Thread by @davidfrum

A thread about "negotiations." 1/x

Since 1991, post-Soviet Russia has fought two wars inside Chechnya. It has waged wars across internationally recognized borders against

Moldova
Georgia (twice)
and Ukraine (2014 and then again in 2022).

Russia intervened in the Syrian civil war and between Armenia & Azerbaijan.

It's often claimed that "all wars end in negotiations." But to date, none of post-Soviet Russia's many wars have ended that way. 3/x

Instead, post-Soviet Russia's wars have tended to freeze into perpetual unresolved conflicts, with Russia retaining chunks of other people's territory - enduring international opprobrium - and waiting out any ensuing sanctions. 4/x

A reason that post-Soviet Russia's wars end as "frozen conflicts" is that they have ended on terms more or less satisfactory to Russian leadership. Russian leaders have never seen any need for a more formal resolution that might require some concession to adversaries. 5/x

If the 2022 invasion of Ukraine were to end today, it would end as another "frozen conflict." From a Russian point of view, there'd be little to negotiate. They've still got Crimea, Donetsk, and Luhansk. They didn't colonize the rest of Ukraine, but they mauled and terrorized it.

The status quo is acceptable enough to post-Soviet Russia. So when prominent people urge negotiations now, they are urging a policy that would award Russia a good-enough win - and leave Ukraine broken and vulnerable to further Russian aggression/pressure. 7/x

What might induce Russia to change its established pattern and -for the first time- negotiate an end to a war that it started? Only one thing: fear that the war is trending in a direction even more unacceptable than any concessions necessary to end the war Russia started. 8/x

To get to negotiations with Ukraine, Russia needs to genuinely fear that it could lose its war against Ukraine- lose catastrophically enough that negotiations become a less unacceptable alternative to Russia's leaders. 9/x

The way to get to negotiations is, therefore, to arm Ukraine to the point where Russian leaders fear defeat.

The way to thwart negotiations is to withhold arms from Ukraine and leave Russia's leaders with hope they can preserve the status quo. 10/x

To put it more formally, Russia's preferences look like

Russian victory > frozen conflict > continuing war > negotiations requiring concessions.

The West can only "jump to negotiations" after it has denied Russia any hope of success from first three preferences. END