The Unlikely, or Terrifying, End Games in Russia’s War Against Ukraine

Alexander the Great, after crossing with his army into Asia, stopped at Gordium (in modern-day Turkey). He approached the famous Gordian knot — a tangled mass of bark tying an ox cart to a pole, so intricate and tight that no one could unravel it. When told that anyone who could untie the mess would rule all of Asia, Alexander simply pulled out his sword and cut through it — solving the problem and fulfilling the prophecy.The Ukraine war may be our Gordian knot, but — in our current nuclear age — it is dangerous to cut rather than unravel it.A European StalingradNo one knows exactly how many people have been killed in the Ukraine war, which has now lasted four years and eight months — longer than World War II in the Pacific, the American Civil War, or World War I. There is still no end in sight. Estimates of the human toll vary widely, since it is in the interest of both sides to exaggerate the losses of the enemy while under-reporting their own casualties.Nonetheless, most sources agree that more than half a million have died. Other estimates put the total fatalities closer to one million. At least another million and a half have been wounded or are missing. Some calibrate well over 30,000 total civilian deaths, the overwhelming majority of them Ukrainians. On average, well more than 1,500 Ukrainians and Russians are being killed or wounded each day.To outside observers, the war appears different from most other current armed conflicts, in which religion or ethnicity is the cause, or at least the force multiplier, of the conflict. Despite Ukrainian political independence, both sides are ancestrally similar and — when it comes to almost half of Ukraine’s prewar population — linguistically identical. Both sides are indistinguishable in superficial appearance. Both are predominantly Orthodox Christian. They fought alongside each other in World War II and often shared a common history.In February 2022, Vladimir Putin planned to decapitate Ukraine with a lightning strike on Kyiv, thereby bringing the entire country within days into his envisioned new Russian empire. That operation, reminiscent of the “Thunder Runs” to capture Baghdad in 2003 with a shock-and-awe wave, utterly failed in the face of remarkable Ukrainian courage and savvy.What followed, however, has become even more nightmarish than the death cauldrons at Verdun or Stalingrad.A Slaughterhouse WarUkraine’s economy is ruined. A fourth of the population has been displaced. Perhaps 15 percent has fled abroad. The Zelensky government relies on Western aid and the heroism of its troops for survival. The latter have established a nearly impenetrable line of defense in the contested Donetsk Oblast, one of the richest and most urbanized regions of Ukraine.If the Russians were to break through that line, there would be little left to stop them from marching on Kyiv, and thus little to prevent the collapse of Ukraine’s entire resistance. Yet for now, the Russians, in tragically ironic fashion, are playing the role of the trapped German aggressors at Stalingrad: a hemorrhaging army that can no longer advance and won’t retreat.Yet as we approach the end of the fifth year of this insane war in late 2026, the Ukrainians — now with roughly a fifth of Russia’s population, a 12th of its GDP, and a 28th of its area — are starting to run out of men, money, and support. Ukraine’s last chance of salvation is to keep sending its vast drone fleet — brilliantly created all but ex nihilo — against Russian industrial targets, especially fuel refineries.Russian strategy, by contrast, aims at hitting more civilian targets in Ukraine to kill enough noncombatants to demoralize the population.The longer the war drags on, the more Russia — its military humiliated, its oil-exporting economy under strain, its losses staggering — grows desperate and dangerous, as its image as a major power erodes further. As a result, Russia hopes to stop European aid to Ukraine by quietly sending “mysterious” drones over European nations — nations Mr. Putin despises for their humanitarian affectations and military weakness.The Russians seek to counter American aid through a renewed partnership with America’s chief rival, Communist China; by stealthily aiding Iran with intelligence, satellite reconnaissance, and smuggled weapons; by hoping that soaring global fuel costs will demoralize the American public on the eve of the midterms; and by making wild threats of nuclear and conventional attacks against the entire North Atlantic Treaty alliance.A Fragmenting WestThe war has certainly further deepened the long-standing divisions between the United States and Europe, which transcend President Trump’s occasional furor at Europe and Europe’s own bouts of Trump Derangement Syndrome.America is seething at European calls for additional transatlantic solidarity. The United States has already provided Ukraine with well over $100 billion in total logistics, weaponry, reconnaissance, and economic aid to prevent Russians from pouring into European countries, but such help has not been matched by the Europeans when it comes to stopping a nuclear Iran.For decades, European leaders have warned that a nuclear-armed Iran would pose an existential danger. Yet European denial of dual-use NATO bases to the American military, the prohibition on even flying Middle East-bound American military or logistical aircraft over several European nations, and the constant rhetorical attacks on the American military effort to stop an Iranian bomb are all starting to fragment the alliance’s support for Ukraine.Europe sees the future of the West as hinging on stopping Russian aggression. America may agree but sees an unhinged nuclear Iran as an even greater danger. Europe is peeved that Mr. Trump is ending fuel sanctions against Russia to lower sky-high global diesel prices. America is even angrier that green and vehemently anti-Russian Europe has been the chief buyer of Russian natural gas since the war began. And on