(05-26-2024, 08:01 AM)Goose Wrote: (05-26-2024, 01:32 AM)TrumpCard Wrote: I didn’t say that the US would leave Ukraine defenseless after the negotiated settlement. I think a negotiated settlement might well include a NATO force in Ukraine to help defend the new border and deter further attacks.
There are at least two serious problems with this approach. First, given our track record in Ukraine there is little chance that Ukraine (or Russia for that matter) would believe our assertion that we would actively help defend their border has any meaning at all. In the Budapest agreements we said we would do just that. We never have. Even if the administration that signed the agreement fully intended to do so, their is no reasonable assurance that subsequent administrations (or the US Congress) would honor it. History says we won't. Even if there is a "hostage force" in Ukraine, it may not fight. The Russians could just avoid it as much as possible while issuing all kinds of threats. That force itself would be inadequate to actually protect Ukraine and without massive reinforcement and support from NATO it wouldn't be effective. It still comes back to NATO's "will", which based on history and the current state of play in Ukraine is totally lacking. Why would NATO fight to defend a "rump" Ukraine and won't fight now to defend a viable one? There would be even more reasons not to do so.
Second, given the current state of public opinion in the NATO countries the probability of any of them agreeing to send such a force and thereby make a commitment to defend the rump Ukraine is zero. The simple fact is that nations act in their own perceived interests. If the US and NATO will not send troops now to defend Ukraine because they do not consider it in their vital interest, why would they station troops in a rump Ukraine? The same risks of a direct conflict with Russia would exist. Nobody is going to do that. If Ukraine became a full NATO member then possibly the necessity to support NATO (even if the individual nations really don't want to on its own merit) would perhaps allow such a force to exist. However, the probability of all NATO nations agreeing to Ukrainian membership in NATO is even lower that some bilateral agreements being created. Even the US didn't support that before this war. Why would we now?
Last, a Ukrainian state based on current military positions is simply not viable. Ukraine was the poorest country in Europe before they lost access to the sea of Azov and the transportation network in the south and east of the country. It carried most of their trade. What remains would be much worse off even setting aside all the war damage to the rest of the country. Such an agreement would simply leave a situation that is not viable. See Czechoslovakia in 1938 and what happened in spring of 1939. It may postpone the inevitable, but it will still be inevitable.
We agree that more Western support would (or would have) helped Ukraine maintain territorial integrity (mostly). We also agree that the West's unfortunate posture probably will prevent Ukraine from taking back the territory that Russia invaded. The point of disagreement relates to what will happen if Russia were to sign a peace treaty in which it agrees to observe certain borders. You raise two main problems, both of which are real, but, I think, surmountable.
First, you say Ukraine already was the poorest country in Europe and it can't survive without better access to the sea. I think Ukraine's ability to survive economically depends more on stability than it does on territorial integrity. Ukraine has suffered calamity after calamity throughout its history. Invaded and sacked multiple times, multiple revolutions, famine, genocide, even a major nuclear accident. If Ukraine were to sign a treaty that Russia actually observed, that would create a surge of optimism that hasn't existed for the vast majority of Ukraine's history. There's enough land and access to the sea to support an economy. No one is saying that Ukraine will ever be Poland or Hungary (which themselves still have plenty of problems). But if people were to believe in a stable future without a high risk of further invasions, I don't think economic strife would cause the country to collapse. It would just be another poor country with a difficult history of living in Russia's shadow.
Second, you say NATO would not put troops in Ukraine and Russia would not observe any peace treaty. Maybe I should have put this first because, in my mind, it's the elephant in the room. The economy and political system eventually will collapse if the people live in constant fear of another Russian invasion. But I think it's important to set the stage. In my view, everything else will fall into place (enough for Ukraine to survive as an independent nation) if people believe in the strength of the peace treaty.
So, why would the U.S. or other Western nations put troops in Ukraine to solidify a peace treaty?
(1) The U.S. already has ~$50,000 troops in Eastern Europe, and it could reposition some of those troops in Ukraine without substantially affecting the U.S. budget (which is a major consideration in light of our current political climate).
(2) The U.S. has shown a willingness to put a certain number of its troops in harm's way in the Baltics to show Russia that the U.S. is all-in on defending the East/West border. There is proof of concept that it has worked so far in the Baltics, and the administration might well conclude that the same thing would be true in Ukraine.
(3) Although NATO membership for Ukraine would be nice symbolism, the U.S.'s willingness to defend Ukraine is the only factor that really matters. Russia observed its treaty with Finland in part because it believed that the U.S. and other major western powers would defend Finland (even though Finland was not a NATO member at the time).
(4) There is one decisive factor that would distinguish the U.S.'s decision whether to defend Ukraine pre-2022 with the U.S.'s decision whether to defend Ukraine after a potential peace treaty. Pre-2021, Russia and Ukraine were engaged in active hostilities. The U.S. would have been intervening in an active conflict in which Russia had recently taken territory and was obviously engaging in ongoing efforts to take more. If the U.S. put troops in Ukraine and Russia just continued on its course, there would have been a direct conflict between U.S. troops and Russian troops (or Russian proxies at a minimum). After a treaty, presumably there would be a fortified border like what we see in Korea (though not at the same density of troops due to the length of the Russian/Ukrainian border). If Russia wanted to take more territory, it would have to initiate a new invasion directly into a "peacekeeping" force. Russia has demonstrated in the past (e.g. Yalta, Finland) that it won't risk starting WWIII by violating a treaty that establishes a West/East border. Russia can do better by focusing any expansion efforts on geographic areas that are more under its sphere of influence (the Caucasus).
(5) If you're saying that the U.S. or West should have sent troops to defend Ukraine pre-2014, then I agree, but those were very different political times. Obama was attempting a "re-set" with Russia. Bush was tied up in two major conflicts for most of his presidency. Before the Iraq War went south, Ukraine was run by a pro-Russian strongman who would not have accepted Western troops even if we wanted to put them there. Before that, Yeltsin was trying to move Russia towards a more friendly relationship with the West and we weren't about to undermine him by putting troops directly on his border. In sum, a 2024 peace treaty would be the most logical time since the Fall of the Soviet Union for the U.S. or the West to put troops in Ukraine.
