CDR Salamander - Can You Make Existential War Bend to Pragmatism?

My apologies to regulars here, but in the last year or so I have felt the need to remind new arrivals about my stance with regards to Ukraine and Russia as new readers tend to make incorrect assumptions. My record is clear back to 2014: I stand firmly with the Ukrainian people’s desire for independence and self-determination. I am not a Russia-accommodationalist.

Yes, yes, yes, to all the issues with Ukraine since independence. I have written for well over a decade about their issues with corruption, etc…but that has little to do with the issue at hand.

As I mentioned on an episode of the Midrats Podcast in the months before the February 2022 invasion by Russia, Ukraine needed to find a path to peace to avoid an even more disastrous war with Russia that may, at best, result in her being reduced to client state status similar to Belarus and her people lacking self-determination. I thought at that time Crimea would be the price, but after so much killing, I don’t think Russia will settle for just that. As long as they have a strong army in the field, they will want a lot more.

Where does that leave Ukraine as we approach the 4th anniversary of the war? Remember, Ukraine has been fighting Russia in this phase of their mutual conflict for longer than the USA fought in WWII.

The performance since February of 2022 of Ukraine’s leadership and military against Russia, which is technologically more advanced, has a larger population, economy, and military is beyond commendable. For many, the hope was that they could hold out long enough for Putin’s grip on power to slip, bringing about enough internal disruption inside Russia that the Russians could not continue the fight in Ukraine. As usual, hope is not the best OPLAN and it has not worked out all that well. But, the fight continues.

Both Russia and Ukraine are weakened nations, but by every measure, Ukraine has less of an ability to sustain the fight and it should think about what was an acceptable cost for peace. As much as I support Ukraine’s cause, I also can read statistics.

Eventually Ukraine will run out of people before Russia runs out of will. Europe will not come to Ukraine’s aid with blood, and you can have all the material support in the world, but if you don’t have the people to use it, it does not matter. The USA does not see its self-interest in blindly throwing money and support to the Ukrainians.

So, we have seen a serious effort towards attempting to have the parties come to the peace table. It is worth a try, but I still remain unconvinced that either party really is ready to reach a peace. The Ukrainians want their land back—or most of it—and Russia has a pain threshold much greater than those in the West—in spite of centuries of evidence to the contrary—give it credit for.

I could be wrong. There might be a path to an agreement that would bring peace, at least for a while. If so, what would that look like?

I do my best to read work from smart, well meaning people whom I disagree with, but otherwise think are worth listening to.

Over at Foreign Affairs last week, Thomas Graham makes his argument as to why Ukraine needs to go to the peace table now.

For lack of a better description, Graham can be seen as a member of the realist and pragmatic school with regards to the relationship between the USA and Russia, as outlined in his book Getting Russia Right. As you can see just from his FP archive, he’s been consistent since the start of the war.

What is his view at the end of 2025? It is an extensive article behind the paywall, but here’s the core of his well reasoned argument:

Nearly four years of brutal combat, in which neither side has achieved a strategic breakthrough, has created a paradoxical situation in which both countries lose the longer the war rages on. The best deal each side can achieve is available now, not in six months or later. Ukraine will not gain anything by waiting to negotiate from a hypothetical future position of strength; such a position will not come soon, if ever. Ukrainian leaders have already acknowledged that they cannot liberate by force all the territory Russia has seized. What Ukraine cannot achieve on the battlefield will not be handed to it at the negotiating table. Nor will a stronger Ukraine incline Western countries to provide it with more formidable security guarantees. Western governments have already made it clear that they will not risk war with Russia to defend Ukraine. And the longer Ukraine waits, the more destruction it will have to endure.

Instead of seeking a position of strength, Ukraine urgently needs to settle the conflict, which has devastated the country economically and demographically. The cost of reconstruction over the next decade has been estimated at more than 2.6 times its pre-war GDP of $200 billion.

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Russia appears stronger. But it has paid a staggering price—more than one million dead or wounded—for marginal tactical gains. During this year’s offensive, Russia seized just one percent of Ukrainian territory at the cost of more than 200,000 dead and wounded. The cost of recruiting new volunteers is soaring, while the Kremlin still fears the social repercussions of a mass mobilization. After two years of growth of over four percent, the economy has stalled. The forecast for this year and next hovers around one percent growth. Meanwhile, Russia has invested negligible sums in cutting-edge technologies. In short, it is mortgaging its future to sustain the conflict. As a result, each day the war continues, Russia falls further behind the great powers—China and the United States, to be sure, and also possibly India and Europe, with which it hopes to compete in the decades ahead.

Unsurprisingly, Russia and Ukraine remain far apart on the terms of a settlement, particularly on territorial questions and the nature of security guarantees for both of them.

…

But these gaps are bridgeable. Indeed, the contours of a final settlement are visible, even if both sides vigorously deny it: a cease-fire along the line of contact without either country formally recognizing the other’s control of territory it considers its own; armed neutrality, or sufficient military capabilities to reliably defend one’s territory, for Ukraine with the possibility of EU accession but not membership in NATO; and no further NATO expansion eastward into the former Soviet space. Such an outcome would enable Putin to declare victory and Zelensky to claim he had preserved what was most precious—Ukraine’s sovereignty and independence as well as its European aspirations.

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The United States also needs to deploy the formidable psychological leverage it possesses over Russia. One cannot overstate the role the United States—and Trump personally—plays in validating Russia as a great power and Putin as a global leader. This matters all the more because Russia has struggled on the battlefield against what it (and most Western observers) assumed was a second- or third-tier military. Instead of the anticipated blitzkrieg and swift conquest of Ukraine, the Kremlin will soon find itself fighting the Ukrainians for longer than it took the Soviet Union to crush Nazi Germany in World War II. Washington can exercise that leverage in the first instance by assuring Moscow that it would be willing to normalize relations. Such a measure will help convince Putin that the United States will not relegate Russia to a secondary tier of interest once the war is resolved. Trump’s new National Security Strategy makes clear that the administration no longer considers Russia a major threat, to the consternation of traditional U.S. allies. Normalization is also strategically important to Putin in its own right: it would allow him to rebalance Russia’s relationship with China and expand his room to maneuver globally.

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Critics will argue that such a diplomatic effort is beyond the capabilities of the Trump administration. It allegedly lacks the discipline, consistency, capacity, and patience to pursue a sustained diplomatic effort. But even the admittedly halting progress in current negotiations would not have been possible had Trump not opened a dialogue with Putin in February with the goal of ending the war. Despite much speculation to the contrary, Trump has neither abandoned Ukraine to Russia’s will nor walked away from the problem as one that is too hard to solve. And the U.S. national security apparatus has the expertise and skill needed to manage a complex diplomatic undertaking, if only the administration could find a way to reliably control its own bureaucracy, which it does not trust.

How does that match with what I’ve been writing about the Russo-Ukrainian War of 2022? I think his take is worth taking on board. We will see more if there is a winter offensive in the cards for Russia…or, more unlikely, Ukraine…that will break the stalemate on the front. Time is on Russia’s side, but she is also brittle—though, really, few know.

Either side could see a general collapse, and there could be some technological or military innovation that would enable a move out of the trenches and FPV drone slaughter zones—maybe. More likely, more bite by bite and struggle to see which of the brothers will tire first.

That latter part is in no one’s interest. As is well known in war, the longer conflicts go on, the more they are likely to bring in other nations.

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