Status quo ante bellum: what does it mean for the war in Ukraine

Doesn’t this assume that Feb 23 2022 was “ante bellum” ? I think most Ukrainians felt they were in a state of war since 2014: certainly the government acted that way, didn’t it? Armed hostilities were in-progress for years. People were getting killed, etc, etc. Why didn’t UA kick RU out of its occupied lands? B/c UA didn’t have the weaponry (remember how the US insisted that the Javelins we were transferring could not be used in the Donbas?)

I would think that “status quo ante bellum” should be 2013. Not Feb 23 2022.

Why wouldn’t Putin use tactical nukes if he was genuinely thought he was losing at-scale in the Ukraine such that the status quo ante bellum deal would look attractive ? i.e., right now (rightly or wrongly) he seems to think that he can outwait the West and Ukraine and/or might win. However, if he thought he was at risk of imminent loss of the occupied Ukrainian territory (the situation where the deal you propose would make sense for him to take), then wouldn’t his rational move be to escalate with tactical nukes? That option has a ton of disadvantages but the West does not seem to have a credible response to it and he in that situation would have limited downside (i.e. he and his regime would seem unlikely to survive such an obvious defeat).

I have no good better answers than what you propose but am interested in hearing why the above reasoning is wrong (which I hope it is)

I think these are genuinely difficult questions – ones that tend to lead me to the conclusion that historical claims, as such, are probably worthless. This is a pretty unpopular opinion, both with the public and with political philsophers, as far as I can tell. (I’d apply the claim pretty broadly, though.) One of the strongest arguments against the claim in the post is Chethan Murphy’s – that taking Feb. 24 as the starting date is both arbitrary and not reflective of the “situation on the ground”. The other argument that seems to have some weight to me is that even this would encourage Putin/Russia to continue cutting little bits off from neighbors. I think, for example, that Abkhazia is lost to Georgia, and that the sooner people in Georgia accept that and move on the better off they will be, but it’s not obvious that, if we do that for Abkazia and South Ossetia, that it won’t encourage future aggression. And then how long must the territory be held before it should be considered “gone”? Not one day, but (apparently) 7 years is enough? (If so, were the Baltic states unjustified in splitting from the Soviet Union? They’d been part of the Russian empire for hundreds of years, and then part of the Soviet Union for 50 +, with the 20+ year break being due almost completely to an unjust peace forced by German aggression…)

In any case, I’m not able to come up with any sort of principle that seems to work here, but a purely pragmatic approach also doesn’t seem very satisfying, and is also pretty hard to work out.

From the start of the war, Chomsky and a few others have argued Russia was provoked, and that Ukraine–corrupt, Nazi-ridden–should stop fighting because while Putin is a bad man, he has the bomb and Zelenskyy does not. (Ukraine gave up its nuclear weapons in exchange for Russia accepting its borders.)

Ukraine has been able to first resist, and regain lost land with the help of NATO weapons; but it also hasn’t lost because it still wants to win.

A ceasefire now would be accepting occupation of Donbas; it would be giving Putin a victory. I doubt any Ukraine government–except one made of quislings–would be able to do that.

Chetan Murthy: it’s common for invaders to do that, and equally common for the subsequent vote to be respected internationally. New Caledonia remains part of Greater France, for example, because “all resident citizens” (who haven’t been killed, exiled or imprisoned) got to vote, not just ethnic New Caledonians. The Timor and Papua votes had similar issues. As well as other places too controversial to mention.

Prof Q will no doubt agree that if such a referendum was held in Australia it shouldn’t be just First Nations people who get to vote, just as they weren’t the only ones voting on the Federation question(s) back in 1900-ish. But if you allow nissei or even issei to vote, you have the stacking problem. It’s worse if you allow displaced people to vote, but also if you don’t (right now… who wants to return to Crimea to vote in that independence referendum?)

Fully agree with Chetan. Russian occupation of Crimea and the puppet republics is an ongoing breach of Ukraine’s sovereignty, which Ukraine is fully justified in using self-defence to remedy. Ukraine didn’t have the means to do so previously, but that doesn’t put its rights in abeyance. The minimum basis of any peace should be:
* Full restoration of Ukrainian territorial integrity.
* Return of all deported Ukrainian citizens.

