What If Russia Makes a Deal?

[David Morris]

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/ukraine/2022-03-30/perilous-long-game-ukraine

“The horrors of the war, including the leveling of major urban areas such
as Kharkiv and Mariupol, the displacement of millions, and the civilian
death toll, cannot help but provoke outrage. U.S. President Joe Biden’s
unscripted remark in Warsaw on Saturday—speaking of Putin, he said, “For
God's sake, this man cannot remain in power”—reflects a fairly widely held
sentiment that the United States must prioritize punishing Putin, or even
seek his ouster.”

The main challenge today is that Ukraine’s brave resistance—even combined
with ever-greater Western pressure on Moscow—is highly unlikely to overcome
Russia’s military advantages, let alone topple Putin. Without some kind of
deal with the Kremlin, the best outcome is probably a long, arduous war
that Russia is likely to win anyway.

On every count, Putin
<https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/russia-fsu/2021-04-01/vladimir-putin-russias-weak-strongman>
spectacularly
misjudged. Much credit for his failure so far goes to the resilience and
bravery of the Ukrainians [•••]

But Russia’s initial struggles do not mean that it will lose this war.
Putin seems to have shifted from seeking regime change to a strategy of
imposing costs; by inflicting ever-greater pain and suffering on Ukraine,
he seeks to force Zelensky to accept his terms for peace, including the
recognition of Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk and Luhansk regions as independent
states. Russia can still snatch victory—defined this way, at least—from the
jaws of defeat over the coming weeks and months. It would doubtless be a
brutal, bloody, and ultimately Pyrrhic victory, but the Russian military,
even after suffering the losses it has suffered, still has the capacity to
achieve it.

Should Putin attain peace on his terms after a long, bludgeoning campaign,
it would constitute a significant strategic setback for the United States.
A long war that sees him prevail would also cause dramatically more death
and destruction in Ukraine [•••]

Washington has an interest in long-term stability and a durable peace in a
postwar Ukraine and along Russia’s periphery to reduce the likelihood of a
conflict like this in the future. In addition to a massive humanitarian and
economic aid effort to stabilize Ukraine, this will require follow-on
consultations with all parties concerned—Russia, Ukraine, Russia’s other
neighbors, and the West. Talks should be aimed at agreeing on rules of the
road that would minimize the risk of a future war involving Russia and its
neighbors.


On Wed, Mar 30, 2022 at 10:26 AM Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:

> I say Cicero could not have foreseen the overwhelming power of modern
> nations....
> Ukraine MUST get a way to protect themselves from that lying Putin
> ignoring the peace
> and attacking again.....this time he may not try old tanks....
>
> On Wed, Mar 30, 2022 at 9:30 AM David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>
>> https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/ukraine/2022-03-23/what-if-russia-makes-deal
>>
>> How to End a War That No One Is Likely to Win
>>
>> In this war, there will be no Munich, no Nuremberg, and no Versailles.
>>
>> The question now is what kind of ending Europe’s first major
>> twenty-first-century war will feature. The Roman statesman and scholar
>> Cicero argued that an unjust peace is better than a just war. Ongoing
>> negotiations between Ukraine and Russia will put that proposition to the
>> test.
>>
>>
>> The Ukrainians’ brave resistance has halted the Russian advance. In
>> ordering an invasion of Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin acted
>> impulsively. Were he now to think strategically, he would cut his losses
>> and look for a way to finish the war. His larger political aims are
>> already
>> out of reach. He cannot control Ukraine and will struggle to partition a
>> country opposed to Russian occupation. Moscow has only an expensive and
>> forbidding military path ahead of it, which together with sanctions will
>> place sizable burdens on Putin’s regime. But whatever happens in Ukraine,
>> Russia will still be a nuclear power, and it will retain Europe’s largest
>> conventional military.
>> --
>> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
>>
>