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Samizdata quote of the day

You say the third-best time to negotiate would be now. I can see why you would want that, but you’re not a party to the negotiations. Russia and Ukraine are. And why would Ukraine negotiate now?

As I said from the outset, what Ukraine needs is long term security. Not words on a piece of paper. Actual security. If they don’t get it, the lives they “save” now will be lost double when Russia inevitably invades again. And, yes, I’m sorry, long term security for Ukraine means NATO membership which Putin would not agree to as things stand.

And so we are where we are.

Konstantin Kisin

13 comments to Samizdata quote of the day

  • Ken Hagler

    Ukraine isn’t a party to the negotiations either, as they found out when they tried to negotiate peace back in March.

  • Quite so, Ken. People calling for ‘negotiations’ seem to forget that.

  • Steven R

    The sad truth is small countries live and die at the whims of the great powers. We saw it in 1938 with the Munich Agreement, we saw it post-WW1 and 2 when lines were simply drawn on a map without the input of the people living in those areas, we saw it with the constant cycle of existence and non-existence of Poland sandwiched between the various Russian and German empires. We saw it in 1815 and in 1648 and in 1763. We saw it in the Middle East, Asia, Africa, and we’ll see it again in the future.

    What’s old is new again.

  • The sad truth is small countries live and die at the whims of the great powers.

    Kind of, yes, but not sure “whims” is quite the right word, I think “interests” might be more accurate. USA & most of Europe are backing Ukraine because they see it as very much in their interests, not out of the goodness of their hearts.

  • bobby b

    “USA & most of Europe are backing Ukraine because they see it as very much in their interests, not out of the goodness of their hearts.”

    I would be more explicitly wishy-washy and cynical, and say that the US and Europe are acting in their own interests of the moment, and the “backing” part may dissolve as those perceived interests develop.

    It’s my country, but right now I wouldn’t trust it further than I could throw it. I hope the Ukrainians feel the same way.

  • Paul Marks

    With a different government in Russia negotiation might well be possible – but with Mr Putin? Not really.

    Mr Putin broke many agreements, long ago, both with Westerners – and with Russians.

  • Y. Knott

    “Mr Putin broke many agreements, long ago, both with Westerners – and with Russians.”

    – And with Ukrainians. Lest it be forgotten, Ukraine agreed to return its nukes to Russia in exchange for perpetual Russian guarantees of Ukrainian territorial integrity. How well’d that work out for them? And indeed, considering the Ukrainians read the writing on the wall in 2014 and have been diligently preparing for Round #2 ever since, how well’s it working-out for Putin and Russia?

  • William O. B'Livion

    And, yes, I’m sorry, long term security for Ukraine means NATO membership which Putin would not agree to as things stand.

    I’m going to disagree.

    All that does is make Ukraine a buffer and a trading piece.

    Long term security for Ukraine would be to do three things:
    1. Swiss style neutrality with an Israeli style military. EVERYBODY gets trained, EVERYBODY serves, and when not serving their personal weapons home with them (and keeps them when they leave the service) coupled with a distributed armory system like the US used to have–a building in every town with heavy equipment and crew served weapons.
    2. Double down on agriculture and energy. Make more food for places that are trying to reduce food yields, and build modern 4th gen nuclear plants (the kind that can’t be used for nuclear bombs) to export energy, and to have energy that is cheap enough to turn excess biomass (from the farming) into biofuels at competitive prices.
    3. Work harder to eliminate corruption and wokery. Build honest pride in what the country is, and is trying to become. Offer to pay people to leave if they don’t want to go that way–but they can only come back if they repay that money.

    Make Ukraine a healthy, functioning, more-or-less self sufficient “liberal democratic republic” that you have to destroy to conqueror, because the people *love* their country and at least like their fellow citizens.

    THAT is security.

  • Alex

    That would seem an excellent plan for most countries, the UK included.

  • Chester Draws

    Swiss style neutrality is not an option.

    They have nothing like the natural barriers that Switzerland has, their main enemy is on 75% of their borders so can attack anywhere and nothing like the economy to pay for it. (It works if you have borders like Switzerland, the UK, or Sweden and the enemy is coming from one direction.)

    I suspect that Ukraine was rather in NATO than go the super-heavily-armed route in any case. The last thing Putin wants is a powerful Ukraine linked to the West. He’d accept NATO and a small army rather than that.

  • I have to agree with Chester Draws (October 12, 2022 at 1:41 am). Ukraine’s geography contributed to its history being that of a much-invaded state fully as much as Switzerland’s mountains, or Britain’s island status, contributed to those countries’ histories.

