Exploring Ukraine’s Future: Alternative Scenarios

By Frank Hoffman

Wise leaders recognize that history does not follow a fixed linear path, and that the greater the uncertainty, the greater the value of examining alternative futures. The use (and the abuse) of scenarios is well established in the corporate world. Scenarios are used to explore the range of possible futures in the defense-planning business, as they help address the plausible multiple futures that policymakers may have to face. This article addresses potentially troubling scenarios involving the Russo-Ukrainian war that will impact US policy in the near future.

As the noted futurist Peter Schwartz stresses, scenario planning is purpose-built for uncertain times. Scenarios are not predictions, instead they are  an antidote against false certainty and presumption predictions by policymakers. They best serve as a catalyst for serious reflection about critical assumptions. This prepares decision-makers for inevitable surprises that may arise, making their institutions more resilient and responsive. I fear the war in Ukraine will not continue as a stalemate for long, and US decision-makers need to be prepared to adapt quickly to changing circumstances.

There has been a proliferation of scenario-based assessments about Ukraine recently, indicating a high degree of uncertainty in today’s security environment. Strategic analysts at the Stimson Center have explored scenarios centered around a US retrenchment from Europe. A European think tank has posited six “scary policy scenarios” anticipating a change in the US government. Another excellent product was produced by the Centre for Security, Diplomacy and Strategy in Brussels titled Shades of Grim: Scenarios for Ukraine and Global Order.

At this point, two and a half years into the war, the reality of a protracted conflict has settled in. Many people want to see Kyiv succeed but expect some sort of political settlement to be the most-likely outcome. There is a growing sense that a negotiated settlement should be sought. Clearly, however, the prospects for a just and sustainable peace are slim. The Russo-Ukrainian conflict, as the eminent scholar Lawrence Freedman has assessed, is a war without a quick diplomatic fix. Both sides hold intractable positions, and even a cease fire will be resisted if today’s battlelines lock in as borders. A push for a lasting settlement has strategic value that makes it worth pursuing. However, several scenarios may introduce new pressures and impact options.

In this article four scenarios are offered for consideration. Each of the postulated scenarios has origins in ongoing events and open sources. These four possible futures are presented in the table below.

North Korea Reinforces Russia

This scenario expands North Korean support to Moscow and operationalizes the partnership deal inked in 2024. Russia had earlier touted a purported offer from North Korea to send 100,000 troops early in the war, when a protracted conflict was not foreseen. Recent reporting suggests that combat engineering troops are likely. By 2025, Russian manpower resources are strained, and Putin asks for help on a transactional basis.

The North Korean regime has already provided millions of artillery rounds and some rockets and missiles, including munitions made with the latest Western technology such as US-developed chips. Now, North Korea provides troops to reinforce Russia’s defenses. In accordance with their new security pact, Korea is asked to provide greater assistance as direct attacks on Russian soil increase in number and range.

Pyongyang sends roughly 50,000 troops, including three brigades of combat engineers to help with fortifications and two military police battalions. It also deployed two brigades of long-range rocket artillery and two Motor Transport Battalions as well. They do not take a direct combat role. These formations are employed inside Russia, freeing up Moscow’s limited manpower for roles inside Ukraine. They offer some help in building stronger defenses and protecting Russian airfields and logistics bases. North Korean forces are not considered well trained or effective, but exposure to Russian methods could increase their potential. In return, Pyongyang gets hard currency, Russian missile and nuclear technology, and gains lessons from Russia on electronic warfare. This could include security cooperation programs that aid North Korea in developing submarines capable of launching ballistic missiles.

This move is not expected to change the outcome of the conflict: It merely makes it easier for Rusia to extend the war throughout 2025. But North Korea’s help will assist Putin to sustain his war of attrition and grind down the Ukrainian military. While North Korea’s entry into the war is not decisive, it mitigates Russia's personnel challenges. Moscow suffers from manpower shortages at this stage, as well difficulties sustaining a war of attrition with a dwindling hardware inventory. North Korea can contribute. The presence of the North Korean forces may complicate Ukrainian targeting deep into Russian territory and raise escalatory risks that would increase North Korean involvement. If that occurred, the injection of North Korean combat forces into Ukraine would stiffen Putin’s offensive capacity and increase Russia’s ability to expand the territory it occupies.

