Correction and addition:
Due to an editing error, an earlier version of this post failed to include Jeffrey Laurenti's his last two paragraphs, which included his prediction that Ukraine has a smooth path toward inclusion in NATO.
Here is the complete and corrected post.
Maybe it ends with Ukraine overrun. Maybe Russia withdraws in defeat. Maybe both sides need to experience frustration and hopelessness before a settlement can happen. Maybe a leader needs to die, be killed, or be deposed. Eventually something happens.
Guest Post author Jeffrey Laurenti is an expert on foreign policy. He is a college classmate, a political scientist, a former senior analyst with a boutique foreign policy think tank. He lives in New Jersey, where he has been active in Democratic politics.
Due to an editing error, an earlier version of this post failed to include Jeffrey Laurenti's his last two paragraphs, which included his prediction that Ukraine has a smooth path toward inclusion in NATO.
Here is the complete and corrected post.
Eventually wars end.
Jeffrey told me he thinks Putin misplayed his hand on Ukraine for the past decade. He undermined Ukraine president Viktor Yankovych, "a pro-Russian stooge," by making him abandon a hard-negotiated economic accord with the E.U. Then he shaved off the Russian-speaking eastern provinces that had guaranteed a pro-Russian vote of between 45% and 52% in Ukrainian national elections. And then he went to war without evident reason or urgency. Taking them out of the Ukrainian electorate guaranteed a West-leaning majority of at least 65%.
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| Laurenti in a Bassari village in Senegal |
Guest Post by Jeffrey Laurenti
Russians ushered in the new year with yet another fireworks display over Ukraine, knocking out electrical power in Kyiv and other cities. Ukrainians celebrated their more focused strike on a building in Ukraine’s Russian-occupied east where hundreds of newly mobilized Russian conscripts were housed.
The two sides in Mr. Putin’s war did not grant each other even a holiday’s reprieve in their grinding struggle, where the lines of control appear to have budged scarcely an inch since winter set in. It is less the front lines than the home front where the war is now being fought: Russia seeks to demoralize Ukrainians with winter hardship and to sap their will to resist, while Ukraine presses to exhaust Russia’s military capabilities and trigger a collapse of its demoralized soldiery.
At the moment this looks like a classic war of attrition, where relentless death and destruction aren’t translating into territorial gains on either side; the question is, will one side crack first?
We may devoutly hope – I certainly do – that Russia’s war machine cracks first and quickly, that Vladimir Putin suddenly discovers he wants to spend more time with his family, and that a replacement leadership in Moscow disengages from the war, dismantles the ultranationalist security state built around Mr. Putin’s old KGB cohort, offers the Russian citizenry a second chance at democracy, and recognizes Ukrainian sovereignty and territorial integrity. That is certainly a possible outcome, assuming the entire Western world continues to serve as the arsenal for unflagging Ukrainian national spirit, and the one we should hope to see.
But sometimes wars of attrition go on and on and on, with neither side suddenly crumbling. They can end in compromises among exhausted combatants. Perhaps this spring Kyiv may gauge the Ukrainian public’s enthusiasm for continuing the war till every last Russian combatant is expelled from Ukraine’s internationally recognized territory.
It may be that those last Russian combatants are only withdrawn in the context of a settlement in which an international peacekeeping force, presumably organized through the United Nations, provisionally replaces them in the eastern Ukrainian territories still occupied by Russia when a ceasefire is put in place.
The future political status of those territories might then be determined by a U.N.-administered referendum in each of the contested territories vacated by Russian security and paramilitary forces in Donetsk, Luhansk, and Crimea. The risk that the ethnic Russian populations in those territories might sway the electoral result toward Moscow would be a bitter pill for Ukrainian nationalists – but those populations’ sour experience of the Putin regime’s empty promises might also make reunion with a now Western-aligned Ukraine an attractive option.
Presumably no settlement would impede the International Criminal Court from proceeding at its lumbering pace to prosecute war crimes in this conflict, including the crime of aggression.
Finally, by its aggression the Putin-esque national security state has thrown away its effective hold on Ukraine’s admission to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Given the huge investment that NATO members have already made in supporting Ukraine in this conflict, and the military capabilities that Ukrainians have demonstrated to its prospective NATO partners, Kyiv can be confident of a smooth path to NATO accession.
Mars is a fickle god who seems to enjoy surprising his most devoted devotees. Mr. Putin’s aviary of Russian war hawks are simply the latest to discover Martial infidelity.
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8 comments:
The Ukrainian resistance probably wouldn’t have lasted so long without the aid of the U.S. The question is whether that aid will continue, with Republicans taking over the House. The Republicans' cult leader just can’t bring himself to condemn Putin's actions, even as Russian soldiers are raping and murdering Ukrainian civilians.
"Eventually wars end." The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has not ended. Their are many on-going, long-standing conflicts in the Middle East and Africa. I could name many others. Conflicts can ebb and flow indefinitely.
Western interests are at stake in Ukraine, perhaps more so than any recent conflict, and so it is imperative that Russia is pushed out. But whether Putin is removed or not, nationalist Russian sentiments will remain, the oligarchs will still remain, and they will still be a rogue state. I don't see Russia accepting a UN moderator, they have shown nothing but contempt for the institution.
What is problematic is that there is no opposition in Russia that could conceivably effect democratic change. Putin will likely be replaced by someone similar, if not worse. After months of sanctions, Russia is not suffering enough, certainly not enough to spark a revolt, to stop the aggression. The hope is that the corrosive effects will ultimately cause an economic collapse, but most observers don't see it happening soon.
While no US soldiers will fight, we will be supporting Ukraine's defense, as if we are directly engaged. This will be a burden on us at a time when anti-democratic forces are working to undermine our commitment to fundamental freedoms, making even more important that the rule of law and our institutions address these internal threats.
"There" (oops)
The United States’ focus should be on helping the Ukrainians unequivocally win the war. We should simultaneously apply this template to Taiwan, supplying them with what they need to make a successful Chinese invasion impossible.
We and our allies killed communism. It died in 1989. Now it’s time to kill authoritarianism, and specifically the tech-enabled variety currently dominating China. The heroism of the Ukrainians points the way.
The problem with engaging in this war on authoritarianism is that instead of paying for it, we're bequeathing the bill to our offspring. Also, we still have an authoritarian of our own that has yet to be dealt with.
The national debt is a huge problem for this country. No politician has seriously tried to address it since Ross Perot, and unfortunately, he turned out to be a nut.
But as long as we’re headed off the cliff, we might as well do something useful before we go splat.
In 1994, the US pledged to support the defense of Ukraine if Ukraine gave up its nuclear weapons.
The US financed World War II, which was mostly fought on foreign soil, with 60% debt and 40% taxes.
Wars are fought not only for those who are alive today but also for the benefit of future generations.
We didn't fight two world wars and the Cold War to be right back where we started in the previous century.
No one is happy about it; certainly not Ukrainians, who are being frozen, starved and bombed daily. At least we are here, not there. Maybe we should count our blessings for that.
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