Ukraine in the Membrane
A conflict of visions helps explain the origin of the war – and how to resolve it. Foreign Policy Geniuses focus on rhetoric, but we argue facts, strategy, and risk-management matter more.
“Public discussion on Ukraine is all about confrontation. But do we know where we are going? In my life, I have seen four wars begun with great enthusiasm and public support, all of which we did not know how to end and from three of which we withdrew unilaterally. The test of policy is how it ends, not how it begins.
“Far too often the Ukrainian issue is posed as a showdown: whether Ukraine joins the East or the West. But if Ukraine is to survive and thrive, it must not be either side’s outpost against the other — it should function as a bridge between them.” – Henry Kissinger, 2014
The Oval Office clash of February 28 between Ukrainian President Volodimyr Zelenskyy and his U.S. hosts, President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance, might have been unsightly and unsettling for some. But the jarring exchange may have finally induced Americans and Western Europeans to dig into the details of an unnecessary war.
Donald Trump was elected, in part, to end the war in Ukraine. In mid-February, the President’s top diplomats had met with the Russians in Saudi Arabia, where they agreed on a few high-level goals, including a peace that is “enduring.” No one should have been happier than the Ukrainians, who’ve suffered up to one million dead and wounded and 10 million refugees who’ve fled the country. With Russia surging, and Ukraine about to suffer even worse losses, you’d think Ukraine and its Western backers would welcome a helping hand.
A stubborn Zelenskyy, however, clad in all-black war-zone chic, blew up the White House meeting. In previous weeks, he had already dissed Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent at a “high decibel” meeting in Kiev and then similarly dismissed VP Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio at the Munich Security Conference.1
Zelenskyy seemed not to remotely understand Ukraine’s dire situation. It took several weeks of intense pressure to get Ukraine back to the table, this time in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. The U.S. even temporarily turned off Ukraine’s access to American satellites and intelligence to get its attention. So intransigent was Zelenskyy, the U.S. excluded him from the talks in Jeddah, where Ukraine finally agreed to the U.S. suggestion of a 30-day ceasefire.2
Despite his reluctant acquiescence, it’s clear Zelenskyy wants to keep fighting. So do battalions of American and European pundits, who are furiously editorializing to scuttle a peace agreement. This is a battle between good and evil, they insist, and any resolution short of total Russian defeat is total defeat for the West.
Nearly every faction of military and international experts who’ve run U.S. and European foreign policy over the last 30 years agree on the basic story and strategy. For short, we will call this group of Neoconservatives, Neoliberals, Super Hawks, Liberal Internationalists, Atlanticists, Pentagon Politicians, and various Deep State alumni the Foreign Policy Geniuses (FPGs).
But what if the FPG narrative, which has reigned for two decades, is wrong? After all, most now agree the FPGs bungled Iraq, Afghanistan, and America’s wider Middle Eastern adventures. What if simplistic historical analogies and moral browbeating do not describe Russia-Ukraine reality but are in fact the source of the conflict and the chief obstacles to its peaceful resolution? What if the risk of nuclear war is higher than any time since 1962 because of a fundamentally fake news narrative?
Understanding there is another vision, another angle, another set of facts… could make all the difference.
A Tale of Two Visions
Aggressive Expansion – The prevailing FPG narrative says this is a simple case of aggressive expansion by Russia. One day, a monstrous Vladimir Putin decided he wanted to take Ukraine’s land and launched an “unprovoked” invasion. This out-of-the-blue attack signaled his territorial ambition to reassemble the Soviet empire. The West must therefore oppose the incursion at nearly all cost, lest Russia expand deeper into Europe. Modern Russia is little different from the Soviet Union. Ukraine must “win,” and Russia must “lose.” It’s a matter of “honor.” Otherwise, Russia will feel emboldened, and – they push the argument much further – so will China. This is the view endlessly asserted by the foreign policy establishments of the U.S. and Europe – the FPGs – and all legacy media outlets.
Escalatory Spiral – But there is another vision, which I believe far better fits the facts on the ground. This alternative approach suggests the lead up to the war was something closer to an escalatory spiral.
For more than two decades, each side took actions, which it perceived (or pretended) to be defensive, but which the other side viewed as offensive. Former CIA Russia specialist George Beebe outlined this framework in his 2020 book, The Russia Trap: How Our Shadow War with Russia Could Spiral into Nuclear Catastrophe.
NATO’s expansion eastward in the 1990s and 2000s was, it asserted, a strategy to defend Europe from Russia. But Russia viewed NATO expansion – first to central Europe, then the Baltics and eastern Europe, and possibly next to Ukraine and Georgia right on its most sensitive borders – as an offensive threat.
Russia, keep in mind, was the far weaker party, still recovering from the Soviet implosion.
Kiev’s crackdown on the ethnic Russian portions of eastern Ukraine, beginning in 2014, alarmed Moscow. When Russia resisted, taking back Crimea and warning the West to stop advancing and persecuting its brethren, NATO claimed, “See, we told you Russia’s a threat. Why would they care if we add countries and arm them? We are, after all, a defensive alliance.”
When the U.S. rejected Russia’s final plea to negotiate in December 2021, and when Secretary of State Tony Blinken told Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in January 2022 the U.S. reserved the right to put missiles in Ukraine, Russia believed it had no choice but to secure the eastern oblasts right on its border.
