So, What Now?

If you’ve turned on your TV or read a paper or wandered around on-line today you are aware that there was a bit of a fracas in the Oval Office yesterday just before lunch. The long and short of it is the President Zelenskyy and President Trump banged heads in public. 

People - from both sides - or all sides, as it were - suggest that this was an ambush, that Trump meant to do this. I watched and rewatched the video, beginning to end and, if that is true, these are the best actors on earth, no one else even close. To me it has all the feel of a discussion that went completely off track and a friendly discussion turns into a fight. Everyone has done this, we have all had fights with family or close friends or loved ones, and with coworkers. This is particularly true when there is something that is applying pressure to the system, and all these folks have been under great pressure.

All that said, I’m not sure it does much good to nit-pick who is to blame. More to the point is this central point: Trump is sincere in his desire for peace. He may have other motivations as well, which makes him a real human being, but he is clearly sincere in his desire for peace.

The greater concern is simply this: what happens now?

At the core is the position, held by Trump, and in fact held by all sides, that:

1) Too many people have died

2) Ukraine has a manpower problem that makes it difficult to conceive how they can sustain the war for any extended period of time; they can probably make it another 12 months, but maybe not.

3) The war in any case has already gone on too long and caused far greater damage, both within Ukraine and in its 2nd and 3rd order effects around the world.

4) Ukraine has no meaningful strategy that leads to battlefield success, the overall defeat of the Russian army, and the expulsion of the Russian army from Ukraine 1991.

So, while it’s entertaining to talk about the fracas in the Oval Office, it is grim entertainment. The war has killed, on average, more than 200 soldiers (Russian and Ukrainian) every day for 3 years, maybe a good deal more. The question is, what now?

To answer that question we have an excellent historical parallel:

Consider an embattled US ally determined to lead his people to freedom, very large armies from a dictatorial state, the enemy state and its allies led by men infamous for extremes of violence and treachery (numbers that would put Putin to shame), an extremely complicated military situation on the ground, and a new US President.

The situation was, of course, Korea 1953. The Chinese were determined to win, the USSR was helping, the amount of death and destruction was staggering (I encourage anyone who isn’t familiar with Korea to spend a few minutes on-line looking at the war in Korea. To put it in perspective, the Korean Peninsula is about a third larger than Ukraine east of the Dnepr river, so of similar size. In a war that lasted 3 years, 1 month and 2 days more than 3 million people were killed - perhaps 10 times as many people as have been killed in Ukraine.

Various figures argued that too many people had died to give up, that their deaths demanded the fight continue until, as Gen. MacArthur had promised, the Chinese were driven back over the Yalu River. Then, MacArthur was fired by Truman and replaced by Gen. Matthew Ridgeway. Truman didn't run for re-election, and Eisenhower came in, determined to end the war before it got worse.

President Syngman Rhee, the leader of South Korea, was, to quote Gen Ridgeway, "unalterably opposed to any negotiations at all and said so loudly and often,” and was a "bitter advocate of reunification by force."

It is worth noting that Ridgeway made a point of commenting on one of the mistakes the US avoided: an insistence on “total victory.” Or even a “halt to aggression” before talking peace. (It is also worth noting that Ridgeway liked and respected Rhee and recognized the incredibly difficult position in which he found himself.)

Traces of similar arguments can be heard today, the “sunk cost” argument, too many have died to give up now. For these who invoke World War II, it is important to remind ourselves that the war, which from the Western European perspective was begun over the German seizing of Poland in 1939, ended with Poland virtually enslaved by the Soviet Union. Poland, which lost its independence in 1939, didn't really regain it until 1991, 52 years later.

Gen. Ridgeway, writing his lessons learned after the war, noted that throughout  the war US objectives were subject to constant adjustment, that objectives were always kept within capabilities, and that further, the war was not be allowed to override civilian control of the military; that letting the military shape the outcome of the war free from political interference was “incompatible with our way of life.” That would include, then as now, allowing military objectives to override political reality.

President Eisenhower, in a letter to President Rhee, June 1953, commented that: “We would not be justified in prolonging the war with all the misery that it involves in the hope of achieving, by force, the unification of Korea.”

Rhee, however, was adamant and refused to agree to the terms of the proposed armistice and refused to sign it. It was inconceivable to Rhee that the war be ended after “such wholesale slaughter.” As early as June 1951 Rhee stated the conditions for peace:

1) Chinese army must withdraw north of the Yalu River

2) North Korean Communists disarmed

3) Soviet assistance to the North ended

4) No Settlement that conflicts with sovereignty or territorial integrity of the Republic of Korea

After this Rhee was viewed increasingly as either a patriot or a nuisance, depending on your perspective. But, as the US and Europe increasingly demanded an armistice, Rhee increasingly was viewed as a roadblock.

After Eisenhower was elected he visited Korea and met with the Military commanders and with Rhee, but in fact discussions were of little depth. Reading between  the lines, it was clear changes were afoot.

By June 4th a draft agreement had taken shape; Rhee adamantly refused to sign it, insisting that signing it would doom the Korean people to permanent division. The line they had agreed to was essentially the same line from summer of 1951. Two years of fighting had yielded simply more dead.

What is the point to be drawn for President Zelenskyy?

Gen Ridgeway’s observation that objectives be kept consistent with capabilities is, perhaps the appropriate starting point. The fact that, in the end the US and the UN Command simply went ahead without Rhee and reached a ceasefire agreement without Rhee’s participation is the end point. President Zelenskyy may or may not like the result, but he would find it hard to turn down a ceasefire. And in the middle of all this is the practical work of the US trying to function as a great power that everyone is turning to, hoping the US pulls a rabbit out of its hat at every turn, as Trump is trying to do. That Magic Act is the job of the president - of every president. Accept it, or not. Presidents who are trying hard will try to pull the rabbit out of the hat. Hopefully, they get the right rabbit. But they need to pull a rabbit out of the hat.

Or, as a really smart friend noted this morning, “So, you don’t like being a superpower? Try not being one.”

As the Pirate King observed:

“Many a King on a first class throne,

If he wants call his crown his own,

Must manage somehow to get through

More dirty work than e’er I do.”