The larger issue is how this strategic partnership evolves into a serious problem for the United States and allies intent on deterring Russia and defending South Korea, as the partnership generates mutual security benefits.

China Chips In

In this scenario, the so-called Unlimited Partnership is put to the test. Western fears of a true  "Axis of Upheaval"  bent on confronting American dominance and Western values come about in this scenario. In alignment with their agenda, China takes on a more offensive posture to offset Moscow’s sagging position.

Chinese leader Xi Jinping has decided that it is in China’s interest that the United States remains tied up expending constrained resources on Kyiv. As noted by the Australian military expert Mick Ryan, China benefits from a long war in Ukraine. Since China’s covert efforts have been detected and called out by NATO, the People’s Republic of China decides to become a truly decisive enabler, and increase its aid to Russia. China stands accused of already developing a Shaheed knockoff for Russia. In this case, it now provides 100,000 drones and loitering munitions to Russia and promises to provide another 100,000 by the end of 2025. These drones are similar to Iran’s Shahid attack drone but with longer range and some anti-jamming capabilities.

In addition to the new drones, China applies its massive manufacturing base to quickly generate a sustained flow of missile components and valuable chips for airplanes and other defense systems. This scenario is already playing out incrementally. Roughly 70 percent of Russia's imported machine tools and 90 percent of its microelectronics are coming from China, according to US officials now. This support ensures that Russian defense production keeps churning out hardware and lethal munitions to attack Ukraine indefinitely.

While Russia grows ever more dependent on China’s generosity, Beijing leans into Moscow’s advanced technologies including air defense, space, electronic warfare, and hypersonic systems. Both exploit designs and breakthroughs from Western technology are gained through nefarious means. A study by RAND expects that Sino-Russian military cooperation will intensify. Deeper integration and more exercises might also engender expanded technology and skills transfers.

In this scenario it becomes clear that China and Russia are colluding to create a “Post-West global order” conducive to their authoritarian rule.

NATO Retrenchment

In this scenario, the major European powers wind down their support for Ukraine’s military. Their internal politics have shifted to the right, and their citizenry are more interested in maintaining their standard of living and less interested in curtailing Putin’s ambitions. As noted by Dr. Mike Mazarr, “Beyond sustaining the defense investment surge, the biggest land mine for NATO is the future of European politics—the potential for extremist parties and rising ideological cleavages to ‘shake the alliance's unity’ and political foundations.”

Rising ideological disputes impact the three major powers of France, Germany, and the United Kingdom. France faces a large debt situation and financial constraints with a polarized government. It struggles to satisfy its electorate and elects to focus on shoring up social programs and state initiatives to improve the economy. France is running a deficit of over 5 percent of GDP and needs cuts, not more spending. Economic reforms have helped raise productivity and job creation, but other reforms on pensions and labor rules are resisted. The European Union is unhappy and warned President Emmanuel Macron that France’s deficits should be reduced to EU limits. It is not that France is ungovernable but it’s clear that voters have “elected a fragmented assembly that reflects a fractured country.” A France preoccupied with domestic political strife will find it hard to play its vital role in the Europe.

Germany too faces political tensions with the stronger position of the Alternative for Germany party. Berlin seeks to improve the Bundeswehr and meet its commitment to spend 2 percent of GDP on defense. Much of the increase will be soaked up by decades of under-investment and ramping up the industrial base. German cuts its aid to Ukraine by half to focus on its own military needs. Yet, Germany’s plans to rearm are already faltering in execution according to RAND. This scenario may already be operative as Germany compromised on defense funding cuts rather than increases, on the eve of the NATO summit.

The United Kingdom in this scenario starts out striving to sustain its support to Ukraine. The new Labor government led by Sir Keir Starmer pronounces that the United Kingdom’s support for Ukraine will remain for as long as it takes. The new Defense Secretary, John Healey, said Britain's support would be reinvigorated by stepping up supplies of aid. Both underscored the new government’s promise to increase defense spending. But a lot of that increase, if approved, will be soaked up with upgrading the strategic deterrent submarine force and big-ticket items like Challenger tanks and Apache attack helicopters. The UK government is stretched thin facing manpower and equipment shortfalls due to historic underinvestment and unpreparedness for conflict of any scale, according to current leaders. However, the new UK government will have to get the British economy unstuck and restore critical but declining public services.

