Transnational Thursday is a thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or international relations history. Feel free as well to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the wars in Israel or Ukraine, or even just whatever you’re reading.
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I'm not sure if we've talked about this lately, but do we have any thoughts on what should be done with the Russia-Ukraine war at this point? Seems like as good a time as any to consider grand strategy, with Trump soon to take office in the US.
It's a little surprising that it's still going. It seems pretty clear to me at this point that Russia / Putin has no intention of stopping anytime soon. The sanctions regime that has been put in place seems to have caused them to return to self-sufficiency as much as it has hurt them. I'm doubtful that further attempts to sanction them harder will have any greater effect. The Ukrainians seem to have had impressive determination, especially during the first few months, but they don't seem to have the practical ability to eject the Russian troops, even with extremely generous donations of Western arms. I'm doubtful that's possible at all without large-scale Western intervention. There's also the possibility of allowing them to make more deep strikes into Russia with longer-ranged weapons, but I'm doubtful that anything along those lines can hit hard enough to either seriously disrupt their logistics or their will to fight, at least not without, or maybe even with, so many high-end western arms that it's basically obvious it's the US striking them directly, with all of the potential consequences that could entail.
From the perspective of an American, it's felt for a while like maybe it's time to wind down this conflict, or at least our involvement in it, as far as providing arms and assistance. Are we really accomplishing anything but getting more Ukrainians killed to little effect? And okay yeah, Russia is not our friend, but it's probably only to the United States' benefit to push them so far.
Does anyone have any different opinions? Does anyone see any realistic potential of forcing Russia back without a large-scale escalation that I'm doubtful Americans will accept? The European powers may be more determined to push Russia back, but do they have much practical ability without the US?
The eventual result will almost certainly be a ceasefire along the line of control with no official peace treaty or concessions by either side besides perhaps the Kursk salient by Ukraine. The best analogue would be the Korean War, where the last two years were spent in a stalemate with high casualties but no meaningful progress by either side, and the core issues remain unresolved to this day despite the cessation of major hostilities. I see no way to force Putin to accept such an outcome while he still thinks he has the upper hand and can slowly push the front forward in the Donbass, but presumably there will come a time in the next two years when he has to either declare a full mobilization, risking domestic unrest, or agree to a ceasefire.
If a Polish/Baltic expeditionary force were deployed to Ukraine with no restrictions, they could probably force Russia to withdraw from most of the territory they have occupied except for Crimea, but such action seems likely to anger the Russian public enough to accept full mobilization and escalation to a general European war against NATO. There are ways to do this with some plausible deniability e.g. "We had nothing to do with this ambassador, our soldiers just went AWOL and joined the Ukrainian foreign legion," but the more political cover they have the more likely they are to simply be fed into the Ukrainian meat grinder without the tools they need to make a real difference in the war ("They also stole our tanks and fighter jets and launched missiles at you from our territory" is a bit of a stretch). In either case, the US and other NATO nations would not be obligated to bail them out of a fight they started.
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