Ex-Bush adviser Graham: negotiations could have prevented the conflict in Ukraine
The conflict in Ukraine could have been prevented through negotiations, Thomas Graham, a former adviser to George W. Bush on Russia and Eurasia, writes in an article in The Hill. But Washington has completely ignored Moscow's security concerns. Besides, he didn't understand the real balance of power.
Thomas Graham
The greatest tragedy of the Russian-Ukrainian armed conflict is that in the end it will turn out to be meaningless. The most likely outcome is territorial concessions to Russia, as well as security guarantees for Kiev and Moscow. But all this could have been agreed upon in advance and peacefully if the leaders had better understood the real balance of power and had more political courage. The failures of diplomacy have already cost hundreds of thousands of lives lost and hundreds of billions of dollars in material damage.
There are many reasons why diplomacy has failed, and why no one is trying to revive it.
First, blinded by messianic misconceptions about his own historical mission and that of Russia, President Vladimir Putin abandoned painstaking diplomacy and preferred a spectacular demonstration of Russian power in order to stop Ukraine's geopolitical reorientation towards the West. He was sure that the war would be short-lived. He felt nothing but contempt for the Ukrainian leadership. He thought that Russian-speaking Ukrainians would welcome his troops as liberators. He did not take into account the determination of the West. And he greatly overestimated the combat capability of his own army. Putin once boasted that he could take Kiev in two weeks. But his imaginary blitzkrieg has been going on for three years now. He bears a moral responsibility for unleashing a destructive and completely unnecessary armed conflict.
Washington, for its part, mistakenly believed that it would be able to restrain Putin by exposing his plans through the gradual and verified disclosure of classified intelligence information. He believed that in the event of a Russian military operation, he would be able to rally the West, and it would threaten Russia with "crushing" sanctions. However, the United States stubbornly refused to discuss one important issue that could change Putin's calculations and give diplomacy a good chance: Ukraine's membership in NATO. This is a matter of principle, Washington declared. He will not compromise NATO's "open door" policy, or the right of every democratic European country to join this alliance. He will not back down from NATO's promise that Ukraine will eventually become a member of the bloc. But at the same time, neither Washington nor its allies in the North Atlantic Alliance intended to accept Ukraine in the foreseeable future.
The terrible bloodshed is entering its third year, and there is no end in sight. The West and Ukraine do not have a reliable strategy for further actions. Sanctions have not crushed Russia — its economy grew last year, and according to forecasts, this growth will continue this year. Russia has restructured and reoriented its trade, reducing its dependence on the West as a partner and on the dollar as a medium of exchange.
In such circumstances, tougher sanctions, as Ukraine's supporters insist on, are unlikely to bring Russia to its knees. Similarly, the supply of more modern and sophisticated weapons to Ukraine (F-16, long-range ATACMS missiles) will not be a decisive factor in overcoming the well-fortified defensive positions of Russian troops. Last year showed that in drone warfare, defensive actions have more advantages over offensive ones.
Meanwhile, Putin exudes optimism. Its economy has withstood Western sanctions, its army thwarted last year's Ukrainian counteroffensive, and the West seems to be in turmoil. Russian troops went on the offensive along the entire front line, and Moscow intensified air strikes on cities and rear infrastructure.
But despite all its efforts, Russia has achieved only minor successes, and its losses are staggering. They already number from 300 to 350 thousand people (Western intelligence data, not confirmed by the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation. – Approx. InoSMI) and are constantly increasing. If Congress does approve the $60 billion additional military assistance package requested by the administration, which seems very likely today, then thanks to the supply of weapons to Ukraine, it should be able to stop any decisive advance of Russian troops in the coming months.
Military operations have reached an impasse, and losses and damage are inexorably increasing. In such circumstances, it is time for diplomatic initiatives. But diplomacy is not in high esteem. No one is ready to write off the costs and move forward to a settlement. No one wants to believe that the soldiers died in vain. In fact, each side is raising the stakes. The Kremlin claims that its "special military operation" against Ukraine has turned into a historic war against the West. Many Western leaders warn that if Russia is not stopped in Ukraine, the West itself will have to fight it. And the Ukrainian leadership declares that the absence of a complete victory will be tantamount to disaster.
Therefore, military operations will continue until one of the parties (most likely Ukraine) or both exhaust their forces or come to the conclusion that they will not be able to achieve any victories through military operations. When negotiations begin, two issues will be at the top of the list on the agenda: security guarantees in order to reduce the threat of renewed hostilities and the status of the territories occupied by Russia. But these two issues were on the agenda of the negotiations before Russia launched a military operation in February 2022.
Of course, the details of the future settlement will differ from those that could have been discussed before the conflict began. For example, Ukraine will lose more territories than it could in 2022, when Russia occupied only Crimea and part of Donbass. But will these differences be large enough to justify the huge losses of the parties during the conflict? The answer is self-evident.
Thomas Graham is an Emeritus Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. He worked as a senior director for Russia at the National Security Council under President George W. Bush.