How to End the War in Ukraine: The Doctrine of Reciprocal Strategic Security

The Democrats have won control of both chambers of the United States Congress, and one of their first priorities appears to be increasing military assistance to Ukraine. According to the Financial Times, Democratic lawmakers are discussing a new security assistance package worth approximately $15 billion, alongside tougher sanctions against Russia. The proposal has not been approved, and President Donald Trump retains considerable power to oppose it. Nevertheless, the political direction is becoming familiar: more weapons, more financing, more sanctions, and the prospect of continuing a war that has already devastated Ukraine.

How much longer are we prepared to let this continue?

Entire cities have been destroyed, millions have fled their homes, and hundreds of thousands of soldiers have died. The Center for Strategic and International Studies estimated in July 2026 that Russia and Ukraine together had suffered more than two million military casualties, including those killed, wounded, and missing. Some Russian military officials have claimed that Ukrainian losses alone may exceed two million, although those higher estimates have not been independently verified. Whatever the precise number, the devastation is staggering. The World Bank estimates that Ukraine will require nearly $588 billion for reconstruction and recovery over the coming decade. Meanwhile, the war continues.

Donald Trump promised to end it. In March 2025, his administration briefly suspended military assistance and intelligence-sharing with Ukraine, applying pressure on President Volodymyr Zelensky to engage in negotiations. Ukraine subsequently accepted an American proposal for a thirty-day ceasefire, conditional on Russian acceptance. Washington restored assistance, while Russia agreed only to a narrower pause in attacks on energy infrastructure.

I believe Trump’s willingness to challenge the assumption that military assistance to Ukraine must continue indefinitely represents an important departure from the policies that have sustained this confrontation. There is nothing inherently virtuous about financing a war indefinitely. Military assistance may help a country defend itself, but it cannot substitute for a political strategy capable of ending the conflict. Without a realistic diplomatic objective, it may simply prolong the destruction.

And what, precisely, is the objective? To restore every square kilometer of Ukraine through military force? To weaken Russia economically and militarily? To demonstrate that the West cannot be challenged? Or to establish a stable peace in Europe? These are not necessarily the same objectives, and it is remarkable how rarely political leaders are required to distinguish between them.

Trump’s pressure also exposes an uncomfortable reality: Ukraine’s military and political options depend heavily on decisions made in Washington and European capitals. Whatever Ukrainians themselves wish to achieve, external assistance significantly shapes their ability to continue fighting. And now, as Democrats prepare to take control of Congress in January, we face the prospect of renewed military assistance just as American, Russian, and Ukrainian representatives are preparing another round of negotiations in Abu Dhabi on November 10–11.

According to Reuters, the negotiations will address postwar security arrangements, de-escalation, humanitarian measures, and the possibility of ending the war. Yet the fundamental question remains unanswered: Who bears responsibility for creating the confrontation in the first place? Unless we answer that question and establish principles capable of preventing such confrontations, what exactly prevents the next Ukraine?

I believe the answer requires a fundamental change in international security. For decades, governments have relied heavily on deterrence—military alliances, strategic threats, and the promise of overwhelming retaliation—to preserve peace. But in a world armed with nuclear weapons, I believe restraint offers a far more promising foundation for lasting security than the permanent threat of mutual destruction.

Before explaining the doctrine I propose, however, we must examine what happened in Ukraine. Because the evidence reveals a political catastrophe that was neither sudden nor entirely unforeseeable.

The Problem With Our Understanding of Guilt

History has taught us to distinguish between responsibility for creating a war and responsibility for particular actions committed during it. Consider World War II. We recognize Nazi Germany’s principal responsibility for launching the war in Europe without needing to defend every military action subsequently undertaken by the Allies.

In February 1945, British and American aircraft devastated Dresden, killing approximately 25,000 people according to the city’s historical commission. The military necessity and morality of the bombing remain controversial. Then came Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In August 1945, the United States dropped atomic bombs on the two Japanese cities, killing an estimated 140,000 people in Hiroshima and 74,000 in Nagasaki by the end of that year.

The conventional justification was that the bombings were necessary to force Japan’s surrender and prevent an American invasion that might have cost even more lives. But historical research has raised serious questions about that explanation. In The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb, historian Gar Alperovitz argued that the weapons were employed partly to strengthen America’s diplomatic position against the Soviet Union. Tsuyoshi Hasegawa, in Racing the Enemy: Stalin, Truman, and the Surrender of Japan, examined the importance of Soviet entry into the war and the competition between Washington and Moscow over Japan’s surrender. Their interpretations differ, but both challenge the notion that the atomic bombings can be understood solely through the military necessity of defeating Japan.

The implication is disturbing. Even during the closing stages of a war against an aggressive dictatorship, decisions involving the lives of hundreds of thousands of civilians were influenced by calculations concerning the geopolitical balance that would follow the conflict.

Yet these questions do not lead us to conclude that everyone was equally responsible for starting World War II. We distinguish between the principal responsibility for creating a war and responsibility for particular actions committed during it.

Why, then, should we abandon that distinction when examining Ukraine?

