Ukraine war: No more talk of talks; The West must plan for a long war and aim for victory
A negotiated ceasefire or settlement is a dangerous illusion
Doctor of Juridical Science (SJD) in International Law, Harvard University
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“Ukraine war: No more talk of talks; The West must plan for a long war and aim for victory”
Adapted from The Trenchant Observer, September 2, 2023
The “same old” news about the war in Ukraine
Many readers may be bored with the “same old” news about the war in Ukraine.
Without leaders who explain the satkes in Ukraine’s war of self-defense against Russia’s war of aggression, ordinary readers may indeed become bored, as undoubtedly readers became bored with the Nazi wars of aggression in Europe before the entry of the United States.
Of course, that changed on December 7, 1941, when American military forces became directly engaged and started dying in what became a world war following Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor.
Yet even during the four-year participation of the United States in the war, many newspaper readers must have become bored with the monotonous nature of the news coverage from day to day.
One difference from the present was that President Franklin D. Roosevelt spoke directly to the American people about what was at stake in the war, and Prime Minister Winston Churchill was extremely candid in his descriptions of the Nazi threat and the damages Germany was inflicting in England as well as on the Continent.
Ukraine: The existential struggle between Russia and the West
Simon Tisdall has reminded us in The Telegraph of the existential nature of the struggle between Russia and the West currently playing out in the Ukraine war.1
While we and others have repeatedly underlined the existential struggle between civilization and barbarism which the war represents2 leaders in America and the West have largely failed to explain to their populations what is ultimately at stake in the war.
Indeed, there is strong reason to doubt that they themselves fully grasp what is at stake.
Now, as the war drags on, there is renewed talk of a negotiated ceasefure or settlement. This talk is usually from people who have not been following the war closely or who do not understand the broader context in which it is taking place. But it also comes from military and government officials who should know better but whose thinking is sharply circumscribed by the political and military exigencies of the moment.3
Those who speak of a negotiated settlement never address the limitations on potential peace terms imposed by peremptory norms of international law and the United Nations Charter, or the U.S. policy of non-recognition of territory gained by military conquest enshrined in the “Stimson Doctrine” in 1932, adopted following the Japanese conquest of Chinese Manchuria in 1931 and the establishment of the Japanese puppet state of Manchuko.4
Simon Tisdall does not go into all of these details, but he does remind us of the civilizational nature of the military conflict with Russia in Ukraine, and of the fact that talk about talks is counter-productive.
What the West (and the civilized nations of the world) need to do, he suggests, is to focus on the long-term nature of the struggle and what is at stake, and to take actions on an urgent basis to ensure that Russian aggression in Ukraine is defeated.
When history is written, it is likely to record the tragic errors in thinking and strategy which President Joe Biden and other NATO leaders such as Germany’s Olaf Scholz have made in responding to the Russian invasion.
However, we are where we are.
The best that can be hoped for is that Joe Biden and other Western leaders will study and take to heart lessons from the mistakes they have made and the mistaken assumptions from which they have proceeded.
Such analysis may be necessary if we are to formulate and execute a strategy that will lead to the defeat of Russian aggression and the triumph of Ukraine in its war of self-defense.
That triumph will also represent the triumph of international law, the United Nations Charter, and the world’s principal system for the maintenance of international peace and security.
As Tisdall stresses, there should be no more talk of talks. Instead, resolute action to win the war in Ukraine is urgently required.
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See also,
1) “Ukraine War, August 26, 2023: Republican unity and the fascist threat,” The Trenchant Observer, August 26, 2023.
2)”Ukraine War, August 28, 2023: Biden's withdrawal from Afghanistan could cost him the election,” August 28, 2023.
3)”BRICS Summit in South Africa: A political grouping built on illusions?” The Trenchant Observer, August 22, 2023.
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Simon Tisdall, “Putin is waging a forever war. The west can’t pull the plug on Ukraine now”; Moscow won’t stop short of subjugation of Kyiv. That’s why the Nato allies must ignore talk of talks and start fighting to win,” The Guardian, September 2, 2023 (15.35 BST);
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See, e.g., “Ukraine: U.S. policy on "territorial concessions", peremptory norms of international law, and the history of U.S. policy over the last 90 years,” Trenchant Observations, May 22, 2023.
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