Those Two Worse: A Compromise. However, Peace Between Russia and Ukraine Is a Pipe Dream – American Populists talk about bringing peace between Russia and Ukraine. Such a deal is a pipe dream for a lot of different reasons.
Any compromise deal would be dead on arrival.
Vladimir Putin has no intention of withdrawing from Ukrainian territory.
Volodymyr Zelensky has no intention of ceding the part of the country under Russian occupation and claimed by Russia to Vladimir Putin.
On the ground, Ukraine has gained little territory despite its much-touted counteroffensive. It has gained propaganda victories with strikes against the Kerch bridge and its landing of special forces on the Crimean coast. Pro-Ukrainian rhetoric about how the Ukrainian army has degraded the Russian capacity to fight by reducing the number of artillery pieces, tanks, armored personnel carriers, and so forth sounds an awful lot like Vietnam.
“On the one hand, the Ukrainian counteroffensive has failed to produce any spectacular breakthroughs so far—and if the only criterion for a stalemate is the lack of spectacular breakthroughs, then, yes, there is a stalemate. If, on the other hand, incremental gains and the progressive degradation of Russian artillery, supply lines, ammunition dumps, fuel storage sites, transportation infrastructure, and command and control centers also matter, then, no, there is no stalemate,” Alexander J. Motyl, professor of political science at Rutgers University-Newark, writes in Foreign Policy magazine.
The fog of war is thick in this conflict.
Echoes of Vietnam in Ukraine
In Vietnam, General William Westmoreland infamously talked about the “light at the end of the tunnel” when it came to winning the Vietnam War.
Despite his war of attrition, the U.S. lacked the political will to bring about victory by invading North Vietnam, Laos, or Cambodia. Westmoreland’s strategy was to kill the communist Vietnamese faster than they would replace their troops. It did not quite work so well.
Former Deputy Defense Secretary Elbridge Colby sees the comparison.
“The echoes of Vietnam in U.S. policy toward Ukraine today are a lot stronger than is commonly admitted. It’s far from an exact analogy. But there’s more to take heed of than the complete dismissal of the relevance of Vietnam suggests,” Colby wrote on X.
Although Gen. David Petraeus and AEI’s Frederick Kagan are cautiously optimistic that Ukraine’s 600-mile front may eventually cause the Russians to collapse, they note the Russians should not be underestimated.
“An aspirational theory of victory is no guarantee of success. The Russians have clearly adapted to the realities of this phase of the war, and while they face serious challenges, it would be foolish to write them off,” they write, noting this will be a long war.
War is chaos. It is highly unpredictable. The Russians could fold or draw it out for the next decade.
Putin has Little to Negotiate For
Vladimir Putin has very little to negotiate for when it comes to his “Special Military Operation” in Ukraine because he continues to hold most of the cards. War is won or lost based on who controls the most territory.
“We will seek to demilitarize and denazify Ukraine, as well as bring to trial those who perpetrated numerous bloody crimes against civilians, including against citizens of the Russian Federation,” Putin said in his initial February 2022 speech at the start of the current phase of the Russo-Ukrainian War.
Ukraine nor the Biden administration will acquiesce to peace talks that would leave the country with a demilitarized zone as exists in Korea separating the communist north from the capitalist south.
Putin might accept Ukraine as a frozen conflict just as the Russian occupation of Transnistria in Moldova or Abkhazia or South Ossetia in Georgia are frozen conflicts.
Medvedev: Russia Will Fight for Decades
Former Russian President Dmitri Medvedev noted that Russia would fight for “decades” and that the “Western governments will change, its elites will get tired and beg for negotiations and freeze the conflict.”
Those who think the Russians will bowl over amid a stalemate on the ground are kidding themselves. Russia will not yield. Ukraine will have to do better than it’s currently doing on the battlefield to get the propaganda to match the reality.
John Rossomando is a defense and counterterrorism analyst and served as Senior Analyst for Counterterrorism at The Investigative Project on Terrorism for eight years. His work has been featured in numerous publications such as The American Thinker, The National Interest, National Review Online, Daily Wire, Red Alert Politics, CNSNews.com, The Daily Caller, Human Events, Newsmax, The American Spectator, TownHall.com, and Crisis Magazine. He also served as senior managing editor of The Bulletin, a 100,000-circulation daily newspaper in Philadelphia, and received the Pennsylvania Associated Press Managing Editors first-place award for his reporting.
From the Vault
The Navy Sent 4 Battleships To Attack North Korea
‘Sir, We Hit a Russian Submarine’: A U.S. Navy Sub Collided with a Nuclear Attack Sub
