[late]

"In his dissertation, and in his subsequent book, “War and Punishment,” Goemans laid out a theory of how and why some wars ended quickly and others dragged brutally on. The war in the title was the First World War; the “punishment” was what leaders in Germany, in particular, feared awaited them if they brought home anything less than a victory. When Goemans’s book came out, in 2000, it was the first modern full-length study devoted entirely to the problem of war termination, and it helped launch the field.

I recently spoke to a number of war-termination theorists, including Goemans, to see what the theoretical perspective could tell us about the war in Ukraine. The theorists turned out to be an engaged and lively group, most of them glued to Twitter and Telegram, in multiple languages, as they tried to follow the war in real time. They believed the wars that they had studied could shed light on the current conflict.

“This is a large European war, something we thought we would not see,” Goemans said. “It’s trench warfare, like World War One. And it’s for the existence of Ukraine as a state.” The implications are enormous. “This will shape the rest of the twenty-first century. If Russia loses, or it doesn’t get what it wants, it will be a different Russia afterward. If Russia wins, it will be a different Europe afterward.” The scope and complications of the war foreclose a quick resolution. “This is what made World War One so big, this is what made World War Two so big,” Goemans said. “It’s not just ‘I want a piece of territory because my ethnic brethren are there.’ It’s—all this shit.”

“For a war to end,” Goemans said, “the minimum demands of at least one of the sides must change.” This is the first rule of war termination. And we have not yet reached a point where war aims have changed enough for a peace deal to be possible."

More at the link:

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/annal ... ket-newtab

[Skynet]

Either on the negotiating table or never like Syria