A Solution to the Ukraine War Emerges

He said that there was also focus on the rights of Ukraine’s native Russian-speakers, some of whom, according to Lavrov, complain that they are forced to speak Ukrainian or seen as second-class citizens.

But, Reuters reports, he said that, on “neutral status” and security guarantees, “there are absolutely specific formulations which in my view are close to agreement.”

Both sides say that in addition to the issue of Ukrainian neutrality and security, the status of the Crimean Peninsula and the Russian-speaking-majority Donbass region are still sticking points waiting for a creative solution.

Analysis: The Brooding Shadow // By Ben Frankel
On 28 January, a month before Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine, we wrote that Russia would never allow Ukraine to join NATO: Countries prefer countries in their neighborhood to be friendly, or at least non-threatening. If they have the miliary power to dictate what would be the degree of freedom their neighbors enjoy, then, when all else fails, they use that power (Ben Frankel, “Geography is Destiny: Ukraine’s Options Are Limited,” HSNW, 28 January 2022).

We wrote:

This is not the place to discuss a solution to the Ukrainian crisis, but Ukraine should consider the example of Finland and Austria, two neutral countries which, based on an arrangement reached with the Soviet Union after the Second World War, agreed not to join any Western military alliance, but otherwise enjoy their political, cultural, and economic freedom.

Russia may not allow Ukraine quite the same degree of freedom allowed Finland and Austria, but even a “Finland light” status for Ukraine would be preferable to a Chechnya-level killing and destruction.

This is not to justify or accept Putin’s brutal invasion of Ukraine, or to justify his 2008 campaign in Georgia (another former Soviet Republic on the list of NATO membership applicants), or Russia’s re-taking of Crimea in 2014.

It is only to recognize what international relations realists call the “security dilemma.” Stephen Walt (“An International Relations Theory Guide to the War in Ukraine,” Foreign Policy, 8 March 2022) offers a succinct explanation of the security dilemma:

The dilemma arises because the steps that one state takes to make itself more secure often make others less secure. State A feels unsafe and seek any ally or buys some more weapons; State B gets alarmed by this step and responds in kind, suspicions deepen, and both countries end up poorer and less safe than they were before. It made perfect sense that states in Eastern Europe wanted to get into NATO (or as close to it as possible), given their long-term concerns about Russia. But it should also be easy to understand why Russian leaders—and not just Putin—regarded this development as alarming. It is now tragically clear that the gamble did not pay off—at least not with respect to Ukraine and probably Georgia.

To see these events through the lens of realism is not to endorse Russia’s brutal and illegal actions; it is simply to recognize such behavior as a deplorable but recurring aspect of human affairs.

When pushing for NATO expansion eastward, it would have been a good idea for the Clinton and George W. Bush administrations to balance their well-intentioned and laudable idealism and optimism – some called it “exuberance” — with a dose of realism, which was offered by old realists such as Henry Kissinger and George Kennan, and a new generation of realists in American academic institutions.

You go back and read the warnings these realists issued since the mid-1990s, in both academic journals and the serious general media, about the inescapable consequences of pushing NATO all the way to Russia’s doorstep, and you realize, not without a sense of sadness and frustration, how prescient and accurate the analysis realists offered has been.

Would that American leaders heeded the words of the late Kenneth Waltz, who was among the developers of the theory of neorealism, aka structural realism: States conduct their affairs in the “brooding shadow of violence.”

Ben Frankel is the editor of the Homeland Security News Wire