Peace in Ukraine

The current war in Ukraine has roots in history. It was predictable. 

From Russia's perspective, the U.S. and the West have been carrying out a relentless slow-motion invasion for 30 years. 

Herb Rothschild corrects an error in my introduction to his Guest Post yesterday. I said the U.S. broke treaties. They weren't treaties. They were agreements and understandings that made possible the peaceful end of the cold war.

I am not sympathetic to Russia. Under Putin, Russia has again  become undemocratic and totalitarian, reversing the relative openness and democracy under Gorbachev and Yeltsin after the collapse of the USSR. I consider Russia a bad and dangerous actor in the world arena. But bad actors can have legitimate interests and fears. Smart diplomacy recognizes the fears and triggers of other actors. If you poke the bear you might have to fight it.

Great powers have regions of influence and areas of vulnerability. Russia is vulnerable to invasion from the west. There are no geographical impediments to invasion so they substitute distance, which saved them from Napoleon and Hitler. The collapse of the USSR and the diplomatic understandings that permitted independent democracies in Central and Eastern Europe included the understanding that the West would respect Russia's need to avoid having hostile powers on its western flank. 

The U.S. and the West broke that agreement. When Russia was weak, we got away with it. We felt the pride of victory. Europe needed Russian oil and natural gas, and Russia had it to supply. Russian energy made Russia prosperous; Russian pride fueled Russian nationalism. Some of the same cultural issues that fuel backlash in the U.S. -- secularism, feminism, gay rights, gender, race-mixing -- took place in Russia, too. Putin, like Trump, associates himself with traditional values. From Russia's point of view, they got back on their feet.

Russia's invasion of Ukraine is selfish and murderous, and history will conclude that it was immoral. But it is understandable and predictable in the context of a country that feels itself under attack by hostile forces --  military, economic, and cultural. Look at our own history with Cuba and Vietnam, and now the rhetoric about China. 

Herb Rothschild has a lifetime of advocacy for peace. I consider him a peace realist, not a sentimental idealist. Peace is possible when settlements respond to the power and interests of the participants.

Guest Post by Herb Rothschild: 

What peace in Ukraine might look like.

I wish to respond to two reader comments on my Ashland.news column about the stalemated war in Ukraine that Peter republished on June 13. 

A reader asked what treaties the U.S. broke regarding eastward expansion of NATO, which is essential in understanding Russia’s actions in 2014 as well as in 2022. No treaties were broken; in his introduction to my column Peter said they were, but he overstated the betrayal. Rather, at the time Gorbachev was considering the request by Western powers to allow the reunification of Germany, they gave him unequivocal pledges that NATO wouldn’t expand eastward. In the words of James Baker, then U.S. Secretary of State, “not one inch eastward.”

 People have claimed that such assurances weren’t given. However, there is a cache of declassified documents on the website of The National Security Archive at George Washington University that remove all doubt. Thus, Russia, which has consistently and vehemently protested NATO expansion beginning in 1999 with the inclusion of the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland, has had every right to do so. If you’re inclined to dismiss its security concerns. Just imagine how our government would respond if China formed a military alliance with Canada and Mexico and began holding joint exercises with them near our borders. 

A reader of Peter's blog asked me what I think might be the terms of a negotiated settlement. There’s a cardinal rule about negotiations that parties to a conflict, not third parties, should work out such terms. As some who responded to my column correctly said, it’s for the Ukrainians to decide whether they wish to negotiate and what terms would be acceptable to them. 

Nevertheless, because the U.S. supplies so much of the military hardware and ammunition that Ukraine fights with, we are implicated in the casualties. So, we not only have standing but also a moral obligation to decide for ourselves whether a prolonged war will cause more suffering to the Ukrainian people than a negotiated peace.

What might that look like? It’s worth considering the facts on the ground prior to the 2022 invasion. In 2014, Russia had reclaimed Crimea as part of Russia. Also, people in the eastern provinces of Luhansk and Donetsk were waging a war of secession. Ukraine regarded these developments as indefensible, and President Zelenskyy insists that all that territory must be returned. 

Crimea had been part of Russia since the time of Catherine the Great, and its inhabitants largely were Russian. Khrushchev chose to give Crimea to Ukraine, never thinking that the U.S.S.R. might dissolve and Russia would lose its only warm water naval base. In the referendum over which Russia presided, Crimeans voted overwhelmingly to rejoin Russia. Ukraine and its Western allies, of course, declared that the referendum was rigged. 

The eastern provinces, largely Russian speaking, were the electoral stronghold of Viktor Yanukovych, who was elected president in 2010. He was driven out of office in 2014 in a U.S.- backed uprising we chose to call the Revolution of Dignity. Yanukovych’s supporters regarded it as illegal and undemocratic and chose to secede. With Russian military support, they had been locked in brutal warfare with Ukrainian government forces up until the Russian invasion, when that front was subsumed into the larger war.

This history is a necessary prelude to my saying that it wouldn’t be an obvious injustice if Crimea remained Russian and at least parts of Luhansk and Donetsk became independent republics associated with Russia or at least autonomous districts of Ukraine. A way to solidify the legitimacy of such an arrangement would be to hold UN-supervised referenda in those territories and let their inhabitants determine their destinies. Meanwhile, Russia would have to relinquish all territory that it has occupied since February 2022. 

That’s my take on a reasonable diplomatic resolution.

[Note: To get daily delivery of this blog to your email go to: https://petersage.substack.com and subscribe. The blog is free and always will be.]