Only Ukrainians Will Decide When the War Is Over
And if you have to say “this is not appeasement,” it’s probably appeasement.
Henry Kissinger, just shy of 99 years old, still has it in him to issue a foreign-policy take that infuriates a lot of people. Ukraine, he said while speaking at (where else?) Davos, should be willing to trade territory for peace. That sounds a lot like appeasement, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky wasted no time in rebuking him. “You get the impression that Mr. Kissinger doesn’t have 2022 on his calendar, but 1938, and that he thinks he is talking to an audience not in Davos but in Munich back then.”
Ouch.
But Kissinger isn’t alone in this opinion; the New York Times editorial board made a similar case a week earlier. Calling on the Ukrainians to be “realistic,” the Times said that Ukraine would likely lose territory and that Kyiv should act before Americans, in effect, get bored with the whole mess. “Confronting this reality may be painful,” they wrote, “but it is not appeasement.”
If you have to say “This is not appeasement,” it’s probably appeasement.
Worse yet are the people who insist that Russia’s “interests” should be taken into account here, as if “Russia” and not Putin started this war. (I mean, of course, people like Professor John Mearsheimer, among others.) These arguments dovetail into warnings that we should not encourage any further humiliation of Russian President Vladimir Putin. That ship has sailed (and sunk): Putin and the Russian military are already plenty humiliated. And as Ambassador Stephen Sestanovich recently quipped on Twitter: “Exactly how much Ukrainian territory does Putin get to keep to avoid being humiliated? (And does he get to decide?)”
I have from the start of this war argued for keeping NATO and the United States out of a direct conflict with Russia. But to talk about “Russia’s interests” and how best to placate Putin is nonsense. This war began because of one man, and it is a case study not in realist theory but in the psychology of dictatorship. This is an extremely dangerous time, and while we should be cautious, we should not allow these would-be Metternichs and modern Colonel Blimps to spin our moral compasses.
It is not, however, a forbidden question to ask when, and how, the Ukraine war might end, and on what terms.
Ukraine has the right to fight on, and we—that is, the nations that once proudly called themselves the “Free World”—have an obligation to help them keep ejecting the Russian invaders. But all wars end, and neither the Ukrainians nor the Russians can continue this kind of slog much longer. At some point, this will settle into something other than the intensive combat operations we’re seeing now.
That’s not to say that the Russians can’t keep killing people. They can go on for years shelling and throwing missiles into Ukraine. War is difficult; murder is easy.
Instead, as some military analysts have pointed out, Russia’s campaign has “culminated,” a military term from the work of Carl von Clausewitz, meaning that the Russians have reached the point where further operations aimed at their original goal are no longer possible. (The Russians are obsessive students of Clausewitz, and they almost certainly realize this now.) It’s important to remember here that while the Russians are losing, that won’t go on forever either; just as the Russians have reached their culminating point, so, too, will the Ukrainians.
So how should we think about the possible termination of the Russian-Ukrainian war, and what are the implications for American foreign policy? Here are a few guidelines and assumptions.
- Only the Ukrainians will decide when the war is over.
Every strategist knows that a war ends only when one party makes a conscious decision to throw in the towel. Situations such as World War II, where the victor pursues the complete destruction of the enemy’s ability to resist, are rare. We should dispense with the idea that Ukraine is some junior partner of the West who can be told when to stop fighting. This is a nation in arms, tens of millions of people who will fight with shovels and picks if it comes to that. The United States and NATO cannot force Kyiv to negotiate; Ukrainian territory, no matter what Henry Kissinger says, is not ours to give.
A related point here is that we should stop talking about “American war aims.” The United States doesn’t have “war aims.” It has moral and strategic aims, which in this case coincide. It is in our interest as a democracy, as a guarantor of the international system of peace and security, and as an Atlantic power to stop Russia from rolling over its neighbors. These are our goals and our interests; the “war aims” belong to Ukraine.
2. The obligation for a cease-fire rests with Russia, not Ukraine.
Don’t misunderstand me: I do not want an endless bloodletting in Central Europe. I want a cease-fire in Ukraine, and so does the United States, at least according to the readout of Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin’s call with his opposite number, Sergei Shoigu.
But cease-fires have to make sense to both of the parties involved. The United States and its allies agreed to a cease-fire with Iraq in 1991—but only after Iraq had been expelled from Kuwait. Iraq agreed because the alternative was the continued destruction of its armed forces.
Ukraine, rightly, has resisted intemperate calls for a cease-fire at all costs, a strange demand on the side that is currently winning back territory. It is especially puzzling, however, that the calls from some in the West for a cease-fire ignore the fact that the Russians have no interest in one. That’s kind of a problem. A cease-fire where one side does not cease firing is called a “surrender.” If the Russians don’t want to stop the war, then the calls for a cease-fire are really just calls for the Ukrainians to stop fighting, and that makes no sense—except as a way to head off the possible dangers of escalation.
