Russia has won. The world is changing once again. Time to negotiate.

Ukraine has failed to defend its borders since it gained independence in 1991, shortly after the fall of the Soviet Union. It is now losing its war with Russia to reestablish them if it has not already lost. In hindsight this appears to have been both inevitable and equally foreseeable. 

Since independence the Ukrainians appear to have been, in hindsight, exceedingly unwise to aggressively align themselves with the West, especially in seeking membership in NATO and the EU, rather than seeking an Austrian-like neutrality. They were fools, culturally speaking, to climb in bed with the decadent West which only allowed the old Soviet era rot to spread and deepen. 

In the meantime the killing continues and as I see it there are two great barriers to peace and one of note, and none of them pertain directly to Ukraine or Russia.

The first is the post-WWII or even WWI notion that we were going to abolish settling territorial or border disputes with the sword. This was naive. Borders have been moving since the beginning of time but a Russian victory would put a final nail in the coffin of the pretence that we can bring history to an end, and will get other states thinking about settling their own disputes the old-fashion way, as kings and peoples always have.

The second problem is that it would represent a clear end to the triumphant march of globalism and any imagined unipolar global order, the great dream of modern utopians. Again, a naive hope, and dearly held dream of the global elites who would like to freeze things in place for the good of humanity, with themselves frozen at the top. 

Lastly and of note, war is profitable and who-knows-who is making a ton of money who will use what influence who-knows-who has to keep the mill grinding.

The fear is not that Russia is going to go nuclear, or march on Berlin again like in 1945. The former is unlikely because the Russians are not suicidal. The latter because they would have to get through Poland first.

The fear is that the global elite, those visionaries of an imagined global order who currently hold institutional power, will not accept that their dream was just that and instead double down.

M.C. Atkins