By Robbin Laird
Paris, France, November 9.
In a piece I published on June 30, 2024, I highlighted the Ukrainian issue as follows:
In the early 1990s, I worked on a study of the new Slavic states, namely Belarus and Ukraine, and their impact on the European order. We argued that these states really did not fit into the Western or the Russian orders and constituted a future flash point for European conflict.
There was much uncertainty with regard to how either the United States or Western Europe should deal with them, and the larger question of the fate of the “new” Eastern Europe was more pressing. The West essentially fell back to their default structures, the European Union and NATO, as their answer to how to deal with the awkward states like Hungry and Romania, but we are still facing an unsettled European order, one which is hardly “whole and free” which was the pitch word from Washington.
But that meant, one had still to deal with the Russians, who throughout modern European history have challenged or troubled a settled European order.
President Putin is the latest Russian leader to drive the challenge. His seizure of Crimea in 2014 which followed earlier actions in Georgia and elsewhere set the stage for his more recent invasion of Ukraine. This war is a deadly event for both countries and creates much uncertainty about the impact of both on the future European order, and the West is hardly unified behind the policy of the Ukrainian leader with regard to the objective of fighting the war until he regains all of Ukrainian territory including Crimea.
The problem is that this objective is leading to the evisceration of his own country. The Ukrainians have fought valiantly but it is difficult to help Ukraine by simply giving arms until the last Ukrainian stands tall against the Russians.
There is little alternative to dealing with Russia and supporting Ukraine and negotiating a ceasefire. After which, the West faces the daunting task of figuring out what policies they will support for the future of Ukraine and Russia and how to reinforce the independence of Ukraine in difficult strategic conditions.
With the election of Donald Trump as the 47th President of the United States, the opportunity for a negotiated ceasefire has come to the fore as a policy priority, issue and possibility.
To gain a sense of the reality of the situation in Ukraine, The Wall Street Journal has produced a video which effectively highlighted the current situation of Ukraine in the war.
Putin’s invasion of Ukraine without any doubt was a key moment in the expression of global expansion in the multi-polar authoritarian world which undercuts the Western “rules based order” and needs to be checked.
But which path realistically is best to do so?
I use the term realistically not simply as a verbal clarification.
Washington has not had a realistic war winning strategy in my lifetime. How about getting real about the world we live in. That would be a change.
A full Ukrainian victory including the rollback of the Russian takeover of Crimea in 2014 can not be done with the current nature of Western support and the capabilities of the Ukrainians. The basic reality is that the population of Russia is more than four times greater than Ukraine, Russia is a massive country with outlets in multiple regions while Ukraine is a land-based enclave East of Central Europe.
Let me put this even more bluntly: which Western state is going to match North Korean troops going to Ukraine? Simply sending weapons to Ukraine will not be enough. What price total victory for Ukraine?
When I visited Civil War battlefields with my brother who lives in Tennessee, we looked at a field where the South lost 15,000 men and the Union 35,000 and thus was the last Confederate victory. But the reality was that the North could continue to lose more soldiers than the South as immigrants were coming into the North (from Ireland, for example) and sent to fight the South. The North produced its own war goods; the South imported many of their weapons from Europe. This looked to me like the future of the Ukraine War.
Putin has lost a great deal in this war and frankly it is good news that he has. He was a friend to Merkel and has lost both his friend and that kind of opportunity with Germany. Macron had welcomed him to Versailles where I don’t think he can look forward to that kind of French hospitality. The Nordics are all in NATO and working on the kind of defense integration only an adversary could drive.
He has lost big time by having to sell out to many of his authoritarian partners as well, a good subject for a future article. He is willing to do so to stoke the flames of conflict in Ukraine to save face and his war.
His goals are not ours. We need to stop the war. We need to rebuild Ukraine. And to strengthen Ukrainian defense and work for stabilization of the military situation throughout the Russian border region which includes the High North.
We worked with the Soviets, and I don’t see why we can’t do so with the Russians. We did not surrender the West to the Soviets, but quite the contrary. We don’t have to surrender the West to Russia through a negotiation with Putin. But we must clearly work with Ukraine to build a viable defense structure, but I frankly do not see any sensible way to do so by putting them into NATO when many parts of Europe still resist strengthening their defense efforts.
And I hardly think President Trump will as well. But President Trump is also facing a situation very different from when he came to office in 2017. Then he was attracted by Brexit and EU bashing. Brexit is the biggest disaster Britian has inflicted on itself in the post-war world.
Any way ahead with Ukraine will involve EU and key states commitment to the rebuild of Ukraine and to Ukrainian defense. It is indeed an opportunity for those advocates of European defense to create real capabilities.
And this situation provides a unique opportunity for the French President. Macron has had a decent working relationship with Trump and has himself dealt with Putin. Germany is in political freefall, and Trump will need European partners in any Ukrainian-Russian strategy. That path might be through Paris.
Ukrainian soldier standing on destroyed by missile strike city background with blue and yellow flag, Russia Ukraine war concept, demolished building and territory liberation. High quality photo AI generated
(By arrangement with defense.info)
