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How To Make Peace In Ukraine

On October 17, 2022

The Ukraine war is steadily escalating. Strikes on infrastructure, the Russian mobilization of reserves (Ukraine has already mobilized multiple times) and increase NATO aid as well as economies stuttering around the world. Tac-nukes have been put on the table, though not used.

Peace is better than war, but there seems to be no route towards peace. The Ukrainians have passed a law stating they won’t negotiate while Putin is leader, both sides think they can win on the battlefield and so more refugees flood out of Ukraine, more people die, are raped or tortured or maimed for life.

It is in no one’s interest for this war to continue to spiral up the escalation chain, not even America’s. Europe is already locked in US satrapies, and America is shuddering under the effect of the sanctions plus Covid. For America the real enemy is China, not Russia; and for China the real enemy is America, but both nations need the other for now and neither of them wants a war, even as the US puts on further semiconductor sanctions and widens sanctions to aircraft.

Russia and Ukraine cannot make peace. The normal method would be to find a neutral third party, but there is none who is trusted and powerful enough to take on the task.

There are two nations who can force a peace, however. The US, as the lead nation in NATO and China, which is keeping the Russian economy going. China needs Russia for its future, since Russia makes it immune to a naval blockade choke-out by America and its allies. The US needs Ukraine a lot less, but Ukraine simply cannot fight the war without US/NATO support.

Both Ukraine and Russia need a victory. Any peace will have to give them something they can call a victory. In particular, Zelensky and Putin must be able to sell any peace deal as a win.

It is also important to recognize that some parts of Ukraine really do prefer to be in Russia. What the borders were drawn as generations ago does not change that fact and that Musk made it does not mean it is false. These regions will never truly be loyal to Kiev.

Since there is no neutral third party, the way to peace is to have China and the US negotiate the deal. Let them draw their lines, and then draw the final line in the middle. China is negotiating for Russia; the US for Ukraine.

An approximate deal which will work is:

At least Donetsk, Luhansk and Crimea go to Russia. Perhaps somewhat more, in regions that are more Russian than Ukrainian.
Russia gets international acknowledgement of these areas as a permanent part of Russia, including from the Ukraine, US and the EU.
The land bridge to Crimea may go to the Russia. If it does not, then a joint Chinese/US force administers it, with no missiles, long range artillery, or military aviation beyond transport and a choppers allowed.
Ukraine gets guaranteed accession to the EU in 5 years if they meet some reasonable targets. No take-backs. Ironclad.
Ukraine gets to join NATO in 10 years, again if they meet some reasonable targets. No take-backs.
A large fund for rebuilding Ukraine. Perhaps matching from the money frozen from Russia and from the West. China might throw in some money as well, if they get to do some of the rebuilding. (China is arguably the best at the world at infrastructure right now.)

Russia might be able to take more land than it will get in such a deal, but it will not get international acknowledgment of what is taken and it will have to lose a lot more men. Given Russia’s demographics, further mobilization is not in its medium and long-term interests.

What Ukraine really wants is full integration with Europe and the West. It gets that, which it won’t get otherwise, since after a war it will be discarded, and it no longer has to fight over areas that really don’t want to be part of Ukraine.

The West gets an end to the war, which will help its economies, and will help the politicians in charge stay in charge. (Remember that Biden was begging the Sauds for enough oil to get him thru the mid-terms.)

China keeps its Russian satrapy and thus its strategic depth. If they negotiate a reasonable deal, the Russians are grateful, which will be helpful down the line.

The world ends an escalation cycle which could end in the use of tactical nuclear weapons, which is in everyone’s interest, including Russia’s.

And a hell of a lot less people die, are maimed, raped and tortured or lose their homes and livelihoods.

With this deal everyone gets something which can be considered a win, but no one gets everything they wanted.

It’s a lot better than the alternatives, likely even for the belligerents. Ukraine is NOT getting everything back by fighting a war, and the costs of a war are painful for Russia (that Europe is hurting more does not mean this is good for Russia) and won’t get it official acknowledgment of its gains.

Peace is better than war. Let’s make it happen.

