Thread by @BretDevereaux

So there has been a lot of discussion about the need to give Putin an 'off ramp' (though I know some realists chafe at the wording) for de-escalation.

And I have good news! I have found the off ramp, pictured below. If the Russian army takes that ramp, hostilities should end.

To be a touch less flippant, I think the problem with finding Putin de-escalation options is that he pretty evidently doesn't *want* to de-escalate.

If Putin was looking to trade some gains to hold on to others, there might be a case for negotiations. But he's not doing that!

Instead he's annexing territory he doesn't even control to tie his hands and the hands of any potential successor, to be unable to concede Ukrainian soil currently under the feet of Ukrainian soldiers.

No off-ramp can be useful for a man who wants to be on the highway.

And I think the notion that Ukraine or NATO should preemptively negotiate ourselves out of this or that territory to provide an 'off ramp' is frankly absurd. If Putin wants to try to lock in a favorable peace while his army still exists, he can ask.

To be frank though, a lot of the 'realist' off-ramp talk strikes me as too clever by half, trying to find a way to think away the escalation risk that Putin has created. But one party cannot unilaterally lower the risk, they can only move it around, redistribute it.

And so the existence of the problem - Putin has created a nasty escalation risk scenario - doesn't imply the existence of a solution.

Confront Putin now? Escalation risk now. Don't confront Putin? Escalation+Proliferation risk tomorrow when he does this again, somewhere else.

But I don't think there's a clever policy or way of thinking which removes the bad risk Putin created by invading Ukraine (twice) - you can only mitigate and plan for the risk Putin's behavior creates.

There is no clever solution, only bad and worse options.