In reality that’s the priority for the west including all the Euro Leaders meeting with Trump today at the White House. In writing to this point yesterday, Adam Mill at Chronicles Magazine wrote…
President Donald Trump is expected to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin tomorrow in Alaska to discuss proposals for ending the war in Ukraine. Meanwhile, the president of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, has softened his position after initially refusing to be party to any peace deal recognizing Russian annexation of land conquered during the war. Zelensky and many of his supporters expressed concern over “rewarding” Russian aggression and compared any such concession to the Munich agreement that ratified Nazi aggression in the former Czechoslovakia. Such concessions make future Russian aggression more likely, they warn.
But this is not Munich, after which Hitler marched unopposed into the former Czechoslovakia following the flimsy peace agreement that led to dishonor and war. Even then, the world powers lacked the will and likely the means to use force to stop the Germans with or without an agreement. The shame of Munich was in legitimizing Hitler’s aggression.
That’s certainly true… this isn’t Munich, but neither is it Versailles, and I wonder if he’s taking that info account. Zelensky’s attitude is understandable, but he, like so many American leftists, seems interested in punishing Putin. Again, understandable, but problematic. History speaks loudly to this. The sentiment of punishment drove Versailles, which in turn led directly to Hitler’s rise, and WWII. Punishment, while understandable and even morally justified, was at least counter productive in the end.
Total victory on the battlefield is an obvious impossibility, from either wise. It’s simply not going to happen. As Mill suggests:
Escalating this war to totally defeat Russia means committing the sons and daughters of Europe and the West. Our meager birthrates mean that every soldier’s death is the potential end of a family. That’s what Ukraine and Russia are experiencing now. Neither country will soon recover from the loss of their young men. Both sides are suffering immensely.
That’s true…. US sources suggest Russia has lost 20,000 people this month alone.I haven’t seen Ukranian losses listed but imagine that I would assume that those numbers are proportionally similar.
What’s left on the list of possibles then, is a negotiated peace. Not overly desirable, since negotiated peace is invariably less robust.
Putin of course, has his reasons for invading Ukraine. Among them, NATO expansion eastward. He wants a buffer zone against NATO. I remind the reader about NATO’s article 5, which essentially means that an attack against one NATO member is taken as an attack on ALL NATO members. In other words, instant world war if Putin so much as flinches. One can easily understand his discomfort with that.
At this point it’s also about the ego of both Putin and Zelensky.They’re both going to have to give up something. Putin, in particular is going to need to give up at least a few of his demands.
Now, I don’t recall a war being settled by giving up conquered territory, outside of Israel after the six day war. Somehow, I don’t figure either Putin or Zelensky have that kind of moral grounding, even with Trump’s prompting.
Will Trump be successful? I don’t know but the way I see it he is likely the only one who can.
