Ukraine Cannot Be Asked to Sign Its Own Death Warrant By Dan McLaughlin
https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/ukraine-cannot-be-asked-to-sign-its-own-death-warrant/
The war in Ukraine appears right now in stark terms: A revanchist Russia seeks the extermination of the Ukrainian state, and the Ukrainian people, with their blood up in a fit of wartime nationalist fervor, are in the mood to fight to the last ditch for their nation. So long as Russia offers Ukraine no option but its annihilation as an independent state — at best, surviving with a foreign-imposed puppet regime — things are likely to continue along those lines. A man who is cornered with no way out will fight on until crushed, and perhaps beyond that in a protracted insurgency. American and European voices offering a “realistic” argument for Ukraine accepting peace terms to avoid further death and destruction have to reckon with the fact that, since time immemorial, there have always been things people feared worse than war.
The diplomatic dilemma in constructing an “off ramp” is that it has to satisfy both sides. As Jim Geraghty argues, it really is not apparent thus far that Vladimir Putin really wants one, or at least is willing to offer one in terms that are a remotely realistic appraisal of the mood of Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky and the people he represents.
For all of the Churchillian rhetoric surrounding Zelensky and Ukraine right now, it still makes sense for Ukraine to accept peace terms that are, in effect, an admission of defeat. Russia may be bogged down badly and embarrassing Putin and his military on the world stage, but it is still the larger, greater power, it has already occupied Ukrainian territory, the entire war is being fought on Ukrainian soil — not Russian — and Russia has nukes and the sort of leader whose willingness to use them can’t entirely be ruled out. Much as it will batter Ukrainian national pride and the prestige of its allies to admit this, any negotiated settlement will put Russia in a better position than before it entered the war. Compared with the status quo ante, Ukraine’s borders will be reduced. And it may be compelled to distance itself in some ways from the United States and Europe. Zelensky is already floating the possibility that a deal could involve permanently renouncing Ukrainian ambitions to join NATO. Strategic ambiguity will be officially dead, as if the war hasn’t already pronounced a time of death. Ukraine may have to accept being forced further into Russia’s parlous economic orbit and away from the European Union.
Here, however, is where the terms being floated by advocates of a Ukrainian capitulation cross the line and present what may be an intolerable sticking point: the demand that Ukraine simultaneously renounce NATO and accept the dismantling of its own military. It is unreasonable for Putin to demand both, or accept that both will be accepted without a significantly longer conflict. Putin, of course, desires to see Ukraine both disarmed and shorn of allies or security guarantees. But that goes beyond a demand that Ukraine be defanged as an offensive threat to Russia (a fantastical chimera, but one that Putin has talked himself into, at least as pretext). It is, transparently, a demand that Ukraine give Putin carte blanche to dismember it at will next time. A nation that has no capacity for self-defense must have allies who will defend it; a nation that can count on no allies must (per the Israeli model) be capable of standing on its own. The Ukrainians are unlikely to be unaware that voluntarily abandoning both at once is an invitation to resume this war later on terms much more favorable to Russia. To ask that is to ask for national suicide. If Ukrainians are presented only with the choice between a war of national extermination now or a war of national extermination later, all the “rational” arguments for cooling off and settling are likely to be unavailing.
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