Victor Davis Hanson
American Greatness
Aside from the rhetoric, there is a growing consensus among Western diplomats, military analysts, military officers, heads of state, and even much of the media about how to end the endless Ukrainian war.
A proposed peace will see a DMZ established somewhere along an adjusted 1,200-mile Ukraine-Russia border. Tough negotiations will adjudicate how far east toward its original borders Russian forces will be leveraged to backstep.
Publicly in the U.S. and covertly in Europe, all accept that a depleted Ukraine will not have the military strength to retake Crimea and the Donbas.
In 2014, both were absorbed by Russia during the Obama administration. Neither that administration nor any since has advocated a military effort to reclaim them.
Loudly, the U.S.—and again quietly Europe—concedes that Ukraine will not be in NATO—a confirmation that Russia will use to justify to its people its disastrous invasion, and even many Ukrainians will accept.
How will the West deter Putin from his inevitable agenda of reclaiming lost Soviet territory and Russian-speaking peoples? For now, his army is exhausted, its arsenals depleted, and its reputation shattered.
In the future, a commercial corridor, anchored by concessions to American and international mining concerns, will supposedly serve as a tripwire to deter Putin from attacking in-the-way noncombatant Americans.
More practically, Ukrainian forces will be kept fully armed. They have already inflicted perhaps a million causalities on Putin’s forces—possibly five times the dead, wounded, and missing that the Russians lost to the Taliban over that entire decade-long misadventure in Afghanistan.
If Trump can coax even a ceasefire, the oddly bellicose left will still rail about “Munich” and Trump as “Putin’s puppet.”
But after perhaps 1.5 million total Ukrainian and Russian dead, wounded, sick, and missing, transatlantic leftists will quietly admit they never had any realistic plan to win by fighting Russia to the last Ukrainian.
And they certainly were not willing—despite what they claimed in their spasms of braggadocio—to send U.S., U.K., European, or NATO ground troops into Eastern Ukraine.
Trump has faced criticism for his volatile, art-of-the-deal approach to Ukrainian diplomacy over the last 10 weeks.
Lost in such criticism is that the Biden administration did not even try to end the war. Instead, in the LBJ-style of “light at the end of the tunnel,” it parroted the great “spring offensive” to come. And when that gambit disastrously failed, it resorted to the banal blank check of “as long as it takes.”
Western leaders simplistically thought that sending more arms, money, and Ukrainians into the cauldron would eventually break Russia—30 times larger than Ukraine, 10 times richer, over four times more populous, and far less bothered by the mounting toll of its greater losses.
In addition, we even know the likely course of negotiations to end the slaughter.
As soon as Trump pressures Zelenskyy for a ceasefire and a rare minerals mining concession, Putin smells an advantage. So, he digs in and orders his generals to double down on terror strikes for advantage.
And then, once Trump sees that scolding Zelensky empowers Putin to back off from a ceasefire, he turns on Putin and puts far greater pressure on him: a secondary embargo on all who buy Russian oil that even the “on to Moscow” crowd had never envisioned.
Once Putin seems to agree, then Zelenskyy thinks he was had and wants a better mining deal or reconsideration of NATO or more sophisticated weapons—until Trump reminds him that the despised U.S., not his beloved Europeans, is his only route to a shaky peace.
So, we know the negotiations will have a yin and yang until there is no solution other than a ceasefire leading to a Korean-peninsula-like hot peace.
Putin always preferred to exploit the Obamas and Bidens of the world. And he did so in 2014 and 2022, rather than the mercurial, unpredictable, and ultimately dangerous Trump, during whose tenure he stayed put within his borders.
He also knows that for all the talk of his puppet Trump, the latter killed hundreds of the Wagner group, pulled out of an asymmetrical missile deal, first sent offensive weapons to Ukraine, sanctioned Russian oil and oligarchs, warned the Germans not to deal with Putin on the Nord Stream II pipeline, and bombed into extinction ISIS of Iraq, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, and Qasem Soleimani.
So, Putin knows that India, China, and others who buy his oil will not if he reneges on his willingness for a ceasefire.
If and when peace comes, we can already foresee the misinformation that will follow: Trump deserves no credit. Zelenskyy remains the true hero. A now hollowed-out Russia was the real winner.
The only mystery?
Since when did the anti-war left prefer an endless and horrific war to a difficult, messy peace?
Agree. This is sensible and cogent.
AMEN.
“Now is the time to strike” can have many permutations. We can provide Ukraine with the conventional armaments to hit Moscow, St. Petersburg and military installations. And/or the Europeans can put troops on the ground. And/or we can return Ukraine’s nuclear weapons which were removed in 1994 under a failed agreement wherein the United States pledged to defend Ukraine (hah). I’m sure there are other alternatives which someone smarter than I can suggest. What I do know is that the fear of war with a nuclear power precludes necessary military responses to aggression which ultimately results in a larger scale military operation with far greater casualties. Such fear would also consign us to respond to military provocations from only non-nuclear powers. Russia and, apparently, China, are not so constrained.
My prior comment was awaiting moderation and then it disappeared. Hmmm.