With desirable additional elements being:
* Reparations
* War crimes tribunals
* Withdrawal of Russian support for illegal occupations elsewhere (e.g. Transnistria, Ossetia, etc)
* Significant demilitarisation of Russia
* Lifting of Western sanctions on Russia.

@V

The short version is, “because his international position can get a lot worse”.

The West has imposed sanctions, but those sanctions can be made more extreme. China and India have thus far stayed neutral, but the use of a nuclear weapon would be a strong push for them to join the sanctions camp. Putin currently has some hope of peeling off, or at least outlasting the political will for, Western Ukrainian support, but using a nuke would end any prospect of that. The West is supplying arms to Ukraine, but currently not its best weapons. And while I think conventional NATO intervention is the least likely response because of the escalation risk, Putin also has to reckon that NATO could respond by obliterating all of his military assets in Ukraine (at which point Putin can commit murder-suicide by pressing the big red button, but he started out wanting to make Russia Great Again, so making it into radioactive glass would be a disappointing outcome for him even if he takes human civilization with him).

And on the other side of the ledger, what does using a tactical nuke get him? It’s not going to automatically win the war for him. Modern armies don’t concentrate enough to be particularly vulnerable to a nuke, so he’d pretty much have to target a city, which would be a horrific atrocity, but limited in terms of military efficacy. Would the Ukrainian government surrender if he nukes Kyiv? It’s possible, but it’s also quite possible (and based on events to date I’d say more likely) that it would have the opposite effect.

Of course, the commencement of the war was itself irrational (though much less obviously so, given that people on both sides thought the Russian military far more capable than it turned out to be), and there’s always the possibility that Putin feels backed into a corner and goes for it even if it doesn’t make sense (this is one of the reasons why having lots of nukes in the world is bad), but there are some pretty strong reasons why he should hesitate.

As advised, you are permanently banned

As a general policy I disagree, because I think it gives aggressors a strategic advantage over defenders. We shouldn’t enable a strategy of attack, achieve limited goals, declare a cease fire or force a stalemate, negotiate in bad faith, and then resume the attack when conditions are favorable with a guarantee that they can’t lose what they’ve already gained. We should want military conquest to be as risky as possible to discourage it’s use over seeking an end to active conflict as fast as possible.

We also shouldn’t create a disincentive to making cease fires, by granting the present conditions the nearly the same status as the prewar status quo. If there’s little difference between a ceasefire and a surrender, what is the incentive to either grant a ceasefire or for the aggressor to negotiate in good faith after one?

As others have pointed out, status quo ante bellum always has moral problems. First, when did the war start? An argument can be made that it was at least with the invasion of the Luhansk and Donetsk areas.

Second, there is no way to return to status quo ante bellum anyway unless one were able to magically reanimate all the victims of the war and rebuild the destroyed houses and infrastructure at no cost whatsoever. If Russian forces withdraw, and that’s it, significant parts of Ukraine are rubble, while Russia remains untouched. Thus the idea of reparations in wars of the past.

Of course, this reasoning is informed by moral outrage, not political feasibility. As others have also pointed out, such is the reality of human history. Former colonies are now free nations, but their indigenous cultures have been irrevocably lost, their industrial capability at the time was destroyed, many indigenous peoples have been replaced with Europeans, and the resource wealth of many parts of the planet was carried off to European countries whose inhabitants now lazily conclude that there must be something wrong with the Bolivians or Namibians for not being as wealthy as themselves. If there was moral justice for invaders in this world it would look quite different.

Would application of the principle of status quo ante bellum to the Eighty Years War, or the April Uprising, or the Ten Days War, or any other war of independence, mean independence not being granted or achieved, on the grounds that at the beginning of the war the territory whose independence was being sought was not independent?

I must admit I’ve never heard of any of these.

Fair enough. I had to get some of the names from the Wikipedia list:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_of_independence
The Eighty Years War, from 1588 to 1648, also known as the Dutch Revolt, was fought for independence from the Spanish Hapsburgs, and resulted in independence for the United Provinces, also known as the Dutch Republic.
The April Uprising, in 1876, was fought for independence from the Ottomans, and was unsuccessful in itself, but the international response, including the ensuing Russo-Turkish War, resulted in the establishment of an independent Bulgaria.
The Ten Days War, in 1991 (so this is one both of us lived through–at least, we lived through the news reports), was fought for independence from Yugoslavia and resulted in independence for Slovenia.
There are lots of other wars on that Wikipedia list–and probably lots more that haven’t been listed–many which resulted in independence being achieved as well as many which did not.

