By Michael Gfoeller & David H. Rundell, Newsweek, 11/3/22

The absence of any serious effort to end the conflict between Russia and Ukraine through negotiations is striking. The withdrawal of Russian forces, Ukrainian neutrality, an end to economic sanctions and most importantly a cease fire and legitimate U.N.-monitored plebiscite are all negotiable, though you would hardly know it from the rhetoric of Russia or the West.

Before dismissing such efforts, it is important to ask yourself, “How much do I really know about Ukraine?” For most Americans, the answer is not much. A year ago, few of us could find Crimea on a map. Ukraine’s history is complex and the current situation fluid.

Part of the problem is just defining the borders of Russia. Are you talking about the Czarist Empire that included half of Poland, Stalin’s Soviet Union that covered most of Central Asia, or today’s much diminished and embittered Russian Federation? In none of these configurations does Russia have clear, naturally defensible borders. As a result, it has been invaded by the Mongols, Swedes, French, and twice by the Germans. Freeing themselves from the Nazis cost Russia 22 million lives. For comparison, American losses during World War II were 400,000 from a population of roughly similar size.

Because secure borders are such a vital concern for Russia, the eastward expansion of NATO was always going to be problematic. George Kennan was America’s pre-eminent Soviet expert and the author of our Cold War containment policy. In 1997 he wrote, “expanding NATO would be the most fateful error of American policy in the entire post-Cold War era. … Such a decision may be expected to inflame the nationalistic, anti-Western and militaristic tendencies in Russian opinion, to have an adverse effect on the development of Russian democracy, to restore the atmosphere of the Cold War to East-West relations and to steer Russian foreign policy in directions decidedly not to our liking.” His predictions were entirely correct, but his advice was ignored. NATO expanded, adding 14 new members that had either been part of the Soviet Union or dominated by it.

Ukraine was not among these new NATO members in part because Russia made its opposition very clear. U.S. Ambassador to Russia William Burns presciently wrote in a memo to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, “Ukrainian entry into NATO is the brightest of all red lines for the Russian elite (not just Russian President Vladimir Putin). In more than two-and-a-half years of conversations with key Russian players, from knuckle-draggers in the dark recesses of the Kremlin to Putin’s sharpest liberal critics, I have yet to find anyone who views Ukraine in NATO as anything other than a direct challenge to Russian interests.”

It is not hard to understand why Ukraine would be “brightest of all red lines,” for Moscow. Simply put, the key is the Crimean Peninsula and land access to it. Despite containing 11 time zones, Sevastopol has been Russia’s only warm-water naval base for nearly 250 years. It became Russian in 1783. In 1853, the Czar fought a war against France and Britain to keep it. During the Second World War, tens of thousands of Soviet troops died defending and ultimately liberating Sevastopol from the Wehrmacht. Whoever controls Crimea dominates the Black Sea and can threaten Russia’s southern flank. The idea that Sevastopol could become a NATO naval base has always been as unacceptable in Moscow as the placing of Soviet missiles in Cuba was to Washington.

Some argue that we are fighting for democracy and must crush Putin however long it takes. They clearly overlook not only how unpopular costly forever wars have become with the American public but also our checkered experience with regime change. Other pundits even call for reparations or war crime trials as if we were at Versailles or Nuremberg. They forget that both the Treaty of Versailles and the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials were entirely predicated on abject German defeats. Short of a nuclear war, that is not going to happen to Russia.

Ukraine has had historically flexible borders. Until 1918 the city of Lviv, (then Limburg) was Austrian. Between the two world wars, western Ukraine was Polish. Crimea was transferred from the Russian Soviet Socialist Republic to the Ukrainian one only in 1954 primarily to increase the number of Russian speakers in Ukraine. Not counting Crimea, post-Soviet Ukraine has now lost nearly 20 percent of its prewar territory and become almost entirely dependent on foreign arms and financial assistance, three quarters of which is American. Millions have been made homeless or fled the country. As manpower reserves and the tax base collapse, inflation has soared, and infrastructure been systemically destroyed. Despite recent gains, it is not at all clear that Ukraine is winning the war. Yet Ukraine remains a difficult country to help. Its post-Soviet governments have been profoundly corrupt, and one cannot give money endlessly to a man with a hole in his pocket.

Russia on the other hand is largely self-sufficient in food, energy, and armaments. The ruble is stronger today than it was a year ago. Western sanctions have caused more economic havoc in Europe than Russia. It is perhaps worth remembering that Putin’s parents lived through the Siege of Leningrad where 600,000 Russians chose to starve to death rather than surrender. It seems unlikely that he will now capitulate because he can no longer buy a Big Mac.

We do, in fact, live in a rules-based world order, and one of the cardinal rules of international relations is that large powers expect to control a sphere of influence that they will fight to defend, as we are prepared to do in Taiwan. One of the principal functions of diplomacy is avoiding or ending the carnage of military conflicts. Most often, that involves talking to people with opposing views whom you neither like nor trust.

What would a negotiated solution look like? It should begin with an honest appreciation of what the local populations want. Support for self-determination has been a central plank of American foreign policy since President Woodrow Wilson went to Versailles. We remain confident that the consent of the governed is the most fundamental form of legitimacy. The Czechs and Slovaks peacefully went their separate ways. Citizens of Quebec were allowed to vote on remaining Canadian. The people of Scotland were given a chance to leave the United Kingdom. The British even got to vote on staying in the European Union. Don’t the people of Crimea and the Donbas deserve as much? If we trusted the U.N. to monitor Iran’s nuclear activities, surely it can also be trusted to organize and monitor a fair election.

The First Crimean War (1853-1856) ended in a negotiated compromise. In all probability, the Second Crimean War will end the same way. In 1962, when faced with the possibly of nuclear Armageddon during the Cuban Missile Crisis, President Kennedy did his utmost to defuse the situation through independent thinking, negotiations, and compromise. Today, we face a similar situation. There are numerous issues to negotiate, but a ceasefire and plebiscite would be a good place to start. This would be complicated, controversial, and expensive to administer, but so is continuing to support and fund a war. The suffering of the Ukrainian population is getting worse by the day and winter is coming. It is time for creative thinking and effective diplomacy to end this war before it spins further out of control.