Russia Hits Power Infrastructure

On October 10, 2022

Well. Maybe hitting the Crimean bridge was less smart than it seemed.

#Kiyv city's thermal power plants, came got hit by #Russian missiles. Fire broke out at the Kyiv CHPP-5 #Ukraine pic.twitter.com/GG0bGiJ5dn

— Middle East Update (@islamicworldupd) October 10, 2022

There are two possibilities here:

It’s a tit-for-tat. “You hit our key infrastructure, we’ll hit yours and we can hit harder.” If so, it’s actually a warning from Russia to end the escalation here.

It’s “gloves off” time. Russia has been very restrained going after power and water and sewage. Power is still on in Ukraine, they even kept shipping them gas. (Far more restrained than the US in Gulf I and II, by the way.) For Americans, think of this as “the heavy hand of war.”

If it’s the second, then what happens is another huge refugee wave to Europe. I’d expect it to be even larger than the last one, over ten million. This weakens Ukraine, damages Europe and warns NATO of the consequences of not keeping Ukraine on a leash. It may also lead to further Ukrainian and “Ukrainian” attack on Russian infrastructure, leading to a cycle of escalation.

I don’t know which it is. A lot of powerful people and a large part of the Russian population have wanted “gloves off” for a long time, and there’s a strong military case for doing so, though Russia wants to do it only when it seems justified, mostly because China is uneasy about escalation, and Russia needs China.

(This is also clearly a war crime as well as a tragedy, but it’s the sort of war crime which has become routine over the past 20+ years.)

We’ll see.

(Addendum: some indications Belarus is moving troops to the border.)

Addendum To My Fifteen Points On The Ukraine War

On October 7, 2022

Decided a little more needed to be added to the post, but email went out just before I added it, so I’m putting it here.

Addendum:

My argument, from the beginning, has always been simple: Russia can mobilize more men than Ukraine and has reason to do so. Unless they are weaker internally/China than I think or NATO intervenes more than I think, they will eventually have a conventional military victory.

Of course, I could be wrong, but nothing which has happened yet has changed my view. What has happened is that NATO was willing to mobilize more resources than I expected, and that has made a Russian victory require more mobilization (and I always felt doing this with only 200k men was stupid.) However, absent sending in large numbers of NATO troops, the fundamental assertion remains.

As for the internals, the Russia economy, as far as I can tell, is doing better than much of Europe. The fundamentals are simple: Russia a food and fuel surplus and can get almost everything else they need from China and other sources and China needs Russia to not lose. This is not the late USSR, constantly running food deficits.

This leaves internal political instability, and my judgment is that if Putin loses power he is replaced by hard right wingers who will mobilize more, not less. There is no meaningful centrist or left wing opposition in Russia.

If you believe I’m wrong on any of these points and you’re right my argument may be wrong, but this is the argument.

Fifteen Points About the Future of the Ukraine War

On October 7, 2022

Let’s lay it out.

First: the next while belongs to Ukraine. They have the initiative and new Russian troops will take time to arrive.

Second: Russia is almost certainly mobilizing more than 300K troops, the bill allowed for one million. The more they mobilize the more training time will be required; not just because there are more troops but because they are reaching deeper into reserves to people who have been out for longer.

Third: When enough of those troops reach the front, Russia will stop their territorial losses and go back on the offensive. The more Russia mobilizes, the stronger the offensive. If they go up to a million, they will have about 2:1 when added to current troops in Ukraine.

Four: Russia is not fighting just Ukraine. If it was, it would win. It is fighting Ukraine + NATO, and it’s clear that means that NATO officers are doing the majority of the planning and we now know that there are some NATO troops on the ground, we will find out there were more, and that a lot of volunteers were “volunteers.”

Five: Western propaganda has included a lot of declarations that the end-goal is regime change, recapturing Crimea and even breaking up Russia. It has been declared, over and over again, that there will be no negotiated peace with Putin. This means the Russians regard this war as existential.

Six: what Putin said was “all methods” not tac-nukes, that includes things like level bombing, taking out Ukrainian infrastructure (remember, power, water and sewage are on in most of Ukraine and Putin could turn them off tomorrow.) Tac-nukes are part of all-methods, but unlikely to be the first thing reached for. They will be used if necessary to defend Russian territory, which to Moscow includes the Oblasts that recently were declared part of Russia.

