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Isn't this just a general purpose argument for extending the war forever? Obviously the opponent would only compromise if he was weak. And if he's weak we can win!
Algorithm for perpetual war
Opponent is losing: Don't stop now, he's toast. March on to victory.
Opponent is winning: Don't negotiate from a state of weakness.
Honestly, I don't know. Maybe Putin wouldn't accept peace even at the current borders. Maybe he would. Maybe he'd give it all back in exchange for international recognition of Crimea. Why are we afraid to try offering an olive branch?
No. It's a specific-person argument relevant to the key decision maker based on past actions and demonstrated intentions.
Your algorithm lacks basic considerations such as not reflecting the considerations of what objectives are being pursued, the considerations of Putin that Resolute Raven was referring to, not factoring in the game theory of the nuclear weapons.
It also lacks the characteristic of having been made by the person you are responding to, rendering it a straw man that does not address their actual position.
I don't know- why are you afraid?
May other people aren't afraid, they just deem it an irrational and even harmful olive branch based on the multiple other olive branches Putin was offered that Putin discarded, ignored, or used as weapons in the course of his path to the present.
Which returns to your propensity to ignoring the history of involved actors and repeated iterations of conflicts and compromises as a factor in other people's considerations of how to deal with said actors.
To pick just one related to territorial claims, the history that Putin himself recognized Ukranian territorial integrity before he decided not to, before he said he had no further territorial claims on Ukraine, before he sponsored an uprising he claimed he had nothing to do with, before he launched an armed intervention to secure separatist republics he claimed he had no territorial ambitions on, before he annexed them but claimed he had no territorial goals on the rest of Ukraine, before he declared the annexation of not only territories held but territories never captured, to current highly costly efforts to continue conquering territory not held and never held previously.
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