Thread by @BrynnTannehill

There's plenty of people posting about the offensive, and what's going on around Verbove (is it a breakthrough? Maybe?) Or if there's enough time and munitions left in the summer to finish with the offensive being a success. But, I want to talk about "terminating conditions". 1/n

The excerpt posted above highlights a common failure in thinking in the "a bad peace can't be worse than this war" crowd, which includes Trump, Musk, Kennedy Jr., Ramaswamy, Charap, et al. This fundamentally ignores the Ukrainian perspective. 2/n

First, these facts have to be considered. Russia is stealing children, and attempting to eradicate Ukrainian culture in the territories they hold. They're press ganging men in occupied territories into being meat for the front lines. 3/n

Russia is torturing and murdering civilians. POWs are vivisected, castrated, starved, crippled, and murdered. Mass graves are all over the place in recaptured territory. On top of that, Russia violated its treaties and invaded: twice. 4/n

If Ukraine accepts peace with Russia, Russia finish the job of cultural genocide, and handing out the spoils of captured territory to ethnic Russian oligarchs. It's what Germany did with Poland and Ukraine in WWII. 5/n

From a cultural perspective, the odds of Ukrainians saying, "Meh, let them torture, rape, murder, and steal children as long as I'm safe in Lviv," is precisely zero.

Let me repeat: ZERO. They will not abandon their people, and children, to torture, madness and death. 6/n

Imagine how the US public would react if Mexico invaded Texas, began deporting all the non-Mexican people, stealing children, raping all the non-Mexican women, and sending us back POWs who had been castrated and their limbs cut off. 7/n

The answer would be that we, as a country, would (for lack of a better word) would go ape shit. Remember the wave of anger that happened after 9/11? Imagine it just went on, and on, and on with horror after horror. 8/n

The odds of the US deciding to stay it's hand in the face of mass stealing of children and cultural genocide by a hostile foreign power is ZERO. The level of f***s given about how the world saw our response would also be zero. 9/n

There's a some cultural stupidity happening here too: what expert in Slavic culture has ever said that they're really famous for a "forgive and forget" mentality?

Yeah, I didn't think so.

After the Holodomor, and this, there is a bottomless well of hostility here. 10/n

There's also the political aspect. No politician in Ukraine will sue for peace while public sentiment is that they need to save their people, children, and culture. If Zelensky did, there'd be another revolution. If he ended elections to sue for peace, same. 11/n

The political viability of suing for peace with Russia is ZERO. It would be a death sentence for any Ukrainian politician's career. Again, think post-9/11: there was almost zero political opposition to going into Afghanistan, and a lot wanted to go harder. 12/n

Now imagine if 9/11 happened every day, for 650 days. Someone would have been nuked by now. Which brings me to my final point: what happens if the US tries to force Ukraine to the negotiating table by cutting them off? 13/n

This would present Ukraine with two options:

a. Sue for a peace that neither the public nor politicians wants and condemns their countrymen to torture and death

b. Keep fighting by any means necessary, and the gloves really come off. 14/n

By and large, Ukraine has "behaved" themselves: and by this I mean that they have generally avoided using Western materials inside Russia, their intel services have not been conducting kinetic stuff in friendly countries, and there's no WMD.

That goes bye-bye if abandoned. 15/n

Russia has gotten away with murder in Western nations for years, including assassinations. Without western arms, and unwilling to sacrifice their children and countrymen, they are likely to use every means at their disposal, and exploit every Russian weakness. 16/n

Assasinations of Oligarchs, their mistresses, and their spoiled spawn in Miami is on the table. So is developing nuclear weapons. Russian diplomats in the US are a viable target (Sergei was shot in Maryland? Well, it is the US, guns and muggings happen all the time.) 17/n

Instead of ending the conflict, cutting Ukraine off from conventional weapons is, in my estimation, more likely to push them to UNconventional means with which to carry on the conflict than to make them sue for peace. 18/n

Once the US cuts off Ukraine, it loses any sort of leverage. It's basically the geopolitical equivalent of this scene from "American Beauty". What is the US going to do after that? Bomb Ukraine after it swears it's doing everything in the name of peace? 19/n

So, beyond the ethical issues with helping a fascist, genocidal Russian state win, beyond the fact that 4% of the DoD budget has wiped out 50% of Russian ground hardware, beyond the fact that abandoning Ukraine won't end the war, it means we lose what little control we have. 20/n

No leverage, no one on the ground, and a Ukraine that is angry and desperate enough to try ANYTHING to save its people, while Ukraine banks on the fact that the US will stay out of it because of its isolationist tendencies. It's the foreign policy equivalent of "Inshallah" 21/n

I'm kind of embarrassed that certain people who should no better, haven't thought this through from a military, political, social, and cultural perspective of Ukraine. Instead they treat it as unknowable in a way that reeks of false ignorance. 22/n

C'mon guys, these calculations aren't hard. Just because something hasn't happened yet, doesn't mean it isn't relatively easy to foresee the (highly) probable outcomes. 23/n

We're not going to successfully get them to sue for peace. And abandoning Ukraine doesn't mean the end of the war, it only means losing what little control we have over how far it spreads. 24/n