The conventional narrative begins on February 24, 2022, when Russian forces entered Ukraine from several directions. Russia used military force, therefore Russia is responsible for the war, while everyone else is merely responding to its actions. That account identifies the state that initiated the February 2022 military operation. It does not explain how Ukraine became the center of a confrontation between Washington and Moscow, why that confrontation developed over decades, or which political decisions made the catastrophe increasingly likely.

Those questions cannot be answered by beginning the history at its final military stage. To understand what happened, we must examine the political structure that produced the confrontation.

And that history begins long before Vladimir Putin ordered Russian troops into Ukraine.

Ukraine: The Country That Could Have Been a Bridge

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Ukraine emerged as an independent country with substantial industrial capacity, fertile agricultural land, a highly educated population, and extensive economic relationships with Russia and Europe. It was also a bilingual and culturally diverse society. According to the 2001 census, approximately 17% of the population identified ethnically as Russian, while nearly 30% reported Russian as their native language. Many additional Ukrainians spoke Russian regularly.

These distinctions were important, but they did not make peaceful coexistence impossible. Ukraine’s political system contained competing orientations toward Moscow and Brussels, and governments changed through elections. The country had serious problems—corruption, oligarchic influence, regional inequality, and competing national identities—but none of them required war. Ukraine’s own 1990 Declaration of State Sovereignty expressed an intention to become a permanently neutral country outside military blocs. That was not a Russian invention. It was an idea rooted in Ukraine’s own political development.

After Viktor Yanukovych was elected president in 2010, Ukraine adopted a nonaligned security position. The same year, Kyiv and Moscow concluded the Kharkiv Accords, extending Russia’s lease on its naval facilities at Sevastopol until 2042 in exchange for discounted natural gas. Russia maintained its Black Sea Fleet facilities, while Ukraine received economic benefits. Neither arrangement required Ukraine to surrender its political independence.

Then, in December 2013, Moscow offered Ukraine up to $15 billion in purchases of government bonds and a substantial reduction in natural gas prices. This was not free money. The financing created repayment obligations, and the energy arrangements depended on continued negotiations. But for a country facing serious financial difficulties, it offered immediate economic relief.

Yanukovych decided to pursue the Russian agreement after suspending negotiations over an association agreement with the European Union. Was that necessarily a betrayal of Ukraine? I do not see why. A president must evaluate available agreements and decide what he considers advantageous for his country. Citizens may disagree with that decision, demonstrate against it, or elect another government that pursues a different policy. Ukraine’s next regular presidential election was scheduled for 2015, and a constitutional political process existed through which the country’s direction could change.

Instead, the confrontation developed into a revolutionary rupture that destroyed the existing political order. The deeper tragedy is that Ukraine did not necessarily need to choose between being Russian and being European. It could have remained Ukrainian—a neutral country maintaining peaceful commercial relationships with both sides, potentially becoming an extraordinarily valuable economic and cultural bridge between Russia and Europe.

Instead, it increasingly became the territory over which they competed.

The American Project in Ukraine

In November 2026, historian and former New York Times foreign correspondent Stephen Kinzer published Boiling Point: How America Brought War to Ukraine. Kinzer argues that American involvement in Ukraine did not begin with the Maidan uprising of 2013–2014. It began during the earliest years of the Cold War.

Following World War II, the newly established CIA developed operations involving Ukrainian anti-Soviet nationalist organizations. Some of its collaborators had previously been associated with organizations implicated in wartime atrocities. One prominent figure was Mykola Lebed, whose subsequent relationship with American intelligence is documented in Hitler’s Shadow: Nazi War Criminals, U.S. Intelligence, and the Cold War, published by the US National Archives.

Through Project AERODYNAMIC and related operations, the CIA supported clandestine networks, infiltration missions, publishing activities, and political information campaigns intended to weaken Soviet control over Ukraine. These operations are established through declassified American records, and their historical importance lies in the relationship between Ukrainian political movements and American strategic objectives. The United States recognized Ukraine as a potential source of pressure against Moscow and pursued that opportunity.

This does not mean that every Ukrainian nationalist movement was invented by Washington. Ukrainians had genuine grievances arising from decades of Soviet repression, famine, and restrictions on political independence. But an outside power does not need to invent a political division to exploit it. It can strengthen existing factions, provide financing, influence organizations, support selected political leaders, and make confrontation more attractive than compromise.

That is one of the oldest mechanisms of foreign intervention. A country contains competing political communities whose disagreements can ordinarily be managed through elections, constitutional protections, and negotiated settlements. But when an outside power systematically strengthens one faction against another, domestic political competition can become a struggle over the country’s geopolitical allegiance. The country’s internal divisions increasingly serve external strategic objectives.

This is precisely the mechanism that must be addressed.

The Maidan Revolution and the Question of Foreign Intervention

After Ukraine gained independence in 1991, American involvement increasingly assumed public forms. The National Endowment for Democracy, financed principally through US congressional appropriations, supported Ukrainian civil society organizations, independent media, political development, civic education, and related activities. Many of these programs had legitimate public-interest purposes, but they also operated within a broader American policy favoring Ukraine’s integration with Western institutions.

