What if Ukraine loses the war against Russia?

T-12 Trump minus 12 days

January 8, 2025 by James Rowles

BACKGROUND

1) Robert Kagan, “TRUMP IS FACING A CATASTROPHIC DEFEAT; If Ukraine falls, it will be hard to spin as anything but a debacle for the United States, and for its president,” The Atlantic, January 7, 2024 (1:04 PM ET);

At T-12, Trump minus 12 days, we need to ask what will happen if Russia wins its war of aggression against Ukraine.

For a comprehensive analysis of the current situation regarding the war, with excellent analysis of military and political realities, see Robert Kagan’s article cited above.

Few policymakers and analysts have thought much about the consequences of a Ukrainian defeat at the hands of the Russians.

Most avoid the thought by entertaining the illusion that there can be negotiations that could lead to a ceasefire or some kind of a settlement. They argue among themselves about the potential terms of such a ceasefire or settlement, despite the fact that neither Vladimir Putin nor Ukraine is interested in negotiations.

Vladimir Putin has been absolutely clear. His conditions for entering negotiations amount to total capitulation on the part of Ukraine.

Wolodymyr Zelinski appears to be open to territorial concessions, but his statements in this regard must be read as simply a brilliant maneuver to get on the right side of Donald Trump. The Ukrainian constitution prohibits any “territorial concessions”.

Moreover, mandatory or peremptory norms of international law prohibit terms in a peace settlement recognizing the acquisition of territory by military force or even its temporary occupation. The illegal use of force is prohibited by Article 2 paragraph 4 of the United Nations Charter, the bedrock principle on which the United Nations is founded. Any trreaty or agreement violating such norms of peremptory international law would be void ab initio under international law, and have no legal effect.

Political leaders know these facts. They are deliberately lying to their populations and to each other by holding out the possibility of a negotiated solution to the conflict.

They can negotiate with themselves about agreements that would leave Russia in control of conquered territories until the cows come home, but they are only blowing smoke into thevind. They are only lying to each other and to their populations.

Not one of these political and military leaders and analysts has addressed in any detail the situation that would exist and the consequences that would follow if the leading powers overtly ignored bedrock principles of international law and the U.N.Charter.

These leaders and analysts are unwilling to face the hard realities of the Ukraine war. To do so would require determined and energetic actions, including preparations for a war that may last decades (or at least until Putin leaves the scene); the imposition of sanctions against Russia that would really hurt those imposing them; and an all-out effort to persuade or coerce the nations of the so-called Global South to join the regime of international sanctions against Russia.

To face the hard realities of the Ukraine war would require countries to move toward establishing wartime economies that could sustain the production of munitions and advanced weapons systems over the course of a long and drawn-out war.

Finally, to face the hard realities of the Ukraine war would require recognition of the fact that our military forces, our soldiers, our NATO soldiers, might need to become directly engaged in the war to prevent a Russian victory.

This requirement, moreover, could become urgent very quickly if the Ukrainian forces begin to falter.

This is a sobering reality. So was the reality facing England, France, and other democratic countries in Europe in 1938 and 1939. They temporized. They delayed. They harbored illusions that peace could be ensured by negotiating an agreement with Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany, as British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain and French Prime Minister Édouard Daladier tried to do in Munich in September 1938.

As late as May 1940 Chamberlain and British Foreign Minister Lord Halifax sought to get Britain to negotiate a separate peace with Germany. Fortunately, Winston Churchill successfully resisted their entreaties.

The world and the U.S. need a leader of the caliber of Winston Churchill to lead us through the coming years of war with Russia.

Instead, we have Donald Trump.

We can only hope that we will be surprised.

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James Rowles is a former Lecturer on Law at Harvard Law School and professor of international law at other universities.

He studied the history of Nazi Germany at Stanford, and has studied and worked on human rights, judicial reform, and access to justice projects in many countries in Latin America, Africa, the Middle East, and in Afghanistan and Russia. At Harvard Law School, he taught a course on “Law, Human Rights, and the Struggle for Democracy in Latin America”.

At the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) of the OAS, he worked on human rights cases involving forced disappearances, executions, and torture in a number of authoritarian countries in Latin America and the Caribbean.

Recent Books by the Author

The Rape of American Democracy: Republican Actions and Democratic Failures, 2016-2021 (2024). Available on Amazon and from IngramSpark by clicking on a link here.

Don’t Be Stupid. Pay Attention, Damn It! Advice for Undecided Voters and Voters Leaning Toward Trump (2024). Available on Amazon and from IngramSpark by clicking on a link here.

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