{"id":60558,"date":"2025-08-19T13:19:16","date_gmt":"2025-08-19T17:19:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/?p=60558"},"modified":"2025-08-19T13:21:34","modified_gmt":"2025-08-19T17:21:34","slug":"a-reality-check","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/?p=60558","title":{"rendered":"A Reality Check"},"content":{"rendered":"

On Monday, The Federalist<\/a> posted an article about the ongoing negotiations to end the war in Ukraine. The article reminds us that neither Russia or Ukraine can actually win the war decisively.<\/p>\n

The article reports:<\/p>\n

President Donald Trump\u2019s meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Alaska on Friday didn\u2019t yield the ceasefire deal Trump was hoping for, but there was apparently enough progress made that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and top European leaders are meeting with Trump in Washington today to discuss the possibility of peace negotiations and a deal to end to the war for good.<\/strong><\/p>\n

What might such a deal look like? Simply put, it would consist of territorial concessions in exchange for security agreements. Ukraine would cede portions of Russian-occupied territory in Crimea and the eastern provinces in exchange for a security alliance with the United States and European powers. Trump himself has alluded to this, mentioning \u201cland swaps\u201d ahead of his meeting with Putin on Friday.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Russia’s main goal has always been a warm-water port. The land Russia has currently seized from Ukraine would provide that port. If Ukrainian President Zelensky would make territorial concessions to give Russia a warm-water port, the war would end. However, the corruption that has provided a lavish lifestyle to the ruling class in Ukraine would also end. That is probably one of the major sticking points in the negotiations.<\/p>\n

The article concludes:<\/p>\n

And here we come to heart of the difference between Biden and Trump\u2019s view of the war, and of foreign policy broadly speaking. The establishment foreign policy experts that ran things during Biden\u2019s term (and Obama\u2019s) think the world operates according to theories and abstractions rather than solid realities like history and geography. They thought they could simply invoke something like sovereignty, without grappling with the possibility that sovereignty and territorial integrity, given Ukraine\u2019s history and its untenable borders, might be mutually exclusive.<\/strong><\/p>\n

That mindset is representative of an entire class of policymakers in Washington who fail to grasp that the outcome of a war \u2014 any war \u2014 is far more likely to be decided by something as unmovable as a mountain range or a warm-water port than vague invocations of sovereignty. Likewise, a common language or a shared 1,000-year history between warring peoples are going to be more important factors than the bureaucratic minutiae of a multi-lateral security agreement drafted in Brussels.<\/strong><\/p>\n

After years of attrition warfare between Ukraine and Russia, bankrolled largely by western powers, the underlying factors in the conflict have not changed \u2014 and they never will. An adjustment of Ukraine\u2019s borders, together with security guarantees from the U.S. and Europe, is actually in everyone\u2019s best interests, not just Russia\u2019s. Ukraine as it\u2019s currently constituted is indefensible, as events have shown. Lasting peace will require grappling with the history of Ukraine\u2019s borders and adjusting them to reflect solid realities \u2014 not some hazy platitudes about democracy and sovereignty. Those kind of abstractions are a big reason we\u2019re in this mess, and rejecting them is the only way we\u2019re going to get out of it.<\/strong><\/p>\n

It’s time that western nations stop funding this carnage.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On Monday, The Federalist posted an article about the ongoing negotiations to end the war in Ukraine. The article reminds us that neither Russia or Ukraine can actually win the war decisively. The article reports: President Donald Trump\u2019s meeting with … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[8040,10589,11815,7146,15069,3327,18398],"class_list":["post-60558","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-crimea","tag-president-trump","tag-the-federalist","tag-ukraine","tag-ukrainian-president-volodymyr-zelensky","tag-vladimir-putin","tag-warm-water-port"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60558","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=60558"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60558\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":60580,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60558\/revisions\/60580"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=60558"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=60558"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=60558"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}