How Does It End?

Via Instapundit, I discovered this piece by George Friedman, How the Ukraine War Will Likely End.

. . . Putin cannot stop, nor can he reach an agreement with Ukraine that he will keep. Every deal – except for surrender by the enemy – is a revelation of weakness on the part of a weak country and a weak ruler. The only alternatives are ineffective action because the force he sent to war was the wrong force from a country that didn’t have the right one.

He can reach a genuine cease-fire, but if he does, he’s finished. Not being able to defeat the Ukrainians, and held in contempt by others, destroys the myth of his power. Continuing the war endlessly reveals the same thing. As this goes on, Putin’s primary task is to pretend that the defeat is not happening because anything less than victory is a defeat. Every agreement must end in betrayal, and as it happens with guerrillas, they get stronger the longer the war drags out.

I think "cannot stop" is a key phrase, because the war is not just a series of disconnected snapshots that can be paused and examined at will. New things are happening based on what's already taken place. For instance, there's the question of Finland and Sweden joining NATO:

Finland will clarify next steps regarding a possible decision to seek NATO membership in the coming weeks, Foreign Minister Pekka Haavisto told reporters after attending a NATO foreign ministers' meeting in Brussels on Thursday.

. . . Finland, a European Union member state, shares a 1,300-km (810-mile) border with Russia. Haavisto said Russia's invasion had shown that Russia is willing to take increasing risks in its military operations, can quickly mobilise more than 100,000 soldiers against a neighbouring country, and has mooted more openly than before the possible use of its nuclear and biological weapons.

"There we come to a situation in which we may need cooperation," Haavisto said, alluding to NATO.

He added that NATO member countries have offered to help Finland with ensuring security during an application process and said they estimate it would take from four months to one year to approve the application.

Regarding Sweden,

. . . [T]he Swedish prime minister remained hesitant until recently about her country's NATO position.

In early March she said it would "further destabilise" that part of Europe and "increase tensions" if Sweden joined. But by the end of the month that position had changed, a sign of the shifting discussion within the Social Democrats and feeling some heat from Finland, with [Prime Minister Magdalena] Andersson now saying "I do not rule out NATO membership in any way."

Not mentioned in current discussions, as far as I can see, is the loss of Russian credibility when it threatens "consequences" for either country joining NATO. As a practical matter, as of today, Russia has committed the best part of its military resources to a failed invasion of Ukraine. The consensus view is that for Russia even to resume its Ukraine offensive will require reconstitution of its forces, a process likely to take months -- but this leaves out what would be needed to impose "consequences" on Finland and Sweden for joining NATO.

The Russo-Ukraine War has shown that Russia is unable to invade even a militarily weak neighbor without imposing extreme costs on itself, and in the end, it can't achieve anything like its objectives -- the best case for Russia now would be a return to something like the status quo ante. Finland and Sweden would be much harder to invade now even without the new NATO promise of security guarantees during their application process.

In fact, given the extent of atrocities coming to light in Ukraine, a negotiated outcome of the war that would include Ukraine staying out of NATO itself seems increasingly distant. Nobody wants a situation in which Russia can recover from the war and simply resume either open aggression or threats of it.

On the other hand, I don't see an extended stalemate given the history of the war so far. The move for Finland, likely followed by Sweden, to join NATO now is an indication that the myth of Russian power has already been destroyed. The threats of "consequences" even a few weeks ago are now empty.

What we've seen so far in the war, with Kyiv the best example but Odesa/Mykolaiv serving as well, is that Russian advances "culminate" before reaching their objective, followed by a period of Ukrainian counterattacks that eventually result in a Russian rout. I think equivalent conditions are building for the Russian drive from Izyum southeast toward Slovyansk and Barvinkove.

I think what we'll eventually see is a situation where Ukraine regains territory at least beyond the de facto 2014 borders, but Russia will be unable to accept conditions that acknowledge this. Meanwhile, Finland and Sweden will join NATO, Ukraine will at least continue to threaten to join, and Russia will be kept busy retaining possession of Kaliningrad and the Kuril Islands.

But this leaves out the whole issue of war crimes trials and reparations, which could put Russia at an even greater disadvantage. At that point, I think we'd be in a position calling for something like a new Congress of Vienna.