Stop pretending there's a bloodless way out of the Ukraine crisis.
A rebuttal to those who believe that they can ✨manifest✨ an end to this war with good vibes and pure intentions.
Until a fortnight ago, the default position of much of the anti-war left was that talk of a Russian invasion of Ukraine was false and a pretext for aggression on the part of NATO, the US and allied intelligence agencies. Then of course, Russia invaded, and Western governments swiftly ruled out any kind of military escalation. Having been so comprehensively proven wrong on two different counts - their belief that Putin won’t invade, and fears of NATO escalation - a significant part of the left has been completely disoriented. We’re all powerless, so we take that frustration out on harebrained - and equally powerless - pundits and opposition politicians proposing silly ideas like No-Fly-Zones that have no chance of being implemented in a million years. The fact of the matter is, the Western left has absolutely no agency or influence over developments in Ukraine. We’re all playing twitter armchair general and howling into the wind - myself included.
Unable to metabolise these feelings of helplessness, some have now pivoted to demanding that Western governments stop supplying Ukraine with military aid and instead do everything possible to facilitate a diplomatic solution. Some of the more credible (but still flawed) arguments for this position stem around the belief that these arms will end up in the wrong hands, particularly those of ultranationalist far-right Neo-Nazis such as the Azov Battalion, resulting in possible blowback in the future. The far weaker, nebulous argument rooted in wishful thinking is the idea that Western support for Ukraine is somehow “prolonging” the war and bloodshed, and that there’s a magical PEACE button somebody unspecified ought to smash which will result in the guns going silent and both sides hashing out some mutually agreeable terms for a sustainable peace.
If the Ukrainian government had fallen quickly and Russia had established at least nominal control over the entirety of the country, then I would have agreed that the West funneling arms and sustaining a prolonged insurgency would have been a futile endeavour with little to show for it other than more Ukrainian lives lost. Such a scenario would see the country become Russia’s own Afghanistan. The power vacuum left by the Ukrainian state would be filled by ultranationalist militias, some of which would draw on radicalised western volunteers with the potential for them to return to their countries and carry out acts of far-right terror.
However, this is not even close to being the actual reality on the ground.
Ukraine still has its legitimate government intact. Its military is still standing and continues to hold the vast majority of the country’s territory. There is still a credible chain of command that flows right to the top and which can be held accountable. Putin’s initial political objective of swift regime change in Kiev has been rendered all but impossible and as a result he has pivoted to waging a war of brutal punishment - destroying everything he can in order to break Ukrainian morale and force them to submit to his will.
NATO expansion obviously has a role to play in fomenting the tensions that brought about this catastrophe, but in this specific realm it was the pretext, not the actual cause. Putin launched his invasion believing that Ukraine would fall within days. He expected to be greeted as a liberator in the Russophone parts of the country. He expected to be able to parachute a couple of green men into the centre of Kiev and topple Zelensky’s democratically elected government, replacing it with a puppet regime and then be on his way without much resistance. However, this did not happen. The Ukrainian defense efforts have been far more successful than anyone expected, and the Russian offensive has been far worse. This reality has forced a change in Putin’s political and military objectives. Calling this fight “unwinnable” is missing the point, if only because Putin himself has already realised that it is impossible for him to secure a decisive kinetic victory over Ukraine’s conventional forces, which is why he has now pivoted to attempting to destroy the resolve of the Ukrainian nation by terrorising civilian population centres.
Putin is not fighting an exterminationist or genocidal war with the purpose of wiping out all Ukrainians as a people. However, he is determined to inflict as much bloodshed and destruction upon Ukrainians as possible in order to break them and force them to accept a new order in which their country is completely within the Russian sphere of influence. However, the unprecedented strength of Ukrainian resistance has forced Putin to open diplomatic channels he never thought he’d need. Unfortunately, they are going nowhere because of Russian demands that Russia itself doesn’t take seriously. In addition to predictable ultimatums on ruling out NATO accession and recognising Crimea as rightfully Russian, it also insists on Ukraine ceding its claim to the entirety of the Donbass - Ukraine’s most populous and industrialised region. To round out the unseriousness of its “offer”, there are also completely unsubstantiated demands for “denazification”, and the total non-starter of insisting that Ukraine permanently and unilaterally demilitarise. The reason a serious dialogue is not on the table for now is that Putin still believes he can secure more military objectives and push Ukraine to accept the total vassalage he initially thought he could secure bloodlessly.