… unless the existing state is so oppressive that self-defence requires armed resistance.

There’s more than one way of interpreting that qualification. Through most of history, in most states, how much scope did most people have to defend themselves against the state without resorting to arms? There’s at least a case that could be argued that most of the time the only way people had to defend themselves against the state was by armed resistance.

I wouldn’t say this argument would justify all or even most of the occasions when, in fact, people have resorted to arms, only that there are serious complexities lurking behind the verbal formulation.

Revolutions, including wars of independence, usually fail …

For what it’s worth, a lot of the wars of independence in the Wikipedia list ended with independence being achieved, although…

… when they succeed, the change is often not for the better.

… I’m not committed to the opinion that the achievement of independence was always or even mostly worth the price paid for it. I know for a fact that there are examples in history of dedicated fighters for independence who could be found, in the later times after independence was well established, saying ‘If I’d known this was how it would turn out, I wouldn’t have fought for it’, and it wouldn’t surprise me if this turned out to be a common phenomenon.

So, as a general proposition, I feel dubious about a lot of fighters for independence, but I don’t generally think any better of those who are fighting against them. Reading about the recent struggle over the campaign for Catalan independence (which at least hasn’t broken out into a war, yet, this time), I feel that neither side has a good case.

… Not a great example of the benefits of war. …

I’m not sure whether you’re trying to make, as if it’s a point against me, some point that I’ve already acknowledged myself. I wasn’t arguing for the benefits of war. It’s a fact that for many countries in this world, their independence is a consequence of war, which is not to say it must be a benefit; it’s also a fact, therefore, that a resolution of those wars on a basis of the status quo ante bellum would have denied them their independence, which is not to say that those wars are thereby justified. For just one example of what I mean, it’s a fact that Poland became independent as a consequence of the First World War; I’m not trying to judge, one way or the other, whether Polish independence was a good thing, still less whether it was worth the cost. If the First World War had been settled on a basis of the status quo ante bellum, Polish independence would have been denied; I’m not trying to suggest that this outcome justified the countries who launched the war, who certainly didn’t do so with the object of making Poland independent.

As far as I can tell, there’s nearly always a desire to maintain independence in those countries which are independent, many of which, as I observed, became so by fighting for it; but who knows? Perhaps if those countries had not become independent by warlike means, they would nevertheless have become independent at some later date by peaceful means, like those other countries which have become independent without war. I don’t know of any way to judge the likelihood of that.

But how would you sell the principle of status quo ante bellum to the Dutch in 1640, or the Chileans in 1820, or the Americans in 1780, or the Mozambicans in 1970, or the Vietnamese in 1950, or the Algerians in 1960, just for example (there’s no shortage of those)? I’m not arguing that all of them were right, only that they would have been hard to convince.

I guess you might argue from a humanitarian standpoint that everyone should simply cease hostilities immediately, but if we are only talking about a ceasefire then usually you’re assuming either that the hostilities are going to resume again in the future or that, at best, you have a heavily militarized standoff like Korea, both of which have their own humanitarian costs.

A ceasefire where Russia doesn’t feel like it had a big setback, and where international support ebbs for Ukraine while the hostilities die down, would be pretty much a disaster for Ukraine–letting Russian bide its time for another attack down the road. You seem sanguine about that, but if the Ukrainian war is in the rearview and more fascist governments are in place in Europe and the Americas, how long is Russia likely to remain an outcast?

Anyway given that Ukraine is the party under attack (and Russia could end this all very quickly by withdrawing), the only ceasefire it seems Ukraine could or should accept is the one that leaves it in the strongest position for the implied next round of hostilities.

How about resolving this by arbitration?
Each side proposes a list of persons, entities, or governments that it would accept as arbitrators. Kinda like how Trump and the US government agreed on a special master regarding the documents seized at Mar-a-Lago.

It might be one of Bernard Woolley’s beloved irregular verbs:

I favour restoration of the status quo ante bellum;
You are an irredentist;
He is on trial for war crimes before the the ICC.

Status quo ante bellum might be a way of ending the war more quickly.

One possibility is that the war will go on for a very long time, and lead to a stalemate. That often happens.