In December 2013, Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland publicly confirmed that the United States had invested more than $5 billion in Ukraine since independence. The figure covered cumulative American assistance over many years, not $5 billion proven to have financed the Maidan uprising. Nevertheless, Nuland’s official remarks made Washington’s preferred political direction unmistakable.

Then came the leaked telephone conversation between Nuland and US Ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt in February 2014. During that conversation, the diplomats discussed the composition of a possible future Ukrainian government, and Nuland expressed a preference for opposition politician Arseniy Yatsenyuk. The conversation was reported by the BBC.

Imagine Russian diplomats discussing which American opposition politicians should enter government while mass demonstrations were unfolding in Washington. Would the United States regard that as normal diplomatic behavior?

Economist Jeffrey Sachs, who has advised numerous governments and international institutions, has gone further. In an August 2024 interview with Tucker Carlson and a February 2025 address to the European Parliament, Sachs argued that Washington helped organize the overthrow of Yanukovych. He described conversations during his visit to Kyiv following the revolution and asserted that American assistance had supported important elements of the Maidan organization.

These allegations deserve serious investigation. The publicly established evidence demonstrates American political involvement and an unmistakable preference concerning Ukraine’s future leadership. Whether American intelligence services directed the violence that precipitated Yanukovych’s removal is a more specific question, requiring evidence about operational decisions, financing, communications, and command relationships. That is precisely why an independent investigation is necessary.

The violent escalation of Maidan also remains a subject of historical controversy. Political scientist Ivan Katchanovski has argued, through published research examining videos, witness testimony, and Ukrainian judicial proceedings, that elements of the Maidan opposition participated in the February 20, 2014, sniper killings. His conclusions are disputed, but the research demonstrates why the origins of the violence should not be treated as an insignificant detail.

What interests me most is the political mechanism. A democratic process allows citizens to change their government through elections, while a revolution can overthrow the constitutional order and create opportunities for political arrangements that would otherwise require electoral legitimacy. For a foreign power seeking to change another country’s political direction, such a rupture offers possibilities unavailable through ordinary diplomacy.

Now consider the sequence of events. On February 21, 2014, Yanukovych and opposition leaders signed a European-mediated agreement providing for constitutional changes and early presidential elections. Within a day, the arrangement collapsed. Yanukovych fled Kyiv, and parliament declared him unable to fulfill his duties. The constitutional legitimacy of the procedure remained disputed.

An agreement intended to restore a constitutional political process had been replaced by a revolutionary transfer of power. Why was the agreement abandoned so quickly? Who encouraged the opposition to reject compromise? What role did foreign governments play in shaping the transition, and what did their representatives know about the violence?

The Maidan protests reflected genuine domestic grievances, including corruption, dissatisfaction with Yanukovych, and police repression. But the legitimacy of those grievances does not automatically establish the legitimacy of every action undertaken in their name, particularly when foreign governments are attempting to influence the outcome. Ukraine’s political future had become deeply entangled with the strategic objectives of more powerful states, and the consequences were catastrophic.

NATO and the Warnings Washington Chose Not to Resolve

The risks of NATO expansion were not unknown to American policymakers. In 1997, George F. Kennan, one of the principal architects of American Cold War containment strategy, warned that expanding NATO would be a profound strategic mistake. Kennan anticipated that enlargement would inflame Russian nationalism, undermine prospects for cooperation, and recreate the atmosphere of Cold War confrontation. His article, A Fateful Error, was subsequently reproduced in the US Congressional Record.

In February 2008, US Ambassador to Russia William Burns sent a classified diplomatic cable entitled Nyet Means Nyet: Russia’s NATO Enlargement Redlines. Burns reported that Russian opposition to Ukrainian NATO membership extended across significant sections of the Russian political establishment. The warning was not limited to Vladimir Putin; Ukraine’s accession to NATO was understood in Moscow as a particularly dangerous security issue.

Nevertheless, at the Bucharest summit in April 2008, NATO declared that Ukraine and Georgia would eventually become members.

But there was something profoundly disturbing about that decision.

Most Ukrainians did not want to join NATO.

According to a survey conducted by the Democratic Initiatives Foundation in September 2008, only 24.8% of Ukrainians supported NATO membership, while 63% opposed it. In Donbas and Crimea, opposition reached an extraordinary 94.3%.

These figures appear in Averting Crisis in Ukraine, a January 2009 report by Steven Pifer, a former American ambassador to Ukraine, published by the Council on Foreign Relations. The report also documented the enormous regional divisions over NATO and warned that tensions involving Ukraine’s military alignment, Crimea, and Russia’s Black Sea Fleet could lead to a serious confrontation.

Now consider what this means. In January 2008, President Viktor Yushchenko, Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, and parliamentary speaker Arseniy Yatsenyuk had formally requested a NATO Membership Action Plan. Yet the September survey showed that nearly two-thirds of the population opposed membership. The strongest opposition came from the very regions where the relationship with Russia was most sensitive.

So whose interests were these politicians representing?

This is one of the fundamental weaknesses of modern representative republics. Governments are elected to represent the population, but once in office, they can pursue policies that the population does not support. Foreign governments, financial institutions, lobbying organizations, and political factions may all influence decisions that ordinary citizens have little practical power to prevent.

