal reluctance — fear of escalation as the organising principle of policy at the expense of deterrence.
Consider the evidence. In the days after the invasion, Western leaders agonised over banning Russian banks from SWIFT, describing it as a “nuclear option.” When they relented, World War 3 did not ensue. When HIMARS rocket systems were delivered to Ukraine, Armageddon did not follow. When F-16s arrived, nothing happened. The pattern is consistent: the West hesitates, Russia escalates, the West eventually acts, and the catastrophe that was promised does not materialize.
In the meantime, the escalation ladder has been climbed by Russia. Mass mobilisation. Shahed drone strikes on Kyiv. North Korean troops on European soil.
The fundamental misconception at the heart of Western policy holds that restraint deters aggression and that regimes like Russia respect multilateral peace. They do not. Aggression feeds on hesitation. Authoritarian regimes with expansionist ambitions do not answer to diplomacy conducted from weakness. They answer to the same force they use to subdue their neighbours. Tyrannies are not restrained by caution; they are restrained by resistance. Fire is not put out by pleading with it.
Comprehensive support for Ukraine does not risk engulfing us in war. It has the potential to end it by cornering Russia, overwhelming its capabilities and demonstrating that territorial conquest in Europe will not pass.
The consequences extend far beyond Ukraine. In 1994, Ukraine surrendered its nuclear arsenal in exchange for security guarantees under the Budapest Memorandum. Those guarantees have been all but shattered. The message to other regimes is devastating: agreements with the West can be voided by force. The cost of “avoiding escalation” here may, ultimately, be paid elsewhere.
Since January 2025, the return of Donald Trump and American isolationism has undermined alliances and commitments. But if the defence of the European order depends entirely on Washington, that order is inherently fragile. While the U.S. turns its back on decades of foreign policy on Russia, Europe must chart its own path and policy.
Attempts to force a ceasefire onto Ukraine do not seek to end the conflict. They aim to freeze it in time. In the words of Oleksandra Matviichuk, Ukrainian lawyer and Nobel Peace Prize laureate, “peace does not come when the country which was invaded stops fighting. That’s not peace. That’s occupation, and occupation doesn’t decrease the human suffering, it just makes [it] invisible.” Every frozen conflict in the post-Soviet space, from Transnistria to South Ossetia, has functioned as a tool of permanent destabilisation.
Opponents will note that the nuclear threat is real. But the architecture of nuclear deterrence exists precisely to prevent nuclear war. If Russia resorts to nuclear force, it faces nuclear retaliation — mutually assured destruction. To allow the invocation of nuclear threats to paralyse policy is to gift Russia a veto over the sovereignty of every non-nuclear state on its border.
The Cold War provides clear evidence that deterrence restrains aggression. In the Euromissile crisis, NATO deployed Pershing II and cruise missiles in Western Europe in response to Soviet SS-20 missiles. Moscow bemoaned the move as escalatory, yet the result was the opposite: the pressure created by NATO’s resolve led the Soviets to back down and to the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty.
There is a persistent misconception that Putin is a madman driven by irrationality. This narrative is comforting because it absolves us of the responsibility to act, but it is erroneous. Putin is ruthless, calculating and opportunistic. He understands that Russia would not survive a war with NATO, let alone a nuclear standoff. His threats are instruments of coercion, calibrated to exploit Western fear. The measures critics warn would provoke wider war are precisely those that would coax Russia into retreat because the alternative is annihilation, and Putin’s security apparatus in Russia are well aware of this, hence their campaign to dampen Western public support for Ukraine.
What is required is not a continuation of the status quo, but a decisive shift to active deterrence: a no-fly zone over Ukraine; long-range missiles capable of striking military installations; the designation of Russia as a state sponsor of terrorism. European leaders have floated deploying troops to secure a future peace deal. This is suicidal reluctance — offering to act once the crisis is resolved rather than acting to resolve it. If troops can be deployed after a ceasefire, they can be deployed now. Deterrence deferred is deterrence denied.
Suicidal reluctance is the gradual erosion of everything the postwar order was built to protect. The way to end this war is not to force Ukraine to sign away its sovereignty for “peace for our time” as was once heralded by Neville Chamberlain. It is to make the war unwinnable for the aggressor, because the alternative is a world in which borders are redrawn by force, agreements are worthless, and the strong devour the weak.
This article was originally published in UCL’s International Public Policy Review and finalized in April 2026. Given the pace of developments in Eastern Europe, some facts, figures, or projections referenced in this article may have since been superseded.