Another possibility is that Putin won’t last and as soon as he is gone it will be easier to arrive at something people in the contested areas and people of Ukraine can live with. A lot of things could be possible.

It might depend on whether this is mostly Putin’s war.

But a gamble of lives v. the gamble of time seems to favor lives.

If this conflict ends more quickly, time is on the side of Ukraine, depending on the settlement.

Might it not be worth it to end the conflict soon and leave the other issues for the future?

Russians–or some of them–may have war fever now but it’s not impossiblee they will recognize the illegitimacy of Putin’s invasion in time.

It’s a risk, but one where fewer people die. And perhaps it is unfair to the nation as a whole but people in the disputed territories might prefer to be alive rather than be reunited with Ukraine.

Nations matter but so do individual people.

You do seem to be sedulously ignoring the question of “why February 2022 and not 2013”. The closest you’ve come to an answer is “well things in the Donbass / Crimea 2014-2022 weren’t that bad”.

(1) They were actually pretty bad! Donbass’ economy collapsed, and it turned into a poverty-stricken hellhole run by organized crime and militias. Median per capita GDP dropped by nearly 50%, life expectancy seems to have dropped by around a decade, poverty and infant mortality soared. The Russian-occupied Donbass is estimated to have lost around a third of its population during those years, almost entirely due to people leaving — voting with their feet.

Crimea was less bad economically, because Russia chose to make it a showcase and invested billions of dollars of oil money to prop up the Crimean economy. However, the Crimean Tatars — the only people who can claim with a straight face to be “indigenous” — have been brutally oppressed, including the imprisonment or disappearance of pretty much all Crim Tatar leaders and spokespeople. The Tatars now undergoing slow-motion ethnic cleansing through a combination of encouraged emigration and forced Russfication. Meanwhile, Russia has been engaging in aggressive demographic engineering to ensure a long-term Russian majority there (which firmly did not exist in 2014). Note here that the Ukrainians have declared the Tatars a protected minority with a bunch of special rights — which the Russians very firmly have not.

IIUC your position seems to be “all that isn’t /that/ bad, and after all it will eventually self-correct, like East Timor, so it’s certainly not worth fighting a war over”. Is that a fair summation?

2) Again — why is Russia to be given a bye for its aggression of 2014? Or, to rephrase the question — at this time last year, would you have supported the expulsion of Russia from Crimea and the Donbass? Because that would have been the “SQAB” at the time.

3) “Like Timor L’Este” — and not, presumably, like Tibet or South Sahara or Palestine. How do you support the assertion that it will be like one and not the other? Show work, please.

4) I’ve been living in the fUSSR for most of the last 15 years. And across the region, nobody thinks the Russians will be stopped by a ceasefire, and nobody thinks the Russians can be trusted. That’s based on hundreds of hours of conversation with Armenians, Georgians, Kazakhs, Tajiks, Kyrgyz, and diasporid ethnic Russians. The universal assumption of Russia’s former colonized peoples is that Russia wants to dominate the former Soviet space, and will do so by whatever means it can.

I’m living in Kazakhstan right now, and the Kazakhs are quietly rooting for Russia’s complete defeat. Not a “SQAB” withdrawal to 2014 positions! The Kazakhs want to see Russia crushed, hard. Why? Because they are seriously (and reasonably) concerned that they are next. There’s a strip of majority-Russian land along Kazakhstan’s northern border. And whenever a Kazakh government shows signs of independent action from Russia, Russian think-tankers and Duma members suddenly start pointing out that this region is historically and rightfully part of Russia.

So the Kazakhs want Russia crushed — and as someone who lives there, it’s kind of hard to disagree with them! Maybe their reasoning is wrong, but it’s pretty hard right now to say it’s an unreasonable fear.

5) Finally, let’s note that historically, Russia has a well-established pattern habit of bouncing back from incomplete defeats and showing up for a rematch a generation later. “La Russie ne boude pas; elle se recueille” — oh, look it up.

Doug M.

John, you’re a good guy, and I know you’re writing in good faith. So I mean this in the kindest way possible:

Most of us who support Ukraine’s cause, also are opposed to war and revolutionary violence. But when someone comes to Ukraine and brings war and violence, brings genocide, then we all want Ukraine to push them out, and to be able to return to what it was before that “someone” arrived with violence. To the greatest extent possible. Saying “I want violence to end” is the same as saying “I want to reward Russia for their violence”. Because they’re not going to promise to never be violent again; indeed, anything that leaves Russia with any sort of “win” will — will — end up causing the next round of violence and genocide.

