Russia-Ukraine Week 7B: Give peace talks a chance

Patrick Cockburn says neither side will "win," and that it looks more like Syria and that if we recognize that, the sooner we get to negotiations.

Ed Luttwak also weighs in on how to get to negotiated peace. 

And, without getting specific other than calls for "security guarantees" for both countries, Jeremy Corbyn also calls for a negotiated piece.

So, that's two leftists and an early-generation neocon all saying, like Chomsky last week, "let's be real about getting real."

Per the first two, I think that at a minimum, a plebiscite on the Donbas would need to be part of this. Probably, even though Ukrainians wouldn't like it, since it was part of the Russian SFSR until 1955, accepting the Crimea as being part of Russia would also need to be part of that. So would an official pledge by NATO to not offer membership to any additional former Warsaw Pact countries (ie, Serbia) or to any former SSRs, ie Georgia, or Armenia, as well as Ukraine. That fudges Sweden and Finland, of course.

Contra nutters at Counterpoint (SMH) last week, it does NOT mean reparations by Russia. Not unless the US wants to make good all the costs of sanctions against it in return, and you and I know that's not happening.

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The Fellow Travelers blog, rather than focus on the efficacy of sanctions, has a piece looking at sanctions' "legitimacy" and "distinction," fitting both into norms of international law and the former into the UN Charter as well, and finds US-led sanctions against Russia failing on both, especially with contrasting them with a leading BDS group's push for sanctions on Israel.