Entirely guessing here, but I suspect the US is working towards a traditional compromise settlement that makes no one happy and sets the stage for another conflict down the road. Probably with the Ukraine recovering to the post 2014 border, but leaving Crimea unrecovered, possibly with the suggestion of a UN governed referendum (which will be indefinitely put off) to determine it’s final status as a territory.
The Ukraine will be unhappy, but dependent to a large degree on Western support for recovery, and will still have the majority of the win, and Russia will be unhappy (obviously) but won’t have lost ‘core’ territory from their POV, and might be willing to settle.
And of course, it’ll blow up again down the line, but the USA is bad about going for quick fixes.
I don’t think this is the likely outcome, just a plausible scenario that they think they can get everyone to just barely tolerate, ideally before use of nuclear weapons pushes any hope of a negotiated solution off the table (probably).
One of the the things that will also probably kill any long term peace prospects are the non-governmental losses that are going to be pursued by all parties in the courts. Russia is never getting back it’s funds - from the airlines claiming damages for seized planes, to other internationally owned resources, to Ukrainian governmental and civilian claims, Russia’s future trade with the West is going to be crippled for probably at least a decade.
Which will per historical trends, just make the populace unhappy, and looking for someone to blame, and someone to ‘make it right’. So meet the new boss, same as the old boss.
I think Crimea is ultimately going to be the sticking point for the end game scenarios. Taking it militarily will probably be far harder for Ukraine than re-taking the more recent losses, because the Russians have had a lot more time to prepare the ground there.
But a referendum a few years down the road as part of a cease-fire makes sense, because of the economic and political issues Gyrate mentions - after few years of economic hardship for being on the losing side, there’s a decent chance that a large part of the population of Crimea would jump at the chance to ditch Russia and rejoin Ukraine. This has the extra bonus of being a direct slap in the face to Putin and his “leadership”.
Putin doesn’t want head-to-head combat with NATO or the US. He’s hoping they will eventually give in if he throws enough manpower and missiles at Ukraine. Zelensky believes that with NATO and the US backing him, he can wear Russia down until Putin realizes it’s a lost cause. Putin using tactical nukes would be a huge mistake and would drag NATO and the US directly into a conflict he can never win.
I think Putin would be happy just to keep Crimea, but I don’t see Zelensky ever agreeing to that now. I can see this war grinding on for another year or two until either Zelensky decides to cut a deal (unlikely) or Putin decides to pull troops out (also unlikely). The end game for the US is to avoid WWIII and to keep Ukraine an independent country… at least for now.
While I would like to see Russia absolutely crushed and see the 1991 borders restored, I would prefer to see a compromise reached that stops more bloodshed and destruction. Taking into account the likelihood that Russia will accept the terms, I think the most likely outcome of the war is that Russia gives up its claims on the recently annexed territory, has its claims to Crimea internationally recognized, and pays a large indemnity to Ukraine. I think recognition of Russian control of Crimea is the easiest thing to give Russia that’s (relatively) in line with the will of the people living there, and giving Russia absolutely nothing of what it wants will be extremely tough to force.
The second most likely outcome is that Russia gives up its claimed on the recently annexed territories, and agrees to a UN-run referendum being held in Crimea to determine its future status, but unlike in the above scenario, Russia is not forced to contribute monetarily to the rebuilding of Ukraine.
However, I don’t really know what the concrete goals, if any, the US and other supporting nations have in mind by supplying Ukraine with weapons and intelligence as they have been doing. I think they only really have the short-term goal of preventing Ukraine from being conquered, and having Russian troops no longer control any of the recently annexed areas. What to do with Crimea is probably not something that’s being thought about when it comes to the why there is support being given, and the Crimea issue going to be the number one sticking point.
Like you, I do not believe it is anyone’s best interests for America to take the position that this war should be fought out until Russia “decisively loses”. I understand the desire to see Putin getting bitch-slapped, but international policy shouldn’t be decided upon someone getting bitch-slapped, especially when nuclear bombs are involved. During the early days of this conflict I regularly saw news reports of negotiations; I saw the name of Russian’s Foreign Minister often enough that I actually remember it off the top of my head (Sergei Lavrov); there was talk of Turkey trying to help broker a deal. I was optimistic that there could be a ceasefire, and I acknowledged that it might involve Russia keeping some of the supposedly-independent “Republics” in Ukrainian territory, but I was OK with that if it meant that fucking nuclear power plants wouldn’t get bombed by artillery.
