WAR & PEACE: WHY A DIPLOMATIC END IS UNLIKELY

Withe the new American administration determined to end the war in Ukraine – as much as to prove a point set out in its campaign promises as any other reason, talk of peace is high.

I have suggested that any outcome will at best be temporary but it will stop the fighting. If Ukraine gets into NATO as part of that deal, it will stick. That seems unlikely and without it, Ukraine will eventually face another Russian invasion.

Let us face the realities, and the clarity of what needs to happen. Peace is wishful thinking. It can only succeed in the circumstances above. Assuming that NATO entry is impossible – as much because Russia would object to it as part of any peace, then Ukraine has no guarantees it can trust. It’s just a matter of time before the Russians attack again.

Why is there a war in the first place? Because Putin decided that he could no longer stomach an independent Ukraine or any notion of it having a separate culture. His fears were further aggravated by the fact Ukraine, despite massive efforts to turn it eastward, was determined to turn west. NATO membership and the EU both beckoned in the longer term. The EU was bad enough, but NATO was impossible for Putin to contemplate. War came because Russia invaded. Ukraine would not commit to Moscow and was determined to defend its national sovereignty.

Therefore real peace can only be obtained through three options:

1. Russia completely defeats Ukraine
2. Ukraine effectively defeats Russia
3. Putin’s regime is replaced with one that doesn’t share his goals and ends the war by withdrawing.

There are no other circumstances where peace can be guaranteed and option 1 would have deep and lasting ramifications for years to come, none of them good. Option 2 would have some serious implications as well, but those are for another day.

The problem is that the collective West, lead by a feeble Cold War Biden mentality that escalation up the ladder to nuclear war must be avoided at all costs. (when that ladder was now a construct projected by Putin for his own ends, namely crippling our willpower to do anything about stopping him), led us to serious policy mistakes.

Firstly we failed to deliver enough weaponry to deter the attack. Second when it came the sanctions were weak, and we hesitated to supply weaponry in case Kyiv fell and the war ended quickly. Thirdly, when it became clear Ukraine was able to resist we then only gave it enough weapons to stop it loosing, not enough to let it win. In the first year, if we had given it enough, as September 2022 proved, Ukraine could have potentially routed the Russians and ended the whole thing.

The piecemeal approach to weapons deliveries and the slow roll-out of tanks, missiles, aircraft and so on in historical terms is going to be seen as an agonizing mistake and Biden and Sullivan along with Schultz in Germany will be seen as having made a strategic error of the first order, beholden as they were to outdated concepts of nuclear escalation.

We are now where we are. We cannot undo it.

For a diplomatic end to the war we have to remember several key things.

1.Russia never ever sticks to a treaty obligation unless it suits it. That’s just historical fact and evidence of it litters the last 250 years.

2.Russia led by Putin is a country that will say whatever it has to, lie at every turn, and deceive you every minute of every day.

3. Putin is the absolute definition of the word tyrant. Psychologically, tyrants are weak men driven to excessive action. They overcome their self-perceived weakness by being the best and then some, at something that makes others fear them. For Putin this was his beloved Judo, where this small and apparently weak looking teenager quickly excelled to a level that put him on the cusp of the Olympics team. He knew that joining the KGB – which was mostly invite only for highly connected party families in the chosen few, would give him yet more status and generate fear. He literally persisted trying to get in to the point they were sick of his applications and gave him a go. This is a man for whom power and keeping it are paramount. He is up there on the national pedestal, but he wants more – tyrants always do. He wants to prove that he’s above and beyond those who came before him, his legacy is the re-conquest of Ukraine and its re-incorporation into the Russian empire.

If we don’t understand this, we are fools. He will say and do whatever it takes to stay in power and to achieve his goals.

In 1994 Russia had no choice but to let Ukraine go, but it wasn’t having a nuclear power on its doorstep. So it took Ukraine’s nuclear weapons in exchange for a US-UK-Russian guarantee of Ukraine’s borders and independence, the Budapest Memorandum. It promised it would ever attack Ukraine, then spent all of the early 2000’s undermining it, using gas and payment issues to take more from Ukraine – especially money and military equipment. Putin was the policy architect.

In 2014 it finally invaded Crimea – and Putin said that was finally the end of Russian demands. Then it started a civil war in the Donbas. It used that as an eventual segue into the inevitable invasion of Ukraine in 2022. None of it was enough. Enough in Putins mind, equals all.

Putin, therefore Russia will not be happy until it has all of Ukraine. Russia is, in the terms of ground taken and continuous advances, winning the war. That’s all Putin sees. He announces that Ukraine doesn’t exist, there is no separate Ukrainian culture, its government is nazi and genocidal, only a complete capitulation will suffice.