Ukraine offers a particularly consequential example. Its political leaders pursued a military alliance that a substantial majority of their population opposed, while Washington encouraged that policy despite knowing Russia’s objections.

The American administration understood the risks. Germany and France opposed granting Ukraine an immediate membership plan, partly because of concerns about Russia’s reaction and Ukraine’s internal divisions. Nevertheless, President George W. Bush pushed for enlargement, and the final declaration promised eventual membership.

The decision created an extraordinarily dangerous arrangement. Ukraine was promised eventual NATO membership without receiving immediate security guarantees. Russia opposed the prospect, and Ukraine remained caught between competing strategic systems. Washington understood the objections, European governments understood them, and Ukrainian leaders knew that their military alignment was a fundamental issue in relations with Moscow.

The problem was never simply whether Ukraine had the right to choose its alliances. The problem was whether one country’s alliance choices could be developed into a strategic threat against another without producing a predictable security crisis.

This contradiction already existed within the European security framework. In 1999, the OSCE Charter for European Security recognized both the right of states to choose their security arrangements and the principle that states should not strengthen their security at the expense of others. It also rejected exclusive spheres of influence. These principles were supposed to coexist. But what happens when they conflict?

Suppose Ukraine chooses a military alliance that Russia considers a serious security threat. Does Ukraine’s freedom to choose an alliance prevail automatically, or does Russia’s security concern establish limits on that freedom? The Charter provides principles that must be reconciled, but it does not establish a sufficiently effective mechanism for determining when one country’s security arrangements become an objectively prohibited threat to another.

That is the institutional failure. The solution cannot be to declare either principle absolute. An unconditional right to choose any military arrangement could permit threatening foreign deployments against a neighbor, while an unconditional right to veto another country’s alliances would permit powerful states to control the political independence of smaller countries. What is needed is a rule distinguishing legitimate political independence from objectively threatening military conduct, together with a mechanism capable of enforcing that distinction.

Without such a mechanism, governments simply choose whichever principle serves their interests.

And that is exactly what happened.

The Cuban Missile Crisis and the Principle of Reciprocity

The contradiction becomes clearer when we consider the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. The Soviet Union attempted to install nuclear missiles in Cuba, close to the United States. Cuba was a sovereign country with its own government, foreign policy, and formal right to enter into international agreements. Yet President John F. Kennedy did not accept the argument that Cuban sovereignty gave the Soviet Union an unrestricted right to deploy nuclear weapons so close to American territory.

Washington regarded those deployments as a direct threat to its national security. Kennedy imposed a naval quarantine, demanded the missiles’ removal, and prepared military contingencies. The crisis was resolved through negotiations: the Soviet Union withdrew its missiles from Cuba, while the United States pledged not to invade Cuba and secretly agreed to remove its Jupiter missiles from Turkey.

The essential achievement was reciprocal security. Both powers recognized that the strategic activities of one could create an intolerable threat to the other, and both made concessions to remove that danger.

Now imagine China developing extensive military cooperation with Mexico, financing anti-American political movements, training Mexican forces, and preparing the deployment of offensive capabilities directed against the United States. Would Washington simply accept this as Mexico exercising its sovereign rights? I doubt it very much.

But what rule would govern the situation? If the United States considers certain foreign military deployments near its borders unacceptable, it cannot automatically dismiss comparable concerns expressed by Russia or China. The rule must be universal. And if Mexico knowingly allows its territory to be used for prohibited hostile military operations, responsibility cannot belong exclusively to China. Mexico’s political leadership must also account for its decision.

This is the principle I want to establish through the Doctrine of Reciprocal Strategic Security: countries cannot expect their own security concerns to be treated as legitimate while dismissing identical concerns expressed by others.

But the doctrine goes further. It does not merely recognize reciprocal security interests. It proposes clear limits on the military relationships that countries may establish near rival great powers, before those relationships create a confrontation.

That is the missing element in our present international system.

The Forgotten War in Donbas

The armed conflict in Ukraine did not begin in February 2022. Fighting had already been underway in Donbas for nearly eight years. Between April 2014 and January 2022, the United Nations documented approximately 3,405 conflict-related civilian deaths in eastern Ukraine, with more than 7,000 civilians injured. Communities on both sides of the contact line endured shelling, mines, displacement, and disrupted public services.

Russian-speaking residents of separatist-controlled areas faced years of insecurity, while many civilians in Ukrainian-controlled areas suffered as well. For the people living there, the conflict was not an abstract debate about NATO or geopolitics. It was a question of whether they could safely remain in their homes.

And their suffering was documented by international institutions.

In July 2021, the United Nations published a detailed investigation into arbitrary detention, torture, and ill-treatment in eastern Ukraine between 2014 and 2021. Its findings were disturbing. Approximately 1,500 conflict-related detainees had suffered torture or ill-treatment at the hands of Ukrainian government actors, while approximately 2,500 had suffered abuses by armed groups and other actors in separatist-controlled territory. The documented practices included arbitrary detention, secret detention facilities, physical and sexual violence, intimidation, and other forms of mistreatment.