Seven: OPEC cutting oil production is, in fact, helpful to Russia. Understand clearly that outside the West and our client states like Japan, Korea and Taiwan, most of the world is not cheering for NATO to win, because for good reason they hate and fear Europe and the US far more than they do Russia.

Eight: The only country which has sufficient leverage over the Russians to force and end to the war is China. However China does not want Russia to lose the war, for their to be regime change, and so on. Russia is their satrapy, their junior ally and absolutely necessary to their security. A regime friendly to them must stay in power. With Russia China can survive a western naval blockade, without it China cannot. It is that simple.

Nine: there is nothing that Russia absolutely must have that it cannot get from China and India. They cannot be choked out economically without those two nations cooperation (though really, it’s about China) and China in particular will not cooperate, though it may make mealy mouthed statements as if it is.

Ten: Europe is suffering more from sanctions than Russia is: significantly more.

Eleven: However bad this war has been, it can be a lot worse. It hasn’t even reached Iraq war levels of destruction of infrastructure, for example, as pointed out in six.

Twelve: the Nord Stream pipelines were sabotaged so Europe in general and Germany in particular would have less reason to press for peace, especially as the winter makes clear how much they need Russian natural gas. It was done to keep the war going, and to help de-industrialize Germany and Europe so that America can maintain its hegemony.

Thirteen: because the Russians now see this war as existential, they will mobilize as much as they need to. If that is millions of men, it’s millions of men. Though there is clearly some resistance to mobilization, it is unlikely to be enough to stop it, and the more the West threatens to break up Russsia and so on, the less resistance there will be. Russia has traditionally been willing to bear huge losses in what it considers existential wars.

Fourteen: The war will go on until one side or another is actually defeated. That may be economic defeat, political defeat or military defeat, though they tend to go together.

Fifteen: peace can only be made in two ways: crushing your enemies entirely, or negotiating. You can’t make peace with your friends, only with your enemies.

Bonus Point: Kennedy negotiated because Russia then, and now, has enough nukes to end the world. Also the crisis was caused because the US put nukes in Turkey.

Rationality Is A Process, Not A Conclusion (Nuclear Weapons Edition)

On October 5, 2022

A lot of mistakes come from assuming rationality means “thinks the same way I do” rather than “reasons from premises I might not share.”

Less than 1/1000 economists predicted the financial collapse, because they reasoned from assumptions like “the market is self-correcting” or “housing prices never go down.” (Sometimes both at the same time, which is rarely rational.)

Back in 2008 I wrote an article saying the next war w/Russia would be over Sevastopol/Crimea. I was told by Eurocrats that was impossible, because it would be irrational: the energy trade was too big to risk, Putin needed it. Rational. Putin didn’t see it that way, either then or now: Crimea and Sevastopol were Russian regions, strategically and emotionally important. When Ukraine seemed serious about cancelling the Sevastopol naval base lease, he acted.

Right now I hear a lot of people saying things like “never give into nuclear blackmail because then Russia will keep using it” or “Putin is rational, he would never use nuclear weapons.”

Now I don’t think he will, but I don’t think it’s impossible, even if one considers Putin rational. All he has to have is a scenario where he believes that he will get more than he will lose.

So, imagine that at some point Russia wants to end the war with Ukraine but doesn’t or can’t conquer enough to force a peace. Or imagine that there is a fake peace (no peace treaty) and Ukraine keeps dropping artillery shells into territory Russia says is theirs now.

Putin might, rationally, decide that the way to force a peace is to indicate that if war continues, he’ll go nuclear and if people don’t believe him, drop a tac-nuke or two to prove he’s not bluffing. (Remember, blackmailers who kidnap people often DO kill the victim. They aren’t bluffing.)

He thinks that the West is not really willing to risk a nuclear war and that if he is willing to risk one they will back down, especially if what he wants isn’t really that big. That’s a rational belief. It might be wrong, but it’s not irrational.