Thus Russia’s incursion beginning in February 2022. If it had wanted to annihilate and conquer Ukraine with its powerful arsenal, it could have. But it decided not to. After all, it wanted to retain some relationship with its historical brethren after the conflict. Perhaps an invasion of moderate proportion, Russia surmised, would finally get the West’s attention and force a real negotiated settlement.
If the second vision is closer to correct or even plausible from certain perspectives, it may help us find a better resolution to the war.
A Short-ish, Incomplete History
A little historical background might help us understand the scenarios and properly analyze current negotiations.
So here’s a summary of events over the last couple decades. It is not remotely comprehensive – nor even unbiased. In fact, because Western readers are so familiar with the FPG narrative, we present many items which arguably back Russia’s case. Facts, we argue, are nevertheless important. Shielding oneself from reality leads to poor decision-making and, in cases of war with nuclear counterparts, potential catastrophe.
In 1998, an aging George Kennan, the dean of U.S. diplomacy and architect of the West’s Cold War strategy of containment, argued against pushing NATO to Russia’s doorstep. He called it “the most fateful error of American policy in the entire post-Cold War era.” He said it could result in war. With the Soviet Union gone and Communism defeated, aggressive NATO expansion might prevent the West from turning Russia from enemy to partner.
In 2008, State Department Russia expert Bill Burns, who would later serve as President Biden’s CIA director, penned a cable home to Washington – “Nyet Means Nyet.” Expansion of NATO or other security guarantees to Ukraine is Moscow’s bright red line, he wrote. A level one threat. Every Russian political faction, not just Putin or the hardliners to his right, believe this strongly.
The U.S. nevertheless poured $5 billion into Ukraine’s government and “civil society” – including George Soros NGOs – building up capacity to generate anti-Russian sentiment and move Ukraine into NATO’s orbit, even if short of formal membership.
In 2010, Viktor Yanukovych won Ukraine’s presidential election on a platform of cooperation with Russia, greater economic ties with the EU, and military neutrality.
In 2014, however, the U.S. supported the coup which toppled the democratically elected Yanukovych. The State Department’s Victoria Nuland, an architect of Ukraine policy – and of Iraq policy before that – passed out sandwiches and cookies in the square as neo-Nazi groups overthrew the government. (See extensive histories of the Maidan events here and here.)
The new U.S.-backed Ukrainian government outlawed the Russian language and even began shelling the heavily-Russian eastern oblasts. The U.S. moved quickly to integrate our intelligence services with Ukraine’s, and to heavily staff all of Ukraine’s ministries and train its military. Politically-connected Americans also began laundering and extorting huge amounts of money through Ukrainian agencies, companies, and NGOs – for example, Hunter Biden’s millions from Burisma.
Sensing a major advance by NATO, including a threat to Russia’s key warm-water naval base in Sevastopol, Putin moved to secure Crimea. Crimea, which had been Russian for hundreds of years, both territorially and ethnically, later voted 95% to cement its re-combination with Russia.
Already in 2014, everyone knew the coup and Putin’s response in Crimea pointed toward escalation.3 Henry Kissinger advised both sides to contemplate the other’s interests: “The West must understand that, to Russia, Ukraine can never be just a foreign country. Russian history began in what was called Kievan-Rus. The Russian religion spread from there. Ukraine has been part of Russia for centuries, and their histories were intertwined before then. Some of the most important battles for Russian freedom, starting with the Battle of Poltava in 1709, were fought on Ukrainian soil. The Black Sea Fleet – Russia’s means of projecting power in the Mediterranean – is based by long-term lease in Sevastopol, in Crimea. Even such famed dissidents as Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and Joseph Brodsky insisted that Ukraine was an integral part of Russian history and, indeed, of Russia…” “A wise U.S. policy toward Ukraine would seek a way for the two parts of the country to cooperate with each other. We should seek reconciliation, not the domination of a faction…” “For the West, the demonization of Vladimir Putin is not a policy; it is an alibi for the absence of one.”
For a short time, it appeared the sides would take Kissinger’s advice. The coup, Russia’s seizure of Crimea, and the new Ukrainian government’s crack down on ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine led to negotiations – resulting in the supposedly de-escalatory 2014 and 2015 Minsk Agreements 1 and 2. One key item of the ceasefire was Ukraine’s promise to amend its Constitution to guarantee limited political autonomy for the Donbas, which Russia viewed as both a human rights issue for ethnic Russians and as a physical buffer.
Ukraine did not fulfill this promise. NATO boosted its weapons and training support of Ukraine, short of full membership. The U.S. pushed against implementation of Minsk 2.
For a good summary of the Minsk 1 and 2 timeline, see this article by Ian Proud. Messy details abound, but whatever the case, you can see “the war” did not begin suddenly in February 2022 but long before, in 2014.
In September 2015, University of Chicago international relations professor John Mearsheimer prophetically warned that “the West is leading Ukraine down the primrose path, and the end result is that Ukraine is going to get wrecked.”4 Mearsheimer5 merely took seriously Moscow’s repeated declarations that it viewed (1) the Western build-up in Ukraine and (2) Ukraine’s failure to implement the Minsk 2 agreement from earlier that year as serious and unacceptable threats.
