This one delusional neocon gives a perfect glimpse into the Ukraine War Fantasy Land they all live in. Someone really should explain to Mike Pompeo how peace deals actually work.
Ukraine War Fantasy: This Neocon Just Revealed The...
Former US Secretary of State and CIA Director Mike Pompeo seems irked that the Ukraine conflict could end without Russia groveling and handing over concessions on a silver platter. That’s because, let's face it, Russia is objectively winning on the battlefield. Even some establishment figures capable of independent thought have finally caught on. British historian Niall Ferguson has been saying since September that despite all the West’s punitive efforts, he struggled to imagine any scenario other than Russia “nevertheless grinds out a victory.”
Newsflash for Pompeo: The winning side making concessions for a ceasefire – beyond the ceasing of fire – isn’t how peace deals work, genius. But try explaining that to Pompeo, who has spent the past few years talking about Putin like he’s the guy Ukraine’s totally going to beat up in the school parking lot. It's almost comical, if the stakes weren't so high.
“The adversary here, Vladimir Putin, has – to best I can tell – conceded literally nothing to date. And while they say there’s 90 percent agreement, I doubt that Vladimir Putin thinks that the relevant 10 percent that remains is anything he’s willing to give up on,” Pompeo said recently in a TV interview. He added that the US should be heading in the opposite direction from denouement, to “impose far more punishing costs” on Russia. Clearly someone who has never met a loss that he was interested in cutting.
Did the Nazis, as they were being flattened by the Allies in World War II, get to dictate peace terms? Or how about the Brits, who lost to the American colonies in the Revolutionary War? Pompeo’s logic would have demanded that Britain call the shots for the Treaty of Paris in 1783 and insisted that Independence Day be canceled because it’s offensive to the losers. Seriously, the historical illiteracy is staggering.
Russia would clearly be giving something up in any peace deal. Contract lawyers know that a promise to refrain from doing something is a perfectly valid consideration in a binding agreement. So promising not to flatten Ukraine or grab more territory would be a legitimate concession. What’s Ukraine getting in exchange? Peace. Duh. Is that not enough of a prize? I mean, what's the alternative, endless war?
It’s much more likely that what neocon warmongers like Pompeo really mean when they worry that Russia won’t be made to give anything up for peace is that Moscow won’t have paid the same price that the neocons imagined in their fantasy War Room. Guys like Pompeo live in a parallel universe where Russia has been losing.
“Despite what some would have you believe, Vladimir Putin is not winning,” he wrote in October. ”Putin can bluster all he wants, but he isn’t winning this war – and we shouldn’t let him,” Pompeo said in March. At the time, Pompeo qualified Ukraine’s “winning” as having not yet lost the entirety of the Donbass to Russia. That’s like saying someone’s winning at life because they haven’t yet been thrown out into the streets after missing rent. It's a pretty low bar, Mike.
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