Or perhaps Putin gets into a scenario where he’s losing the war badly, and believes that if he does either he loses power and maybe his life; or that the Western maximalists will succeed in breaking up Russia. If the only way to stop that is to drop a nuke or two, why not? The US dropped nukes on Japan for less reason, although it’s true that no one else had nukes back then.

But what does the West do? If they tit-for-tat, and drop a tac-nuke or two, that means general war: Ukraine doesn’t have nukes, remember, so a NATO country has to attack and that will lead to nuclear war pretty fast if Putin thinks he can’t win a general war. (This is also true of a conventional war against Russia by NATO. Once he’s used tac-nukes, what makes you think he’ll stop when faced by a much more powerful enemy?)

The idea that Putin won’t use nukes is based on the idea that the risk of armageddon is always greater than whatever he expects to achieve. But what if he figures he can only die once or that Russia will cease to exist if he doesn’t use them, or that using them is the only way to stop a long drawn out fake peace? Also, remember that to some people dying by nukes and dying any other way is still just dying.

Now I have to say that think Russia is very unlikely to use nukes , even tac-nukes, but I also feel uneasy ruling it entirely because it is quite easy to come up with scenarios where Russian leadership decides the gain is worth the risks. This is even true if Russia feels backed into a corner, or if they are in an Afghanistan or Spanish Ulcer situation (Napoleon constantly losing troops in Spain). An ongoing bleeding which can’t otherwise be stopped might be worth risking nuclear war. If you’re going to lose anyway without it, why not risk it?

This, by the way, is why fighting a nuclear superpower over what they consider a core interest (notice “they”, not what you think, but what they think) is so risky and why the USSR and the US danced around each other like ponderous elephants. “If we really fight, we both lose.”

If Russia wants to win in Ukraine more than we (and given our support for Ukraine, it is “we”) do, they may well use nukes. Pretending it’s impossible is stupid and very very dangerous.

The Attacks On Nord Stream I & II

On September 28, 2022

Let’s point out the obvious. Russia had no reason to attack its own pipelines. If it doesn’t want gas to go thru them it just turns off the tap. Sabotage to the pipelines weakens Russia’s position, since it will be months before they can offer to turn fuel back on, if they ever can (I’m seeing reports the damage is truly epic), which they would have wanted to offer during the winter in order to pressure Germany in specific and Europe in general. Anyone who says or believes that Russia did this is a moron, a propagandist or has had their mind so twisted by Russia-hatred they can no longer think straight.

Who did attack? Who knows. One possibility is the US.

Thank you, USA. pic.twitter.com/nALlYQ1Crb

— Radek Sikorski MEP (@radeksikorski) September 27, 2022

Radek Sikorski is a Polish MEP, and married to Anne Applebaum.

On the other hand, Naked Capitalism published a piece suggesting Poland did it. They recently opened their own pipeline, and are rabidly anti-Russia. Germany needs Russian gas and oil to run its industrial economy, but Poland wants Germany to not push for a peace deal with Russia.

I don’t know who did this, but what I do know is that it almost certainly wasn’t Russia. If you thought it was, check yourself, you’ve gone off the rails into propaganda-land and your emotions are ruling your reason.

Oh, and this is an attack on Germany and other countries who get gas from Russia, even more than on Russia and a reminder of how fragile international logistics links are. In the event of a real war, expect far more than this to go down.

How Peace In Ukraine Has Been Made Almost Impossible

On September 26, 2022

To make peace either one side has to be unable to fight any more, or both sides must want to make peace.

One problem in Ukraine is that both sides (and I don’t mean Ukraine and Russia, but Ukraine/NATO v. Russia) have put themselves into a trap where the leaders of various countries can’t afford to lose the war, because they will lose power.

Support for Ukraine is popular in Europe, but it is also true that such support has cost the Europeans a great deal, and that ordinary Europeans have seen bad economic times as a result. This is especially true in Germany and is seen as true in the UK (where more of the reason is their political leadership.) This will get worse as the war drags on thru the winter, as it seems certain to do, and Russia reduces or cuts off energy supplies as they seem almost certain to do.

