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Does anyone believe Putin will actually sign a peace deal? From what I can tell, the pro-russian side thinks they just have to continue eating through ukraine until just-around-the-corner total victory because obviously the lamb won’t voluntarily sign off on being dinner. And the pragmatic pro-ukrainian side recommended that zelensky just wave through any of trump’s harebrained peace schemes to let putin take the blame when he inevitably says no, which is happening now.
Isn't that the Ukrainian stance too, they thought they were getting Crimea back, not to mention Donbass? The US endorsed this posture under the Biden administration. Only in 2024 did Ukraine start tentatively admitting some land might be permanently lost.
People only wage war when they think it's in their best interests, to get some kind of superior peace treaty compared to not fighting. Russia thinks they have something to gain. Ukraine thinks they have something to gain. That's why they're fighting.
While there is certainly much truth in that, I do not think that it is the whole story.
A nation which is prepared to fight a losing war just to make their invader bleed for every inch of land, Causal Decision Theory be damned, will obviously get worse outcomes in the case of a war. But if their pre-commitment is known beforehand, they are also much less likely to be invaded in the first place.
Also, there are outcomes which can be had from fighting which can not be had from agreements. Nations are not monolithic agents. There are a lot of outcomes which may be desirable to a government which are simply not feasible to achieve without war. For example, governments can use "we are at war" as an excuse to bypass normal decision making processes. "We may not be at war, but we negotiated that we will get 60% of all the benefits of being at war, so please curb your expectations with regard to decision making accordingly" will not fly domestically. Or take what the EU is getting out of the Ukraine war: depriving a belligerent Russia of its Soviet stockpiles and of the personnel which can be drafted with the least hassle. This is not something Putin could do politically without a war. Well, I guess he could promise not to use these Soviet stockpiles and soldiers against Europe, but if his promises could be trusted we would not be here in the first place.
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Wanting to win is not a sufficient condition for conflict. Someone’s wrong, someone’s making a mistake. Else the parties would agree on the end-state of the war and save themselves the costs of war.
It is true that they have both made fancy claims. How then do you tell a Tough Negotiator from a Delusional Man? The former makes optimistic claims as an anchoring, negotiating tactic, while the latter actually believes his own bullshit. One way to tell them apart is getting a mediator, and when he presents his relatively unbiased, fair compromise, one will accept it, the other will reject it.
Tariff digression: @Dean thinks Trump is a tough negotiator, I think he is a delusional man (on tariffs specifically). He wants to be paid for buying stuff. That’s not how buying works. The phones aren’t ringing, and his trade partners aren’t going to hand over the crown jewels because he threatened to blow up the economic bridges. Trump is sincere, he has been proclaiming his love of tariffs for decades, way before it could have been a negotiating tactic. The lack of progress on tariff negotiations will be evidence of incompatible views on reality between trump and partners, therefore of trump as the delusional man. And vice versa of course, quick tariff relief based on partners' concessions will be evidence of compatible views, therefore of trump as the tough negotiator.
Specifically in the case of the war in Ukraine? Russia keeps invade and taking territory. A "compromise" in which Russia gets part of Ukraine and Ukraine keeps part of Ukraine is merely the starting point for the next invasion in a few years.
If Putin were willing to abandon the idea of eventually conquering all of Ukraine, there could be a compromise where Russia gets a chunk of Ukraine and Ukraine join NATO to provide a guarantee that Russia won’t take the rest of Ukraine in the future. I don’t think that Putin will go for that.
If you're into schizo-kremlinology, some people floated theories that he might go for that, and even made the offer in a plausibly-deniable way, but the "chunk" would include everything right up to the Dniepr river.
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What fair, unbiased mediator is there in the entire world for a conflict this big? China and India are vaguely pro-Russian, EU and US are pro-Ukraine.
Just today we had US politicians firing shots into Russia. Cringe aside, the US certainly isn't capable of resolving this diplomatically: https://x.com/RepBrianFitz/status/1913299824494944423
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what incentive does Russia have to participate in peace talks if they're not interested?
Presumably whatever incentives the mediators have available to them and care to use: adding or removing sanctions and further military aid to their counterparty. "Come to the table, or we will make this more painful than your regime can bear" is a threat that I had assumed was implicitly levelled. Whether it is or not seems less clear at the moment, but Ukraine-flagged warships (torpedo boats, as is tradition) harassing Russian shipping or naval assets outside the Black Sea with some degree of plausibly-deniable allied assistance. Or actually biting sanctions on Russian energy exports.
These haven't happened yet, and may not be on the table, but it at least strikes me that they could be.
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You would think that avoiding the deaths of tens of thousands of your people would be incentive enough. But the decision lies with a man whose interests are not aligned with his people. His regime, and his person, are a lot more secure with the war on, when there is still hope to win (until you sell, it's not a loss), hope that all of those young russians did not die for nothing. Plus, as a long-isolated and increasingly megalomaniacal dictator, he has a less realistic assessment of the situation than your average ukrainian war spectator, of either side. I think he actually believes nato troops may leave ex-warsaw pact countries if he plays his cards right, as he demanded before he invaded ukraine.
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It costs not much. Can't rule out they'd get a good deal if impossible happens.
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