The Limits of Force and the Endgame in Ukraine

This is the way the war ends. Not with a bang.

Last week’s essay, “Fighting Fascism Isn’t Fun,” spent some time talking about the foreign policy and national security implications of the newly Trumpified United States. This week let’s look at one piece of that in more detail.

Following the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, I wrote here (and on Consequence Forum, an online journal about violent conflict) about the worrying zeal for military force that had understandably gripped many in the West in response to that brutal aggression. The sheer brutality of Vladimir Putin’s unprovoked attack, and the valor of the Ukrainian people and their leaders in resisting it, were deeply stirring. But the brave Ukrainian struggle also brought out a bellicose wave of enthusiasm for warfighting among many in the West who are usually more reluctant about such things. Predictably, it also elicited a disgusting pro-Putin response from the American right, which lives in an alternate reality where day is night, up is down, and villains are heroes.

Military force was undeniably required to resist the Russian campaign, but the rah-rah cheerleading for it — even among people not usually given to jingoism — and the simplistic grasp of what that entailed, irked and worried me. (Among its risks, it also opened the door for those…