How to End the Ukraine War on Ukraine's Terms
As Machiavelli wisely advised, to deter an evil invader, a prince needs to be doubly evil in return. Putin's regime change war of choice in Ukraine has only one correct ending: Russia's total defeat.
At the fateful 2008 Bucharest Summit, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization stated in its closing declaration that Georgia and Ukraine “will become members of NATO.” For the next fourteen years, the global alliance failed to militarily back up that promise, leaving Ukraine vulnerable to Russian intrusion––stoking Putin’s ire even as it opened his eyes to imperialist opportunity. Obama's feckless response to Putin’s annexation of Crimea in 2014 helped get the little green men war started in the East. Biden's mixed-message incompetence in early 2022 made a full-scale invasion inevitable.
But that’s all water under the Kaidatsky Bridge now, as we seek to end this ugly, cruel, and wholly preventable war. The costs to the world––over 300,000 dead or wounded, over eight million persons displaced––have become far too high. If the Ukraine War drags on, the risks of catastrophic global escalation, drawing in Russia-allied China and Russia’s non-aligned clients in Brazil and India, grow exponentially.
Just as George W. Bush made a similarly catastrophic blunder in 2003 with his regime change war of choice in Iraq, underestimating the breadth and intensity of internal resistance, so too Putin blundered into an unwinnable regime change war of choice in Ukraine, underestimating the tenacity of Ukraine’s highly inventive resolve. With a national consensus behind him, Ukraine's President Zelensky is absolutely correct in demanding that no peace negotiations begin until Russia withdraws from all of Ukraine's territory, including Crimea. Ukraine can win this war, and must.
But in the negotiations to resolve it, a few compromises are required. As long as Russia returns all prisoners of war, including all Americans held unjustly as political prisoners, and formally recognizes Ukraine's full territorial integrity, Ukraine must withdraw its demand to prosecute Putin for war crimes. In addition, all parties to the conflict must agree to a formal return to the terms of the 1994 Budapest Memorandum that pledged the U.S., UK, and Russia to “respect the independence and sovereignty and existing borders of Ukraine” and “to refrain from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity and political independence of Ukraine.” As part of this renewed collective commitment, which must now include NATO, regime change in either Kyiv or Moscow must be disavowed. The over $300 billion in frozen Russian assets will gradually be returned contingent upon Russia meeting its side of the bargain, but only after the initial costs of Ukraine reconstruction and demining are deducted.
In the meantime, I advise Ukraine to rain holy hell on Moscow with thousands of drones directed at Putin and his oligarch pals and begin a series of asymmetrical actions to damage Russia's oil and gas infrastructure, the lifeblood of Putin’s ethnoreligious adventurism. I would throw in some high-level wet work to create a climate of paranoia inside the armed forces, whose commitment to the fight has been shaky from the start.
Ukraine needs to do this all without publicly acknowledging it. As Machiavelli wisely advised, to deter an evil invader, a prince needs to be doubly evil in return. With a nuclear-armed adversary, this must be done skillfully and quietly.
These dramatic actions will force Putin to eventually sue for peace as the increasingly beleaguered Russian people demand it and a defaulting and hamstrung Russian economy requires it. You don't win a war with half-measures. You win it with decisive ones. This is how to end the Ukraine War on Ukraine’s terms.