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A Realistic Outcome [1]

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Date: 2023-02-28  

What are some realistic outcomes to the war in Ukraine?

I was listening to an episode of the Radio War Nerd podcast, and they interviewed a journalist named Ben Aris. Their observations were basically:

The war is currently in a stalemate

Soldiers are killing each other at a 1-1 ratio

Everyone is tired and logistics are exhausted so both sides are kind of recharging

And, basically, one outcome is (potentially) that the war ends via negotiations in the springtime. A settlement where Russia gets the Donbas (well there’d be an “independent” DPR and LPR or something). Ukraine stops shelling the Donbas, maybe some promises are made around NATO expansion idk. Russian soldiers stop the invasion into Ukraine. Something along those lines. Putin gets to claim sort of a pyrrhic victory in the Donbas, Ukrainian people stop dying. Everyone kind of wants this way out.

To me, this would be tragic because it would resemble a settlement which could have been achieved in the early months of the war. If our leaders had only wanted to facilitate and encourage negotiations. Instead, we waged a proxy war. So, similar settlement, just taking place a year (or more) later. And that means hundreds of thousands more people dead.

In other words, we effectively will have chosen: “drag on the war a year, let hundreds-of-thousands more people die, and get to the same eventual settlement as before, because Russia will be slightly worse-off”

And, yes, it was Putin’s choice to invade (in response to many calculated provocations by the US), and that was unacceptable, but it’s also incredibly naive (and frankly irresponsible) to not focus on the choices of your own leaders, and what outcomes could have been achieved.

The US will basically have said:

We don’t care about Europe, they can suffer price increases on the energy they need. They can freeze all winter, I don’t care.

We don’t care about Ukrainian lives. We’ll let them tread water for a year, let 100k more die, all to get the same outcome in the end.

We are happy about each conscripted Russian soldier who dies If you believe in this one I hope you burned your draft card during Vietnam



But, you know, maybe this blog post is moot. We’ll find out in the spring how things truly shake out.

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