Quote (Goomshill @ 28 Oct 2024 11:37)
Putin needs to be at a position where the incentives of a peace deal outweigh what he can take on the battlefield. Where a combination of lifting sanctions, reintegrating energy imports, regional security guarantees and any land concessions are sweet enough and the impediments to further progress and their lack of value and difficulty to hold are sour enough. He's still absolutely in a position where we could negotiate that kind of deal to split Ukraine in half and end the nu-cold war, because its still a costly war and risks his stability. And we're still favored to hold this same bargaining position since its much more difficult and less rewarding for Russia to move into the hostile west of Ukraine where the population actually opposes him and has no resources to claim. Yet, the danger for us now is that if Ukraine falls into rout after out and implodes, Putin will have a clear shot for Kiev and be able to dictate terms of any deal
The incentives to compromise exist now, but the battlefield gains might make our window fleeting
Appreciate the answer!
I gotta disagree on some details, though. First the bolded part: I don't see Putin pushing into the territory on the right bank of the Dnieper. Imho, Kharkiv, Dnipro and Odessa are the north-western-most places of Russian interest in their respective parts of Ukraine. So if a peace deal was on the table in which Putin gets all those, he'd take it in a heartbeat. But such a deal would amount to a near-unconditional Ukrainian surrender anyway. My thinking is more concerned with what it would take for Putin to settle for a deal in which he doesn't get those places. And I have a much harder time seeing a rationale for him to take such a deal which would enshrine the
current lines while his troops are making good progress toward high-value targets.
Second, the promise of lifting sanctions and reintegrating Russia in the Western economy seems wholly unrealistic to me. After the experience of the past 3 years, which investor (Western or Russian) would actually be willing to make major investment into new pipelines, new factories or new trade partnerships? Particularly against the backdrop of Western security guarantees for Ukraine, which would have to be part of any kind of deal, but would mean that trade breaks down again and investment will be lost as soon as the situation escalates yet again at any point in the future?
Furthermore, such an offer would expose the diverging economic self-interests within the West. Germany would love to gobble up as much natural gas as it can get while the Poles and Baltics would want a firm economic iron curtain to be upheld. The Americans would love to continue their LNG shipments to Europe, but also for the European economy to get going again, so they would imho want us to get some Russian resources, but not too much. It would also present Western corporations with difficult choices. Would BASF rethink plans to build new factories abroad if Germany regained access to cheap Russian gas, but its reliability was highly doubtful?
Tldr: the economic aftermath is a fucking mess.