Victory or Peace?

One of the most puzzling aspects of the Ukraine War, for me, has been the most pacifist, anti-war people I know urging that there is no alternative to a Ukrainian victory. No negotiated peace: only a complete victory, with the full expulsion of the Russians — and preferably regime change in addition — is acceptable.

To see hardline leftists making this argument is puzzling. It is especially puzzling trying to figure out why they have picked this conflict as the place where there is no substitute for victory, and not any of a host of others. These are the same people who told us a decade ago that Russia was not our enemy. I guess that changed once they began blaming Russia for Hilary Clinton’s defeat in 2016. It is still odd to hear these arguments from them.

The counterargument comes in one of the best articles I have read on European policies: Europe’s Reckless Bid for Victory by Wolfgang Munchau. His is not a theoretical argument, but a practical one. To wit: Europe talks as though only victory is acceptable, but no country there is willing to make the sacrifice to attain it. Various countries have eked ahead their defense spending a small amount, but they are all far behind America, and even further distant in actual, present military capabilities. Putin has nothing to fear from them, and he knows it. They also ought to know it, but they talk as though they can inflict a defeat on Russia without America’s help.

It’s not just about whether defeating Russia is practicable. People on the Left talked for years about the dangers of nuclear war, but they are now being awfully casual about threatening the world’s largest nuclear power with military defeat. What would defeating Russia look like? Even if Ukraine were, by some miracle, be able to expel Russia from all occupied territories, I doubt that would be the end of the war. More likely, we’d be looking at some sort of escalation; probably not nuclear, but there are many ways that Putin could push the envelope to gain an advantage. That would put pressure on Western leaders to counter, leading down a dangerous path.

I maintain that a successful end to the war, from Ukraine’s perspective, means accepting their territorial losses in exchange for a stronger guarantee against Russian aggression in the future. I am hopeful that Trump’s peace plan will lead us down this path.

Munchau’s article provides a nice opportunity to tie things back into the Peace of Westphalia, and without the usual canards about sovereignty. He suggests that a negotiated peace like Westphalia is a better model than the absolute victory of World War II. He also mentions the irony that Anne Applebaum, winner of the “Peace Prize of the German Book Trade,” used her acceptance speech to urge the military defeat of Russia. He quotes her as saying, “If there is even a small chance that military defeat could help end this horrific cult of violence in Russia, just as military defeat brought an end to the cult of violence in Germany, we should take it.” I would like to know in what world Applebaum thinks that military defeat will lead Russia to end its cult of violence. That certainly wasn’t the consequence that the First World War had on Germany. The Second World War was a different story — but then, we occupied the country and rebuilt it. Surely she doesn’t think that is going to happen in Russia.