    It is also worth remembering that Adolf Hitler ordered the German High command to prepare a plan for invading Switzerland on the evening of the day France surrendered (if I recall the timings correctly). This invasion was at first called Operation Green, then renamed Operation Christmas Tree when the name Operation Green was re-applied to the plan for invading Southern Ireland. In later planning, for fear the Swiss would dynamite tunnels under the Alps that were key to German-Italian communications, Operation Christmas Tree was postponed till the Axis had won enough of the war to afford the time to re-dig them.

    Even with mountains, there is nothing magic about Swiss neutrality and Swiss requiring all males to own a military weapon. It sure helps make would-be invaders think about deferring till they’re confident they have the undistracted time they’ll need, just as Putin deferred till Trump was gone, but it was the allies, not the mountains, that made Hitler defer invading Switzerland forever, not just for a while.

  • Snorri Godhi

    I would not say that i entirely agree with Chester, but he makes a good point.
    But Bobby also makes a good point.

    My thinking (brain-storming, really) is this:
    In the short-to-medium term, NATO membership;
    In the medium-to-long term, a joint Ukrainian-Polish-Romanian-Baltic* nuclear arsenal;
    In the long term, hopefully, Russians will come to their senses and cease to be a threat.

    * I have included only countries on the European Plain. Others could join, but they have less skin in the game.
    If Belarus joins the current conflict, there is a fair chance that the Lukashenko regime will collapse, in which case Belarus could join this alliance.

  • Alex

    Swiss style neutrality is not an option.

    They have nothing like the natural barriers that Switzerland has, their main enemy is on 75% of their borders so can attack anywhere and nothing like the economy to pay for it. (It works if you have borders like Switzerland, the UK, or Sweden and the enemy is coming from one direction.)

    Natural borders help but they are not the final word. In some ways Great Britain was threatened by its natural borders as much as protected, instead of knowing that your enemy will approach from a particular direction British rulers had to prepare for attack from all sides, this is what spurred the development of the Royal Navy which was an incredibly expensive investment.

    The Ukraine stands in a similar position to Britain circa 1700. They are in a sea of enemies. They should not trust that Poland is a safe border either, but obviously there are degrees to danger and the main likelihood of attack has been from Russia and from Belarus. What I thought William meant by Swiss-style neutrality was the adoption of a policy of non-intervention, which without wishing to justify Russia’s paranoia in the least would nevertheless reduce the perception of the Ukraine having sided one way or another. Additionally pursuing armed neutrality would establish without any doubt that Ukraine would defend itself. Of course we know now that Ukraine will defend itself, but until February a lot of people did not really believe this. The relative ease at which Russia annexed the Crimea undoubtedly emboldened the Russian hawks. There will come a time again in the future when people come to believe that the Ukraine lacks the force of will to defend itself adequately, particularly if it pursues a strategy of closer ties with the West, EU membership and resting under the NATO umbrella. Just as I believe that the UK is better out of the EU setting its own destiny and pursuing peacefully its own interests, the Ukraine is likely better off out of the EU in the long run. In the short term of course it may well cement the Westernization of the Ukraine and act to pull Poland and other EU countries closer to the Ukraine, but in the long term EU membership is likely to prove deleterious to Ukraine’s interests. Long term Ukrainian security would be well served by better economic relations with Russia, lots of trade across the border. Russian citizens economically dependent on Ukrainian trade would not be supportive of aggression and hostility to the Ukraine. This is hardly possible if Ukraine becomes subject to EU trade restrictions.

    In recent decades the conventional wisdom seems to have been making every country economically dependent on others for basic goods to reduce conflict. This seems to have been the underlying rationale with the European Steel and Coal Community, for instance. I fundamentally disagree with this idea. While it is probably true that countries with good security in food, energy, water and other basic goods will likely feel able to conduct wars without fearing total economic collapse, aggressors rarely are acting from rational bases so pursuing a situation in which each and every country is dependent on international trade for basic necessities doesn’t necessarily preclude conflict. Furthermore by making countries dependent on others for necessities likely increases the chance of conflict that does have a rational basis, as well as greatly increasing the chances of devastating shortages in those necessities. This has been seen with the energy market this year (and last year too, really). The spectre of global famine is on the horizon, too. I believe that the opposite policy of pursuing independence in energy, food and other necessities is preferable, this reduces the risks of conflict arising over resource scarcity. Trade for technology and luxuries on the other hand establishes good relationships between countries and reduces the risk of conflict, due to the inherent economic disadvantages of losing out on that trade. Jeans and washing machines were the downfall of the Soviet Union, the people wanted the luxuries of the West not the simple stuff that could be easily copied in any case.

    The pax Britannica and the pax Americana, to a lesser degree, were born of surplus not of scarcity. The surpluses were created by sensible investment in production but trade in technology was the most influential factor in creating the surpluses that promoted peace and trade in luxuries cemented the peace. Now we live in a world of increasing scarcity and hardly for any good reason. We have the technology for greatly increasing our production of food, energy, clean water and other such basic necessities but most countries simply refuse to invest in these technologies.