These were not simply allegations exchanged between Moscow and Kyiv. They were findings published by the United Nations.

Nor were the concerns limited to the battlefield. Following Maidan, Ukraine’s parliament attempted to repeal legislation protecting the regional use of Russian and other minority languages. The repeal was not enacted, but the attempt contributed to fears about the future of Russian-language rights. Subsequent language and education policies became recurring sources of controversy.

In December 2019, the Council of Europe’s Venice Commission concluded that Ukraine’s state-language legislation failed to strike a fair balance between strengthening Ukrainian and protecting minority-language rights. It criticized provisions that disadvantaged Russian and other non-EU minority languages and recommended substantial changes.

The protection of vulnerable communities should have been central to any political settlement. Instead, the armed confrontation continued, while the Minsk agreements of 2014 and 2015 were intended to end the fighting and establish a political framework for resolving the dispute.

The Minsk II package of measures provided for a ceasefire, withdrawal of heavy weapons, constitutional decentralization, special arrangements for certain areas of Donetsk and Luhansk, local elections, and restoration of Ukrainian border control under agreed conditions.

The agreement was never fully implemented.

And then came the remarkable statements of two European leaders who had participated directly in the diplomatic process. In a December 2022 interview with Die Zeit, former German Chancellor Angela Merkel explained that the Minsk process had given Ukraine time to become stronger. Former French President François Hollande subsequently agreed that the agreements had helped Ukraine build its defensive capabilities.

Both leaders regarded the agreements as a means of holding back further Russian military advances. But their statements also reveal that the diplomatic process served a military-strategic purpose instead of its declared objective of producing peace.

This raises an important question: was Minsk treated principally as a framework for political compromise, or did important participants come to regard it as a means of improving Ukraine’s military position before a future confrontation?

The difference is fundamental. A peace agreement cannot produce lasting security if the parties principally regard it as a temporary instrument for strengthening their positions before the next stage of conflict. Diplomacy requires a genuine effort to resolve the dispute, not merely to manage the timing of its escalation.

The failure of Minsk should therefore be investigated as one of the major political failures preceding the February 2022 war. It is also directly relevant to the doctrine I propose. International security agreements must contain enforceable obligations and credible verification mechanisms. Otherwise, governments can sign documents, gain time, and subsequently accuse one another of violating commitments whose implementation was never secured.

Zelensky’s Peace Mandate and the Road to 2022

There is another important development that deserves closer examination: the election of Volodymyr Zelensky in 2019.

Zelensky did not come to power promising confrontation with Russia. Quite the opposite. He won the presidential election with approximately 73% of the vote, presenting himself as an outsider determined to fight corruption, improve ordinary people’s lives, and end the war in Donbas.

His promise of peace was one of the central reasons Ukrainians supported him.

In his first months as president, Zelensky made genuine efforts to revive negotiations. His government pursued prisoner exchanges, military disengagement in selected areas, and renewed discussions concerning the Steinmeier formula, a proposed arrangement for implementing political provisions of the Minsk agreements. In December 2019, Zelensky met Putin, Merkel, and Macron in Paris in the Normandy format, where the parties agreed on further ceasefire and humanitarian measures.

The Ukrainian presidency itself reported that the leaders had agreed on steps intended to establish a comprehensive ceasefire in eastern Ukraine. These efforts produced some limited results, including prisoner exchanges and disengagement measures, but they failed to resolve the fundamental political dispute over Donbas.

Meanwhile, Ukraine continued pursuing NATO membership. The commitment had already been incorporated into Ukraine’s Constitution under Zelensky’s predecessor, Petro Poroshenko, in February 2019. In September 2020, Zelensky approved a national security strategy that reaffirmed the objective of eventual NATO membership.

Here we encounter another contradiction. Zelensky had been elected on a promise to end the war in Donbas, yet his government continued pursuing a strategic course that Russia had repeatedly identified as unacceptable.

Did Ukraine’s leadership believe that NATO membership would ultimately protect the country? Did it underestimate Russia’s determination to prevent that outcome? Or were other political pressures influencing the decisions? Whatever the explanation, the government failed to reconcile its military strategy with the diplomatic settlement necessary to end the conflict.

This is precisely the sort of contradiction that the doctrine is intended to prevent. A government should not be free to pursue strategic arrangements that create serious international dangers without clear obligations, public accountability, and consideration of the consequences.

Russian opposition to NATO expansion was neither sudden nor concealed. Moscow repeatedly expressed concerns about the expansion of Western military infrastructure toward its borders and the possibility of Ukraine joining NATO. Those concerns were known to Western governments for decades.

In December 2021, Russia formally published draft security agreements proposing limits on NATO enlargement, restrictions on military activities in Ukraine and elsewhere in Eastern Europe, and constraints on certain missile deployments. Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov described the proposals as a serious attempt to address security concerns, while Western governments rejected major provisions and offered negotiations on arms control and transparency.

The proposals were not confined to Ukraine, nor were all their conditions acceptable to NATO governments. But they were concrete negotiating positions concerning the European security order.

The diplomatic process failed, and on February 24, 2022, Russia launched a major military operation across Ukraine, attacking from several directions.

