The leaders of the United States and Russia appear to have converged on a common path to end the war in Ukraine. NATO will get far less than it once demanded, but the outcome is a stable end to the conflict. Fears that any settlement would give Moscow time to regroup and strike again are understandable on a human level, but strategically misplaced. Russia is unlikely to be in better shape two years from now than it is today—and if the Kremlin believed it was capable of further offensives, it would have no reason to halt the fighting now.
But this also means the definitive end of the West’s ambitions to remake or subordinate Russia.
This kind of negotiated settlement is broadly acceptable in the United States—both to the political class and to the general public. There are groups that want the war to continue, but they are marginal and increasingly isolated.
It is also acceptable in Russia. Hard-line commentators will write columns complaining about unnecessary concessions, but the political elite, business elites, and the wider public are inclined toward ending the war.
We lack fully reliable information about public opinion inside Ukraine. Polling in authoritarian wartime conditions is never trustworthy. Still, even there, most appear to favor a rapid peace—and there is no doubt that the overwhelming majority of those being shipped to the front want the war to stop.
Across Europe, polling shows a clear trend toward favoring peace, even at a disadvantage.
So who exactly wants this war to continue?
Europe’s political and managerial elite—along with those aspiring to join it. No one else anywhere in the world.
Only this narrow class believes that continuing to hunt down Ukrainian conscripts and shipping them in shackles to the front is preferable to giving up the dream of regime change in Moscow. And it is the same class that supports policies leading to the Islamization of their own societies, the destruction of their own domestic industries, and the medical mutilation of underage girls.
It is hard to find anything in today’s world as consistently and comprehensively destructive as Europe’s ruling and financial elites.