Emma Ashford on the "Foreign Affairs" website stresses the need for public discusion of peace diplomacy in the Russia-Ukraine War

Despite the silly handling by the Congressional Progressive Caucus of their own super-mild public suggestion that the Biden Administration should maybe perhaps tell us at least a little bit more about what it's diplomatic strategy for the Russia-Ukraine War might be, that very subject seems to have become slightly less taboo over recent days.

Emma Ashford writes in no less an establishment venue than the Foreign Affairs website and in the Sept (The Ukraine War Will End With Negotiations 10/31/2022). The first two paragraphs are striking:

By late August 2022, the West’s focus on Russia’s war in Ukraine was diminishing. The two sides were bogged down in an extended stalemate, freeing Western leaders from making difficult choices or thinking too hard about the future of the conflict. Events since early September—dramatic Ukrainian gains, followed by Russian mobilization, annexations, missile attacks on civilian areas, and nuclear threats—have shattered that illusion, pushing the war into a new and more dangerous phase. [my emphasis]

We are in an international crisis in which Russia is repeatedly threatening to initiate nuclear war - and "the West’s focus on Russia’s war in Ukraine was diminishing"? That's a terrifying observation in itself!

There’s also the fact of the biggest refugee crisis in Europe since the immediate aftermath of the Second World War. Which will get worse over the next three months.

Since the start of the war, the Biden administration has effectively maintained a balanced realpolitik approach: arming and funding Ukraine yet continuing to make clear that the United States will not engage directly in the conflict. But the administration has avoided talking about one crucial area of war strategy altogether: how it might end. Experts and policymakers who have suggested that the United States should also support diplomatic efforts aimed at a negotiated settlement have been treated as naïve or borderline treasonous. Driving the administration’s skittishness about endgames, then, are questions of morality: many argue that it is immoral to push Ukraine toward a settlement. [my emphasis]

The sloganeering about Immaculate Diplomacy in which the US and the other NATO countries should have nothing whatsoever to say about a peace settlement, and that Ukraine and only Ukraine should decide what a settlement can be, is really just blowhard Cold-War-nostalgia rhetoric. Journalists at least be asking people who make this argument if they really, seriously think that the United States should have no diplomatic involvement in a crisis that could plausibly wind up nuclear war.

That this even needs to be discussed in this way is a real sign of how much we live in a Don't Look Up world right now, in which social media clickbait is more important to even the serious media outlets than actually paying attention to what's happening before our eyes.

To repeat once again, the Biden Administration has enuciated several different US goals in this conflict: restoring Ukrainian sovereignty over its territory, seriously weakening Russia militarily, and even (in a supposed Biden "gaffe") overthrowing Putin's government. Oh, and also avoiding nuclear war.

Ashford makes this very important observation:

To prepare for the best [peace] deal, American policymakers must maintain a common front between the West and Ukraine, take account of Ukrainian and Russian domestic politics, and embrace flexibility, particularly in working out which sanctions against Russia can be lifted without strengthening Putin’s regime. If the administration does not prepare soon, it may find its carefully calibrated response to the war being overtaken by a dangerous fantasy of absolute victory. [my emphasis]

And at this point, it's really not clear what "victory" would mean for the Biden Administration, much less "absolute victory." As Ashford puts it, the "risks seem manageable for now, [but] the time may come when negotiations are necessary to forestall catastrophe."

She doesn't expand on the following point in the way I would. But it's an important observation. What I would add is that this situation could very well lead to a situation in which Ukraine and Russia think it's the right time to begin real peace negotiations but the United States would prefer to see the war go on longer.

In reality, the question is not whether negotiations are needed to end the war but when and how they should unfold. Yet policymakers must contend with a Catch-22: the better Ukrainian forces perform on the battlefield, the more difficult it is to discuss a negotiated settlement, even though it is to Ukraine’s advantage to negotiate from a position of strength. [my emphasis]

Ashford also gives some idea of what possible outcomes a peace settlement might entail. And makes the point that economic sanctions are "often more useful as bargaining chips than as permanent punishment."

Substantive peace negotiations won't happen until both the Russian and Ukrainian sides decide they have to more to gain than to lose by making peace. But the US and other NATO allies are part of the Ukainian side in this situation, as well. So it's silly to pretend than Ukraine alone is going to decide what a peace settlement will be.