and on the acrimony goes.It does not help that the framing of the war as European democracy against Russian totalitarian aggression is undermined somewhat by the desperate Zelensky government’s banning of allegedly pro-Russian political parties, restrictions on opposition press, and suspension of scheduled elections. [Mr. Zelensky avers that he will hold elections if Russia agrees to a 60-day ceasefire.] Such suspension of elections is something that America never entertained during the darkest days of World War II. Winston Churchill was voted out of office even as the war in the Pacific raged on.Adding to the trouble, Europe is itself in crisis.France and Italy have been aflame for weeks. The rioting and upheavals have no easy solution. Native students, socialists, communists, and anarchists have been joined by first- and second-generation immigrants (mostly Muslims from the Middle East and Africa) in calling for more government expenditures for social causes — or else. Yet a dangerously indebted France already spends nearly 60 percent of its budget on social welfare programs of some sort.Suicidal European energy policies have nearly wrecked the once robust European economy. Despite having 100 million more citizens, the EU has a GDP that is $10 trillion smaller than America’s. And NATO’s European members — until recently de facto unarmed — are scrambling to increase their military budgets beyond a meager 2 percent of GDP.In short, Europe’s problem is not a dearth of redistributive social welfare programs but an inert economy that cannot even afford its present welfare generosity.Worse, Europe’s borders are still mostly open. Dismal European fertility ensures an aging and shrinking indigenous population. Meanwhile, the growing immigrant population remains poorly assimilated, poorly integrated, and poorly acculturated to European values — and increasingly angry at its magnanimous hosts.When or How Will It All End?So, given these dismal facts, will this horrific war ever end?There are lots of scenarios for a conclusion to the madness, but most are either unlikely or terrifying.1) After nearly five years of frightening human costs, economic ruin, and global ostracism, Russia could agree to an armistice based on the status quo of the current battlefront. It would keep Crimea and its eastern Ukrainian acquisitions. It could thus claim victory before its disenchanted population. Ukraine would also be able to declare victory for stopping the Russian colossus from pushing farther into the country.Ukraine would not join NATO. But during the peace, it would arm itself to the teeth. Ukraine would fortify its new eastern border to deter further Russian aggression, given that Putin’s ultimate agenda is to absorb all the former Soviet republics either by outright conquest or through puppet governments, and so to claim a status like Peter the Great’s by restoring millions of new “Russians” to the current shrinking Russian Federation. This conclusion would not please either side or its allies. And therefore it might be the only realistic way to stop the slaughter.2) Ukrainian elections might result in a coalition government willing to negotiate a more generous settlement for Putin. The war would end, but with an even greater Russian threat to Ukraine and the rest of Europe than either faced before the war.3) The unsustainable human and economic costs of the war could result in a coup removing Mr. Putin and installing a more realistic oligarchy that would negotiate a peace and blame the deposed Mr. Putin for the catastrophe. Mr. Putin’s political longevity so far (now well into a third decade in power, having survived a number of existential political crises) makes this notion unlikely.4) A hollowed-out Russian military could finally collapse, allowing Ukraine to advance to its pre-February 2022 borders.5) A strapped Ukraine, with its European allies under economic and social strain and the United States occupied with Iran, simply collapses. Russia then annexes most or all of the country. Or perhaps Putin sympathizers win an election, seek to capitulate, and hand over the rest of the country, along with Crimea and the Donbas, to Russia.6) The war could simply drag on for years, resembling the bella interrupta of the Middle East.Strange War, Stranger Reactions to ItFinally, there is something surreal about the politics of the Ukraine war. Almost no one is talking about either its catastrophic human costs or the concrete details of how it might end.Western campuses are silent about the bloodletting. Yet we witnessed violent demonstrations damning Israel for “genocide” and calling on us to “Free Palestine” — even though the death toll following October 7 represents only around six months’ losses in Ukraine. Meanwhile, some on the ultraright who damn Israel’s “aggression” are openly supportive of the Russian invader.The supposedly antiwar left talks only of more arms for Ukraine, without any real agenda for how Ukraine can win or stop the slaughter.Any talk of Western negotiations with Mr. Putin is declared proof of appeasement or collaboration, even though the Obama left gave us the “Russian reset” of 2009 as what it claimed was the only sensible way to deal with the prior Russian invasion of Georgia.The right, too, condemns the idea of Mr. Trump meeting with Mr. Putin, even though Ronald Reagan met with the Soviet dictator when the U.S.S.R. had thousands of nuclear weapons targeting the United States.After October 7, the West pressed Israel constantly on issues of “proportionality,” “negotiations,” and “collateral damage” — not to mention new elections — but such vocabulary is absent from discussions of the far more lethal Ukraine war.In sum, someone had better start thinking of ending this godless war before something or someone else far scarier ends it for us.Tribune Content Agency

The Unlikely, or Terrifying, End Games in Russia’s War Against Ukraine

The Unlikely, or Terrifying, End Games in Russia’s War Against Ukraine

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