Here is Mearsheimer’s full quote from September 25, 2015: “What’s going here is that the West is leading Ukraine down the Primrose path and the end result is that Ukraine is going to get wrecked. And I believe that the policy that I'm advocating which is neutralizing Ukraine and then building it up economically and getting it out of the competition between Russia on one side and NATO on the other side is the best thing that could happen to the Ukrainians. What we're doing is encouraging the Ukrainians to play tough with the Russians. We're encouraging the Ukrainians to think that they will ultimately become part of the West because we will ultimately defeat Putin and we will ultimately get our way time is on our side and of course. The Ukrainians are playing along with this, and the Ukrainians are almost completely unwilling to compromise with the Russians, and instead want to pursue a hard-line policy. Well, as I said to you before, if they do that, the end result is that their country is going to be wrecked. And what we're doing is in effect encouraging that outcome. I think it would make much more sense for us to nurture to work to create a neutral Ukraine. It would be in our interest to bury this crisis as quickly as possible. It certainly would be in Russia's interest to do so. And most importantly it would be in Ukraine's interest to put an end to the crisis.”
Over the eight years between 2014 and 2022, low-level civil warfare in the Donbas would result in the deaths of some 13,000 ethnic Russians.
Let’s pause for an aside: Remember the kerfuffle in the summer of 2016, when Hillary Clinton’s campaign and the media claimed Donald Trump had “gutted” support for Ukraine from the Republican platform? The charge was false, in fact the opposite of the truth.6 But it was a crucial tell about just how important Project Ukraine was to the powerful FPGs and just how far they were willing to go to sustain confrontation, instead of de-escalation. The entire Russia Collusion Hoax was, in no insignificant part, designed to prevent the Trump Administration from pursuing a rational policy on the Ukraine question. By generating a fake cloud of Putin-subservience over Trump’s head, the FPGs not only weakened Trump in general but also blocked diplomatic progress toward peace.
In 2019, Zelenskyy campaigned on peace and neutrality (meaning no NATO membership), including implementation of Minsk 2 Constitutional autonomy amendment so important to Russia. He won but did not deliver.
In 2021, the new Biden Administration, aligned and staffed with Foreign Policy Geniuses, rapidly shifted Project Ukraine into higher gear, intensifying Western military and intelligence integration. Victoria Nuland, co-architect of the 2014 coup, took charge of the State Department’s Ukraine portfolio and, with Secretary of State Tony Blinken, hit the accelerator.
By fall and winter 2021, Putin reached out with increasing urgency seeking a resolution or at least talks. Russia proposed ideas to avoid war.
The U.S. rebuffed Russia at every turn. (See more below about the now-infamous December 2021 phone call between National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan and Columbia professor and Ukraine expert Jeffrey Sachs, where Sullivan insisted there would be no war.)
In January 2022, the U.S. reserved the right to put missiles in Ukraine on Russia’s border.
On February 21, 2022, Putin explained his views in a detailed 55-minute video address – “I would like to emphasize that Ukraine is not just a neighboring country for us. It is an inalienable part of our own history, culture, and spiritual space. These are our comrades, those dearest to us.” One the same day, Russian troops entered the separatist republics and Russia recognized Luhansk and Donetsk. On February 24, Russia launched the wider invasion.
Just seven days into the war, Russia and Ukraine initiated peace negotiations. This, many argue, was Russia’s true goal – to grab the world’s attention and force a de-escalatory resolution, not to conquer Ukraine, which it might easily have done with far greater destructive air power.
In April 2022, just two months into the war, Ukraine and Russia had worked out a draft peace agreement in Istanbul. At the very last minute, however, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, at U.S. direction, swooped in to scuttle the deal. “In Istanbul,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov recently confirmed, “we were one hour away from signing a peace agreement, but Boris Johnson banned Ukraine from doing that.”
More recently, Boris Johnson admitted the whole ordeal is a “proxy war” against Russia on behalf of the U.S., UK, and NATO.7 Likewise, former U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin boasted the war was primarily designed to pummel and weaken Russia. And Sen. Lindsey Graham, among a flurry of shifting rationales, said America’s aim was to secure $14 trillion in Ukrainian natural resources. So much for “freedom and democracy.”
We learned after the war started the U.S. had built a dozen CIA bases and numerous bio-labs in Ukraine. These were the “outposts” Kissinger had warned against.
On September 26, 2022, the U.S. and/or its Western allies destroyed the Nord Stream gas pipelines, denying Europe one of it primary energy sources and sending Germany and the continent deeper into recession and a crisis of deindustrialization.
Contrary to erroneous assertions from Western think tanks and media, which consistently boast of Ukrainian success and devastating Russian losses, three years of war in fact resulted in three to five Ukrainian casualties for every one Russian casualty. In other words, if Russia has suffered around 250,000 total dead and wounded, it’s likely Ukraine has lost around one million dead and wounded. The FPGs continue to claim only 50-100,000 Ukrainian deaths. They are either deluded or purposely misleading.
In early 2025, Russia retains the upper hand in every respect – artillery, air, sea, active manpower, reserves, infrastructure, technology, and morale.