Speaking of which:
3. Fears of escalation are perfectly reasonable.
I was one of the people early on who wanted an immediate halt to the hostilities. I thought Russia would win relatively quickly, and I wanted the damage contained; later, I feared that Putin could lash out after his initial defeats in the battles around Kyiv. Put another way, I will admit that I was anxious about Russia both winning and then losing, at different points in the conflict.
I think these are sensible concerns when you’re dealing with a large, nuclear-armed country led by an isolated and paranoid dictator. The fact that Putin launched this war at all made me wonder about his mental state (and especially about the effects of two years of bunkered quarantine during the pandemic). And so I wanted the U.S. and NATO to avoid any action that would lead Putin to desperation—especially given that Putin and the Russian Orthodox patriarch think they’ve embarked on some kind of mission from God.
I worried then not so much about deliberate escalation, but about a “Black Swan” event, one of those strange and unforeseeable accidents of history, that could push this conflict to a general war between East and West. I still worry about that. I cannot tell you what form such events would have taken. An errant Russian pilot? A misguided cruise missile? Who knows. Such things are still possible as long as thousands of people are shooting at each other on a huge battlefield.
I think it’s more unlikely at this point that Putin will resort to chemical or even nuclear weapons. The probability of such a move was always low (although I wonder if we’ll know, after Putin dies or is deposed, how close we came to such a moment). Western resolve has helped to keep this war contained. President Joe Biden and other NATO leaders made it clear that the use of unconventional weapons would indeed be a game changer—but not in the way Putin might think. Putin (and, apparently, Xi Jinping of China) was surprised by the strength of the Western reaction, and even Putin might now realize that resorting to drastic measures won’t improve his position.
None of this means, however, that I’ve stopped worrying about escalation. Biden and NATO should continue to resist the calls for Western intervention; the last thing anyone should do while Putin is drowning is to throw him a lifeline in the form of a war with NATO, which would rally Russia and crush whatever internal dissent there might be in the Kremlin.
I understand and agree with the idea that the war should end as soon as possible. Every day that this goes on is another 24-hour window in which people will die and during which NATO and Russia could unexpectedly find themselves in a cataclysm neither of them wants. But I disagree with the idea that the Ukrainians should be the ones to terminate the conflict by just giving up—especially if the Russians won’t stop.
4. So when does it end?
There are multiple paths to the end of this war, and right now, the United States, NATO, and Ukraine have little influence over any of them. As I said when this war started: Putin began it, and only Putin can end it.
One possibility, of course, is the end of Putin. I don’t think a coup is likely, but he’s 70 years old, which is pretty ancient by Russian-male-life-expectancy standards, and he looks to be in bad health. Counting on him to keel over, however, isn’t a strategy.
A more likely possibility is that a group around Putin tells him that they’ve all given it their best shot, but it’s time to regroup and recover. This is where Kissinger or others might say: Let them keep some gains for the sake of ending the fighting. The problem is that Mariupol—now in ruins and in Russian hands—is not a small gain. The Russians should pay a price for what they’ve done, and simply handing them territory is, for Kyiv, probably too hard a pill to swallow.
Could Moscow be persuaded to return to some preinvasion line, in which they keep Crimea and their fake “republics” in eastern Ukraine? I don’t know; I think a lot depends on who we mean by “Moscow.” Putin seems bent on his original plan, but as I wrote a few weeks ago, his dejected Victory Day speech, along with some other developments, suggest that he may not be in as strong a position inside the Kremlin as he was three months ago.
Another possibility is that Zelensky decides to accept some kind of territorial loss, hoping to consolidate and rearm his forces while betting that he and Ukraine will outlive the regime in Moscow. If this happens, it’s important for the West to back his play, instead of goading him onward. I think he’d be right to make such a wager, especially if the next few years are wisely spent rearming and rebuilding Ukraine.
After all, a lot of people thought the Soviet Union would last forever too.
For now, we should keep arming and supplying Ukraine with the best weapons we can send and as fast as we can. Russia has already lost this war, and Ukraine wins by surviving as an independent state headed by a leader chosen by the Ukrainian people. Whether that victory includes a return to the status quo of early 2022, or some kind of stabilization of the lines close to where they are now, is not something we can dictate. But we should stop assuming that we can control outcomes and force either Kyiv or Moscow to negotiate. And we should not arrogate to ourselves the right to give away land that is not ours.
5. Now what?
Obviously, we’re only able to talk about any of these exits from the war because of the incredible fighting spirit of the Ukrainians. (The excellence of Western arms and the staggering idiocy of the Russians are important, but the Ukrainians have exploited both of these advantages masterfully.)
At this point, we have three main tasks in this conflict.
We should be a good ally to the Ukrainians and help them preserve their independence; we should be on our guard against mistakes and miscalculations; and we should make clear to Putin that intentional escalation is a dead end. These are all in our interest and in the interest of global peace.
That’s what good diplomacy looks like, and so far, the U.S. and NATO are doing a good job dealing with a bad situation.
I’m headed off for some vacation time next week, so there won’t be a newsletter until the following week. See you all then.