"To the Last Ukrainian"?
What will happen to Ukraine if we trap Putin?
“We can’t continue to have a society that marginalizes rational and reasonable voices and elevates violent and crazy voices.”
See my previous pieces about the war in Ukraine:
“Is US Policy Killing Ukrainians?” (17 March 2022)
“Where’s the Diplomacy?” (26 March 2022)
“Are We in a Propaganda Bubble?” (31 March 2022)
“What Can WE Affect?” (4 April 2022)
Offering an Escape
There’s an important point—regarding the war in Ukraine—about the need to offer Putin an escape in order to prevent bloodshed and destruction. Suppose that we had to do the following things in order to get Putin to leave Ukraine:
(1) decline to investigate war crimes
(2) lift the sanctions
(3) give up some territory in the east
I would regard these as bitter pills to swallow, but the argument on the other side would be:
the alternative is to “fight to the last Ukrainian”—to maximize the bloodshed and destruction that Ukraine will experience—and then feel heroic about ourselves
we swallow bitter pills all the time and they don’t even taste bitter—look at how we effusively praise American war criminals, and look at how we decline to investigate the worst war crimes since WW2, and look at how we even prevent investigation of the worst war crimes since WW2
How much bloodshed and destruction lies ahead in Ukraine if Putin isn’t offered an escape? Nobody can predict that, but an argument for offering an escape would be:
only someone who really hates Ukrainians would take the position “Let’s avoid negotiations, intensify penalties on Russia, block the ‘escape hatch’, and see how far Putin will go”—that’s not the position that you take if you care about stopping the bloodshed and destruction
this position is convenient—you win either way
you win if Putin backs off
you can denounce Putin—and feel good about yourself—if Putin intensifies the bloodshed and destruction
And there’s also the risk of nuclear war, so even people who have no problem with the bloodshed and destruction in Ukraine should—for purely self-interested reasons—be worried about “fighting to the last Ukrainian”:
And that risk of nuclear war would obviously increase if NATO were dragged into the war:
“Ukraine: Three ways this war could escalate and drag Nato in” (10 April 2022)
So it’s certainly true that nobody can predict how much bloodshed and destruction lies ahead for Ukraine. But does that somehow mean that it’s moral—or even rational in terms of self-interest—to close the “escape hatch” on Putin and then watch what happens?
How do we know that Putin won’t destroy Ukraine if his back is to the wall and he has nothing to lose? Maybe he’ll decide that he might as well:
go all out
destroy the enemy that’s torturing him
win a kind of personal victory
Or maybe he’ll decide that the war is dragging on too long—it’s getting too expensive financially or politically or both—and decide that therefore it’s best to:
go all out
level the place with airpower and concentrated artillery
force a surrender
So the basic idea is:
people who care about Ukrainians don’t want to find out how far Putin will go
people who care about Ukrainians instead want to offer Putin an escape
I just wanted to explain this basic idea—I’m not sure if enough commentators are making this concept clear to people who are sad or scared or angry about what’s going on in Ukraine.
Chomsky’s New Interview
Noam Chomsky makes various striking points in his latest interview:
Let me paraphrase the points in the 7 April 2022 piece that I thought were the most important—I’ll add some hyperlinks in addition to the ones that Chomsky already supplied in his piece.
Chomsky gives his following impressions about how the Global South seems to view the West:
the Global South condemns the Russian invasion but also has a “What’s new?” attitude
Biden condemned Putin as a war criminal—the Global South’s reaction is something like “It takes one to know one”
the Global South agrees that Putin is a war criminal but adopts the Kantian principle of universality that the West dismisses with contempt and sometimes with anger
the Global South feels that the Western perception that “aggressors can commit hideous crimes” is “perhaps a little late” and “curiously skewed”
He points out that people in the Global South are aware of the Western silence when it comes to ongoing Western crimes:
They are also able to perceive that Westerners consumed with moral outrage over the crimes of enemies are still able to maintain their usual silence while their own leaders carry out terrible crimes right now—in Afghanistan, Yemen, Palestine, Western Sahara, and all too many other places where they could act at once, and expeditiously, to mitigate or end these crimes.