Facts & Strategy
Whatever one’s view of these facts – whether you think some of them are wrong or misleading or other crucial facts are missing (all certainly true) – a central conclusion cannot be avoided:
Russia had for nearly two decades shouted from the rooftops that Western efforts to create a military and intelligence outpost on its most sensitive border was a security threat and existential concern. You may despise Putin. He may even be worthy of your hatred. You may assert our ability to push bombs and biolabs to Russia’s border. But you cannot argue Russia did not view Western expansion (whether formal or informal) as a matter of life or death.
Imagine if this fact pattern were applied to the U.S. borders with Mexico or Canada. Replace the U.S. and NATO with Russia or China. What if China had installed a puppet in Mexico City and built 12 military/intel bases on our southern border? Imagine if Washington complained to Beijing for 15 years that continued intransigence would lead to escalation. What if Beijing reserved the right to place missiles a couple hundred miles from San Diego, Los Angeles, Phoenix, Austin, and Houston?
We witnessed a roughly analogous scenario in 1962, when the U.S. detected Soviet missiles in Cuba. In return for Soviet withdrawal, we removed missiles from Turkey. Kennedy and Khrushchev avoided nuclear war.
If today’s FPGs had been advising Khrushchev in 1962, they would have said because JFK was an evil capitalist, the USSR should refuse to negotiate and press the threat 90 miles from Florida. The risk of nuclear war be damned. “Honor” compels us to stand by our Cuban “friends.” Only a total defeat of America will suffice.
In 1953, Dwight Eisenhower, acting on a campaign pledge, likewise ended the Korean War. “We could not stand forever on a static front and continue to accept casualties without any visible results,” he pragmatically concluded. “Small attacks on small hills would not end this war.” Was Ike a dishonorable turncoat? No, this decision arguably saved tens or hundreds of thousands of lives and launched South Korea into the modern, democratic, technological stratosphere.
The FPGs seem to value their own stubbornness more than American strategic interest or Ukrainian lives. Have you ever read or heard a calm, sober, persuasive outline of the FPG strategy vis-a-vis Russia? Almost never (more on that in a bit). More often, we get inapt historical analogies (it’s Munich in 1938!), thick emotional appeals (America must not abandon its friends!), and war-bond sloganeering (Putin is a tyrant eyeing world domination; keep the billions flowing!).
Another frequent FPG argument is that a Ukrainian loss emboldens China. Western weakness, in their telling, would tempt Xi Jinping to move on Taiwan. I think the reverse argument is more likely – that a peace deal would far improve our stance vis-a-vis China. A peace would stop the drain on the U.S. treasury and our military stockpiles. The U.S. could shift resources and mind-space toward Asia. It would show the U.S. is smart and agile instead of dumb and bogged down.
Our attempts to tease out facts and understand Russia’s motivations are not efforts to sanctify Putin, excuse Russia’s bad acts, or wish away its future plans averse to our interests. On the contrary, a brutally honest appraisal of reality is necessary to optimize our own strategy. The cartoon narrative of the Foreign Policy Geniuses has led to vast unnecessary destruction, including to America’s own interests. A far tighter bond between Russia and China is only one of the most obvious and strategic blunders resulting from the juvenile FPG storybook.
The NATO Question
In recent days, one of the more sober neocons, Eli Lake of The Free Press, repeated in a series of tweets on X a central fairytale of FPG lore – that this conflict has nothing to do with NATO.
“Also the NATO argument is nonsense. By 2008, Ukraine’s membership was effectively vetoed by France and Germany. In 2010 Ukraine’s new govt officially stopped trying to join the alliance. This is excuse making for the bully. Putin invaded Ukraine because he wanted to take it.”
“This is utter bullshit. NATO was considered for nato membership in 2007/2008. France and Germany effectively vetoed. In 2010 Ukraine withdrew its application to nato formally. And yet Putin invaded first in 2014. Your talking point doesn’t withstand the mildest scrutiny.”
But Lake has to know his own assertion is triple nonsense.
The 2014 coup overthrew the government elected in 2010 on a neutrality platform. NATO cooperation quickly resumed.
Security guarantees, whether backed formally by NATO or informally by NATO member states, have always been a, if not THE, central contention. Before 2014, after 2014, in the lead up to the war, and still to this very day.
George Kennan predicted it. Henry Kissinger knew it. Angela Merkel said it privately, then later publicly. But the FPGs simply cannot admit it. Because it blows up their entire simplistic narrative.
On February 21, 2025, Columbia University economist and Ukraine expert Jeffrey Sachs dropped a bombshell which once again proved the centrality of the NATO question. During a much longer presentation to the European Parliament on the history of the conflict, Sachs recounted an astonishing conversation.
In December 2021, as the U.S. and Russia were discussing ways to avoid escalation, Sachs spoke at length with President Biden’s National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan.
“In December 2021, I had an hour call with Jake Sullivan in the White House,” Sachs relayed. “Begging… ‘Jake, avoid the war. You can avoid the war. All you have to do is say, NATO will not enlarge to Ukraine.’ And he said to me, ‘Oh, NATO’s not going to enlarge to Ukraine. Don’t worry about it.’ And I said, ‘Jake, say it publicly.’ ‘No, no, no, we can’t say it publicly.’ I said, ‘Jake, you’re going to have a war over something that isn’t even going to happen?’ He said, ‘Don’t worry, Jeff, there’ll be no war.’”
