Where's The End Game Strategy?

Let's get real. The de facto leader of the free world is Volodymyr Zelensky. For now, everyone else is in reactive mode, and the whole subtext for the rest is what they can send Zelensky in the way of second-tier NATO weapons that won't provoke Putin to use nukes. The result is a slo-mo collapse of the former Russian empire, done on the cheap. It's generally understood, based on the unofficial threat from Gen Petraeus more than a week ago, that if NATO were to step in with more advanced weapons, the war would end in a matter of days.

So the state of the game is Putin loses more or less slowly, or he loses right away, nukes or not. Conversely, Zelensky wins slowly as Western leaders gradually recognize that Putin has no credible response to their weapons, or Zelensky wins quickly when Putin makes some last, critical miscalculation, and either NATO ships long range missles, F-16s, Panthers, or whatever else, or NATO steps in directly.

For now, the clearest potential Putin miscalculation would be to use nukes. Another potential tipping point would be to widen the war by invading the north of Ukraine via Belarus, with the Belarus army involved. This would widen the war via a third party and make the Poles nervous, with unpredictable results. Either one would simply hasten an already more or less predictable outcome of the war, but then we're still up against the question of what the West wants as an actual outcome.

Here's where the real difficulty begins. Zelensky as a national player has expressed his wishes pretty clearly by this point: Russia withdraws to pre-2014 borders with Ukraine; there are war crimes trials and reparations; Ukraine joins both the EU and NATO; someone other than Putin signs the treaty. Slowly or quickly, this will happen. But how does this affect the world outside Ukraine's borders?

Let's take just the problem of Belarus. For now, it's a close ally of Russia. But once Zelensky gets what Ukraine should have as a local outcome of the war, this leaves Belarus as a Russian ally surrounded on three sides by NATO (assuming Ukraine joins) or NATO and Ukraine as powerful NATO proxy (the current actual state of affairs). There will need to be some official solution of this problem, especially as it relates to Russia. If Belarus is to become a neutral buffer, this will need to be imposed by a Yalta-style consensus -- but under the circumstances, wouldn't Belarus also want to join NATO as well?

And with Ukraine in NATO and a for-now neutral Belarus, how does this affect Kaliningrad/Königsberg? It's farther and farther from Russia and less and less defensible. Hypothetical post-World War III maps show it ceded to Poland, which is what I would bet as well.

Then there's the Kuril Islands dispute between Russia and Japan. According to Wikipedia,

The San Francisco Peace Treaty, signed between the Allies and Japan in 1951, states that Japan must give up "all right, title and claim to the Kuril Islands", but it also does not recognize the Soviet Union's sovereignty over them. Japan claims that at least some of the disputed islands are not a part of the Kuril Islands, and thus are not covered by the treaty. Russia maintains that the Soviet Union's sovereignty over the islands was recognized in post-war agreements. Japan and the Soviet Union ended their formal state of war with the Soviet–Japanese Joint Declaration of 1956 but did not sign a peace treaty. During talks leading to the joint declaration, the Soviet Union offered Japan the two smaller islands of Shikotan and the Habomai Islands in exchange for Japan renouncing all claims to the two bigger islands of Iturup and Kunashir, but Japan refused the offer. This disagreement between the two-island offer made by the Soviet Union and Japan's demand of regaining two bigger islands as well became the cornerstone for continuation of the dispute into the present day.

Last week, President Zelensky in his capacity as de facto leader of the free world called on the international community to recognize Japanese claims to all four disputed islands:

Zelensky said Russia has no right to the territories, and the entire world knows this. He said the international community must “de-occupy” all lands that Russia has occupied and is trying to keep.

“With this war against Ukraine, against the international legal order, against our people, Russia has put itself in conditions — and it is now only a matter of time — of the real liberation of everything that once was seized and is now under the control of the Kremlin,” he said.

I don't see how the West wiggles out of this dilemma. Solving the Ukraine war is going to mean a lot more than just Ukraine. The problem is in fact going to be bigger than just NATO, and it's going to mean overall agreements similar to Yalta. Biden, of course, is not the figure to accomplish this, which means that replacing Biden is at roughly the same level of urgency as replacing Putin.