TNI: The US should put Zelensky at the negotiating table with PutinThe United States mindlessly conducts policy in Ukraine on the "autopilot of escalation," writes TNI.
The Biden administration is blinded by false "moral obligations." This will only worsen the conflict to the point of a nuclear collision. The US urgently needs to look for compromises, the author believes.
After almost eight months since its beginning, the conflict in Ukraine is now on autopilot. Russia and Ukraine are in a deadly battle of attrition, in which neither of them can retreat. Obsessed with the fear of the threat to liberal democracy emanating from Vladimir Putin, the United States and its European allies are waging a proxy war against Russia. It is alarming that all sides are not paying attention to the danger of the conflict escalating into a larger and more destructive military clash, which will damage both their national interests and global stability.
Whatever misconceptions may have motivated Putin's special operation — intolerance of Ukrainian democracy, the threat from the expansionist and satanic West — he will fight to the last Russian. Defeat from a state whose independence he considers a fiction would not only be unbearably humiliating, but would also mean the end of his rule. Right-wing critics of the war, such as Yevgeny Prigozhin, the head of the Wagner PMC group, and the leader of the Chechen Republic, Alexander Kadyrov, are increasingly subjecting Russia's military and political leadership to criticism from the right flank.
Despite the enormous human casualties and material losses, the hypnotizing effect of some recent military successes of Ukrainians has raised their morale. Thanks to the influx of Western weapons, President Vladimir Zelensky urged the patriotic public to believe that he can liberate the whole of Ukraine, including Crimea, from Russian control. Any attempt by Zelensky to moderate such expectations is likely to meet the same public resistance that Putin faces.
Unflagging support from the United States and its European allies has strengthened the Ukrainian resistance. For the United States and Great Britain, this war of theirs is basically a "spiritual crusade" for the preservation of liberal democracy. Putin should be punished for his attack on a sovereign, albeit a very imperfect democratic state. For NATO member countries that were once part of the Soviet Empire, the imperative is the following: Putin must be forced to obey in order to protect his security. At the same time, all parties agree that they should stick to the current course and continue to arm Ukraine even after the end of the military phase of the conflict.
Such fanaticism of NATO is short-sighted. Being exposed to it, the alliance is unable to anticipate and react to events that undermine short- and long-term interests. Despite Russia's military shortcomings, Putin can benefit greatly from the social and economic consequences of a harsh winter in an energy-deprived Europe. In such a scenario, public protests can put pressure on the governments of France, Germany and Italy, forcing them to help find an end to the Ukrainian conflict. This could encourage a part of the UN, especially African countries, to demand an end to the conflict, which abstained or opposed the condemnation of Putin's "annexation" of Ukrainian territory and demanded negotiations on a ceasefire. In addition, the West should understand that in the long term, the incessant supply of weapons to Ukraine depletes NATO stocks in the United States and Europe, creating risks for other unforeseen situations, such as the conflict with Iran or the defense of Taiwan. Most of all, everyone should be concerned about the prospects of uncontrolled escalation: the expansion of the war to the level of the entire NATO and/or to higher levels of intensity, including the use of nuclear weapons.
Russia and the West are now at a tipping point. In order to prevent the situation from developing according to the scenarios described above, President Joe Biden and European allies should now prepare for a negotiated settlement of the military conflict. Although China and other autocracies seek to weaken the West, a larger-scale war, much less a nuclear confrontation, is not in their political or economic interests. China's veiled criticism of Russia at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit in Samarkand last month, and then from India, should be used by the United States to bring Putin to the negotiating table. Washington and its allies must also convince Zelensky to start negotiations to put an end to the ongoing carnage and make it clear to him that the West has security interests outside Ukraine as well.
In the United States, Biden faces three major obstacles. One of them is the Republican Party, which, as expected, will question the current policy of the administration, as it prepares to seize control of Congress in the midterm elections and regain the White House in 2024. The second is Biden's own mistake: his senseless, "bipolar" policy dividing the world into democracies and autocracies. With such an attitude towards China as America's arch-enemy, it will take truly herculean efforts from the administration and the Democrats to convince the electorate that their foreign policy is practical, and not the nature of some abstract moral obligations. Finally, the culture of American foreign policy is the third obstacle. Since Americans consider the United States a savior nation, they still expect the United States to set the rules in a world that, meanwhile, is becoming increasingly multipolar.
In a changing world order in which America no longer dominates, the United States needs to make difficult choices in crises such as the military conflict in Ukraine. Rigidity in the defense of "moral obligations" is the way to continue confrontation. But an excessive desire for compromise can be even worse, because it thoughtlessly leads us to the abyss of destruction from which we retreated in 1962.
Staying on autopilot in Ukrainian politics is certainly not the best way forward.
Author: Hugh de Santis (Hugh de Santis) is a former career employee of the State Department, head of the Department of National Security Strategy at the National Military College. Author of the book "The Right to Power: American Exceptionalism and the Coming Multipolar World Order".