What this fantastical call to “end the war with negotiations now” amounts to, is in effect a demand for complete Ukrainian capitulation to Russia while it relentlessly bombs civilian centres and executes or kidnaps people in the towns it already controls. In this timeline, Zelensky prostrates before Putin and willingly signs up to his demands of permanently ceding Ukraine’s most populous and industrialised region, of completely demilitarising, of allowing Russia to dictate the rewriting of its own constitution, and likely allow it to install a pro-Kremlin PM. It is of course deeply immoral to insist that Ukrainians accept such terms, but the idea that them doing so would result in peace is itself also deeply naïve. The backlash to such an imposition from Ukrainians themselves would be both swift and extremely violent. The stiff civilian resistance to occupying forces in even the most culturally and linguistically Russian eastern regions of Ukraine should dispel any notions of Ukrainians ever accepting such a fate. Any leader who signed such an agreement would likely be killed. Guerilla insurgencies led by nationalist elements will emerge and the war, rather than ending, will enter a new, more brutal and more unstable phase.
Although it is clearly not my prerogative to dictate or impose any terms unto Ukrainians myself, it would appear that the most fruitful position for a long-term peace would be for Ukraine to mimic the “Finlandisation” settlement, where it commits to military neutrality but otherwise integrates itself with the liberal international order and eventually with Europe politically, while making some unfortunate but unavoidable minor territorial compromises. Everyone who angrily demands Biden/Johnson/NATO to press the big red PEACE button seems to insist that they too favour such a settlement. The unfortunate reality is - this outcome is simply not going to be achievable if Ukrainians lay down their arms right now. Instead the likelier outcome is Putin coercing Ukraine to become another Belarus - a belligerent, repressive autocratic client state directly in the close orbit of Moscow. Believing that this is a price worth paying to “avoid WW3” or whatever is a legitimate position I suppose, but it’s one that its advocates need to be honest about.
In any case as I already said, the “Belarusification” outcome will not bring about any kind of stable peace in Ukraine or the region. If Zelensky willingly lets himself become the leader who shepherds in the new terms of suzerainty to Moscow, he will become an assassination and/or coup target. Some kind of massive, sustained long-term Russian military presence in Ukraine will be required to uphold any kind of client regime in the face of widespread popular hostility. There will be a grinding, bloody insurgency reminiscent of Chechnya in which extremists such as the Azov and Right Sector will thrive and expand their influence - far more than they do under current conditions. In the present circumstances, the best way of avoiding this inarguably worse outcome is to keep supporting the Ukrainian government and military with everything it needs in order to preserve the cohesion of the Ukrainian state and exhaust Russian forces enough to bring about conditions for a stable settlement, not just a nominal end to “war” which mutates into the continuation of bloodshed through other means, independent of what the West chooses to do.
So when people say that only “a negotiated solution” can end the war, well…obviously. But whose gift is that in? Certainly not any government in the West. The unfortunate reality is that negotiations will only begin in earnest once Putin has exhausted his military’s capabilities - either once he has successfully ground Ukraine to a pulp and completely subjugated it at tremendous cost, or once the Ukrainian people have fought his forces to a standstill at tremendous cost. Those who insist on an end to military support are in effect opting to bring about the former outcome. There’s nothing any of us can do about that, but asking Ukrainians to lay down their arms and accept their fate just so that we can feel better about ourselves is both unconscionable and completely detached from reality. Squeamishness about sending weapons to Ukraine is understandable and somewhat justified, given the historical blowback of similar decisions in the past. But the people opposed to it are yet to outline their alternative to it, instead just wishcasting outcomes that are completely outside of their control. It is not the West that is goading Ukrainians on towards senseless slaughter in an unwinnable fight - they are heroically taking up the mantle of resistance by themselves. Whether we choose to support them in that endeavour with in a materially tangible way or not, it certainly isn’t our place to tell them when to stop.