If we offered Russia a bridge out of conflict, would they buy it?

Next week, Western diplomats will meet their Russian counterparts in a series of meetings likely to be their best chance of averting a Russian invasion of Ukraine, where 100,000 Russian troops are already in place. border. The question is: What can diplomats really do to stop it?

The request of Russian President Vladimir Putin – an end to any expansion of NATO, not just into Ukraine but anywhere; unilateral limits on the deployment of short- and medium-range missiles by the United States; and limits on troop deployments in NATO countries near Russia – is evident to the West. Agree to cut off our European allies at a time when they are most concerned about Moscow’s ambitions. But by analogy, deny them or offer protracted negotiations no promise of achieving any meaningful Russian goals would only give Putin an excuse to invade. And since neither the United States nor our European allies intend to go to war with Russia in the event of an invasion, the prospect of deterrence seems equally bleak.

Assuming Mr. Putin was prepared for war, preventing it would seem to require a particularly creative foreign policy. Anatole Lieven of the Quincy Responsible Legislature has just proposed that: neutrality towards Ukraine, modeled on Treaty of the Austrian State 1955 between the Soviet Union, the United States, Great Britain and France, as the relationship Soviet-Finnish Treaty in 1948, establishing the neutrality of Austria and Finland during the Cold War, respectively.

Lieven’s proposal was for the United States to provide Russia with a “Golden Bridge“conflict avoidance, something that would meet Moscow’s core security goals without resorting to war or sacrificing core Western interests. The United States and NATO will permanently abolish the how NATO membership gives Ukraine in exchange for Russia agreeing not to incorporate Ukraine into any of its own alliances Ukraine will be required to do Protocol “Minsk II” granting autonomy to the Donbas region, and Russia would agree to withdraw its troops there. In these ways, Ukraine will become a neutral buffer state. This, Lieven argues, would avoid war, meet Russia’s need to keep Ukraine out of the West’s orbit, and not damage Ukraine’s independence or NATO’s credibility.

It sounds like an elegant solution – a way for the West to limit Russian expansion while avoiding an expensive and dangerous new liability. But it is pre-made based on the assumption that both parties really would like to avoid conflicts. I suspect that assumption is wrong.

As Lieven himself realized, Russia’s paramount goal for more than a decade has been to bring Ukraine into Russia’s sphere of influence as a compliant satellite state economically and militarily dependent, similar to Belarus or Kazakhstan. (Russia has just mobilized the army to quell a popular uprising). A truly neutral Ukraine would be a significant setback to Russia’s regional ambitions. Why accept that? Most likely, if Russia addresses this proposal, it will aim to prevent further modernization of Ukraine’s military and limit its economic development to the west, making neutrality a stopover on the road to Russian domination.

For that very reason, neutrality could be dismissed by Ukraine itself and would be interpreted more generally as an affirmation on the West’s part that it respects Russia’s distinct sphere of influence. Since the end of the Cold War, the West has never officially recognized or accepted this, neither for Russia nor for any other great power. Doing so might well be a welcome development – ​​but it’s not a move the West is likely to take lightly. Indeed, many American foreign policy experts may prefer a situation in which Russia took over part of Ukraine and became more isolated as a result, making western Ukraine a more pro-Western country with anti-Russian claims of nationalism. Such an outcome would not require anyone to back down from their ideological commitments.

That hobby is also possible in Moscow. We don’t know how broad Putin’s territorial goals over Ukraine are, but at a minimum it seems reasonable to assume that he aims to establish a land bridge with the Crimean peninsula. At most, he may be planning to occupy all the Ukrainian territories included in the so-called “Novorossiya“If Putin believes that he can achieve those goals easily by force and thereby demonstrate the inability of the West to stop him, then he may prefer short-term conflict.” is a relatively favorable solution, as time may not always be on his side.”

Indeed, time is never the same. That was the big mistake the West made at the end of the Cold War: assuming that the West’s unipolar moment and more specifically, American domination was or could be a permanent condition. Given the time to forge a new relationship with Russia on the basis of respect for its dwindling sphere of influence, That was the 1990s, when the United States was at the height of its relative power. Now we have no option to go back; we must deal with a Russia determined to reverse what it sees as an era of humiliation and re-establish the terms of the European order.

In that context, if we offered to sell them a bridge – even a golden bridge – I could hardly believe they would.