Remember that just eight days before Hamas massacred Israeli civilians on October 7, 2023, Sullivan had boasted, “The Middle East region is quieter today than it has been in two decades.”
“These are not very bright people,” Sachs lamented to the European Parliamentarians. “I’m telling you. If I can give my honest view, they’re not very bright people. And I’ve dealt with them for more than 40 years.”
Last week, two laugh-or-cry announcements capped Sullivan’s infamously poor judgment, which of course was not merely his own, but perfectly encapsulated the three-decade reign of the Foreign Policy Geniuses.
First, NATO Secretary General and former Dutch prime minister Mark Rutte finally acknowledged Ukraine would not join NATO.
Now you tell us!
Then Harvard said Sullivan would join the illustrious university as the inaugural “Kissinger Professor of the Practice of Statecraft and World Order.”
Statecraft and Order, indeed, as the world he left behind burns. You simply cannot make this stuff up.
NATO and security guarantees always have been primary motivations for both sides, and they will continue to be in current and future negotiations.
Passive-Aggressive Provocation
Given this history, you might see why I think the escalatory spiral explanation for the conflict might in fact be too charitable to the West. Do you think the West truly believed it was acting defensively? A more accurate description of the impetus for the conflict is something like passive-aggressive provocation. Here, one side pretends to be acting defensively but in fact continually pokes, prods, and inflames the other side, engaging in threatening behavior which it attempts to plausibly deny to the outside world.
In 2019, the RAND Corporation, one of America’s oldest defense-oriented think tanks, issued a 354-page report called “Extend Russia: Competing From Advantageous Ground.”
The goal of the massive report was to “examine a range of nonviolent measures that could exploit Russia’s actual vulnerabilities and anxieties as a way of stressing Russia’s military and economy and the regime’s political standing at home and abroad.” RAND’s comprehensive campaign was “designed to unbalance the adversary…causing Russia to overextend itself militarily or economically or causing the regime to lose domestic and/or international prestige and influence.”
The report urged everything from “hindering Russian petroleum exports” to “enhancing Russian brain drain” to “withdrawing from the INF [Intermediate Nuclear Forces] Treaty.”
The RAND report also suggested boosting lethal military aid to Ukraine and ramping up discussion of NATO membership:
“More-vocal U.S. advocacy of NATO membership for Ukraine would likely strengthen both Ukrainian morale and Russian determination to prevent such a development, thereby perhaps further extending Russia’s commitment and costs.”
Toppling the government of Russia’s most strategic neighbor; building 12 CIA bases on its border; hinting NATO was still a possibility and that we might install missiles – these seem like passive-aggressive acts meant to force Russia into military action. This was in fact the goal of the Foreign Policy Geniuses – to get Russia to overextend itself and incur the wrath of the international community. For once, the FPGs were spectacularly successful. At least in that narrow goal.
What was the ultimate strategic objective? The only rationale I can imagine for the FPGs’ risky behavior was a long-term plan to remove Putin from power and break up Russia. Otherwise, it makes little sense. Or maybe the reason is more more pedestrian: after the Cold War, NATO needed a mission, and thus an enemy. Russia would suffice. The rest of the world thought 1990 was a happy turning point. For the Western FPGs, the Cold War never really ended.
The problem is they didn’t realize how many people would die. Or that Russia might end up the winner – in territory and potentially, though it is still far from determined, even in international prestige. The FPGs are nothing if not shortsighted wordcels8 who rarely think beyond one dimension.
Remarkably, however, the RAND report actually foresaw these second- and third-order risks.9
An increase in U.S. security assistance to Ukraine would likely lead to a commensurate increase in both Russian aid to the separatists and Russian military forces in Ukraine, thus sustaining the conflict at a somewhat higher level of intensity…
Alternatively, Russia might counter-escalate, committing more troops and pushing them deeper into Ukraine. Russia might even pre-empt U.S. action, escalating before any additional U.S. aid arrives. Such escalation might extend Russia; Eastern Ukraine is already a drain. Taking more of Ukraine might only increase the burden, albeit at the expense of the Ukrainian people. However, such a move might also come at a significant cost to Ukraine and to U.S. prestige and credibility. This could produce disproportionately large Ukrainian casualties, territorial losses, and refugee flows. It might even lead Ukraine into a disadvantageous peace.
This is exactly where Ukraine (and the FPGs) now find themselves – scurrying to to avoid (the blame for) what will almost certainly end up a disastrously “disadvantageous peace.”
The FPGs poked the bear – and Ukraine got wrecked. Along with the FPGs’ credibility.
Scenario Analysis
Before we finish with an analysis of the current negotiations, consider a simplified matrix of previous choices and likely outcomes.
Scenario 1, What Might Have Been: The U.S. and NATO did not push formal expansion to Ukraine or informally arm and equip Ukraine in a provocative fashion but instead allowed it to straddle both European and Russian relationships.
Scenario 2, What Happened: The U.S. and NATO chose Ukraine’s leaders, staffed its ministries, armed and equipped its military and intelligence services, refused to take NATO membership off the table, and blocked diplomacy with Russia – in 2014, 2015, 2019, 2021, 2022, and still today.
In Scenario 1, every party is better off in every dimension. In Scenario 2, every party is worse off in every dimension.
