Thread by @ruth_deyermond

Given some of the reporting of the last week, it’s clear that we’re in for another wave of discussion about whether Ukraine should be pushed to the negotiating table. A 🧵

I don’t want to focus on the ethics, or otherwise, of trying to pressure Ukraine to make concessions in order to freeze the conflict. Instead, I want to look at the implications of these policies for regional, European, and therefore also US security.

I think it’s very unlikely that Western govts would try to force Ukraine to cede any of its territory to Russia. The sovereignty/territorial integrity principles are too important for their conception of international order (as long as you ignore Kosovo).

It would also be too embarrassing a retreat from the position of the last decade on Crimea & Donbas.

So any peace deal Western partners might try to push Ukraine into signing would involve a pause, not a resolution to the fighting. This would create a frozen conflict. We can be pretty confident that’s what the Russian government is hoping for because it *loves* frozen conflicts.

The term “frozen conflicts” (as far as I know) was coined to refer to conflicts in the Soviet successor states, as they were then described. They were triggered by the breakup of the USSR and, 30 years on, none have been resolved.

What froze the conflicts – what both stopped the fighting and prevented final resolution – was Russian military intervention, referred to by the Russians as peacekeeping (and pretty much everyone else as “peacekeeping”).

Frozen conflicts increase Russian access to the contested territory, allowing it to develop its military presence in areas it considers strategically important and expanding relations of political and economic dependence.

Russian dominance means the Kremlin can shape the conditions under which fighting does or doesn’t resume.

Frozen conflicts perform 3 key functions for Russia. 1. Control over the state in question. For 30 years, this has been one of the two preferred tools of Russian coercion in the region (the other is energy blackmail).

With “peacekeeping” forces in place and Russian political and economic domination of the breakaway region, a frozen conflict acts as a choke chain around the neck of the affected state, to be tightened when that state’s govt needs to be brought into line.

2: It allows for the consolidation and expansion of Russian military presence in the contested territory. This helps advance both defensive and offensive objectives.

It allows Russia to protect what the Kremlin sees as its zone of strategic interest and reclaim what it sees as its military bases (lost when the USSR collapsed).

More importantly from the Western perspective, the expansion of Russia’s military presence in these territories facilitates further invasions and annexations. It allows Russia to build up forces beyond its borders that can then be used to attack further West/South in the future.

For example, the annexation of Crimea created the conditions under which the Feb 22 invasion was possible; the military presence in Abkhazia is allowing Russia to relocate some of the Black Sea Fleet pushed out of Crimea by Ukrainian attacks.

3. Because of 1 &2, frozen conflicts make Western states and organisations nervous about developing closer ties to the states who have lost control of parts of their territory.

It took an actual full-scale invasion for them to overcome this anxiety (up to a point) and support Ukraine (also up to a point). Keeping the West out is one of Russia’s main objectives in cultivating frozen conflicts.

The lack of a final resolution in frozen conflicts is important from the Russian govt’s perspective. Resolution removes both a coercive tool in relation to the affected state and the uncertainty frightening the West.

The desire to push Ukraine to the negotiating table is deeply misguided. It won't make the war go away, allow Europe to stop worrying about the expansion of the conflict and energy insecurity, or the US to get back to (as some clearly see it) more important business.

It would simply give the Russian govt what it wants – the time to try to recover and to do what it does with frozen conflicts, including consolidate its military forces in occupied Ukrainian regions.

That matters for Westen security because the relationship with Russia is now extremely hostile (arguably worse than any point since the Cuban Missile Crisis) and because it will be taken by the Kremlin as confirmation of Western weakness – that the West has bottled it once again.

That is not a scenario in which the West would be wise to allow Russia the time and space to build up military strength in occupied regions.

And what would it do to the relationship between Ukraine (govt and people) and Western states and institutions? Nothing good.

Again, setting aside the ethical issues, there is an obvious issue of self-interest in maintaining strong relations with Ukraine in an era of extreme Russian hostility to the West.

As frightening, destabilizing, and costly as the war is, an attempt to push Ukraine into agreements that would create a frozen conflict would be more destabilizing, more costly, and more frightening in the long run.

Frozen conflicts are installment plan wars, and the only person who benefits from that model is the vendor: Russia.