Two days after Donald Trump’s failed summit with Russia’s Vladimir Putin, Secretary of State Marco Rubio appeared on Fox News and raised a familiar point about the Trump administration’s position. “Both sides are going to have to make concessions,” he said, referring to Russia and Ukraine. Rubio added, “Ukraine is going to have to accept things it doesn’t like, and Russia is going to have to accept things that it doesn’t like.”
On CBS News’ “Face the Nation,” the secretary made a similar point, though host Margaret Brennan pressed him on a key detail that too often goes unsaid.
Brennan asked about the potential for a “dangerous precedent” that the United States “now accepts this concept that it is OK to seize land by force.” Rubio responded that Putin “has already seized land by force,” which was true, but which was also beside the point.
“Are you demanding withdrawal?” the host asked, leading Rubio to respond: “In order to have a deal here to reach the end of this conflict, both sides are going to have to make concessions. That’s just a fact.”
Well, maybe, but it doesn’t have to be a fact.
Olga Rudenko, the editor in chief of the Kyiv Independent in Ukraine, has a new opinion piece in The New York Times with a straightforward headline: “All Russia Needs to Do Is Go Home.” From the column:
The meeting between Mr. Putin and President Trump on Friday was a stark reminder of a simple truth: that the real barrier, the only real barrier, between Mr. Trump and peace in Ukraine (and his coveted Nobel Prize) is Mr. Putin. Russia could end the war in Ukraine at any moment by stopping its attacks and withdrawing its forces. By simply going home. Mr. Putin could end it with a phone call.
I’m mindful of the fact that this might be obvious to the point of being reductive, but this seems like it’s a detail that’s too often left out of the public conversation.
For all of the complexities surrounding possible territorial “swaps,” security guarantees and diplomatic partnerships, there’s a far more straightforward solution just sitting there, waiting for attention: Putin could withdraw his forces from Ukraine.
That’s it. That’s the whole solution.
When Iraq’s Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in 1990, the United States’ position was simple: Countries cannot expect to seize other countries, in whole or in part, by force. It didn’t occur to George H.W. Bush and his team to say that “both sides” would have to “make concessions,” since that would necessarily entail punishing the victim for having been invaded.
Rather, the United States’ position was simple: Iraqi forces needed to withdraw from Kuwait, at which point the war would be over and there would be peace. It was a simple solution, that Hussein ultimately accepted.
There’s no reason for the White House to avoid adopting this same approach now. Russia launched an unprovoked attack against its neighbor. And if Putin brought his forces home, the war would end.
Trump has spent months insisting that Putin wants “peace,” and the Republican reiterated the point to Fox News’ Sean Hannity after his failed summit in Alaska, saying that he genuinely believes that the Russian dictator wants to “solve the problem.”
But this doesn’t have to be complicated: All Putin has to do is decide to stop fighting the war he started. He picked the fight, assuming it’d be easy. Ukraine proved to be far more formidable than Russia expected; Russia has paid a heavy price for its miscalculation; and Russia could decide — literally at any time — to simply end the unprovoked conflict.
“Russia could just go home,” Rudenko’s New York Times piece concluded. This would end the war quickly, without additional bloodshed, and without investments. If the White House doesn’t see this a goal worth pursuing, perhaps it should explain why not.
This article was originally published on MSNBC.com
Comments