The West foolishly chose Scenario 2. The Foreign Policy Geniuses might argue that under Scenario 1, Russia would have retained more economic ties and soft-influence in Ukraine, and NATO would have given up an outpost on Russia’s border. True enough. But those would have been an entirely preferable trade-offs.
In fact, the FPG strategy destroyed their own objectives. Under Scenario 2, Russia will likely end up controlling at least 20% of Ukraine, and NATO will lose influence in Ukraine and potentially across Europe. Under any negotiated settlement, where neutrality is codified, NATO and NATO members may be pushed out of a shrunken Ukrainian territory. Under Scenario 1, they might have sustained at least a quiet presence.
Worst of all, Scenario 2 brought the world closer to nuclear war than any time since 1962 – in return for zero benefits and gigantic costs. The Trump Administration’s diplomatic efforts have at least temporarily reduced this threat, but we are not yet out of the woods.
Until very recently, many of the more wild-eyed FPGs urged a Scenario 3 – Total “Victory” against Russia. In recent days, for example, Kaja Kallas, Foreign Representative of the European Union, said the defeat of Russia is crucial to avoid World War III.
In fact, just the opposite is true. Any attempt by the West to “defeat” Russia would trigger World War III. Plenty of actions short of this, such as merely putting NATO member troops in Ukraine, could also trigger nuclear war.
The FPGs never contemplated possible downside risks or the breadth of cascading effects, at least not publicly. For the last decade, maximalist rhetoric based on abstraction and personality dominated – “freedom versus autocracy,” “friend versus enemy,” “weakness will only encourage them.” Neocons especially are foreign policy virtue signalers. They never grasped (or admitted) the key asymmetry, where Ukraine is an existential security matter for Russia but not for the U.S.
Did any of them stop for one moment and ask even more basic questions? Why do we think Russia is evil? What is the threat? Does modern Russia resemble in important ways the Soviet Union at the height of the Cold War? Or has it shifted markedly in its character, ideology, religiosity, and economic orientation? Hasn’t the global landscape shifted since then? Do we want to strengthen the bond between Russia and China? Could we imagine a more productive relationship with Russia? Why not? And finally, if so many NATO nations no longer support the most basic human rights, such as free speech, and more and more resemble the top-down technocratic societies we opposed during the Cold War, what are we even fighting for?
Instead, the FPGs seem to have begun with the premise that it’s still 1960, and Soviet Communism is on the march…or that it’s 1938, and Putin is Hitler. Every utterance and decision flowed from this faulty mental foundation.
They should have read the 2019 RAND report, which considered the possible downstream effects in which Russia pushed back against Western provocations:
“Most of the steps covered in this report are potentially escalatory, and most would likely prompt some Russian counter-escalation. The United States must consider and evaluate the available likely Russian counter-escalation options and seek to deny or neutralize them as part of the overall U.S. strategy. In addition to the specific risks associated with each measure, therefore, there is additional risk attached to a generally intensified competition with a nuclear-armed adversary to consider.”
Even the staunchest Cold Warriors never seriously contemplated sustained provocative action right on the Soviet border.10 They would have considered it madness.
Current Negotiations
Astute analysts know the approximate endgame:
Ukraine will be non-aligned militarily, in other words, neutral. No NATO or NATO-lite alliances.
Russia will get the four oblasts of Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson, and it will retain Crimea.
Ukraine’s military will be limited in number and potency.
Some security guarantees might be allowed but not by NATO members, and nothing approaching a military alliance.
Lifting of sanctions on Russia and dropping of legal claims.
Call this pre-draft proposal Istanbul+. It resembles the Istanbul outline from April 2022, plus additional concessions given Russia’s gains over the last three years. If Ukraine said yes, the war could be over tomorrow morning.
Based on everything we know, the Trump Administration seems to view Istanbul+ as a general target. In his interview with Tucker Carlson, Steve Witkoff, Trump’s roving negotiator, gave the strongest indications yet.
Foreign Policy Geniuses in the U.S. and Europe, however, can’t remotely countenance this outline. They are either so invested in their narrative or so determined to block any deal, they cannot see just what bad shape Ukraine is in, how serious Russia is, and most importantly, that this deal is likely the best Ukraine can hope for.
The official new line from FPG Public Relations is that President Trump and his team are dupes. “Trump is naive, delusional – and being played by Putin,” the Independent headlined. “Putin played Trump like a fiddle,” wrote National Review. “Trump looks like a sucker, a man easily fooled.” “Witkoff is completely out his depth,” Marc Thiessen wrote. “He’s dealing with a KGB mastermind in psyops who is playing him like a cat with a mouse in its paws.”
Their charges of “appeasement” and “betrayal” were entirely predictable, as I wrote last October.
The Western foreign policy establishment has invested too much credibility and emotion. It will charge “appeasement” and “betrayal” and make any deal difficult for Trump.
The smarter, less rabid, and more nimble of the Russia hawks have adopted a more sensible stance. Speaking with the great interviewer Peter Robinson, historian Niall Ferguson provided a roughly good model for how Ukraine concludes this affair. Does it want to be South Korea (a success story) or South Vietnam (a failure)? Ferguson acknowledged Dwight Eisenhower had to force South Korea to accept an armistice.
