Everyone wants a negotiated end to the Russo-Ukrainian war, but negotiations can succeed only if all sides want a stable, lasting, and just peace. Who or what is the greatest obstacle to such a happy outcome?
It’s obviously not the country that was invaded on Feb. 24, 2022, and whose population and infrastructure are being systematically destroyed in a genocidal manner. All Ukrainians want is, as Johns Hopkins’ Eugene Finkel has put it, “to be left alone by Russia,” to live in their own country and practice their own culture. But with one proviso. They want to do so safely and securely, in the knowledge that Russia will not resume its aggression in the near or distant future. As President Volodymyr Zelensky has recently said, Ukrainians would even be willing to make territorial concessions in exchange for genuine security and peace.
If the main obstacle is not Ukraine, that leaves three possibilities: Vladimir Putin, the regime he constructed, or Russia. And in fact, all three stand between war and peace — and will continue to do so until they expire, change or are forced to change. Given the complexity of this unholy trinity, the Trump administration will quickly learn that negotiating a stable peace will take not 24 hours or even 24 days, but 24 months or even 24 years.
Putin is obviously the greatest and most immediate obstacle to peace. He expected to capture Ukraine within weeks; instead he embroiled Russia in an unwinnable war that is now going on three years.
Putin’s problem is that he has full ownership of a disastrous war that will soon cost his country close to a million dead and wounded soldiers, and which is leading Russia toward an economic precipice entailing hyperinflation or stagflation. Putin needs to win or at least create the illusion of victory.
A negotiated settlement that leaves Kursk Province in Ukrainian hands and fails to incorporate the four provinces — Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson — that Putin has formally annexed is unacceptable, not so much because a notional outraged “people” will protest, but because Russia’s elites will see through Putin’s ruse and possibly take him to task. Putin has, thus, boxed himself into a corner. Only something resembling a clear victory can set him free.
But Putin isn’t the only obstacle. So, too, could the deeply authoritarian regime he has constructed. The regime resembles a wheel, with Putin as the hub and his minions as the spokes. The political, military, economic and cultural elites that comprise the regime offer Putin their loyalty in exchange for virtually unlimited access to all manner of wealth. The system resembles the Mafia, with Putin as the boss and his lieutenants the rulers of territorial and functional fiefdoms.
Naturally, the regime presents itself as serving the people. And it does so, partly by offering some degree of material well-being, but mostly by claiming to be making Russia — and Russians — great again. “Greatness” here means having a strong military, asserting Russia’s uniqueness, and expanding its influence and boundaries. In a word, imperialism is central to the regime’s claims to legitimacy. A negotiated settlement that stops short of Ukraine’s capitulation and transformation into a Russian vassal is corrosive of regime stability and thus unacceptable.
The importance of imperial legitimacy brings to mind the third obstacle — Russia, or more precisely, the Russians. There is substantial historical evidence from Imperial Russia and the Soviet Union to suggest that Russians admire strong leaders and authoritarian regimes, and despise weak leaders and democratic regimes. Not all Russians at all times, of course, but enough for many times to suggest that authoritarianism is a broad streak within Russian political culture.
There is also ample evidence to suggest that Russian political culture is at best skeptical of, at worst hostile to, Ukraine and Ukrainians. Unsurprisingly, the anti-Ukrainian imperialism practiced by Putin and voiced by regime propaganda resonates with all too many Russians, thereby effectively forming a closed system consisting of a leader, regime, and people all united by their espousal of authoritarian and imperialist rhetoric and practice.
This, then, is what the Trump administration will face: not just a single, difficult, and possibly intractable individual who claims to be president, but a ramified system of beliefs and practices that are united by their hostility toward Ukraine. Making a deal with a leader, regime, and country all rolled into one “collective Putin” won’t be easy, even for a consummate dealmaker.
Trump may quickly realize that speaking softly with such an opponent makes no sense if Ukraine isn’t armed with a big stick. Words and threats won’t affect the collective Putin. Only actions will — and that means enabling Ukraine to win and thereby compel the unholy trinity to accept a genuine peace.
Alexander J. Motyl is a professor of political science at Rutgers University-Newark. A specialist on Ukraine, Russia and the USSR, and on nationalism, revolutions, empires and theory, he is the author of 10 books of nonfiction, as well as “Imperial Ends: The Decay, Collapse, and Revival of Empires” and “Why Empires Reemerge: Imperial Collapse and Imperial Revival in Comparative Perspective.”
