Notes

Zelensky: Only diplomacy can end Ukraine war
According to this approach, wars will end when the problem that caused the war is resolved by fighting on the battlefield. How long the fighting will last and the form it takes depends on the extent and type of the problem. In a matter of days, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has escalated to one of the biggest military conflicts in Europe since the second world war. The fog of war can obscure our view of who is winning, who is losing, and how long all of this will last.

That said, there wasn't much of a political will for third countries to sanction Cuba at the time. Previous wars, like the eight-year-long Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s, too have hinged on such external assistance. Today, focusing on the short-term aspect of the fighting, and on Ukraine’s near-term military needs, has created a growing risk that legislature and public opinion will cut aid to levels Ukraine cannot survive. "But even if Putin dies, I think there's only a miniscule chance that Russia would back off from the war, because it has already invested so much of its national image in winning." Ukraine's defensive forces transform into an effective insurgency, well-motivated and supported by local populations.
Because it would be hard to reverse after ratification by 32 NATO member parliaments, NATO accession — ideally by the end of 2024 — would also frustrate Putin’s plan to draw out the war until political winds in the West change. The Biden administration has said the war must end before Ukraine can join NATO, because it does not want to risk direct U.S. involvement. But it has not defined what it means, in this context, for the war to be “over.” Must there be a formal peace treaty?

Ukraine's counteroffensive is likely to make some progress in the remainder of this year, Barrons said — but nowhere near enough to end the occupation. The war between Russia and Ukraine entered a new phase this summer when Kyiv launched its much-anticipated counteroffensive, and there were hopes Ukraine would regain the upper hand. The longer the war drags on, there is an increased chance it may slow to "more of a nasty simmer", like the one prior to the full-scale invasion in February, Ms Oliker says. The "special military operation" in Ukraine has already beaten most analysts expectations and, with more offensives planned for this year, there appears to be no end in sight. "His sole remaining function in their perception of the new era of peace will be to nominate a successor and leave the stage." Although he added that discussions around Crimea would likely have to be settled separately, possibly going to an international tribunal for discussion and a process of continuing negotiation.

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Some observers have suggested that continued defeats on the battlefield might result in Putin’s downfall. After all, Russian defeats in the Crimean War in the 19th century, and losses to Japan and in Afghanistan in the 20th century, all catalysed profound domestic changes. A protracted and costly World War I helped usher in the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917. The Russian ruling elite saw the Soviet Union’s collapse merely as a reconfiguration in which former Soviet countries would “continue to be together in some way”, Popova told Al Jazeera, whereas Ukraine saw it as an opportunity to be fully independent.

Equally, Ukraine’s dependence on their weapons gives Western powers a say in how Kyiv plots its strategy. Germany alone remains a critical power vacuum, but most of the nations in NATO have major problems in war fighting and forward deployment capability and uncertain plans for modernization. The Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 saw the return of major war to the European continent. The partial mobilization was carried out in a chaotic fashion, and, as at the beginning of the war, caused tens of thousands of people to flee Russia. And the near-total control of information by the government is making dissent difficult. It would show that the West is committed to creating a more stable and peaceful relationship with Russia, effectively seizing the high moral ground.
They believed the wars that they had studied could shed light on the current conflict. The war theorist Branislav Slantchev, one of Goemans’s former students and a professor at the University of California, San Diego, told me that in August he’d been asked to participate in a Zoom symposium on war termination convened by a U.S. intelligence agency. More recent theoretical literature had acknowledged the two-sidedness of war, Goemans writes, but here, too, important aspects had been missed. War theory imported from economics the concept of “bargaining,” and wars were thought to begin when the bargaining process—over a piece of territory, usually—broke down.

Here’s How We Can End the War in Ukraine
Around 80% of the male population complete some form of military service. Refusal can mean a jail sentence, though there is the option of civilian service out of uniform too. In Sweden and Norway, conscription is partial - not everyone gets drafted.


The recent arms donations — Kyiv still wants fighter aircraft and long-range tactical missiles — are predicated on the assumption they’ll force Moscow to end its invasion and begin negotiations because military costs are too high. That objective has coexisted with an expectation that Putin’s government will probably never stop fighting, as losing the war could spell the end to his political power. So far, western countries have shown strong unity in wanting to help Ukraine force out Russia. But if Joe Biden is defeated in the US presidential election in 2024 by Donald Trump or another isolationist candidate, it could pose serious questions for Ukraine’s war effort.