If you truly believe in peace in the borders of Ukraine, then I would argue you must support Ukraine’s fight to regain all their territory and soundly defeat Russia’s armies. Soundly defeat, not just a lukewarm defeat. Putin and Russia[1] must be taught to never go to war against Ukraine.

[1] Why “and Russia”? Because it is widely reported (and I believe those reports) that pretty much everybody in the elites of Russia, on whichever political side, whichever political party (including Navalny until the war) believed that Ukraine was Russian, and had no independent right to exist. Russian elite culture needs to be taught that war is an illegitimate means of policy. And this lesson will help all the Stans — as I’m sure you’ve seen, Kazakhstan is pretty unhappy with Russia, and wants Ukraine to win, b/c they know that they could be next. Georgia was attacked — and perhaps you’ve seen recent reporting on what Russia’s army did to Georgian civilians in the areas they occupied? It wasn’t pretty, and it was genocidal.

Saying “I don’t want war” when one side most definitely wants war, is just saying “I’m OK with the aggressor winning”.

It’s the same as saying “I’m OK with genocide, as long as my hands don’t get dirty.”

“how isolated I am in my opposition to war and revolutionary violence”

It is fairly straightforward to swear off violence personally. The hard part is what do about that other guy who very much hasn’t.

Of course, once he has beaten your neighbour to a pulp and made off with all her money, you can say that any additional violence beyond this point may conceivably make things even worse. And I see there is some reason to that, because, well, it would be additional violence as opposed to no additional violence beyond this point. I just don’t see how an approach minimises overall violence long-term that signals to a violent thug that his actions will never carry serious consequences and that he will be able to keep whatever loot he can take.

(It is fascinating to me how little attention is paid to incentive structures. The only exception is right-wing politicians worrying about benefit recipients supposedly becoming too lazy to work. But: What incentives do we create if there are no serious repercussions for politicians accepting bribes? What incentives do we create if we penalise people for reporting late but not for not reporting at all? What incentives do we create if scientific journals earn money per article published, no matter its quality, instead of per reader subscription? What incentives do we create if certification is done by service providers whose income depends on being asked to certify again in the future? What incentives do we create if there are no serious repercussions for wars of aggression? Those are somehow not really thought through in public debate.)

I imagine for the Russians, at least if they read history, the status quo ante goes back to the battle of the Ugra (1480) if not the battle of Kulikovo (1380). The memory of such things may matter in a long-term war of attrition, which is apparently what we’ve got.

There is also the question of China, which the US has been careful to offend in various ways for some reason or other.

“First, I’m not proposing a legal rule or an abstract principle of justice here. As stated in the OP, I’m starting from the premise that war/political violence that goes beyond the needs of immediate self-defence almost always does more harm than good.”

Given that the “self” in question is the state and people of Ukraine, why are we wrong to extend the principle of self defense to the whole of its internationally recognized borders –even including Crimea? I know people will argue that Crimea isn’t historically Ukrainian or the Russians are too embedded there to ever dislodge (even the Guardian has taken to inaccurately referring to it as part of Russia), but the millions of Ukrainian citizens who live(d) in the East have had their rights and voices stolen from them by a vicious occupation that purports without evidence to act in their name. If their actual elected government isn’t allowed to defend them, who is?

Even leading pacifists like Gandhi and Bayard Rustin struggled with how to separate legitimate self-defense from illegitimate aggression. Most major religions are pretty inconsistent on it too. These are thorny issues that often defy simple categories. I definitely think the non-authoritarian left are mostly all on the same “side” in terms of pursuing peace and opposing political violence, but we can still disagree strongly about how to uphold those ideals. The grossly one-sided and coerced nature of Minsk process was a vindication of political violence, not a repudiation of it. Its failure to create the conditions for real peace was predictable (and predicted) at the time. I just don’t see the wisdom in basing the next attempt at peace on a ceasefire line that neither side has ever treated as legitimate or binding.

I should have added: I mean, have you even looked at the reports on genocides, on kidnapping of children, of adults, to Russia? It’s precisely what Stalin did with various peoples in the Soviet Union: move peoples from place-to-place, as a way of unmooring them, destroying their cultures and traditions, and eventually subjugating them completely; and if not, then genociding them. And it worked.

