On Paradoxes of War and Peace
Unfortunately, as a rule, all participants in the
"war" system lose. This is not an inevitable, but the most likely
outcome. Its likelihood is due to the fact that the very start of a war
presupposes that the parties to the conflict have diametrically opposed ideas
about what a beautiful new world should look like.
This is precisely why in modern wars, which are fought not
for dynastic interests but for national ones, the parties strive for absolute
victory: for the complete and unconditional surrender of the defeated enemy, to
whom they can dictate the terms of a new world and from the remnants of a
crushed nation, mold a new one, with the same name (Germans, Japanese), but
with completely different characteristics.
Under such conditions, a compromise peace is perceived by
the parties as a truce before the next round of the fight. It becomes possible
only if both participants in the conflict conclude that victory is not
guaranteed, and its price may be too high.
As of today, the U.S. and France, through their leaders from
time to time, state the need for a compromise peace and a readiness to take
Russia's security interests into account. Russia, for its part, responds to
this probing with consent to peace "in principle," but notes the
unreality of the Western conception of this peace's format.
I wrote before that the U.S. is trying to negotiate in such
a way that Moscow receives some territories (which would allow it to talk about
a formal victory in Ukraine), but that the Ukrainian state itself is preserved
as an anti-Russian springboard from which a new offensive against Russia can be
launched at the first convenient opportunity.
In principle, Macron supports the same position. His
statement about the need to consider Russia's security interests is an empty
gesture. The West is unable to provide any guarantees other than verbal ones.
Otherwise, it would have to fulfill the conditions of the December 2021 Russian
ultimatum and pull back NATO's military infrastructure to the 1997 borders.
Demanding that the West leave its Eastern European vassals
without a military umbrella is tantamount to demanding that Russia remove all
of its military infrastructure east of the Urals. Even if such an agreement is
reached by diplomats, it would be absolutely unrealistic from the perspective
of its implementation by the military.
Unilateral Demands, Unrealistic Conditions
Let me give you a simple scenario as an example. Say, the
U.S. and Russia agree on a joint and complete demilitarization of Eastern
Europe (or even all of Europe, for that matter). The Americans honestly
withdraw their troops overseas, dismantle missile defense sites in Poland, the
Czech Republic, and Romania, and even recall their representatives from NATO's
European command, retaining only political participation in the Alliance.
Russia, accordingly, withdraws all its military infrastructure behind the Volga
and the Urals.
Now then, questions arise. What about the Polish army, which
is planned to be doubled (the process is already underway)? What about the
plans to restore and increase the combat power of the Bundeswehr? What about
Macron's statements about the need to create a full-fledged "European
army" capable of defending Europe's interests around the world without
U.S. support? How can we account for this combat potential of one and a half to
two million people, with modern weapons, relying on the nuclear arsenals of
France and Great Britain? After all, Russia and the U.S. cannot forbid EU
countries from taking care of their own security. But while the U.S. is an ally
of Europe, and an ocean where the American fleet dominates separates it from
the "European army," for Russia, these armies, which are also
reinforced and modernized under the pretext of needing to independently ensure
the security of their countries, pose a direct and obvious threat. Thus, from
Russia's perspective, it is impossible to believe the West's verbal
"guarantees" and even signed papers, as it has deceived before and
will deceive again. Any bilateral "confidence-building measures" that
involve mutual, equivalent actions by the parties aimed at demilitarizing some
kind of separating "security zone" are disadvantageous for Russia,
since a military threat from the West remains for it even if all American
forces and equipment are completely withdrawn from Europe.
We come to a simple conclusion: "security
guarantees" in the current circumstances can only be unilateral. Russia
(from the point of view of its objective national interests, not the subjective
ideas of individual politicians) will only be satisfied with complete
military-political and financial-economic control over the post-Soviet
hinterland (including the NATO Baltic states). At the same time, NATO's
military infrastructure must be removed behind the Oder and Elbe, and all of
Eastern Europe must become a de facto demilitarized zone.
For its part, the West is only ready for mutual arms
reductions in Eastern Europe, which puts Russia in a worse position than before
the start of the conflict. If the West manages to achieve an
"equitable" treaty, it will solve its main problem: Russia's military
and political resources will be tied up in the Western direction, while the
U.S. will gain a free hand against China. In such a case, Russia's fate will be
entirely dependent on China's ability to effectively resist the combined forces
of the U.S. and its allies in the Asia-Pacific region. At the same time, a U.S.
victory in a conflict with China would leave Russia alone against the combined
forces of the West, while a Chinese victory would ensure Beijing's
unconditional leadership in a beautiful new world, condemning Russia to a
secondary role, as one of the important allies, but still the "younger
brother" of the Celestial Empire.
