A man named Kenneth Waltz said in his foundational book: “Asking who won a given war […] is like asking who won the San Francisco earthquake. That in war there is no victory but only varying degrees of defeat is a proposition that has gained increasing acceptance in the twentieth century.”
These lines ring truer today than they have in decades. Russia and Ukraine kill their soldiers by the hundreds each week, as a consequence of Russian aggression. Outrage against its murderous onslaught has galvanized the West, dusted off NATO’s image, and unified public opinion.
A close look at the military, political, and moral dimensions of the war is needed to understand why it will continue unless the West settles it. A strategy for how the war can be ended without surrendering to Russia or depriving Ukraine of its right to self-defense is also derived from the analysis.
From the start of the war, Western weapons and tactics have turned the tide on the battlefield, but Western policies have never exceeded their initial reactive stage. Public and political discourse is seemingly locked into virtue signaling, where the simple promotion of diplomatic efforts is heavily criticized as morally wrong.
What is totally lost in this emotional reaction is that the conflict parties will continue to fill the ground with bodies for as long as the West is stuck in supporting the status quo. This is a price too high to pay for national pride and moral righteousness. Instead, the West should set an example for assertive diplomacy in the name of global peace.
NATO should understand its agency in defining a “day after” that at least holds the promise of durable peace. The phantom image of a peace agreement is already beginning to take shape and must be pursued relentlessly by all diplomatic means.
Against the backdrop of its failed invasion, Russia cannot begin to hope it will ever have uncontested control over additional territories seized in 2022. Major parts of Ukraine have resisted the Soviet Union in the wake of World War II at unimaginable cost, and even a cessation of hostilities with the Ukrainian state could not prevent a protracted Ukrainian insurgency after a future settlement. Therefore, the sham referenda conducted as a pretext to annexation must be recognized as null and void. Only a withdrawal of Russian forces from the occupied East will bring peace.
However, the Donbas region has seen a genuine popular uprising in 2014, generously supported by Russia. To settle the conflict there, a heavily mandated UN mission will be required to keep the peace.
In recognition of the local opposition to the Ukrainian government, a fully demilitarized and temporarily semi-autonomous region must be negotiated, modeled after Kosovo. After a decade-long mission, a heavily monitored referendum could be conducted to decide the future of this region.
Ukraine as a whole must obtain very strong security assurances from the West and pose a heavy conventional deterrent against future Russian aggression. However, its neutrality and unwillingness to join NATO must also be assured to Russia. Especially nuclear weapons, which were not tolerated in either Cuba or Turkey during the Cold War, cannot be tolerated in Ukraine based on the same geopolitical reasoning.
To generate peace on these premises, NATO should approach the war as a de-facto Hegemon, rather than a half-hearted belligerent. It should utilize carrots for the Ukrainians and sticks for the Russians to steer the conflict toward resolution without compromising Ukraine’s right to self-defense. Diplomatic channels must remain open and both sides must abdicate their maximalist goals. Failure to do so on the Russian side should be linked directly to increased supply of modern weapons and munitions to Ukraine.
This could amount to a temporary escalation of the conflict, but this is preferable over an open-ended trickle of arms into the ocean of attrition war. NATO would temporarily and openly support Ukraine to achieve a state on the battlefield closer to a reasonable post-war demarcation. Once this is achieved or Russia credibly commits to compromise by giving up controlled territory, Western supply of munitions should swiftly decrease.