I feel like you’re treating Russia like a modern nation, amenable to modern incentives.

as all of this
was and is
the decision of ONE –
ONLY ONE MONSTROUS EVIL INDIVIDUAL
(and not of ‘Russia’ or the ‘Ukraine’)
Sorry to say
that KGB officers –
once stationed in Germany –
only understand
ONE…
(very old KGB)… conclusion to any war.
(and that doesn’t include any possibilities of any ‘variations’ discussed here)

@J-D, 28
SQAB might work better in cases involving only pre-existing states. New states (Poland), and the collapse of old states (two of the powers partitioning Poland) make it impracticable. The new states are not going to disappear without a war, the collapsed states collapsed for a reason and restoring them would also mean war.

Chetan Murthy 09.29.22 at 1:42 am: “… But it’s clear (painfully clear from multiple wars over the last 20 years) that Russia will not be deterred by anything other than resounding defeat.”

Resounding defeat seems less curative than you imagine. I know only one major “imperial” power well, the United States, and its basic predilections for military combat and domination have not changed in spite of defeat in Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, and so on. In the cases of Great Britain, France, Germany, Austria, Spain, Sweden, the Ottoman Empire, the Golden Horde, Japan, and several others, an end to military adventures came only with the ultimate fate of empires: political, economic, and moral exhaustion, leading to a situation in which the social order and culture of the power in question were fundamentally changed, usually in very painful ways. The United States and Russia (and China) might want to choose something else, although their leaders don’t seem capable of it at the moment. No good outcome is guaranteed for anybody.

JQ@52: One further thing to add to your points (which I fully agree with) is the Russian appetite for a protracted war. If the war switches to one of reconquering the territories Ukraine lost in 2014, then I suspect there will be a dramatic shift in how most Russians perceive the war. It will come to be viewed as a fully justified defensive war to protect their own territories. We outside Russia may find it justifiable that Ukraine regains its lost territories from 2014, but I doubt many Russians share that view.

And so the war for full unification must almost by necessity be long-lasting and one that can only end in a complete defeat of one of the two sides. I struggle to see why such an outcome is considered preferable to a return to the status quo from before the start of the war, however unsatisfactory that status quo might have been.

I’m definitely not arguing for us rolling the dice on nuclear war. But possibly Putin would be rolling the dice more than once. Someone previously asked how certain Putin can be that a nuclear attack order will be obeyed. This might well be the point at which he suffers lead poisoning or falls out of a window. (I know this would have been a rare opportunity to use “defenestration”.)
The failure of the Russian conventional military to perform as expected raises another question: How many Russian nukes still work?
After all, you can count tanks, artillery pieces, and shells. The soldiers parade and the planes fly over on Mayday. How do you know the nukes work or the rockets will launch?
The US spends tens of billions of dollars per year just to keep the nuclear warheads themselves functional. Then there’s spending to keep the missiles, subs, and bombers operational. If the oligarchs stole enough from the Russian Army to emasculate it, can Putin count on his nukes working? How many times does he want to roll the dice?

Prof. Quiggin’s comments on the human costs of a war of reunification has gotten me thinking about the hundreds of thousands of Russian and East Ukrainian conscripts being sent more or less directly to the front with completely inadequate training and equipment and winter around the corner. It’s going to be a nasty, bloody fight made much worse by a restive and polarized population and the shattered morale and discipline breakdown of the Russian occupiers. Should the Ukrainians take advantage of these units’ extreme vulnerability to inflict massive casualties and try to break the Russian will to fight, or would that just galvanize Russian support for the war? Would the Ukrainians then be culpable for the deaths of tens of thousands of Russian soldiers who don’t even want to be there, or did they become legitimate targets the moment they were handed a rusty kalashnikov and dumped in a field somewhere?

If there is a way to get them to just pack it in and go home without more bloodshed, that would be ideal. Otherwise, we’re left with the much thornier question of whether sending them home through more bloodshed is better or worse than the bloodshed that will arise if they aren’t sent home. The answer to that question seems to depend on the vindictiveness and greed of the occupation as well the extent of continuing armed resistance in the occupied territory. A fractious, implacable insurgency, waves of repression and collective punishment, and a cycle of violence that could last decades is one possible outcome of a bad ceasefire. There is also the serious risk that the Russians will just use any break in the fighting to regroup, re-arm and prepare to try again.

