No Off Ramp
Critics of US involvement in Ukraine spin fantasies of a diplomatic exit strategy
The superiority of diplomacy over war as the solution to disputes between nations is one of those beliefs so widely embraced that it’s hardly questioned. And it’s true in a way that “Jaw, jaw is better than war, war”—as Harold Macmillan quipped. So why, with a major war now raging in Europe between Russia and Ukraine, does it seem so difficult to get the belligerents and other interested parties to sit down and talk the conflict to death?
Americans who oppose US involvement in the war periodically berate the Biden Administration for its failure to impose a diplomatic solution. V. Putin, they say, must be provided with an “off-ramp”; that is, some sort of face-saving compromise, the tab to be picked up by Ukraine in the form of territorial and other concessions. National Review’s Michael Brendan Dougherty is one such critic. But details tend to be lacking, no doubt because to spell them out would expose the off-ramp for what it is: appeasement. So instead we get a cascade of rhetorical questions, e.g. from Mr. Dougherty: What are the limits of America’s involvement in the war? What will be the status of Crimea? What’s the exit strategy? And so on.
The problem goes deeper than appeasement, however. Demands for a negotiated settlement at this time are based on a fundamental misunderstanding of the relationship between diplomacy and war. People tend to regard them as two distinct things, which they’re not. Diplomacy and war are in fact aspects of the same thing, a phenomenon that for convenience may be called power politics. Three pertinent observations by three well-known historical figures will serve to define that term:
In The Prince, Machiavelli noted that fear is more reliable than love.
Frederick the Great remarked that diplomacy without armed force is like a musical score with no musical instruments.
Henry Kissinger commented that in a diplomatic negotiation, the likelihood of getting one’s way depends on the amount of pain one can inflict on the other side.
Fear is more reliable than love because it touches on self-interest. Diplomacy requires the backing of armed force because, as Frederick and Kissinger both perceived, success in a diplomatic negotiation depends not on the logic or justice of one’s position but on a calculus of power. On the bottom line, it’s either force or the threat of force that creates the conditions for successful negotiations between nations.
Sometimes, indeed, war can be staved off by the threat of force. Just now we’re observing the sixtieth anniversary of the Cuban Missile Crisis, a most dangerous confrontation between the US and the USSR that was resolved diplomatically because both sides feared the alternative, nuclear war. Or sometimes a war can be ended by the intervention of a third party, as in the Crimean War (1853-56). Austria, having adhered to a policy of armed neutrality until late 1855, helped to end the war by threatening to come in against Russia—a major factor in Tsar Nicholas I’s decision to sue for peace. But sometimes a war rages on until it reaches a definitive, culminating point, compelling one side or the other to give up. That was how World War I ended, with the exhaustion of the Central Powers.
In each of these examples, a calculus of power brought the belligerents and interested parties to the negotiating table. Good intentions and considerations of humanity were not necessarily absent, but ultimately it was fear and self-interest that made diplomacy possible.
The Russo-Ukrainian War has been going on for eight months now, and so far neither side has shown a willingness to cut its losses and ask for peace talks. The Ukrainian government and people remain determined to eject the hated invader from their territory; the Russian government is determined to stave off a humiliating defeat that could well prove fatal to V. Putin and his regime. Therefore, the only diplomatic ploy would be for the United States and NATO to impose peace terms. And the only realistic way of doing that would be to put pressure on Ukraine to make concessions to Russia—that is, to provide Putin & Co. with an off-ramp.
The United States and its allies have the power to do this. The military assistance and diplomatic support they’ve provided to Ukraine made it possible for that country to stand up against Russian aggression and turn the tide of the war. A threat to reduce or cut off that support might well convince the Ukrainians that they can do no more. But the responsibility for the peace settlement would then rest with those who’ve demanded it.
It's depressingly easy to foresee how the ensuing negotiations would go: a one-way process, a series of escalating concessions to Russia. Once Putin saw that Ukraine’s allies had gone wobbly, he’d hold out for everything he could get in exchange for that shiny object, peace. And if the Ukrainians balked, they’d be denounced as warmongers.
The toxicity of the fallout from such a “peace process” is so obvious that even the hapless Biden Administration is likely to recoil from it—perhaps remembering what happened the last time the President decided to end a war. Standing against all the complaints about the costs and risks of aid to Ukraine is the disaster that would ensue if Putin were seen to have profited from his brutal aggression. Ukraine would become a Russian puppet state. NATO would be fatally undermined, its eastern members having been given good reason to doubt the value of the alliance. In Russia, Putin’s position would be immeasurably strengthened, and his dream of reestablishing the defunct Russian imperium would be well on its way to realization. Farther afield, the Chinese, the Iranians and the North Koreans would be sure to take note of America’s irresolution and pusillanimity.
Thus the critics are wrong—for this conflict there is no cost-free, convenient diplomatic exit strategy. The Russo-Ukrainian War will be resolved on the field of battle, not at the conference table. Sooner or later the war will reach its culminating point. Then the calculus of power will yield a solution, and the diplomats will have something with which to work. The proper policy for the United States and its NATO allies is to make sure that the solution is as unfavorable as possible for V. Putin and his gangster regime.
Author’s Note, 16 November 2022: Many thanks to The Cosmopolitan Globalist magazine and to Claire Berlinski in particular for republishing this essay.
Yes. Exactly. I'd like to republish this, if you'd let us.
Thank you for saying what should be obvious. We live in one of those eras where the obvious needs to be said over and over and over ....