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Notes -
To anyone who has discussed the issue with pro-Ukraine people.
Why do people support Ukraine fighting against Russia, with a strange militaristic fervor, instead of supporting surrendering / negotiating peace?
Anglin makes the points that:
-the war is severely impoverishing Europe due to high energy costs
-the war is destroying Ukraine ( population + territory / infrastructures / institutions)
-continuing the war increases the chances of a world war
Is it cheering for the possible destruction of Russia?
Something to do with the current leadership of Russia, anti-LGBTQ, pro-family policies?
Is it about the 1991 borders of Ukraine, issues with post-Soviet Union border disputes?
Notion that 'if we don't stop Putin now he will never stop no matter what'? Is it something about broadly standing up against aggression of one state vs another, supporting the 'underdog'?
The issue with that one which seems to be central to Alexander's March 22 post is that there isn't much that seems capable of stopping Russia.
Sending another 100k Ukrainians to the meatgrinder for that end seems a little bit harsh coming from people with very little skin in the game.
Just signaling what they are told is the correct opinion?
Is it about saving face, sunk cost at this point?
What would be the best case scenario for a Ukraine/State Department victory?
To my understanding, Putin is not the most radical or dangerous politician in Russia, and an implosion into ethnicity-based sub-regions would cause similar problems to the 'Arab Spring'. Chechens for example would not appear very West-friendly once 'liberated' from Russia.
Not only that, but economic crisis in Europe could generate additional security risks.
There’s no peace deal on the table. It feels like your just building a strawman. You don’t end a war just to leave military positions that can turn into a hot war whenever Russia decides to.
If Russia put together a peace deal that is viable and would end hostilities for a generation then Ukraine should consider it. They haven’t. The only offer Ukraine has received is a ceasefire until Russia is ready to start the war again. From Ukraines perspective it’s better to win or lose now. Not have purgatory and new war in a year.
Is it that likely that a ceasefire would just lead to another war? And on your other point, what kind of peace deal would prevent war for another generation? Like, do you expect Russia to totally disarm or something?
Depending on how you want to categorize the intervention, last February was the second, third, fourth or even fifth incursion by Russia against Ukraine in the last decade. First being Crimea, second being the NovaRussia 'uprising', third being the 2014 direct military intervention to save the NovaRussia uprising into what remained of the separatist micro-states which saw a major defeat of the 2014 Ukrainian army, the fourth being the various escalation-spikes in the not-so-frozen conflict, and fifth being the most recent.
The Russian Federation as an institution has set out goals that a cease fire on current terms would not meet, with very heavy-handed measures intended to ensure no major Russian political figure of significance could backtrack (the annexation of not-occupied territories, the early-war 'we all support Putin' public statements, the various filtration measures including systemic torture and executions that no figure has repudiated, the abduction of Ukrainian children and systemic adoption by Russians), while Putin in particular has demonstrated a pretty consistent and unchanging view on an end-state that doesn't exactly accept the status quo.
While there could be an argument that Putin could be indefinitely persuaded until his death that he isn't ready to attack Ukraine yet again, this is undermined by the fact that- by the public reports of those world leads who've met with him- Putin seems to really believe he can still win this current war, even as the strategic tools Putin had been counting on this war (specifically European gas dependence) will not apply in the medium-term future. In this context, Putin's use of a cease fire would be operational so that he could still operate before full European gas dependence, not indefinite like the Korean War.
Sure, if you want to count the events of 2014 as being three separate wars. But what matters is not how long the battle has gone on for, but how it's going now, and it's going really badly for the Russians.
The same claim is always made by hawks against ceasefires. The North and South Koreans at the time opposed ceasefire - it was only due to pressure from their great power patrons that they accepted the armistice. They would gladly have continued fighting. Hawks, at the time, warned against it, saying that the dastardly North Koreans would attack again once they saw a chance. In that time an entire generation of Koreans has grown up and become old. You think Putin has another fifty years of life in him?
This, uh, is an awkward choice of historical comparison, considering North Korea absolutely did attempt on multiple times to attack South Korea in ways intended to topple the government, ranging from decapitation strike on a Blue House to attempted insurgencies to a provocation campaign intended to drive the Americans to withdraw so that the North Korean buildup could go against the relatively less built-up South.
The 'hawks' were absolutely correct that North Korea would attack again once they saw a chance, as demonstrated by them doing so, and so the hawk-influence on an armistice as opposed to a treaty was vindicated.
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If Ukraine fights this out I would estimate a 20-30% chance of complete Russian disarmament. That’s a scenerio where losing the war costs Moscow legitimacy for their colonial possessions and the splintering of the Russian empire into unit sizes without an ability to project force.
Current lines are not defensible for Ukraine. Old 2014 lines would be defensible for Ukraine right now especially with added western tech transfer and a degraded Russian military.
Any thing I’ve seen from Russia right now in terms of ceasefire seems to be to buy time to rebuild combat effectiveness. Also for the broader west a ceasefire isn’t good because it means we need to spend more money keeping the lights on in Ukraine before rebuilding for real.
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