The state of the war
The US has provided €44bn ($46bn) of military support to Ukraine, and Europe (including the UK) €18.7bn, according to Germany’s Kiel Institute. "Unless circumstances change, it is unlikely that the war will end in 2024," he told Newsweek. "Despite the slow gains in 2023, Ukrainian morale remains high. The majority of the country still believes that they will win the war, and they will not accept any other outcome than the total removal of Russian forces from Ukrainian lands." In his self-assessment, Phillips O’Brien concludes that he was too optimistic in assuming that the US and its allies would transfer the long-range systems necessary to attack and disrupt the supply lines behind enemy lines.

The worry is that even this is overly optimistic, although it is the strategy that western leader appears to be selling to their publics. “There is a real problem here in that we may be over-encouraged by Ukraine’s early successes in counterattacking last year,” said James Nixey, a Russia expert at the Chatham House thinktank. "There is always a risk of nuclear escalation but I do think both sides are being cautious," Partlett says.


The risk of the strategy was that it would bring the United States into the war; the hope was that it would choke off Great Britain and lead to victory. https://penzu.com/p/38c4c80750ac6747 was a “high variance” strategy, in Goemans’s words, meaning that it could lead to a great reward or a great calamity. In the event, it did lead to the U.S. entering the war, and the defeat of Germany, and the Kaiser’s removal from power.

Either the Russian military’s transition to indiscriminate bombing of civilian targets succeeds in eroding Ukrainian resistance, or battlefield casualties and domestic economic woes succeed in defeating Russia’s will to fight. Mr Putin could declare Western arms supplies to Ukrainian forces are an act of aggression that warrant retaliation. But without political support, the mindset of a country that does not feel like it is about to go to war is unlikely to change. They believe some of their Western allies, as well as supporters in the media, have become over-excited about Ukraine's army and its Nato equipment. "A frank and constructive dialogue is expected to improve relations between states," the Ukrainian president's office said on its official channel on the Telegram messaging app alongside a photo of Mr Szijjarto, Mr Kuleba and Mr Yermak.
As for humanitarian or war crime trials, these seem unlikely to affect more than a few low to medium-level scapegoats—or even take place—as long as Putin is in power. Ukraine might at least be able to repatriate some of its citizens and children who have been taken into Russia and are being forced to become Russian citizens. Put bluntly, a workable Western grand strategy means that the political leaders in the United States and its NATO partners need to make good on their political statements and efforts. They must create and actually implement an effective overall plan for arming, training, and supplying Ukraine, as well as strengthening NATO. The war in Ukraine has exposed the fact that Russia’s conventional forces have serious limits, but it has done an equally good job of exposing NATO’s lack of war reserves, standardization and interoperability, modernization, and readiness. Germany alone remains a critical power vacuum, but most of the nations in NATO have major problems in war fighting and forward deployment capability and uncertain plans for modernization.

Industrial-age warfare bends significant parts, or in some cases whole economies, towards the production of war materials as matters of priority. The EU's decision to open membership talks with Ukraine and Moldova is more than just symbolic. It instead would create the equivalent of a “rules-based disorder” where European states found their own solution to securing their position relative to Russia along different lines. At different times in this conflict Russia has resembled Iran’s position, and Ukraine has mirrored Iraq’s in that war — if only incompletely — said Jeremy Morris, professor of global studies at Aarhus University in Denmark.
It is also a clear example that for all the talk of an integrated strategy and a rules-based order, the United States at present only has a limited integrated strategy even for dealing with Europe. Anything that approaches a rules-based order is limited to some developed countries. Putting clearly defined options on the table for improving U.S./European relations with Russia might lead to more Russian willingness to accommodate Ukraine in at least some aspects of territory and economic relations. More generally, Putin will not last forever, and presenting such options moves the focus away from a relatively narrow focus on the war to a focus on its outcome.


So if Russia manages to stymie plans A and B, where would that leave us by, say this time next year? Should Ukraine and its allies simply carry on, hoping for a breakthrough in 2025 or beyond? Given what’s at stake — not just the survival of Ukraine but of the whole international order — that would be risky. It would make success dependent on events we cannot predict or control, including on the outcome of elections in Western countries, including the United States.

Here's my website: https://penzu.com/p/38c4c80750ac6747