He makes these points about geopolitics:
as Russia’s relationship with China strengthens, the “corrupt Russian kleptocracy” can “provide raw materials and advanced weapons to the economic system” that “Beijing is systematically establishing through mainland Asia, reaching also to Africa and the Middle East, and by now even to U.S. domains in Latin America”
Russia can do little more than this, though
he thinks that Russia’s role in this “highly unequal relationship” will likely “diminish further”—China is a rising industrial power, whereas Russia is a declining producer of raw materials and weapons
Europe’s international role is likely to diminish—Putin handed Europe to the US on a golden platter
throughout the Cold War, a major theme was Europe’s status—would Europe subordinate itself to the US or would Europe become an independent force along Gaullist lines?
the latter choice would mean accommodating with Russia and creating a Europe that would be—from the Atlantic to the Urals—without any military alliances
Mikhail Gorbachev had a vision of a Europe that would be—from Lisbon to Vladivostok—without any military alliances, and Emmanuel Macron revived a “limited form” of this vision in Macron’s “recent abortive interchanges with Putin”
a Russian statesman would’ve “leaped at the opportunity to explore something like the Gorbachev vision”—pursuing that vision might’ve avoided the Ukraine tragedy, but the “hard men in Moscow” instead undermined their own interests through violence and criminality and foolishness
Beijing and Washington have both “gained from the tragedy” in Ukraine
Beijing is “probably relatively satisfied”—and Washington is very likely relatively satisfied—with how things are going in Ukraine
And he makes these points about the war in Ukraine:
current policy undermines the hope that we might save Ukraine from further tragedy
current policy informs Putin that he has no way out—current policy says to Putin that Putin can either go to The Hague or proceed to destroy Ukraine
Ambassador Chas Freeman is one of the most “astute and widely respected” US diplomats—he recognizes that the options are either (A) that Russia destroys Ukraine or (B) that an “ugly” negotiated settlements happens and offers an escape to the aggressors
Freeman invokes the 1814 Congress of Vienna—France had been defeated, but Metternich and other Europeans leaders were wise enough to reincorporate France into Europe’s governing councils in a way that led to substantial peace in Europe for a century
the point is that you can swallow a bitter pill and then get peace as a result—accommodation is wise if you want peace
Freeman also invokes the fact that the US and Britain and France punished Germany after WW1—the result was WW2 and the Cold War
I want to emphasize these interesting questions—including a question about the Partnership for Peace—that Chomsky says in the interview should be right in the center of our thinking and activism:
“Can we ascend to the wisdom of the reactionary tyrants who provided Europe with a century of peace in Vienna in 1814?”
“Can we move towards the Gorbachev vision of a European common home with no military alliances, a conception not too far from the U.S.-initiated Partnership for Peace that was undermined by President Clinton?”
“Can some resemblance to statesmanship appear in today’s Russia?”
And Chomsky made these harrowing points about the sad fate that awaits us if we don’t take action:
the “euphoria among weapons and fossil fuel producers is unconcealed as they lead the way toward indescribable catastrophe”
the 4 April 2022 IPCC report underscores “in vivid terms” the horrific fate that awaits us
We can’t continue to have a society that marginalizes rational and reasonable voices and elevates violent and crazy voices.
There’s lots of work to do if we want to save Ukrainians—and ourselves—from a horrific fate.
Some Notes
I mentioned earlier that Putin might decide that the war is getting “too expensive financially or politically or both” and decide that therefore it’s best to turn Ukraine into rubble. I want to point out that I’m not sure what “politically” might mean to Putin, since apparently Putin has to worry about saving face with some sort of inner circle that might turn on him—and maybe assassinate him—if this inner circle smells blood in the water.
I also want to point out that Putin has appointed a new commander—Aleksandr Dvornikov—who has a hideous record. This appointment should make us all the more opposed to the idea of closing the “escape hatch” and then watching what happens to Ukraine—just take a look at the following comments:
Dvornikov is known as the “Butcher of Syria,” Stavridis noted.
Intelligence officials have said that Putin expected the invasion in February to be a swift and easy win for the Kremlin but that it was met with an unrelenting resistance. Bringing in Dvornikov, a man known for his cruelty to civilians, is an attempt to break the spirit of the Ukrainian people, Stavridis warned.
“He is the goon called in by Vladimir Putin to flatten cities like Aleppo in Syria,” Stavridis said. “He has used tools of terrorism throughout that period, including working with the Syrian forces, torture centers, systematic rape, nerve agents. He is the worst of the worst.”
And I want to point out the issue of where people should focus their attention. My instinct is that you should focus on the urgent issue of diplomacy and then you should unpack the war’s background later on after the war is over, but maybe calls for diplomacy will get nowhere if you don’t explain the war’s background to people—there’s lots of propaganda to debunk when it comes to the war’s background, but the question is whether to debunk it now or debunk it later.