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Notes -
I have had an evolving set of view on the conflict in Ukraine that seems to annoy just about everyone. With the news today about Trump and Zelenskyy it's even more relevant.
I’m going to start with the present state of the conflict. This is, for this exercise, going to be called…
Option A - Stalemate and Attrition
Where we are now is an attritional battle with relatively static front lines. What I’ve observed is that there are many “red lines” that the supporters of Ukraine have. This leads to aid being sent simply to preserve the status quo. Ukraine, as much as it would want to win, is prohibited from actually winning because that might give Russia a sad and lead to world war 3.
This is a similar position we were in while in Vietnam. We were fighting for the same hills over and over again. There was no effort to actually win. Unlike Vietnam, where the U.S. faced a guerrilla insurgency, Ukraine’s conflict involves a nuclear-armed Russia, raising the stakes and complicating any path to outright victory.
In my mind, this is the worst option. Unless you get Russia to capitulate, Ukraine will not get enough concessions to maintain her previous borders. This war can go on as long as both sides have men to throw into the meat grinder. Simply because providing enough support for Ukraine to win is off the table.
Clearly both sides will continue to fight on mostly static lines indefinitely.
This isn’t just from a US perspective, all of the arms donations that were given to Ukraine up to this point by basically everyone includes clauses to not attack Russia. We, as a world, are telling the Ukrainian people to fight with one arm behind their proverbial backs. It’s a scenario that they can’t win with.
This option might eventually weaken Putin internally if Russia’s economy or morale crumbles, but banking on that is a gamble with long odds. They seem to have a deep bench of people who share the same values and motivations as Putin himself. Based on surveys and polls I’ve seen, this conflict still has much popular support from the people of Russia.
One has to ask, who is the winner in this scenario? The only plausible answer I have is only the military-industrial complex. Ukraine isn’t winning. Russia isn’t winning. Arms manufacturers are winning. With static front lines fueling endless demand for weapons, defense contractors profit while neither Ukraine nor Russia gains ground.
A prolonged stalemate, which is what this leads to, could erode NATO’s credibility, leave Ukraine a fractured state, and embolden other aggressors watching the West’s indecision.
This leads to…
Option B - Full Commitment
Here’s where we would treat Ukraine as the ally that they should be. This is where you own up to the Budapest Memorandum that was signed by Yeltsin and Clinton to provide security guarantees for the territorial integrity of Ukraine. (The 1994 Budapest Memorandum saw Ukraine give up nukes for security guarantees from Russia, the U.S., and others—guarantees now in tatters.)
To be clear, this has been my position since basically day 1 of the conflict. Day 1, for me, is Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea, not just the 2022 escalation, per the Budapest Memorandum’s promises. A direct conflict between nuclear powers is historically unprecedented. Sometimes, the correct moral choice entails risks.
Russia’s 2022 invasion, unlike 2014, exposed Putin’s broader ambitions, forcing the West to rethink its hesitation.
This option would entail actual support from allied nations, not just good wishes and materiel, but boots on the ground. Short of that, Option B could include bolder support, like unrestricted use of Western weapons, though even this risks Russian retaliation.
Here’s the thing, you have two options, either Russia is an existential threat or it’s not. If they are a real threat, then the answer should always be to support the morally right answer. If that leads to a broader conflict, then so be it — it’s a just war based on the reality. If they are not an actual threat… and Ukraine isn’t really an ally, why are we even talking?
Winding back a bit to option A, to put things into perspective, what we’re presently doing is pretty much what led to WW2. Chamberlain and the rest of the west were in a stance of appeasement. By not actually fighting evil, we let it grow. Just as appeasement emboldened Hitler to push further, letting Russia keep gains now might signal to Putin—and others—that aggression pays.
The broad statement here is that you can’t simply spend your way to victory. No amount of donations of money or supplies will get Ukraine back without Russia losing the conflict they started.
This option is, for all intents and purposes, completely off the table.
So…
Option C - Negotiated Settlement
Here’s the unpopular one. Negotiated peace to end the conflict. Neither Ukraine nor Russia is happy with this. With this Ukraine will lose territory and some level of autonomy.
Given that we, as a world, can’t seem to stomach the concept of Russia losing, which takes Option B out as a solution, you’re left with Option A or C.
Since Option A does nothing but throw more men into the meat-grinder for no gains by either side, I think it’s the worst outcome. I don’t like Option C in any way, but it seems fare less bad than having the same outcome, but more death.
That said, a negotiated peace ceding territory might end the fighting but could set a precedent that territorial conquest pays off, weakening the global order.
Option C feels like a bitter pill; it’s pragmatic but forces Ukraine to sacrifice land and pride, a tough ask for a nation fighting for its survival. Some might say a negotiated peace stabilizes the region short-term, but history—like Munich in 1938—warns that rewarding conquest invites more.
