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Two More Questions on Ukraine
In my post yesterday, I posed a question about the situation in Ukraine: who is the government in Kiev supposed to negotiate with when Moscow won’t admit involvement and the puppet officials on the ground have no real power? Today, I present two more questions about potential peace negotiations for your consideration:
Question: Who is to enforce and guarantee the peace?
Russia is conducting a hybrid war against Ukraine that is becoming more open. This war uses propaganda, human shields, irregular forces, lying, and plausible deniability. Vladimir Putin is the only possible guarantor of the peace. He must uphold his pledge to halt the flow of mercenaries, equipment, propaganda, and self-proclaimed leaders across the border. But Putin is a known liar, who maintains with a straight face that there is no Russian equipment and troops in Ukraine. If Putin is a signatory to any peace agreement, he can continue to destabilize Ukraine (and perhaps even more) while solemnly claiming that he has nothing to do with spoiling the peace.
Question: How can there be a peace agreement when one party, which claims not to be a warring party, is satisfied with the status quo of no peace?
We must understand that Putin’s goal is not territorial conquest. He does not want the loss-making coal mines and steel mills of the Donetsk region. Instead his goal is a frozen war that goes on forever – in other words, just what he has now. Putin wants to destabilize Ukraine to prevent it from joining Europe, reforming itself into a rule of law country, and achieving some reasonable prosperity. He only needs to keep enough forces flowing in to prevent an outright Ukrainian victory. He does not even want victory — because that would make him responsible for the costly spoils.
The bottom line: There will be no peace. There can be no peace. Only real action from the West can bring this mess to an end.
Published in General
When Putin is allowed to annex the portions of Ukraine he wants there will be peace. Face it, the west is not willing to do what it will take to stop him.
Why would he care if Ukraine joins Europe and becomes prosperous if he isn’t interested in owning Ukraine? Does he worry that Ukraine will buy its fossil fuels elsewhere if it can afford to? Does he worry that Russians will pick up expectations of freedom from their immediate neighbors?
If he simply wants a perpetual war to distract Russian citizens from internal problems and to boost nationalism, then that has nothing to do with preventing Ukraine from becoming prosperous.
Why would holding a conquered nation cost him more financially than a perpetual stalemate? If he doesn’t need Ukraine’s resources, then why should he invest at all in a conquered nation?
Also, I recall someone saying months back that Russia has injected false revolutionaries in Estonia as well to stir up trouble. If he’s not interested in conquest, why would he stretch his resources thin with multiple wars?
Because he is an insane dictator, running a nation where the average citizen yearns for the feel of a whip on his back.
You’re asking questions of the irrational, of the insane, of the absurd, of the cartoonish. There’s no answers to your questions.
Sigh. He’s a Russian. Paranoia is the predominate Russian trait. They have a paranoid fear of successful neighbors ( a dangerous example for the downtrodden Proles of Mother Russia, and maybe they will try to carve off a piece of the Motherland) and a paranoid fear of unstable neighbors ( a dangerous example for the downtrodden Proles of Mother Russia ….. ). This is why for all of it’s history Russian has engaged in the same “aggressive defensive” wars as Rome.
You hardly need me to tell you this, Paul, but you have an elegant gift for reducing complicated matters to the underlying essentials. May I ask two questions in reply to your two?
1) Aside from the United States, is there any country, or group of countries, that could indeed guarantee the peace? Germany is prosperous and powerful enough, of course, but the idea that it would put itself in a position that relied, ultimately, on its willingness to use force–well, that simply won’t happen, will it? Could the EU step in? The UN? Anyone?
2) I’d thought Putin did want territory, and your argument that all he really wants is a weak and confused Ukraine on his border throws me a little. You mean he’s not trying to put together the old tsarist/Soviet empire? That all he really wants is a weak and uncommitted buffer zone between him and the West? I suppose what I’m getting at is that Putin’s motivations strike me as terribly important to understand–and altogether obscure. Suppose we said to him, “Comrade Vladimir, for 24 hours you may rule the world, rearranging the map just as you choose.” How would he reply?
Territory, he has plenty of. Territory is a means to an end. Yes, he wants to restore the Soviet Union, and yes he wants power.
By getting Ukraine stuck in a state of limbo, just as he did with Georgia by occupying chunks of their territory, he can guarantee that they will never be accepted by NATO or EU.
All this of course is aimed at internal consumption. He needs to stroke up the average Russian’s willingness to be turned into a slave. Nothing works better at voluntarily turning people into slaves, in Eastern Europe, than beating the drums of nationalism and ethnic hatreds. He’s got the problem that the communists and nationalist parties form the second largest block in Russia. They can easily threaten his power, if he doesn’t preempt and appeal to the average Russian’s desire for both former Soviet glory and Russian ultra-nationalism.
Russia is turning into Milosevic’s Serbia, x 1,000.
@Peter Robinson –
I think Putin wanted the territory in the beginning; but with the events unfolding, “Gaza-ization” of Donetsk-Luhansk region looks like a good plan B.
Europe tolerated Putin’s thuggishness after Georgian War in 2008. “Tagliavini Report” tried to be even-handed (Russia says this, Georgia says that) – and it read as would-be report on Gleiwitz incident: Germany claims this, Poland claims that, and we are not sure. As result, South Ossetia became Georgia’s Gaza.
Then, of course, “polite people” occupied Crimea without a peep from Europe, and it allowed Russia to annex foreign territory for the first time since WW2.
As the saying goes, when the strong don’t use their strength, the most dangerous are not the strongest, but those who are the biggest thugs. Putin learned it back in KGB years, and uses it all the way to the bank!
Peter:
Of course, Putin wants to restore as much of the former USSR as possible (as long as the inhabitants’ skin is not too dark). I was talking about what he can get at a price he is willing to pay, and my view on what that constitutes has changed a lot since his overt invasion. I thought he would not invade for a number of reasons, one being that he now knows he would be occupying hostile territory. At the beginning he believed his own propaganda and thought ethnic Russian Ukrainians would flock to him. They did not. I thought that would squelch his Novorossiya dream. I was wrong. Now he is peddling Novorossiya again.
Peter: I agree with your main points and have believed this for quite a while. Putin’s aim is to make Ukraine stink so much that no one will allow it in their house. Who wants a dirty stinking mutt? That’s what Putin is making at least of southeast Ukraine.