Robinson asked a question the more realistic hawks will be asking: “We already know roughly what President Putin would receive in the kind of deal that the administration seems to have in mind. He gets to keep the Crimea, he gets to keep the Donbas, and he gets an assurance that Ukraine will never be part of NATO. What is unclear is what Ukraine gets in this deal.”
“And this,” Ferguson replied, “is where my fight with the administration began.” Ferguson thinks Trump gave away Russia’s key demands too early and is not applying enough pressure – “real pressure,” though he doesn’t define it. Putin will keep pressing the war until the Istanbul+ outline above is achieved.
“That,” Ferguson concluded, “is why the negotiations will go one, and on. And a year from now, you and I will be talking about the negotiations over Ukraine because” – as Kissinger, the subject of Ferguson’s two-volume history, said – “it’s really hard to end a war.”
Ferguson, I believe, is probably correct, but for the wrong reasons.
Likewise Larry Lindsey, a former Fed Governor, George W. Bush economic advisor, and all-around astute observer. Lindsey writes:
“The logical read of Putin’s playbook is to bog down Trump in the minutiae of a deal until he tires of the whole exercise…” “Meanwhile, Russia continues to make progress on the battlefield. This latter fact strengthens Putin’s confidence in prolonging current circumstances until Trump relents, even though he has yielded to none of Trump’s demands…” “At some point, Trump will conclude that Putin is simply playing him…” “[A] strategic move to motivate Putin into peace negotiations seems to us like a strong possibility for the second quarter.”
Given their lens, Ferguson and Lindsey think Putin will be the key obstacle to a deal. But Putin’s highly specific aims have been clear for many years. The die was cast long ago. Given the facts on the ground, I believe the real obstacles to peace will be Ukrainian nationalists and the FPGs in Western media, think tanks, and the U.S. Senate.
It may be too difficult for them to admit their strategy wrecked Ukraine, and failed to depose Putin, and so they will drag things out, offering more false hope just around the corner.
The answer to Robinson’s understandably frustrated question about what Ukraine gets out of this deal: well, it gets to, in Trump’s words, “stop the killing,” to save many tens of thousands of people and avoid additional large territorial losses. It gets a chance at a fresh start now, instead of potential years worth of war or rump-state dysfunction. In other words, it could aspire to something roughly like South Korea instead of South Vietnam.
Accepting Russia’s terms without getting more tangible benefits in return is not an appealing option. But what if it is by far your best option?
If the U.S. and Europe prolong the fighting, Ukraine will lose more land and people. Russia could take an additional 20% of Ukraine, including the historically Russian cities of Kharkiv in the north and Odesa on the Black Sea. Tens or hundreds of thousands of additional Ukrainians could perish. Is it “honorable” or “steadfast” to back such a catastrophic choice?
Since before the beginning of the war, the FPGs have misunderstood (or misrepresented) the capabilities, interests, and motivations of the parties, the history, and then the casualty counts on the battlefield.
But as Trump told Zelenskyy in the Oval Office,
“You don’t have the cards right now.”
Trump, and his still-underrated deputy JD Vance, is absolutely correct. And the harder the FPGs cling to Zelenskyy and their own stubbornness, they will not only diminish Ukraine’s prospects for recovery, they will boost the possibility of a massive escalation, potentially a nuclear one.
“I’m not playing cards, Mr. President,” Zelenskyy shot back at Trump.
“Oh, you’re playing cards. You’re gambling with the lives of millions of people. You’re gambling with World War III.”
Taking this strategic risk off the table is one of Trump and Vance’s central aims. It’s why the White House is likely to persist in its efforts to find (or even force) an agreement. It’s why the vicious defamations of Western pundits – “betrayal,” “treachery,” “retreat,” “Putin’s talking points” – may not deter the mission.
The other factor favoring persistence is a strategic opportunity, with implications far beyond Ukraine and even Europe. Establishing a new relationship with Russia could dramatically improve America’s position vis-a-vis China for decades to come. No, it wouldn’t split off Russia from China completely. But even a slightly more balanced triangle could dramatically boost U.S. maneuverability.
One might have thought the FPGs, after so many misjudgments in so many varied scenarios over so many years, might display a shred of humility. But this very lack of humility is of course a likely basis for those many misjudgments. Overconfidence and lack of introspection delivers a self-reinforcing cycle of mistakes.
If Ukraine had been allowed to strike a deal with Russia at any point in the last 20 years, it would be better off than today. If it had merely upheld Minsk 2, it would have lost approximately zero people and zero territory, save Crimea. The U.S. would be no worse off, and Europe would be safer and more prosperous. If Ukraine strikes a deal today, it will be better off than tomorrow or the day after.
Can Western FPGs find the humility and honor necessary to seize the moment?
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent offered background to the February 28 Oval Office meeting, including his own previous failed meeting with Zelenskyy in Kiev.
“President Trump sent me there to, again, we were supposed to bring the Ukrainian people closer to the U.S. people, send a strong signal to Russian leadership that we had not only shared values, but now shared economic interests, and also have a strong signal for the American people that their tax dollars were actually going to work,” Bessent told Fox News’s Laura Ingraham.
