The West's calls for total victory in Ukraine can only lead to destructive escalation!

By: Simon Jenkins / The Guardian
Translated by: Agron Shala / Telegrafi.com

As the war in Ukraine slowly recedes from the headlines, it is reaching the point of maximum danger. Can the parties be led to compromise and resolution, or will their desperation, coupled with the war fever of those who do not participate, lead the conflict to a wider escalation and the risk of catastrophe?

The British government has offered Kiev what it calls unwavering support. Thus, Boris Johnson has delegated the policy for Ukraine to the president of Kyiv, Volodymyr Zelenskiy. This includes the ambition to expel Russian troops from all Ukrainian soil, including Crimea and Donbass. Russia's superiority in numbers is making such total victory and a return to pre-2014 borders increasingly unlikely. This would also require massive increases in Western aid over a long period of time. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has already called it a US proxy war against Russia.

At this point in the war, the gamble is of a different nature. When Ukraine turned back the initial Russian advance, Western aid was both decisive and glorious. In recent months, the balance of military power has shifted to a dead end. France and Germany are already showing caution. Like most of NATO, they are giving Kiev military and humanitarian aid, but they rightly consider the war a war of Russian expansion. They don't use the language of Joe Biden and Johnson for a major conflict involving the entire West.

As more and more lethal "defensive" weapons are delivered to Ukraine by Western powers, Russia's complaint of proxy war looks increasingly credible, and Vladimir Putin will continue to ramp up his nuclear arsenal. If he can level entire Ukrainian cities with bombs, why not with nuclear howitzers? Hardline Western politicians have spent their lives practicing for such a showdown. You can tell they're eager to test Putin's mettle — at a safe distance from home. They must know that he will not withdraw from all of Ukraine. So why not see how far his nuclear threat can be bluffed?

As today's wars drag on, their effect on public emotion waxes and wanes, while vested interests show strength. When the Soviets invaded Eastern Europe after World War II, Western discipline was absolute. Followed George Kennan's doctrine of deterrence, not rebound. The Soviet suppression of Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968 was not opposed. There was agreement that nuclear confrontation is unthinkable. The Cuban missile crisis of 1962 and the aging Andropov's moment of madness in 1983 (when the Kremlin, spooked by a NATO exercise, almost launched a nuclear attack) found military chiefs in a state of paralyzing excitement. Recent studies have shown how close the world came to disaster, which was avoided only by channels of fear, secret compromises and split-second decisions.

If the Falklands War of 1982 had been resolved by UN custody before the San Carlos landings – as was almost the case after the sinking of the battleship HMS Sheffield – hundreds of lives could have been saved, not to mention 60 million. pounds a year still being spent on the Falklands "Castle". In Afghanistan, in 2001, then-US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld advised President George W. Bush to go to war, punish the regime, and immediately leave. It was ignored by the "heads of the nation", who continued to impose a large imperial apparatus on Afghanistan and to destroy it. These critical turning points have been forgotten in war histories.

From the moment the conflict heats up, the fever of war through emotion distorts reason. Incited by the media, she poisons any attempt at peace by shouting, "too many people died to allow compromise." The strategy is also skewed. Just as we were told in 2003 that Iraq was planning a missile attack on Britain, so we must now believe that Putin is a similar threat to our security.

The Cold War containment doctrine, tacitly agreed upon by Moscow and Washington, was reserved for the conscious avoidance of East-West confrontation between the great powers. Everything else depended on it. Right now we are at such a turning point.

Whatever solution is reached in eastern Ukraine, it will be one of compromise. Johnson and Britain have done their duty to human suffering, to help a foreign state, not an ally, to resist vicious Russian aggression. Putin has made little progress on his 2014 incursion, though he has. This is where the scope of compromise should lie. If Johnson feels unable to seek peace, he should at least stop calling for war. The next chapter in Russia's relations with Ukraine should be the one that these two countries decide on. /Telegraph/