There’s no more talk of negotiation, diplomacy, or ceasefire in the news anymore, and that bothers me. I am not on board with the idea that Russia needs to be decisively defeated and Ukraine needs to be decisively victorious and that America needs to work towards this end. I don’t want to see the conflict escalate any further and I REALLY do not want NATO to become involved.
I am 36 years old and I did not grow up during the Cold War. The idea of nuclear brinksmanship is not something that I was exposed to at any point in my life, let along enough to get used to it as a normal state of affairs. I believe there’s a significant generational gap at work here. Most people my age who I know, feel the same way that I do about this conflict; most people my parents’ age who I know have a much more “we need to defeat Russia in the name of Western Democracy” attitude about it, and I’m convinced it’s because they grew up during the Cold War. They remember constant talk of nuclear weapons, they know that they were NOT ultimately used, and so they figure this is just a new Cold War and the nuclear weapons are NOT ever going to be used, just like the first one.
I’m less certain. And unlike them, I’ve got my whole life ahead of me.
This is true, but you need to realize that the “constant talk” of nuclear weapons was of a fundamentally different character. The feeling was always one of, the Nukes were the Big Bad Leroy Brown of warfare. You knew it was lurking there, and everyone knew, you don’t go toe to toe with Leroy Brown. So we never really got close to actually using them.
But Putin’s talk is different. He’s talking about using nukes on the battlefield, in the middle of an actual war, just because it’s not going as well as he thought it would. Back in the 80s, we mostly knew that Nukes would only ever be used defensively. Using them just because an attempt to invade a non-nuclear power went badly was largely inconceivable.
I do think Putin’s claim of using a nuke is mostly bluster, simply because I don’t think there is a reasonable tactical target in Ukraine that would warrant such an escalation. Putin knows that if he uses a tactical nuke the world is going to come down on him with both boots. So the battlefield gain would have to be immense to justify using one.
But I’m not seeing such a target in Ukraine. A tactical nuke could be used against large airbases or naval docks if those assets were heavily in play, but they aren’t. Most of the war so far appears to be distributed tank and artillery battles. A tactical nuke might take out 100 tanks and a thousand soldiers, but that wouldn’t materially affect the war, and the response from the world would be a thousand times worse for Russia.
That said… Putin is getting desperate. Desperate dictators can be irrational and dangerous.
Attributed to Von Clausewitz, by among others Robert B. Parker in the Spenser books, but more like Moltke, “No plan survives contact with the enemy.” Mike was more visceral.
Except that the US always maintained an overwhelming first strike capacity, refused to say it would never strike first with nuclear weapons, and used them twice against a non-nuclear power. From the Soviet point of view, the issue may not have been quite so obvious. That meant the Soviets were in a “use it or lose it” situation making the whole thing pretty damn shaky. Add in the accidents and the near-launches on both sides, and one might be forgiven for thinking it was rather a near-run thing
Yeah, but no one really thought the US would ever really strike first.
And you really can’t hold Japan against them. Firstly, that was before we really knew what nukes could do. Secondly, even if they’d used every bomb they had on Japan, that would have been maybe 3-4 bombs, with one or two more coming on line every month or so. Thirdly, at the time, there was no notion of Mutually Assured Destruction - the US was the only country to have nukes for several years after the war.
By the 80s, all those factors were completely different. We all knew that any use of nukes by the US, or the USSR, would be an all-or-nothing thing, so they’d only be used in an all-or-nothing context, which simply wasn’t in the cards. In the 80s, we all knew the West was winning the Cold War, so there was no need to go hot.
I feel that this thing has rippled out into various aspects of the U.S. desires of security and control in general, worldwide. The direct issue of Ukraine has been bubbling for decades. Until quite recently it was not considered so much of a threat even by U.S. and NATO. Russia was always hot about it. But now it has triggered multiple threats in the economic and resource security realms. I say threats, but they do not need to be threats. It seems to be pressuring a realignment to a less U.S. dominated system. Not an economic attack, but a banding together of countries to circumvent a certain level of control.
The U.S. and allies can try and maintain control and punishments, or decide to reset their position in these realms as an equal participant in the concept of trade and economics. Not the rulers, enforcers.
I think most countries are still on the same footing regarding diplomatic relations and alliance with U.S. E.U. countries. But they are taking measures to harden their economic and political self determination.
Best case scenario? Not good for Ukraine as far as territory and losses. But outside the conflict there? A more equal economic and political playing field, and more sovereign self determination within countries.
Of course there will still be certain countries and alliances with huge military advantage. But hopefully the economic political realms can be more free from being weaponized.
