The west’s Ukraine “realists” have lost touch with reality

Putin will not abandon his ambitions to restore Russian power in the former Soviet empire

The world’s liberal democracies have done better than most would have imagined in the response to Vladimir Putin’s war against Ukraine. The US and Europe have rediscovered an unfamiliar coherence and resolve. It’s been far from perfect, but far distant also from the hitherto emerging picture of a west on its knees. Now a big challenge lies ahead - to shut out the siren voices of self-styled geopolitical “realism” that would swap Ukrainian victory for western defeat.

Even as the Ukrainian authorities gather up the bodies of the civilians murdered by Russian soldiers during their retreat from the outskirts of Kyiv, the hum of so-called realpolitik still hangs over the deliberations of policymakers in western capitals. Success on the field of battle for the valiant Ukrainian forces are one thing. Putin’s Russia, the whispers go, cannot be wished away.

The arguments can be superficially seductive, the more so when wrapped in a cloak of humanitarian concern. The over-riding priority, this runs, must be to bring an end to the killing. Russian troops may have taken flight from the Ukrainian capital, but they are regrouping in preparation for what could be another bloodbath in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine.

All wars, these world-weary diplomats go on, must end in a negotiation. For all its fortitude, Volodymyr Zelensky’s government must be ready to compromise. Nor can the west disregard its own interests. Putin is unpredictable. Threatened humiliation might drive military escalation. A regional conflict could turn into a continental war, and then a global conflagration. Of course, no one is telling Ukraine what to do, but outsiders can surely elaborate the limits of their support.

Taken one by one, such points sometimes have apparent merit. It’s a truism, for example, to say that wars must end in a negotiation. By this definition, though, the Treaty of Versailles was a negotiation. What matters in such peace talks is the relative position of the adversaries when the bargaining starts. The greater the losses Ukraine inflicts on Russian forces, the more likely Kyiv will be able to demand peace terms that provide for the restoration of Ukraine’s territorial integrity.

As for the undoubted right of supportive democracies to calculate their own national interests, the realists are trapped in the past. If Putin’s decision to attack Ukraine showed anything, it was that the previous western approach of engagement rooted in one-sided compromise and conciliation was hopelessly flawed. For Putin, the west’s constant avoidance of “provocations” was itself an incentive to aggression.  

In truth, The realists are being, well, hopelessly unrealistic about Putin. They inhabit a world that, despite the annexation of Crimea and the permanent occupation of parts of Georgia and the Donbas,  assumes that the Russian leader can be trusted to keep his word. The Kremlin, this mindset believes, can also be persuaded to abandon its strategic ambition to restore Russian influence in the territories of the former Soviet empire. The harsh reality is that Putin has consistently been emboldened by US equivocation, German mercantilism and French political showboating.

France’s president Emmanuel Macron has been heard say that it is impossible to imagine a stable European security order from which Russia is excluded. He may be right. What he fails to add, however, is that any continental security arrangements that embraced a Russia ruled by Putin by Kremlin design would be wholly unstable. Putin wants a system built around spheres of influence instead of rules. He said so in terms in the extensive list of demands he sent to the US administration late last year.

In this vital respect Zelensky is right when he says Ukraine’s fight is the west’s fight. Any realistic calculation of their national interests demands that the democracies show they have the political will, economic resilience and military capabilities to face down strongman autocrats. In Putin’s case the aim must be to help Zelensky defeat him comprehensively in Ukraine and subsequently to put into place the strategy of containment akin to that operated against the Soviet Union during the cold war. 

This means in turn providing Zelensky with all the sophisticated weaponry he needs to drive out the Russians from the Donbas; an extension of western sanctions to include an end to European purchases of Russian oil and gas, and over time consolidation of these economic measures into a permanent regime to limit and regulate ties with Russia; and enhanced NATO military deterrence in eastern and central Europe. I would call this realism.