The Ukrainians have already experienced the helpless stasis and devastating betrayal of a bad-faith peace process. If it’s up to them (and I think it should be), I doubt they’ll accept that outcome again. That doesn’t mean a negotiated peace is impossible or undesirable, but it does mean the Russians have a massive credibility problem to overcome. They’ll need to start offering real and tangible concessions if they want the Ukrainians (or anyone else) to think they actually mean it this time.

lurker 09.29.22 at 11:27 am: “A 1480 or 1380 SQAB would make Ukraine and Belarus parts of Lithuania and hence of the EU and the NATO. Wouild Russia really like that?”

I didn’t mean they would like it; the phrase is “status quo ante (something)” and it’s a past state of affairs for Russia. At the time they chose to fight the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, the Mongols, and the Teutonic Knights, who were competing powers, all of which they were able to defeat by warfare along their rather loosely-defined borders and by various forms of expansionism when possible. From some Russian points of view, especially those who read neocon fantasies from the West about degrading or breaking up Russia, things may not have changed a lot. 2013 or 1991 are rather recent compared the the overall scope of the story in any case.

I wonder if the problem is of commitment. We need a cease fire that credibly commits the West to resume its level of support if Russia comes back to war after the winter. The problem is that we can’t do that (mostly because of Germany). If we could, that might be different.

[Arrgh; my numbering disappeared. Reposting with hopefully more-permanent numbering. No other changes]
John:

Re: (1) Maybe. Not clear, b/c in any ceasefire, unless we enforce sanctions to the hilt and confiscate his flight assets in the West, he can still rearm and pay off his boyars. This means he’ll prepare for another try. Saying “oh, he got bonked on the nose, he’ll sue for peace” ignores that he has no history of doing that: when Chechnya beat Russia, Putin sent in his troops a few years later and destroyed the place. Destroyed it.
Re: (2): Absolutely false. With every passing day, Ukraine gets stronger and Russia gets weaker. And Ukraine’s partners see Russian war crimes from only a few months ago — the horrors of them — and support Ukraine more. A cease-fire allows Russia time to rearm, train, reorganize, and rest. All of that is bad for Ukraine.
Re: (3): Someone said “in wars, peace settlements cannot be reached unless one side or the other changes its minimum war aims.” We see no evidence that Putin is willing to do that; are you saying that Ukraine should give up on its people ?
Re: (4): NO. The case against ceasefire is that Ukraine has the strategic advantage, and wants its land and people back. Period.

I don’t understand: are you unaware of the atrocities committed by Russian troops that have been discovered everywhere they took land and then were pushed-out? Are you unaware of the testimony of people in the Baltics, that what is happening in Ukraine at the hands of Russian war criminals is precisely what happened to them in the Baltics after WWII ?

I really don’t understand: it’s like you think that Russia is a normal nation or something. Maybe read some of the accounts of what people in the Baltics went thru: the rapes, dispossession, shipment en masse to Siberia, the mass deaths.

“Nothing about us without us” is a principle of broad application.

Is it possible that there are people who fail to grasp the significance of the distinction between ‘No decisions about us without us’ and ‘No commentary about us without us’?

it’s hard to see that Putin is much more irrational than, for example, the promoters of the Iraq War.

That is, of course, compatible with both of them being irrational enough that the arguments needed for the claim in the post to not work!

“By annexing large swaths of Ukraine, Russia has functionally limited its ability to negotiate over boundaries, unless it wants to trade away what it now claims to be parts of Russia.”

from A Moment of Strategic Clarity by Raphael S. Cohen and Gian Gentile of RAND.

To be clear again: I’m not suggesting a legal principle that Ukraine should be prohibited from continuing the war until control over its internationally recognised boundaries is restored. I am saying that if the alternative of a ceasefire on pre-Feb lines becomes available (which would require further military victories before Putin or his successor would concede it), it would be much better for Ukraine and its allies to accept this, and return to negotiations, than to keep fighting. Now another point in the long series I’m planning to make.