…but wait, a surprise…
Option B’ - Two-Front War Risk
Ok, let’s pretend that we actually have the balls to go fight Russia and curb-stomp them out of Ukraine (including, of course, Crimea). Does the US and her allies really have the ability to fight a two-theater war? I would question this.
If the U.S. commits fully to fighting Russia in Ukraine, it might leave Taiwan exposed to China. This would be the ideal time for China to do what they’ve been threatening to do for decades — invade and annex Taiwan.
We have to be really careful with how we’re throwing around our might.
A decisive victory could reshape Europe’s security landscape, but a two-theater war might strain U.S. and allied resources, leaving vulnerabilities elsewhere. If the U.S. goes all-in on Ukraine, China might see a green light to hit Taiwan, stretching allied forces thin across two continents.
Some historical context for a moment. When Russia attacked and annexed Crimea in 2014, the world’s reaction was an annoyed “tut tut.” Nothing happened. Russia shot down a commercial airliners and the sentiment was echoed again.
Nothing happened. Russia’s takeover was internationally condemned — tut tut — but met with limited Western response at the time.
Why is that?
Well, Obama was coming off a victory two years prior against Mitt Romney. All of the rhetoric was that Russia was not a threat.
“The 1980s are now calling to ask for their foreign policy back” in response to Romney saying that Russia is the biggest existent threat to the US and the world.
It would come off as almost comical to have the Obama administration immediately walk that back.
In Europe, Russia was also the supplier of natural gas to power the industrial nations there. Germany was committed to the absurd tactic of closing down their nuclear generation facilities so they were also against any action against Russia.
Tut tut.
Beyond these options, could intensified sanctions, diplomatic isolation, or mediation by neutral parties shift the dynamic? These might pressure Russia without the risks of Option B. Personally, I doubt it. Putin is in too deep to risk pulling out without something that can be claimed as a victory — and any victory would invariably put the scenario into Option C.
There are no good answers.
A continuation of the status quo, Option A, is, in my mind the worst outcome of all. It maximizes human suffering while having the same outcome as Option C.
Option B, my simple-minded “best” option, isn’t on the table because Russia has nukes. By the way, this shows that simply having nuclear weapons makes you unable to lose in the eyes of the world. It’s a non-ideal precedent in my mind.
Option B could also easily lead to B’ as well. That would also be a very not good outcome.
The one that disgusts me the least is Option C.
There are no good answers. Option A drags out the suffering with no end, Option B courts global chaos, and Option C trades Ukraine’s dreams for peace. I lean toward C as the least awful. It sucks. Royally.
Honestly, I would still lean towards B as the correct and moral choice, but I'm very much not in control of any of this.
"Option D: Apologise profusely to Russia and provide them with any support necessary to completely subjugate and annex Ukraine, in return for a promise that they will cooperate in containing China"
I think the choice of options you consider, and the ones you choose to ignore, is tendentious, and the arguments you present for them are based on a several load-bearing assumptions that you never justify. To begin with, you keep coming back to 1938 Germany comparisons, but in what way is Russia similar to it? Nazi Germany did not get bogged down in a stalemate in the Czechoslovakian trenches; Putin's Russia does not have the ideological basis for expansion or even risk-taking (except when they are deluded by bad intel), no shortage of land, resources or sea access, nor the demographics to support a mass war based on general mobilisation; nuclear MAD ensures that no actual existential interest of any major power can be violated; either way we are arguably in a setting where there is an increasingly realistic probability that either the US or China will go FOOM within a few years, which ought to completely reshape the risk-reward calculus if we were not so hardwired to follow established patterns.
How do you imagine that precedent would not exist otherwise? Azerbaijan just conquered territory with minimal effort from Armenia while everyone was looking at Ukraine, Israel somehow keeps growing, the US was having great successes bombing its way through Yugoslavia in the '90s, and BP, Exxon and Shell are currently yielding $billions in revenue per year in Iraq. Just because the median CNN consumer is successfully kept placid and morally assured by non-reporting (in the first case) or "we have received reports of whataboutist antisemitic misinformation, but rest assured these are totally different" (in the latter), that doesn't mean the entities that actually have agency over whether to engage in territorial conquest haven't been watching.
Russian World. A quote from here:
Idk, that sounds to me like ideological basis for expansion.
Apart from Ukraine, that maybe covers part of Estonia/Latvia/Lithuania at most, and they have only been talking about those populations less and less over the past several years (unlike, again, 1938s Germany, which only doubled and tripled down on its ideology). It seems like they have resigned themselves to writing them off.
This is also what that article talks about. From how the article is written, the "tragedy" expression seems to come from a longer sentence about Soviet Russian internal migrants who found themselves stuck abroad as a consequence of the SU collapse: "It was impossible for them to return, to reunite with their relatives. They didn't have a place of work, nor of residency. This is a great humanitarian tragedy, without exaggeration."
The thousand year quote does sound a little more ominous, but "we want to be powerful" is hardly an ideological basis for expansion in itself.
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