Public clamor for renewal forces 10 Downing Street to be more realistic about what London can afford. Some brutal realism from the Chancellor of the Exchequer forces the Cabinet to trim its large-scale aspirations to match limited means. This leaves little to spare for Ukraine’s brave defenders.

In this NATO Retrenchment scenario, by late 2025, Britain has joined Germany and France in a “NATO First” policy that sustains defense spending at 2 percent of GDP, but which limits military support to Kyiv. The outgoing Secretary General reports that European allies and Canada raised defense spending by 18 percent in 2024. Still, the alliance is underprepared for a protracted conflict as shown in a detailed study by CSIS. While NATO has made progress, it completely lacks many strategic enablers and has limited operational capacity. The major powers adjust their security portfolios to address their shortfalls and improve NATO’s deterrent against a long-term threat from Russia.

This is not a gloomy future. Europe’s economic, demographic, and technological edge over Russia give the Alliance a strong competitive edge. With proper planning, modernization programs and munitions stocks could improve over time. Paradoxically, the French strategist Camille Grand observes, such a deliberate approach to strengthening Europe's ability to defend itself might also be the best way to preserve a US commitment to European security.

American Strategic Gridlock

Whereas the third scenario focused on the domestic politics of European major powers, this scenario addresses internal shifts in US economic and political factors. In this scenario, the polarization of the two-party system ossifies both the executive and legislative branches after the 2024 election. Debates between progressives, defensive realists, and internationalists rage on without conclusion. The Federal government’s years of massive budget deficits begin to catch up. The total national debt has broached more than $35 Trillion  in 2024, and Office of Management and Budget estimates that the annual deficit in 2030 will exceed $2 trillion. With both inflation and interest rates creeping up, federal outlays for interest payments almost exceed the Pentagon's budget. Efforts to rein in lower priority expenditures and raise more tax revenue fail to pass in Congress. The debt ceiling bill shuts down the government for two weeks, and defense appropriations for the year remain flatlined, precluding investments in key new programs and technologies.

Some Europeans feared that the United States might want to withdraw from the world’s most successful alliance. However, this scenario assumes support for NATO remains a constant in principle, thanks to improved burden-sharing now that almost two-thirds of NATO members meet the 2 percent of GDP spending level. The new defense strategy of 2025 identifies China as the overriding focus of defense resources. Instead of increased force levels in Europe, the Administration opts to reinvigorate deterrence in the Pacific region to buttress US interests against the greater challenge of China. “China-First” and foremost becomes the official policy, but Congress is deadlocked over spending levels and does not approve the necessary appropriations.

Instead of foreign security assistance, the Department of Defense is directed by Congress to focus its spending to upgrade its modernization programs, shoring up munition stocks and expanding the defense industrial base to prepare for protracted conflicts. As the Center for Strategic and International Studies concluded, the Pentagon cannot supply weapons for a conventional land war of moderate size and high intensity for much longer than a year without drawing down munition stocks to dangerously low levels. Congress wants to rectify these shortfalls at home. In this gridlock scenario, America’s allies and partners learn they must do more with less American help.

Implications

All these scenarios are plausible and efforts to make them less likely or mitigate the risks they pose should be undertaken. As Jake Sullivan reminded attendees at the recent NATO Summit, “The history of Europe, of Ukraine, of the world order is not yet written … nothing is inevitable. It comes down to the choices that we make and the choices that we make together.” But what was left out was mention of the choices that opposing states get to make as well. Great power rivalries and wars are a reciprocal clash of wills, not shadow boxing matches.