Western war propaganda has been about how Ukraine is kicking Russia’s ass, and that Russia’s economy and logistics are on their last legs, while their army is weak and so riddled by refuseniks it can barely fight. Maximalist scenarios, like retaking Donetsk, Luhansk, Crimea and even breaking up Russia have been constantly stated as the war goals.

European politicians have made these statements or implicitly backed them, and if Russia is seen by their own population to win the war then there is likely to be a massive political backlash that loses them their jobs.

My read on Russia has always been that if Putin isn’t seen by Russians as winning the war (it doesn’t matter what Westerners think) then he loses power, as well, and quite possibly his life. To win Putin needs Crimea, Luhansk, a good chunk of the coast and for Ukraine to respect those borders in practice (no military incursions, no artillery or missile strikes) if not in principle.

Ukraine has virtually endless NATO material, surveillance and planning support. The West is willing to fight Russia to the last drop of Ukrainian blood, and even to encourage volunteers (many of whom I suspect are “volunteers”) and mercenaries to fight for them. Ukraine has been drafting for a long time, and still has plenty of manpower.

Russia has a 3 million man reserve. One my wonder if they can really call up all of it and what quality it is, but remember that Russia does have the world’s second largest armaments industry and that the armaments which have been doing the majority of the work aren’t fancy guided missiles (though those get the press), but simple dumb artillery with aid from the type of drones you can by on Amazon. They export food and fuel and can buy most of what they need but don’t make from China and India, where countries are scrambling to get into the market as Western companies leave.

Not only can Russia call up those 3 million, in theory it could draft many more, the question is political will and internal unity. While Western reports of resistance to the call-up seem to me to be one-sides (there are also reports of large numbers of volunteers), I would expect Russia’s political ability to call up men beyond the reserves is limited. The bill which was used to call up 300K was written to allow up to a million to be called.

So both Ukraine/NATO and Russia have a lot of ability to still poor men and weapons into Ukraine. They have incompatible peace criteria: Ukraine is not to give up any land and even take back land it already holds while Russia wants assurances from a Ukraine government it probably can’t get without toppling the government or making it clear that Ukraine cannot defend itself.

One can legitimately point out that negotiators ask for what they never expect to get and say “neither side can seriously expect to get this?” but this isn’t a private negotiation. Putin and Zelensky and western politicians have to get a deal which their population and powerful interests will accept, and the more the rhetoric has been heated up, the harder that becomes. Putin’s real opposition is the hard right: there is no left wing or liberal opposition in his country.

Then there’s the US: the US economy is suffering, sure, but a lot of it is self-inflicted and US political elites are insulated from popular opinion. The Federal Reserve has just announced it will throw many millions more out of work to crush inflation by crushing wages of poor people rather than hurting the really rich, after all, and in any case the worst costs of the Ukraine war fall on Ukraine (whose suffering is irrelevant to them) and European countries whose weakening making them more reliable American satrapies. Humbling Germany and doing as much harm to their industry as possible is an especial bonus and very important to ensuring there is never a Europe which is independent of America.

All of this means that we’re in a trap. For there to be peace one of two conditions must prevail:

One side or the other must make such gains on the battlefield that the other side feels it has no choice but to give in. Russia must make it clear it can destroy Ukraine using conventional force, or Ukraine must actually push the Russians back and make clear they can and will march into all the occupied territory or even strike into Russia.
The costs of continuing the war must seem too high to the decision makers or those who can replace the decision makers. This doesn’t just mean Putin and Zelensky, it means NATO leaders and especially America and it means the public coming to find economic conditions intolerable and not worth it. It means China saying they will pull the plug on Russia (very unlikely unless used as pressure for a “get some of what you want deal”). If these conditions prevail on BOTH SIDES and both sides change their propaganda to “Russia gets some land and Ukraine recognizes that” then a deal is possible. Until then it is not.

Judge for yourself how likely these conditions are. World War I went on forever in part because both sides wanted something for having gone to war, and WWII happened because the Allies used their victory in WWI to punish Germany severely.

Peace requires one side to realize it absolutely can’t win and faces devastation if it continues, or it requires both sides to be willing to give up some gains they had hoped to realize. If both sides are committed to goals unacceptable to the other side, peace can’t occur until that changes.