The Final Outcome: Victory or Global Escalation
If the conflict in the East ends with the same kind of truce
as in the West, the parties will simply return to the starting point from which
the hot confrontation began in 2022, only at a new, higher level. The crisis
will finally go beyond regional boundaries and take on an undisguised global
scale, and a military solution will remain the only possible one. Only at this
level, a military solution will not mean a limited confrontation between East
and West on the territories of third countries (Ukraine, Taiwan), but a direct
confrontation between nuclear powers.
For today's equilibrium to be broken, and for one of the
parties to be forced to make concessions, which would make peace possible at
least theoretically, the Ukrainian crisis must be resolved. Today, a
"draw" that suits the U.S. is being recorded in Ukraine-Russia can
annex certain territories (even more than it occupies now), the U.S. retains
the Ukrainian regime, and with it the ability to start a new phase of a
"small war" (by proxy) against Russia at any opportune moment.
The alternative is the complete military defeat of the
Ukrainian Armed Forces. As of today, this is the West's only combat-ready force
(ready to fight and die for U.S. interests), equipped with Western weapons and
supported by Western mercenaries, and also receiving intelligence and staff
support from the West. A catastrophe for the Ukrainian army opens up the actual
NATO borders for Russia.
The West needs to make a decision, whether to enter into a
direct confrontation with Moscow, which could easily escalate into a nuclear
crisis against the backdrop of an unresolved Chinese problem, or to accept the
new reality and fix the new alignment of forces in Europe in a formal treaty,
after which an attack on China becomes meaningless, as it would be doomed to
failure in advance.
Russia, while solving a foreign policy crisis, along with
Ukrainian territories and the remaining population, receives a serious and
long-term domestic political problem, which consists of the need for a costly
initial phase (which will last for 10-20 years) of economic development of the
new territories, whose economy has already been destroyed, as well as the
informational and political "assimilation" of a population that is
partly hostile and partly has a sharply different mentality (the problem can be
resolved no sooner than in 30-50 years).
This preoccupation of Russia automatically removes the
West's concern about the "defenselessness" of Eastern Europe. Even if
the "gentlemen" do not wish to believe Russia's word regarding the
absence of aggressive intentions, a side result of a military defeat of Ukraine
will be the long-term tying up of Russian resources, which will be directed
towards the economic and political development of the new territories. Russia
will physically be unable to pose any threat whatsoever to the
"defenseless" borderlands.
That is why for Russia, a military victory in Ukraine
becomes the key to a more or less lasting compromise peace, in which everyone's
security guarantees are not just written on paper, but are based on a potential
opponent's inability to concentrate the resources necessary to create a threat
for the next 20-30 years.
For now, both sides believe they have a chance to win, even
an agreement on creating a security zone around the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power
Plant is only possible "in principle." As the Russian Foreign
Ministry once again stated at the UN, "in principle," everyone agrees
on the need to create a security zone.
But it is not possible to agree on the parameters. Such a
private agreement is impossible for the same reason that a global one is
impossible. In the context of an unfinished military confrontation, both sides
consider themselves potential winners. They approach the parameters of a
potential agreement (even one as limited as creating a security zone around the
ZNPP) from this perspective.
Each side seeks to use the agreement to lock in its
achievements and create favorable starting conditions for continuing the fight.
Accordingly, an agreement is only possible as an unforced concession by one of
the parties, which worsens the overall (not only military, but also political)
strategic position of the one who conceded.
That is, the macro-level problem is repeated at the
micro-level: without identifying a military winner, a stable peace is
impossible, because its format implies the diplomatic surrender of one of the
parties with an unresolved outcome of the military confrontation. That is why,
despite all the talk of peace, the Russian leadership is talking about the need
for a winter offensive by the Russian Armed Forces, and the Americans and
British are demanding that the Ukrainian Armed Forces attack at any cost.
Once the contradictions have gone so far and become so
irreconcilable that a war has begun between Russia and the West (albeit on
foreign territory), peace will not be possible until one of the parties has
exhausted its military capabilities (or both simultaneously conclude that the
further continuation of the military confrontation is hopeless from the point
of view of the set goal-to achieve a peace better than the pre-war one, at
least for themselves).