In a new op-ed, New York Times author Ross Douthat eludes to the need for negotiations in order to avoid a long, deadly war in Ukraine. “The logic of escalation is prevailing, the mutual belief that no peace deal is possible until the other side understands that it can’t win,” he writes. He dances around the scenario that Ukraine might not have the enormously successful counteroffensive this spring that is predicted, saying that in such a scenario, “the Biden Administration will need to decide whether a grinding conflict extending toward 2025 and beyond is in the American national interest.” (https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/04/opinion/the-costs-of-a-long-war-in-ukraine.html)
Referencing the recent RAND paper, which makes the case that it may not be in the U.S. interest to continue a long war in Ukraine, Douthat expands on some of these reasons: It is economically straining, depletes our military, kills people and destroys the entire region, it weakens us for the next conflict with China, and also that it “maintains the current dangerously elevated risk of NATO-Russia conflict and nuclear brinkmanship indefinitely into the future.”
