(01-22-2022 10:24 AM)OptimisticOwl Wrote:  Just my opinion, but...
...I think Biden has worked himself into a no-win situation vis-a-vis Russia.

I agree that Biden has made it worse, but we have always been in pretty much a no-win situation with respect to any of the Black Sea former Soviet republics--Ukraine, Georgia, the lot. Under international law (the Montreux Convention) we can't send a carrier through the Bosporus into the Black Sea, and without carriers any naval involvement would be so limited as be ineffective.

What I think Putin really needs is a buffer state on his western border. I think Ukraine (and possibly Belarus) could be valuable to both sides in the neutral buffer state role.

The vast European plain runs from northern France through the Low Countries, Germany, Poland, and Russia all the way to the Urals. The only effective natural defense has been the Russian winter. France, Germany, and Russia have fought back and forth over that plain for centuries, with Poland always ending up with what was left over. Look at a set of historic maps and see how Poland has moved around over the centuries. It's why Germany has historically been so warlike--and so efficient. They had to be to survive. Russians have always feared a major invasion from Germany or further west (as well as an invasion by Genghis Khan and his Mongol hordes from the east). During the Iron Curtain days, the USSR had about as defensible a western border as is possible. They basically had to defend only a few hundred miles of width between the Carpathian Alps (in Romania) and the Baltic. You're not really going to try to invade anybody through the Alps or the Balkans, unless you're nuts. And the Red Army was huge. Today, the Russian Army is much smaller, and getting smaller as demographics kick in and Russia runs out of 20-somethings. And that difficult to defend border has grown from a few hundred miles to a few thousand. If Putin had a buffer zone, he sleeps a lot easier at night. And so does Western Europe.

I would think it a reasonable objective of USA grand strategy to establish Ukraine and Belarus as neutral buffer zones between Russia and the rest of Europe. I don't know if you can get there from here or not, but it would be worth at least some back channel exploration.