And yet the new US president believes he can end the war. Putin will exploit this to the maximum. He will say or do whatever it takes to convince the Americans he will bring an end to the fight – but only on his terms. He will think Ukraine has no say and by giving them one he acknowledges it as legitimate, which he doesn’t want to do. He thinks that this is a Cold War level agreement where the USSR and the USA divide up their satellite states and solve the world’s problems. Those bi-polarity days have gone, long ago.

The Americans will have to choose, between Putin’s sincere lies and letting the US become convinced Russia is innocent – a propaganda scam that has been pushed for years. Or they realize they’re being had and when they finally get that Russia isn’t stopping the war unless it gets everything it wants – all of Ukraine – they decide to play hardball. Finally that might mean Ukraine gets more than it ever hoped for and the equipment to finally break Russia – because Russia is economically and militarily stretched to breaking point. Ukraine has ground Russian teeth down to the gums.

Even in the unlikely event Putin and Ukraine accept an armistice, it will only be because it suits Putin’s agenda for now. The war will never be truly over. Ukraine knows it, Putin knows it. It’s just a matter of time.

Therefore, we’re back to the first three outcomes.

1. Russia completely defeats Ukraine

2. Ukraine effectively defeats Russia

3. Putin’s regime is replaced with one that doesn’t share his goals and ends the war by withdrawing.

The fact is if Putin remains in power there cannot be a real peace that lasts. You cannot trust the Russians unless they decide it suits their position to keep an agreement.

There is much historical precedent for this. At the end of WW1 in the East, in late 1917, having permitted Lenin transit through Germany in a closed train from his home in Switzerland, via Denmark and Sweden, Lenin reached Russia. As soon as he possibly could he ended the war to complete the revolution and fight the upcoming inevitable civil war, handing the Germans at the treaty of Brest Litovsk, all of Ukraine, Poland and Lithuania. He paid whatever price was necessary because it suited him. A year later when Germany collapsed, he didn’t hesitate for a second in fighting the new Polish state and lost to it, signing away large parts of eastern Russia to gain a quick peace and end his own civil war. Ukraine, briefly independent, was crushed.

In 1939 Stalin signed the Non-Aggression Treaty with Nazi Germany, on August 23rd, shocking the world, it guaranteed Poland was doomed. Despite his own non-aggression treaty with Poland, Stalin invaded anyway 17 days after the Germans. He also took all the Baltic states. Then he attacked Finland in 1940 and received such a bloody nose he soon agreed a peace – because it suited him. This is what Russia does. Everything is about expediency.

Yet even Stalin, believed right up to the last second, what Hitler told him, even as the warning bells of an imminent invasion sounded off. Hitler like Putin, was a convincing liar, manipulator and communicator. Few leaders or politicians are even remotely equipped to deal with such people. That’s why Putin wants to meet the president so quickly. He thinks he can use the old magic on the returning president and play him like a drum -as he did before in that tragic press conference in Helsinki.

A real diplomatic end to this war is at best a temporary chimera. We cannot be blinded by the acceptance of Putin’s arguments – they will only be for his own ends, for his ultimate benefit and an inevitable resumption of the conflict some time in the not too distant future, for which he will blame Ukraine.

Putin is a liar and cannot be believed. The war will go on if Ukraine thinks it’s being duped, or that the Americans are. They’d rather chance it and hope that the Russian economy collapses, than give in to some twisted blackmail. And we in Europe must be willing to support them, regardless of the Americans.

I hope it doesn’t come to that. Provided the American President isn’t duped, he will soon see that Putin has no intention of reaching a real peace, but is playing for time. The new Treasury Secretary has already said he thinks sanctions have been too weak and that the oil industry in Russia can be severely impacted by yet more. Enough, he believes to force the issue in short order.

Both the National Security Council head and the Special Emissary to Ukraine, General Kellog, believe it won’t be as easy as Putin thinks it will be. Widespread talk of giving Ukraine a full scale Lend-Lease deal, where it is provided with an open ended credit facility and potentially Russian deposit cash, as well as mortgaging its vast untapped resources, so that it can buy what it wants to equip itself and end the war, would be a nightmare of a challenge for Putin. His resources and cash are being sucked dry with every passing day. This would open Ukraine to the prospect of a massively armed and equipped force in around six-eight months – that if it was done right would put them on the offensive by September. A possibility Putin will want to avoid.

Can Putin swallow his pride and negotiate in such a way that he has to make sizable concessions in order to survive another day? Because that’s all he will do, look to survive until another day, and when the time is right, he’ll be back. Unless Ukraine is in NATO and defended to the hilt. The specter of war will hang in the air until Putin is dead and gone and his successor realizes there’s no point to threatening Ukraine any more.

As long as Putin is alive there will never be a true diplomatic end to the war. It is fundamental existential war for him, and for Ukraine. Until one or the other ceases to exist, it is never truly going to end.

The Analyst

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