Untitled

            Letter: A misreading of the true choices facing Ukraine on whatsapp (opens in a new window)

            Share
            Save
            DECEMBER 8 2022
            24
            Print this page
            Martin Wolf (“It is the west’s duty to ensure Ukraine wins”, Opinion, December 7) misrepresents the true strategic choices facing Ukraine and western governments.

            He poses the issue as either winning or losing the war against Russia, without defining those terms and without assessing the pros and cons of alternative strategies and war aims.

            There are four geopolitical issues on the table: Ukraine’s sovereignty and security; Russia’s vociferous and longstanding objections to Nato enlargement to Ukraine and Georgia; the disposition of Crimea, which has been home to Russia’s Black Sea naval fleet since 1783; and the disposition of the Donbas.


            Wolf may well support a maximalist position — Nato enlargement, Ukraine retaking Crimea, Russian retreat from Donbas without requiring Ukraine to implement the Minsk II agreement — but such maximalist war aims are likely to leave Ukraine in ruins, most of the non-western world siding with Russia, the European economy in tatters and the whole world threatened by nuclear escalation.

            Instead, we should try to end the war in the nearest future through negotiation.

            A key to a successful negotiation is to reject the flagrant irresponsibility of US neoconservatives who have been trying for much of three decades to encircle Russia in the Black Sea, and who have undermined Ukrainian leaders who would compromise with Russia.

            Most consequentially, the US neocons helped to overthrow Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych in early 2014, who favoured Ukraine’s neutrality, opposed Nato enlargement and agreed with Putin that Ukraine’s EU accession process should take into consideration the security and economic implications for Russia.

            Following Yanukovych’s overthrow, the Russo-Ukraine conflict broke out and has been ongoing since, with Russia’s annexation of Crimea, conflict in the Donbas, massive flows of US and other Nato armaments into Ukraine between 2014 and 2021, and Russia’s invasion this year.

            In 2021 Russian president Vladimir Putin once again demanded that Nato not expand to Ukraine; his US counterpart Joe Biden refused to negotiate on that critical issue, alas, and missed the chance to avert the devastating escalation of the war.


            To truly “win” in Ukraine — and indeed to save Ukraine from the utter destruction of an ongoing proxy war between the US and Russia — the west needs historical perspective, not just anti-Russia bluster.

            There are plenty of reasonable grounds for ending the war quickly and peacefully through negotiation instead of reducing Ukraine to rubble.