The path ahead is littered with choices: the West’s and those the authoritarian powers may take. The latter are reflected in the first two futures, and policy options are limited. The United States and its alliance members have little leverage over Kim Jong Un. It should try to disrupt Russia's support for the North if possible, and vice versa. On the other hand, China has natural interests in retaining access to European markets and Western banks. Xi realizes this and the recent NATO statement that called out the People’s Republic of China as a “decisive enabler” puts Beijing on notice. It remains to be seen if China opts to “chip in” more, or if the warning was sufficient.

Scenarios can be a great tool to help anticipate adversary choices and possible circumstances, but there are several analytical challenges to overcome in their employment. The greatest of these is anticipating the convergence of scenarios: As noted earlier, the set here is not mutually exclusive. The most troubling combination in this suite of scenarios would be if scenarios one and two were to further evolve into reality. This could strengthen Moscow’s hold on 20 percent of Ukraine and provide a significant increase in Russia’s ability to strike Ukrainian command posts, logistics centers, and air defenses. That could strain Ukraine’s troops further and embolden Putin. The convergence of scenarios three and four is possible, whereby both the United States and Europe focus internally and on their own security challenges. The scenarios may cascade into the other, leaving Ukraine in dire circumstances with less external support. Careful alliance-planning management will be needed to ensure that NATO’s cohesion is sustained.

Strategic risk is rising to dangerous levels. With conflicts ongoing in Europe and the Middle East, and China flexing its muscle in the South China Sea, the limits of American power and resources grow more apparent. The collusion of today’s sources of instability mandates careful calculations about military buildups. A bipartisan defense commission finds the United States unprepared for modern conflict in multiple theaters and proposes a substantial increase in the Pentagon’s budget.

However, the US Treasury is not bottomless, and public support will have to be built up if further sacrifices are deemed necessary. American policymakers need to explain in clear terms what is at stake in each of the major theaters and what risks are likely or possible in the near term. An age of strategic competition with the potential for high-intensity and protracted conflict suggests the need to carefully craft a more realistic agenda with hard tradeoffs to better balance ends with limited means.

If a few of these scenarios come to pass, policymakers face a different tipping point than that identified by Professor Sara Bjerg Moller in her excellent analysis. The resources to do everything are dwindling and the strategic risk to US interests in Asia and to the NATO alliance may force the West to reconsider its longer-term strategy. The West is slowly coming to the point where vital interests like NATO’s cohesion, defense modernization, and industrial capacity cannot be further risked preserving the very important interest of Ukraine’s independence. While the United States has a robust defense budget of roughly $850 billion, maintaining deterrence in three theaters, defending the homeland, modernizing the US military for 21^st Century warfare, and reinvigorating the defense industrial base all require investment. Increasing defense resources to 5 percent of GDP is promoted as a solution by some US officials. Congressional and public support for such spending would need to be mobilized. Others are calling for pulling back on global engagements and entanglements, while others embrace a “China-First” and foremost strategy that would make the Asia-Pacific region the highest priority. This strategy would make up for the so-called Lost Decade since the US strategic pivot to the Pacific was announced. But it would also expose Ukraine to a long, bloody, frozen conflict.

Conclusion

Wars, once begun, rarely follow a linear path or a clean script. As Freedman has stressed, in strategy is that one must account for the agency of adversaries and adapt to unfolding circumstances.

This article is an exercise to explore some possibly unfolding circumstances to prepare better policy solutions. Hopefully, it can promote a serious and realistic discourse on today’s security situation. The alternative scenarios reflect known challenges that today’s policymakers are trying to tamp down. As the policy community realizes, allowing China and Russia to seize the initiative and recast the international order in their favor will have dire consequences for US prosperity and stability. The challenges are interrelated but should be strategically prioritized based on consequences, risks, and resources.

Strategy, as defined by John Lewis Gaddis in On Grand Strategy, is “the alignment of potentially unlimited aspirations with necessarily limited capabilities.” Washington’s strategy should rigorously align its goals with the nation’s capabilities. It needs to prioritize American interests and prudently discipline the application of US power and resources.

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Frank Hoffman is a member of the Foreign Policy Research Institute (FPRI) board of advisors and a frequent contributor to FPRI publications. He is a retired Marine infantry officer and former Pentagon senior executive. He graduated from the University of Pennsylvania and holds a Ph.D. from King’s College, London.