Not that it changes your argument, but if we’d used every bomb we had on Japan, it would have been exactly the two we did, because those were, in fact, all we had. Plus one if you count the Trinity test, but there was good reason to test one of the infernal things before actually using them.
There’s no talk of this because Russia has been off the deep end in a fantasy world. None of their stated positions, whether it’s to de-nazify Ukraine or take over 1/5th of Ukraine are acceptable to the rest of the world, much less Ukraine. Since the party they need to negotiate with is Ukraine, their positions will need to be much closer to their opponent’s before any negotiations are anything but an experiment in “let’s pretend”. They’ll need to start acknowledging the facts on the ground (they’re unlikely to hold any of the land they’ve claimed) and stop making up their own fantasies before negotiations can honestly take place.
Ukraine’s stated position seems to be “Drive out the invaders to the pre-2014 borders!” It seems like a reasonable position to take, given that they seem to be able to do it provided they are resupplied by their allies. As far as I can tell, there’s no usage of a nuclear weapon that would allow Russia to save face or even hold on to the territory it has occupied.
I was horrified back in the 80s when I learned that Soviet doctrine was to use tactical nukes in the event of needing to get through a large NATO formation. Of course, it’s kind of laughable when I think about it now. It’d be a weird situation where either NATO or the USSR actually lasted more than a few days in actual combat, before it’d become so dire for one side that they’d start slinging nukes.
Ehh, it may not be your experience, but I’ve felt that nuclear tensions really haven’t done anything but increase for most of my lifetime. Even though relations between the US and the USSR softened; India, Pakistan and North Korea all acquired nuclear weapons. The threat’s been hanging out the whole time, and more folks have the ability to use it if they were so inclined.
Well, like it or not, Ukraine really does need to defeat Russia in the name of Western Democracy. This really does seem to be more an existential fight for Western Democracy than it is for Russia, in fact. If we back down just because they use a tactical nuke, they can then just annex any area they’d like. So yeah, I think Ukraine really does need to expel Russia from its borders. If Russia’s feelings are hurt about it, too bad. Don’t invade your neighbors in stupid wars of conquest, and it’s less likely to happen to you.
Even without nuclear war erupting, Putin will be lucky to survive his invasion. I’m starting to worry that Russia might be lucky to survive it intact. Of course, Russia splitting up without it resulting in WWIII would seem to make for more nuclear powers, increasing our risk further. However, I really don’t see an option for Ukraine other than Russia getting a decisive loss handed to it. Ukraine is who they attacked, and Ukraine is who they’re really going to have to settle with.
And Putin has stayed in power by gutting his country of any talented leadership, so that they would not pose any threat to his reign. That’s one major reason his war is going so poorly - any competent generals or civil leaders are long gone.
Staying in power a long time is not necessarily a sign of strength. Sometimes, all it means that the dictator has broken his country, cowered it, weakened it enough so that even a mediocrity like himself can control it. Sometimes, a leader only looks strong because everyone standing around him is so weak.
An actual strong leader makes his country stronger. Putin is not a strong leader.
Problem is, this stance rewards nuclear armament. It’s essentially saying “We are willing to bitch-slap enemies that don’t have nukes, but don’t dare bitch-slap those that do.” It would be indirectly rewarding North Korea (and soon, Iran) for their decisions to go nuclear, and encourage nuclear proliferation.
From the perspective of the West, it seems pretty easy, actually. Just continue doing what’s been done: Continue supplying Ukraine with arms and supplies indefinitely. The attrition math works heavily against Russia; NATO has a combined GDP 35x larger than Russia’s. As sanctions and war losses continue to bite in, Russia will have a harder and harder time supplying its (unwilling) troops with arms and supplies while Ukraine will receive better and better arms for its (willing) troops.
The morale psychology is against Russia. The technology is against Russia. The math is against Russia. The attrition is against Russia. The economics are against Russia. Everything is against Russia.
All the West has to do is continue to stay the course and Russia will be beaten back all the way back to 1991 borders perhaps a year from now, with nary a loss of a single NATO life.
If hostory showed us something, we have to agree on both accounts - and IMHO to a high percentage’s probability.
Q. remains: what will come after …?? - a Gorbachew or a Chechen Ghadaffi???
and let’s no kid ourselves: the money’s worth of weaponry the US sends towards Ukr represents the “most-bang-for-the-buck” for the US defense spendings in many decades (probably by order of magnitude) … never have they cheaper taken away 50% of russians non-nuclear capabilities for what is basically lunch-box-money … and the payback for that will be reaped over the next decades with a castrated russia unable to cause trouble wherever they feel so.