Russia’s use of force violated the prohibition on aggression under the existing international legal framework. Its subsequent territorial claims also created grave disputes concerning sovereignty and the prohibition on acquiring territory through force. But the legality of that decision does not eliminate the preceding history. It does not erase the warnings of Kennan, the diplomatic assessment of Burns, NATO’s 2008 commitment, the breakdown of Ukraine’s constitutional order in 2014, the war in Donbas, the failure of Minsk, or the collapse of the 2021 security negotiations.

The consistency of Russia’s objections to NATO expansion matters. Its territorial demands changed as the conflict developed, but preventing Ukraine’s military integration with NATO remained a central and longstanding objective. Governments respond to perceived threats according to their strategic circumstances, and the costs of war, the territory under military control, and the credibility of future security arrangements can all affect negotiating positions.

The question is not whether every Russian demand was legitimate. It is why the relevant security dispute was allowed to become so dangerous when its central elements had been known for years.

The Economic Interests Behind the Confrontation

Geopolitical confrontation does not occur in an economic vacuum. Wars redistribute wealth, reshape markets, redirect investment, and create enormous demand for military equipment. They also generate constituencies interested in maintaining the policies that support those markets.

In 2019, the RAND Corporation published Extending Russia: Competing from Advantageous Ground, a study sponsored by the US Army. The report examined ways to exploit Russian vulnerabilities through energy competition, sanctions, geopolitical pressure, and military assistance. It explicitly considered increased support for Ukraine as a means of raising the costs Russia faced, while acknowledging the possibility of Russian counter-escalation.

This is an important document because it shows that deliberately increasing economic and military pressure on Russia was being examined as an American strategic option before the February 2022 war. American strategic researchers had considered how pressure involving Ukraine might affect Russia, including the danger of escalation. Whether the war itself was an intended outcome of decisions taken in Washington requires evidence about actual policy deliberations. But the broader strategy of imposing costs on Russia was openly articulated.

And what happened to the economic relationship between Russia and Western Europe?

Before the invasion, Russia supplied substantial quantities of relatively inexpensive natural gas to European industry. Germany had developed important manufacturing relationships around access to Russian energy and export markets. The collapse of those arrangements, together with sanctions, the destruction of the Nord Stream pipelines, and the disruption of energy markets, profoundly changed Europe’s economic position.

American LNG suppliers expanded their opportunities in Europe. European industry faced higher energy costs and difficult structural adjustments, while military manufacturers benefited from increased defense procurement. Some of these difficulties preceded the war and have several causes, but the redistribution of economic opportunities is substantial.

According to the European Defence Agency, the EU’s twenty-seven member states spent approximately €418 billion on defense in 2025, with expenditure projected to rise to €454 billion in 2026. These enormous financial commitments create powerful commercial interests in the policies that sustain them.

The question is how those interests interacted with political decisions. Who advocated these policies? What economic benefits did they anticipate? What warnings did they receive about the risks? And how did corporate lobbying, political financing, and strategic planning influence the decisions that were ultimately made?

If we want to understand how the confrontation developed, these questions are not optional. They belong at the center of the investigation.

The Land Grab Behind the Rhetoric of Freedom

In my earlier article, The Land Grab in Ukraine under the Guise of War, I examined the concentration of Ukraine’s agricultural resources among oligarchs and large agribusinesses, with significant involvement by Western financial institutions.

Ukraine possesses some of the world’s most fertile agricultural land. According to the Oakland Institute’s 2023 report, War and Theft: The Takeover of Ukraine’s Agricultural Land, large agribusinesses, oligarchs, and other major landholders collectively control more than nine million hectares—over 28% of Ukraine’s arable land.

Among the major companies involved are Kernel, MHP, Astarta, UkrLandFarming, and other agribusinesses operating through complex ownership and financing structures. Foreign investment funds have acquired stakes in important Ukrainian agricultural companies, while Western financial institutions—including the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and the World Bank—have provided substantial financing.

Consider the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, an institution backed by European governments and other public shareholders. In 2021, the bank provided a $57 million loan to Kernel Group, one of Ukraine’s largest agribusiness companies. In 2023, it approved financing of up to $100 million for MHP, another major agricultural company.

The bank presents such financing as support for agriculture, employment, and economic resilience. Yet it raises a serious question about public development finance. Why should institutions supported by governments concentrate large amounts of funding in already powerful corporations while small farmers struggle to obtain capital? What happens when those corporations and financial institutions acquire increasing influence over a country’s most important economic resources?

The distinction between legal ownership and economic control is crucial. Foreign corporations are generally prohibited from directly purchasing Ukrainian agricultural land, but corporate shareholdings, long-term leases, financing arrangements, and investment structures can provide considerable economic influence without transferring legal ownership of the soil.

In 2020, President Zelensky signed legislation opening Ukraine’s agricultural land market after a longstanding moratorium. The reforms were encouraged by international financial institutions and criticized by Ukrainian farmers, scholars, and civil society organizations concerned about land concentration.

