Peace in Ukraine won't change much for the USA, but it'll at least reduce the killing

 

A good friend, whose views and judgments I trust, was very angry this past weekend at the thought that the USA might "force" Ukraine to make peace with Russia, giving the latter country most of what it it wanted and leaving the former impoverished.  He's right, of course:  an "enforced peace" would do just that.  However, is that sufficient reason not to pursue it?

Let's start by acknowledging that Russia was and remains the aggressor in this war.  No question about that.  However, few people are willing to acknowledge just how much pressure the USA put on Russia through Ukraine to weaken the former superpower.  The so-called "Maidan Revolution" in 2014, and the popular uprising that preceded it, was organized, sponsored and actively supported by the USA.  (Hello, neocon Victoria Nuland and her infamous "F*** the EU" comment.  The Russia-Ukraine war today owes much to her interference and hostility.  I wonder just how much blood she has on her hands because of that?)

Furthermore, people don't like to remember or acknowledge that the USA supported "46 Ukrainian laboratories, health facilities, and diagnostic sites" under the Department of Defense's "Biological Threat Reduction Program (BTRP)".  That fact is acknowledged openly by the DoD, which strongly denies that those facilities had anything to do with biological weapons.  So, tell me, DoD - in that case, why was it necessary to sponsor no less than 46 such facilities in a foreign country (and former adversary during the Cold War) on the border of Russia (ditto)?  Why not fund them inside the USA instead?  Is it any wonder that Russia took that to be a hostile act and a major threat to its security?  If I were Russian, I'd view it in precisely the same way.

Those and other factors (of which there are many) don't excuse Russia's invasion of Ukraine, but they do make it clear that the former had reasons for its actions, and the latter had few believable excuses.  The US also has few, if any, rational justifications for its military support for Ukraine.  As I pointed out before the war:

There is no, repeat, NO reason for Americans to lose their lives to defend a corrupt, incompetent regime in Ukraine.  We have no compelling or vital national security interest to defend there.  Anyone who disagrees with me is free to identify such an interest and explain it in a comment to this blog post.  I'd love to read it.

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We've seen this tactic used time and time again in multiple countries over many centuries.  Are things getting out of hand for the powers that be in their own country?  Then, quick - let's make the citizens focus on an external threat, something around which they'll feel duty-bound to unite and ignore anything else.  While they're focused on that, we can get away with whatever we like internally.

China's doing that right now over Taiwan.

Russia's doing that right now over Ukraine.

The USA's doing that right now over Russia.

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Afghanistan wasn't worth the thousands of American lives it cost to conquer and occupy it.  Ukraine isn't worth even one American life, because there's nothing there that we need or want, and nothing that's of direct and immediate importance to us.  Let the Ukrainians and the Russians sort it out.  It's their business.  If Europe wants to get involved, let them.  They're near enough to the problem for it to be their business.  We aren't.

There's more at the link.  In the years since I wrote that, I've seen nothing to make me reconsider my position.

Even after all that, there are those who believe that giving Russia's President Putin most of what he wants in a peace settlement would be to "betray" Ukraine, and create more problems with Russia further down the line.  They may be right on both counts . . . but the countervailing arguments are at least as strong, if not more so.  Karl Denninger made some trenchant points over the weekend.

The wise thing to do back before the shooting started was to stop the persecution in the eastern provinces, eliminating the Azov garbage (jailing any who refused to cut that crap out) that nobody can reasonably claim was "legitimate", formally renounce any intent or capacity to enter NATO, pass it into the Constitution to stop the prattling on by European and US interests and recognize through formal and Constitutional protection that Crimea and Sevastopol were and shall remain Russian on a perpetual basis, albeit a borderless entity (e.g. no checkpoints or passports required) to cross between them and the rest of Ukraine.

Of course that's not what happened; the exact opposite was fomented and encouraged and now the violence that resulted is water under the bridge.

You negotiate from where you are today; the foolish decisions you made two years earlier are irrelevant.  On any sort of rational analysis the deal put forward under today's conditions is not crazy.

. . .

We'll see if there's a deal to be had here in the coming days -- I'm not convinced there is, but there should be, and if it is to come it will be from the situation today, not prior to when the shooting started.

You have to deal with the cards on the table today which are a function of both your and everyone else's prior acts.  You don't get to turn clocks back or pretend you didn't have a hand in any of it; quite clearly everyone did.

Again, more at the link.  I highly recommend reading Mr. Denninger's article in full.  He lays out a lot of the background that we've skipped here.

Many of those arguing against a peace settlement emphasize that it will cost less if Ukraine defeats Russia's invasion than if Russia is allowed to "win".  However, they seldom examine all sides of the equation.  For example, consider a recent report published by the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs and consultants at Corisk.

Funding Ukraine’s war effort over four years will cost European governments between $606 and $972 billion, but it would cost them almost double, between $1.4 and $1.8 trillion, to reinforce its eastern flank if Moscow gets its way.

. . .

The funding would go towards an additional 8 million drones, 95 brigades, and up to 2,500 new battle tanks, among other hardware. The report also proposes that the necessary funding could be found by confiscating frozen Russian assets.

More at the link.

Where will Ukraine get the troops and specialists it needs to use that new hardware?  It's already so desperate for cannon fodder that it's kidnapping its own citizens off the street and putting them into uniform.  The proposal is ludicrous on the face of it - but nobody's recognizing the reality that's staring them in the face.  Ukraine is militarily bankrupt.  It's steadily losing ground, and it's incapable of regaining it except for short-term assaults which are rapidly driven back.  The situation has tipped past stalemate into a slow, steady Ukrainian defeat.  If there's a practical, affordable alternative to making peace now, on the best terms available under the circumstances, please tell us in Comments - because I can't see one.

Hundreds, if not thousands, of people are dying on both sides in the Russia-Ukraine war in a situation that can, eventually, have only one end.  At least a negotiated peace would save uncounted lives, and let the survivors go on to live the best life they can under the circumstances.

Peter