This Is How Wars End.

Remember the Tamil Tigers.

Quick note.

This morning I exchanged some email with a Polish contact who lives in South Central Poland.  One can imagine that there is some anxiety in Poland about what is going on next door in Ukraine.  My friend expressed some of that anxiety, although he admits that it is hard to know how hyped up people should be.  The uncertainty seems worse than the thing itself. 

To date, well more than a million Ukrainians have made it across the border into Poland.  The authorities have rolled out a serious program to accommodate these people.  One of my own brothers lives in South Central Poland, and there was some prospect that he and his wife would host relatives of his Ukrainian school friend.  His friend lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.

My Polish friend observed that the rhetoric coming out the Ukrainian leadership remains very shrill.  And, why not?  But, I did suggest this: The fighting, the rhetoric, the hype can be most extreme just before the end.  Consider, for example, the experience of the Tamil Tiger insurgency in Sri Lanka.  The Tamil Tigers organized themselves in the 1970's to fight for an independent Tamil state.  The on-and-off fighting lasted until 2009.  In 2009 the forces of Sri Lanka cornered the Tamils in their last remaining stronghold.  The fight was bitter.  The "international community" (the "West") demanded a stop to the fighting, the rationale being little more than “Fighting is bad.”  The Tamil Tigers appealed to the international community in the same way that the Ukrainians appeal to the international community now.

My own view was that stopping the fighting in Sri Lanka was a very bad idea.  The Sri Lankan forces were about to win a decisive victory.  A war that had lasted more than 30 years would end.  Stopping the fighting would allow the Tamil Tigers to retreat, regroup, and continue fighting.  More people would die over many more years. 

Sri Lanka pressed the battle.  The Tamil leadership perished in the fighting.  An enduring peace was finally achieved.

I am beginning to grow weary of the Ukrainians’ protestations.  A deal is on the table.  It is a predictable deal.  It was predicted.  By the estimation of some, it is a reasonable deal.  Even I sketched this specific deal some weeks ago. 

The Ukrainians are making their last efforts to secure support from the West.  The more support, the stronger their bargaining power vis-à-vis the Russians.  But, Russian resolve to secure the deal they’ve placed on the table is strong.  A little extra bargaining power may effectively amount to no extra bargaining power at all.  Indeed, the sooner the West says, "Cut a deal with the Russians," the sooner the Ukrainians will cut a deal with the Russians.

That deal is: (1) Allow the two oblasti in the east to secede.  (2) Recognize the Crimea as Russian.  It had been Russian ever since Catherine the Great nabbed it from the Tatars in 1776, so it’s not as though the idea of the Crimea being Russian is novel. The Russians want it back so that they can secure the passage out of the Sea of Azov and secure their navy base on the Crimea itself.  (3) Commit Ukraine to not joining NATO.

I had been concerned that the Russians might demand control of the ports of Mariupol, Odessa and Kherson (where the Dnieper River runs into the Black Sea), but that would not make sense if the Russians intend to leave Ukraine alone post-deal. These are important assets that Ukraine needs to export its wheat and get on with itself.

Where would I push back the most were I negotiating on behalf of the Ukrainians?  Perhaps on the first point. What do the two provinces in the east have to do with Russian security? If the Russians want a deal sooner rather than later, then they may be willing to cede these two bargaining chips.

But, there is also some question about what commitment Russia can make to leaving Ukraine alone going forward.  The deal will enable Russia to achieve its objectives, and perhaps that amounts to more than abundant commitment; it would not need to meddle in Ukrainian affairs going forward, and the Russians know that there is no way that it could expect a puppet government to be stable and reliable.  Getting their deal and leaving for good is a good deal for them.

For their part, the Ukrainians enjoy the fact that they’ve demonstrated to the world that they were more than willing to stand up for themselves.  They finally got a chance to fight Russians.  They’ve probably been itching for this kind of thing for a century or more.  They now have a new cohort of national heroes.  Their global brand is much improved, and they know it.  They can disengage without “losing face”.  Everyone can disengage and save face.