In 2023, Zelensky’s government also concluded an advisory arrangement with BlackRock Financial Markets Advisory to help design a Ukraine Development Fund for reconstruction. The agreement did not transfer Ukrainian farmland to BlackRock, and the proposed fund was subsequently suspended, with BlackRock reporting that its advisory work had ended in 2024. Nevertheless, the episode illustrates the increasingly important role international finance was expected to play in shaping Ukraine’s reconstruction.

This raises a fundamental question: What does national sovereignty mean if political independence is celebrated while economic control over a country’s most important resources becomes concentrated among oligarchs, creditors, and powerful investment institutions?

A population can possess the right to elect its government while exercising remarkably little influence over the economic decisions that determine its future. This problem is not unique to Ukraine. It is a structural feature of the relationship between concentrated financial power and contemporary politics.

The Financial Interests Behind European Policy

European politicians frequently present their policies toward Ukraine as purely moral commitments. They defend democracy, sovereignty, freedom, and the international order. Yet these decisions are made within political systems where powerful corporations, financial institutions, industry associations, and professional lobbying organizations possess substantial influence.

Defense manufacturers benefit from increased procurement. Energy companies benefit from changes in supply relationships. Investment funds seek new opportunities in reconstruction and privatization, while financial institutions influence economic policy through lending conditions and access to capital. The European Union even maintains an official Transparency Register documenting organizations that seek to influence EU decision-making.

The relationship between financial assets and political policy is particularly important. Investment funds and banks hold assets whose values depend on future economic conditions. War, territorial changes, sanctions, nationalization, and political instability can expose those assets to impairment or substantial losses. Consequently, investors may have strong interests in the political arrangements that emerge from a conflict.

Determining whether those interests produced improper influence requires examining specific financial relationships, lobbying activity, communications, political contributions, conflicts of interest, and decision-making records. Which companies and financial institutions held significant interests in Ukraine? Which governments or politicians received lobbying or political support from those interests? What policies did the investors promote, and what influence did they exercise over the decisions eventually adopted?

These questions should be investigated openly, including the role of major investment institutions such as BlackRock wherever their activities are materially relevant. The public has a right to know whether decisions presented as matters of national security were influenced by private financial interests.

The underlying problem is structural. Money buys access, access creates opportunities to influence policy, and policy can generate enormous economic advantages for those who successfully influence it. Even politicians who sincerely believe they are defending legitimate principles operate within institutions that can systematically favor policies supported by concentrated wealth.

This is one of the central arguments of Flawed Democracy and How to Fix It. The problem is not necessarily that every politician is personally corrupt. It is that the political system can reward decisions serving powerful minorities rather than the broader public. And when those decisions concern war, the consequences can be catastrophic.

The Ukrainian population pays in lives, destroyed communities, lost economic opportunities, and an uncertain future. Those who profit from military expenditure or reconstruction do not necessarily bear anything approaching the same risks. This disparity should concern anyone who believes political power must serve the many rather than the few.

The Media and the Missing History

The media has played an important role in shaping public understanding of the war. The dominant Western narrative generally begins with Russia’s invasion, emphasizes Ukraine’s right to defend itself, and presents military assistance as a necessary response. Those are important elements of the story. But what happens when the story largely neglects the preceding decades of intervention, strategic competition, NATO enlargement, and failed diplomacy?

The result is an incomplete explanation. A war becomes a morality play in which one side represents evil, the other represents good, and the responsibility of the audience is to support the good side until victory. But international conflicts rarely develop in such a simple manner.

The CIA’s historical operations in Ukraine are documented in American archival records. The warnings about NATO expansion were recorded by American diplomats. The Nuland-Pyatt conversation became public. RAND openly examined ways to impose costs on Russia, while the suffering of civilians in Donbas was documented by international monitors. These facts were available, yet they rarely occupied the same prominent position in public discussion as the events of February 2022.

The most consequential distortion does not always require inventing a false statement. Sometimes it is enough to omit the history that gives an event its meaning.

Commercial pressures, political assumptions, reliance on official sources, and established foreign-policy narratives can produce remarkably uniform interpretations of complicated events. A population repeatedly told that its government is defending freedom may never encounter the evidence necessary to evaluate the broader strategic objectives involved. Without that evidence, democratic accountability becomes impossible, because citizens cannot judge the wisdom of decisions they do not understand.

This raises another question of responsibility. Should journalists and media executives face scrutiny when they knowingly participate in campaigns of deliberate deception that support unlawful conduct?

The historical precedent is instructive. At Nuremberg, Julius Streicher, the publisher of Der Stürmer, was convicted of crimes against humanity for his role in inciting persecution and extermination. The tribunal also acquitted broadcaster Hans Fritzsche, finding that the evidence did not establish his criminal responsibility.

The distinction matters. Criminal responsibility cannot rest merely on reporting an incorrect fact or expressing an unpopular political opinion. But journalism does not provide immunity for participation in independently established crimes, including criminal incitement.

An international investigation into Ukraine should therefore examine the role of organized information operations, knowingly fabricated evidence, and any conduct that may have crossed existing legal boundaries. The objective must be accountability for identifiable actions, not punishment for dissent or disagreement.

A democracy cannot function without truthful public information.

There is no democracy without truth.