That question is different than the one in the OP. If I might phrase it more explicitly, the question becomes: “if Russia requests an armistice, what terms ought the Ukrainians to impose as a condition of negotiation?” From that standpoint, getting the Russians to agree to an evacuation of territories occupied since February would be a resounding success, assuming the offer came fairly soon, as it would save the Ukrainians a lot of casualties, would liberate 9 times as much territory as the Ukrainians have done on their own since Sept. 1, and wouldn’t tie the hands of Ukraine as to the final fate of the remaining Russian-occupied territories.

And I think the Ukrainian government would likely see it that way too. However, such an offer is nowhere near the table. Getting it on the table would presumably require at a bare minimum de facto Ukrainian reconquest of the territories in question, and at that point, the incentives for Ukraine to accede to the request would be much diminished.

Tweets about Russia and their plan to commit war crimes. And how they haven’t changed from what the did to the Baltic states after WWII.
Toomas Hendrik Ilves
@IlvesToomas
·
1h
It is also worth reading in Estonia. Along with the story posted here, how a man on the train announces over the loudspeaker that all Estonians will be sent to Siberia. So that we don’t forget why we worked hard to get into NATO in the 90s and why we work hard to defend ourselves.

Toomas Hendrik Ilves
@IlvesToomas
·
1h
It is also worth reading in Estonia. Along with the story posted here, how a man on the train announces over the loudspeaker that all Estonians will be sent to Siberia. So that we don’t forget why we worked hard to get into NATO in the 90s and why we work hard to defend ourselves.

This: “Liberating areas that were occupied by the Russians only a few months ago has been a slow and bloody business, requiring massive military aid” seems to me to be troubling. This argument would seem to lead to two different conclusions, both of which are pretty unacceptable:
(1) Military alliances are bogus, and we shouldn’t join them. …
(2) Ukraine is outside of NATO, so even if we agree that alliances are useful, we can and should let Ukraine twist in the wind. …

I suspect that’s a misreading of John Quiggin’s position. As I understand it (and if I’ve misunderstood I’m ready to be corrected), John Quiggin considers that if Russia is prepared for a ceasefire on status quo ante bellum terms, then Ukraine should be also. However, since (as John Quiggin acknowldges) no such ceasefire is currently on offer from Russia, his position doesn’t entail that Ukraine should, under current circumstances, cease fighting; and if he’s not advocating that Ukraine stop fighting, then presumably he’s not advocating that other countries (under current circumstances) should cease providing support for Ukraine to keep fighting.

The general position that seems to be implied by John Quiggin’s comments is that military alliances should generally commit allies to support each other, if attacked, in fighting to restore the status quo ante bellum, with the possibly implicit and tacit qualification ‘we will not support you (or, at any rate, we do not guarantee to support you) if you are fighting for goals which go beyond restoration of the status quo ante bellum‘. Whatever you think of this position, I think it’s clearly different from the position which you are attributing to John Quiggin.

China has indicated that it is siding with Russia in Ukraine. If it continues to do so, I expect that Russia will not “lose”, and the questions would become: will there be a nuclear exchange, and what will be the endgame?

JQ@91: “Ukraine’s allies should be focusing aid on the liberation and rebuilding of the areas occupied since February”

John, this is ….. disappointing. You’re heading for a Chomsky moment.

It’s not all gloom and doom:

Dr. Jill Stein????@DrJillStei Oct 2 Thanks, Russia, for blowing up your own pipeline to give us a tremendous strategic opportunity.

Aaron Maré @aaronjmate Oct 1 According to @SecBlinken, the Nord Stream pipeline bombing “offers tremendous strategic opportunity for the years to come.” Too bad that this tremendous opportunity for DC bureaucrats will come at the expense of everyone else, especially this coming winter.
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Oct 2, 2022 · 3:52 AM UTC · Twitter Web App

https://twitter.com/DrJillStein/status/1576419918652006400#m

Just to say, how grateful I would be if Dr. Quiggin’s proposed terms were accepted by all sides today, and nobody was being killed or tortured or abducted tomorrow, and all my donations were going to rebuilding. (Until then, I send most to the Ukrainian national bank for their war effort.)

I saw the end of the movie “Contact” on TV again a few days ago. “Small steps.”

Chetan Murthy @ 25: “Russia needs to be taken down to the studs, rendered not a threat to Europe”
That ought not be a stated objective of the war. Nevertheless, Russia is engaged in a spectacular own-goal which will achieve it anyway, for years at least.