I sympathize with VDH. He wants Trump to succeed in his domestic agenda which would be truly transformative: end DEI, reverse FDR and eliminate the administrative state, secure the borders, reduce the federal budget, reduce the national debt. All this is good but Trimpd domestic mandate will be lost in his foreign policy shipwreck. Trumps fawning affinity to an evil autocrat, Putin, is so utterly repugnant to almost all Americans,VDH tries to gently urge Trump toward resisting Putin and hopes beyond hope that Trump actually has some reason behind his alienating our allies, abandoning containment, destroying our trade status, etc. In fact Trumps jingoistic gulf of America, Canada 51st state, take Panama, take Greenland, take Gaza, is a psy-op designed to normalize Putin’s territorial aggressions. Trump craves access to the resources Putin controls, perhaps. Whatever the cause, abandoning George Keenan’s policy of containment and alienating our traditional allies is disastrous for the USA.
Moderate that.
Why don’t we take Putin at his word: he wants to re-establish Russian hegemony over all of Eastern Europe. Remember the FULDA GAP. Putin fancies his legacy to be on a par with Peter the Great. Stop thinking of this as a war in a distant land between people we don’t know. Think strategically. George Keenan’s vision worked. Contain. And the best place to contain is eastern Ukraine. Arm the Ukies to the teeth. Do not put limits on their tactics. Or kiss off Europe. They’ve been in Paris before.
“Now is the time to strike.” That is, you are advocating a full-scale war with a nuclear power. But you allege that VDH is missing something?
Don’t agree that the Russian military is exhausted. They have advanced slowly to minimize casualties.
Scenario 1:
Get a minerals deal. Put American interests in Ukraine that will stifle future advances by Russia in the future. The eastern border of Ukraine is pretty much set, anyway. Just make it official. This will work as long as we stop saber-rattling gestures like talk about admitting U to NATO. Putin must be serious about no more aggression into U.
Scenario 2:
Get the new eastern border set now. Everybody live with it. However, do NOT give anybody American “security assurances”. We do not want that type of future involvement. Only the “complex” wants that outcome. Gently back away and let Europe deal with it. It is their problem. We have other fish to fry.
Scenario 3:
Don’t do anything because the parties are not ready to agree to anything. Stop wasting our time and money and just get the f*ck out.
Scenario 4:
Go hyper aggressive and counterpunch Putin. Demand concessions with this new form of leverage. This would be costly but would drive a better bargain.
Analysis: The second option appears to be the most sane choice. #3 may be the best one if all parties are disagreeable.
This CIA proxie state known has Ukraine is coming to an end….A country that contains 40+ Bio labs and is a major vehicle of money laundering deep state money is over. Trump has stopped the flow of money and will negotiate a peace…
The love of power has no budget limits, nor moral scruples. Selfless service seems as extinct as common sense.
The answer to the final mystery is when the left realized that indifference and ignorance of many Americans are enough to mount a fight and maybe even defeat the right as Wisconsin where I unfortunately reside for maybe a couple more months, if I can stomach it, proves. But I suppose the left have banked on those 2 realities for a long time now. It’s a shame they haven’t ever used the creativity they have to obstruct President Trump for the benefit of the people who they allegedly work for.
Peace in our time? The echoes of Neville Chamberlain are unaddressed by Mr. Hanson. Russia will rearm with help from North Korea and Iran using its oil revenues and continue to march westward. Will Trump defend the Baltics, Poland or, having given in to Putin on Ukraine, will it be easier to follow the FDR roadmap and tell the weak and defenseless Europeans it’s their war? How successful was that strategy? What about Taiwan? Are we going to offer Guam for peace? Maybe Hawaii. The lack of resolve has ultimately disadvantaged us. McArthur was correct in 1950. We should have wiped out the Chinese and the North Koreans. Russia is depleted having been unable to defeat a fourth rate military. Now is the time to strike. “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” (George Santayana)
I am shocked at how little of an understanding of what is really happening on the ground that Victor has.
1. You can repeat Ukrainian/Nato/Deep State casualty and equipment lose figures all you want that doesn’t make them true. The shear gall and hubris to assume that ONLY people trained by glorious Nato NCOs or officers know how to fight a war is just ridiculous. Thanks to the people controlling Biden, and now President Trumps poor choices hundreds of thousands more Ukrainian soldiers, who are beaten and forced into service, will die. This is a war of ATTRITION, the entire focus of the Russian combat effort is, minimize their casualties and maximize Ukrainian. You look at slow and sometimes stop and start Russian advances and assume Russian weakness or incompetence. You also seem to either be unaware of or deliberately ignoring the operation that smashed the last remnants of the failed Ukrainian Kursk invasion.
2. The four Oblast are a part of the Russian Federation period full stop. Kiev, the correct spelling, Washington and Europe will have to recognize and deal with that fact. Furthermore that is the best possible deal if it is taken Now! Come mid spring when the ground hardens and new offensives begin that deal will soon go away, if the Russians are forced to fight all the way to the Dnieper the demands will increase to include Odessa and more.
I could go on, but at the end of the day only one of will be right. A “Military Historian” or some random guy on the interne
Regrettably, the text falls short given the complexity of the situation, reducing a multifaceted geopolitical crisis to a domestic left-right debate within the United States. This myopic approach fails to grapple with the true strategic stakes, notably the Russian threat, which extends far beyond Ukraine to challenge the global order. By fixating on American political tropes, it overlooks the broader implications of Putin’s actions, rendering its analysis disappointingly narrow and shortsighted.
So much realpolitik, so much leftist posturing.
And all those lives and limbs lost are but shadow boxing casualties of mankind’s progress?