“Instead, President Zelensky and I had a very tough 45-minute meeting at a very loud decibel level. And I kept telling him, ‘Mr. President, the purpose of this is to show the Russians there is no daylight between us.’ And at the end of the meeting, he said, well, ‘I’m not signing this.’”
Zelenskyy told Bessent he would sign it the next week in Munich.
“Then he got to Munich and he ran into Vice President resident Vance and Secretary Rubio. You know, very different than Vice President Harris and Secretary Blinken, but he didn’t sign the agreement,” Bessent said.
“So finally we were supposed to have the signing today. It was supposed to be a great day.” Instead, Bessent called it one of the worst “own goals in diplomatic history.”
Russia has repeatedly said it is not interested in ceasefires. It wants a permanent peace agreement.
In addition to realists and centrists like Kissinger and Mearsheimer, critics on both the right and left argued at the time the U.S./NATO interventions were irrationally dangerous. The point is not necessarily that all these people were correct (although it appears they were) but that people of all political persuasions knew AT THE TIME, in 2014, that Western interventions in Ukraine were provocative, and potentially dangerous and unwise.
For example, former Congressman Ron Paul noted in March 2014 that “The evidence is pretty clear that the NGOs [non-governmental organisations] financed by our government have been agitating with billions of dollars, trying to get that government changed,” he said. “Our hands are not clean.” See more: “We've already spent $5 billion over the last ten years trying to pick and choose the leadership of Ukraine. And then we participated in the overthrow of the Yanukovych government. All we’re trying to do is stir up more trouble. It makes no sense whatsoever.”
In May 2014, John Pilger wrote in the Guardian, “With eastern Europe and the Balkans now military outposts of Nato, the last ‘buffer state’ bordering Russia – Ukraine – is being torn apart by fascist forces unleashed by the US and the EU. We in the west are now backing neo-Nazis in a country where Ukrainian Nazis backed Hitler.
“Having masterminded the coup in February against the democratically elected government in Kiev, Washington's planned seizure of Russia's historic, legitimate warm-water naval base in Crimea failed. The Russians defended themselves, as they have done against every threat and invasion from the west for almost a century.
“But Nato's military encirclement has accelerated, along with US-orchestrated attacks on ethnic Russians in Ukraine. If Putin can be provoked into coming to their aid, his pre-ordained ‘pariah’ role will justify a Nato-run guerrilla war that is likely to spill into Russia itself.”
“What’s going here is that the West is leading Ukraine down the Primrose path and the end result is that Ukraine is going to get wrecked. And I believe that the policy that I'm advocating which is neutralizing Ukraine and then building it up economically and getting it out of the competition between Russia on one side and NATO on the other side is the best thing that could happen to the Ukrainians. What we're doing is encouraging the Ukrainians to play tough with the Russians. We're encouraging the Ukrainians to think that they will ultimately become part of the West because we will ultimately defeat Putin and we will ultimately get our way time is on our side and of course. The Ukrainians are playing along with this, and the Ukrainians are almost completely unwilling to compromise with the Russians, and instead want to pursue a hard-line policy. Well, as I said to you before, if they do that, the end result is that their country is going to be wrecked. And what we're doing is in effect encouraging that outcome. I think it would make much more sense for us to nurture to work to create a neutral Ukraine. It would be in our interest to bury this crisis as quickly as possible. It certainly would be in Russia's interest to do so. And most importantly it would be in Ukraine's interest to put an end to the crisis.” John Mearsheimer, September 25, 2015.
Keep in mind that I disagree with Mearsheimer on plenty, likewise Jeffrey Sachs, who we refer to later. But they happen to have been right about so many details and made so many spot-on predictions on the Russia-Ukraine matter, we have no choice but to listen closely.
“In fact, an already-tough portion of the Republican platform dealing with Russia was strengthened, not weakened, at the GOP convention.” Byron York, Washington Examiner, November 26, 2017.
“Let’s face it, we’re waging a proxy war, a proxy war, but we’re not giving our proxies the ability to do the job.” November 28, 2024.
In the exaggerated dichotomy: Wordcels are people who are good with words and think in terms of rhetoric. Shape rotators are good at math, spatial reasoning, and abstract thinking. https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/wordcel-shape-rotator-mathcel, https://www.vice.com/en/article/ok-wtf-are-wordcels-and-shape-rotators/.
In addition to the more specific caveats quoted above, RAND also issued a more general warning about the downside risks of the broader “Extend Russia” strategy: “Most of the steps covered in this report are potentially escalatory, and most would likely prompt some Russian counter-escalation. The United States must consider and evaluate the available likely Russian counter-escalation options and seek to deny or neutralize them as part of the overall U.S. strategy. In addition to the specific risks associated with each measure, therefore, there is additional risk attached to a generally intensified competition with a nuclear-armed adversary to consider.”
RAND admits the U.S. actions were “potentially escalatory,” and that our efforts could provoke a Russian “counter-escalation.” RAND’s analysis is therefore another piece of evidence the Russian invasion was not “unprovoked.”
Our small-scale funding of the Mujahideen in Afghanistan does not compare to the major war in Ukraine. Vietnam was of course a hot war with a Cold War backdrop – an ill-considered one, in my view – but it did not directly threaten Soviet territory or strategic security interests.
Fantastic article. Thank you for writing it - and publishing it!
Great writing. I am much more informed now. Thank you.