Will Vladimir Putin be allowed to lose gracefully? The West wants to end the war, but also wants to humiliate the Russian leader

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 30/03/2022 (904 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

What does the West want most? To put a quick end to the war in Ukraine, or to humiliate Russian President Vladimir Putin?

It’s not clear it can do both.

I write this in the midst of on-again, off-again peace talks between Ukraine and Russia.

Everything is vague. But the outlines for a deal do appear to be forming.

Ukraine seems willing to adopt a stance of official neutrality between Russia and the West. It would no longer seek membership in NATO. It would not allow Western nations to set up bases inside Ukraine.

In return, a list of unspecified nations (including possibly Canada) would agree to guarantee Ukraine’s security from Russian attack.

Simply put, these guarantors would agree to go to war with Russia should it attack Ukraine.

At the best of times, such a deal would be difficult to pull off. Even an obliging country like Canada might balk at an arrangement that left it such a hostage to fortune.

But the real problem with a negotiated end to the Ukraine war is that it would not allow the U.S. and its allies to achieve their real war aim: to humiliate and diminish Putin to such an extent that he could not continue to wield power in Russia.

When U.S. President Joe Biden called for regime change in Russia last week, he wasn’t misspeaking. America wants Putin out. The Ukraine war was meant to act as the means for achieving this goal.

Thus from the outset, Putin was routinely defined as a madman and a Nazi. He has been called a war criminal, and a case is being made by critics, including Canada, to try him at the International Criminal Court.

This latter move is somewhat odd in that so many powerful nations, including the U.S. and Russia, refuse to recognize the ICC’s jurisdiction in such matters. But consistency has never been a hallmark of this particular war.

In this war, everything the Russians do is by definition evil. Conversely, everything the Ukrainian army does is by definition heroic.

Critics point out that Ukrainian forces include some avowed neo-Nazis. The anti-Putinists say so what? They say the fact that a few neo-Nazis have joined in the fight for freedom pales when measured against the crimes allegedly perpetrated by Putin.

Throughout, Putin remains the target. He alone is deemed responsible for starting this war. He alone is blamed for every rocket fired and every civilian killed or wounded.

Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly talks of the need to “suffocate” the Putin regime. The word is not chosen lightly.

So the question remains. How can any kind of reasonable peace deal be made with such a monster? And yet, if such a deal is to be made, how can the monster be ignored?

In some ways, it is better for the West if the peace negations fail and the war goes on. By the time it is finally over it will have managed to completely isolate Putin’s Russia.

And that, presumably, is NATO’s aim in this never-quite-declared war.

Thomas Walkom is a Toronto-based freelance contributing columnist for the Star. Reach him via email: walkomtom@gmail.com