As if to burnish his reputation as a super-villain in the eyes of the corporate press, Elon Musk this week floated an idea on Twitter for a possible resolution of the Russo-Ukrainian war. For his trouble, he was swiftly accused of being a pro-Putin stooge by guardians of the Official Narrative. His suggested peace plan was dismissed out of hand as “Russia-friendly” and, as The Washington Post’s Olivier Knox put it, “designed to lock in Russian territorial gains.”
But Musk’s idea shouldn’t be so quickly dismissed, not least because it has the virtue of being grounded in reality, but also because broadly speaking the billionaire mogul is right: It’s time for the war in Ukraine to come to an end. One need not be “Russia-friendly” to recognize that this war will most likely end in one of two ways. Either there will be a negotiated political settlement, in which both Russia and Ukraine get some of what they vitally need, or the thing will escalate into a worldwide nuclear war.
Given the options, the responsible thing to do is think through how a settlement might be reached — something our political leaders and media elites, wedded as they are to a maximalist Ukraine policy that seeks the total defeat of Russian forces and regime change in Moscow, have thus far been incapable of doing. . .
Ukraine-Russia Peace:
- Redo elections of annexed regions under UN supervision. Russia leaves if that is will of the people.
- Crimea formally part of Russia, as it has been since 1783 (until Khrushchev’s mistake).
- Water supply to Crimea assured.
- Ukraine remains neutral.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 3, 2022
The plan isn’t perfect, obviously, but it’s a far cry from Kremlin propaganda. It recognizes something that sharp observers of the conflict could see even before Russia’s invasion in late February: With its current borders, Ukraine can have territorial integrity or political independence, but it can’t have both.
My friend Mario Loyola made precisely that argument in these pages weeks before the war began, noting that Ukraine’s present-day borders date from 1954, when Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev “gave” Ukraine nominal control over strategic swaths of territory that had not been traditionally considered part of Ukraine, such as the Crimean Peninsula, along with a formidable Soviet nuclear arsenal. The point was to make it seem like the Warsaw Pact was something other than a Soviet concoction designed to give Moscow more seats in the U.N. General Assembly.
via joemiller