Given some of the reporting of the last week, it’s clear that we’re in for another wave of discussion about whether Ukraine should be pushed to the negotiating table. A long🧵(also posted on the other site).
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We KNOW Russia is bent on empire and Ukrainian genocide.
We KNOW the key to supporting International Law is rejecting multipolar "spheres of influence"
We KNOW via WW I that coddling bullies never works
We KNOW of Putin's hybrid war techniques.
Thank you. I completely agree. Opening discussions on territorial sovereignty is just too dangerous. Not because of the specific territory, but because of the wider implications. Meanwhile, as we’ve seen time and again, a frozen conflict serves Russia well.
I don’t want to focus on the ethics, or otherwise, of trying to pressure Ukraine to make concessions in order to freeze the conflict. Instead, I want to look at the implications of these policies for regional, European, and therefore also US security.
I think it’s very unlikely that Western govts would try to force Ukraine to recognize any of its territory as Russian. The principles of sovereignty & territorial integrity are too important to their view of international order (as long as you ignore Kosovo).
In Kosovo, the West helped the Kosovar majority free themselves from oppression and gain sovereignty. The Serbs risked Serbia's own territorial integrity by challenging the integrity of other nations through ethnic cleansing campaigns. So "Kosovo" was just belated support for Western principles.
Pressuring Ukraine to recognise some of its territory as Russian would also be too embarrassing a retreat from the position of the last decade on Crimea & Donbas.
So, any peace agreement that Western partners might try to push Ukraine into signing would involve a pause, not a resolution to the fighting. This would create a frozen conflict. We can be pretty confident that’s what the Russian government is hoping for because it *loves* frozen conflicts.
The term “frozen conflicts” (as far as I know) was coined to refer to conflicts in the Soviet successor states, as they were then described. They were triggered by the breakup of the USSR and, 30 years on, none have been resolved.
What froze the conflicts – what both stopped the fighting and prevented final resolution – was Russian military intervention, referred to by the Russians as peacekeeping (and pretty much everyone else as “peacekeeping”).
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Any way, Im sheepish now, Id love to read every word of yours ....
We KNOW the key to supporting International Law is rejecting multipolar "spheres of influence"
We KNOW via WW I that coddling bullies never works
We KNOW of Putin's hybrid war techniques.
I meant this pressure to submit to Russia.
It reminds me of those who accept voter fraud but then blame the public for bad reps...