The Peace Negotiations That Were Not Completed

Within weeks of the February 2022 military operation, Russian and Ukrainian negotiators began discussing a possible settlement. The negotiations culminated in the Istanbul framework, which contemplated Ukrainian neutrality, security guarantees, restrictions on foreign military deployments, and arrangements concerning disputed territories.

In April 2024, Samuel Charap and Sergey Radchenko published a detailed reconstruction of these talks in Foreign Affairs. Their investigation demonstrated that the negotiations had progressed considerably, although no final treaty had been agreed. Important differences remained over security guarantees, military restrictions, territory, and implementation.

Then came Boris Johnson.

In November 2023, Davyd Arakhamia, who headed Ukraine’s negotiating delegation, described Johnson’s visit to Kyiv after the Istanbul discussions. According to Arakhamia, Johnson urged Ukrainian leaders not to conclude an agreement with Russia and encouraged them to continue fighting.

Arakhamia also explained that the Ukrainian delegation had not possessed a completed treaty ready for signature and that Kyiv remained concerned about the reliability of Russian commitments and the absence of sufficient security guarantees.

Those details explain why the negotiations remained unresolved, but they do not eliminate the significance of Johnson’s intervention. At a moment when Ukraine and Russia were actively exploring a settlement, the British prime minister encouraged continued military resistance.

What responsibility should a political leader bear for encouraging a war to continue when a possible diplomatic settlement is being discussed?

The same question applies to Joe Biden and Antony Blinken. The Biden administration possessed enormous influence over Ukraine’s military capabilities and diplomatic options. American participation was also central to whether the Istanbul framework could receive credible international security guarantees.

Did Washington make every reasonable effort to transform the negotiations into an enforceable settlement, or did American policymakers consider continued military resistance preferable because of broader strategic objectives concerning Russia?

Those are questions that require documentary answers. A serious international investigation should examine diplomatic correspondence, internal intelligence assessments, communications among American, British, and Ukrainian officials, and the security guarantees considered during the negotiations. The inquiry should identify who advised the continuation of hostilities, on what grounds, what alternatives were considered, and what consequences were anticipated.

I believe Johnson, Biden, and Blinken should be required to account publicly for their decisions. The same obligation should apply to Zelensky and his senior advisers. Where evidence establishes crimes under applicable international law, prosecution should follow. Where decisions were reckless, dishonest, or politically irresponsible without constituting criminal offenses, political and democratic accountability should follow.

A public office is not a license to make decisions with enormous human consequences and then disappear behind the abstraction of national policy.

Responsibility belongs to the individuals who exercise power. That principle must be central to the doctrine.

Trump’s Failure to Deliver Peace

Donald Trump recognized something important during his election campaign: the continuation of this war was not inevitable, and American policy could be changed. He promised to negotiate a settlement, restore communications with Moscow, and reconsider the open-ended military commitment inherited from the Biden administration.

But recognizing a problem is not the same as solving it.

Trump returned to the White House in January 2025. His administration pursued negotiations, temporarily suspended assistance to Ukraine, and attempted to pressure the parties toward a ceasefire. Yet the conflict continued.

The fundamental issue is American leverage. Ukraine depends heavily on Western intelligence, military equipment, financing, logistical support, and satellite communications. These capabilities significantly influence Ukraine’s ability to sustain military operations.

The extent of this dependence became particularly visible in October 2026, when restrictions affecting SpaceX’s military-grade Starshield service disrupted Ukrainian drone and communications capabilities. Reuters reported that officials traced the order to slow the service to the White House, although the administration disputed responsibility for the restrictions.

The controversy continued. Trump later stated that Elon Musk had restored the service, but Ukrainian military sources told Reuters that important restrictions remained in place. The episode demonstrated the extent to which American decisions and privately operated communications infrastructure could affect Ukraine’s battlefield capabilities.

If Washington can materially influence Ukraine’s battlefield capabilities through decisions concerning intelligence, communications, and military assistance, it possesses considerable influence over Kyiv’s negotiating options.

And influence creates responsibility.

Trump could have made a lasting settlement the organizing principle of American policy rather than allowing military assistance and diplomatic pressure to alternate without producing a durable agreement. He has not delivered the peace he promised.

The latest developments illustrate both his remaining leverage and the limits of his approach. In November 2026, the United States announced another round of trilateral negotiations involving Ukraine and Russia, scheduled for November 10–11 in Abu Dhabi. Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner are expected to lead the American delegation, while discussions with European governments concern security arrangements, reconstruction, and the wider European security framework.

At the same time, the Democratic victory in Congress threatens to revive the familiar cycle. One administration expands military assistance, another threatens to reduce it, negotiations begin and fail, and military operations continue. Then a new electoral majority promises a different policy. Meanwhile, Ukrainians and Russians continue dying.

The disagreement between Washington’s political factions also demonstrates how dependent Ukraine has become on decisions taken far beyond its own borders. The United States can increase military assistance, restrict it, restore it, or attach conditions to its continuation. Each decision changes Ukraine’s strategic options.

Yet the central question remains unresolved: what political settlement can establish lasting peace?

A conflict of this magnitude cannot depend indefinitely on the personalities and electoral fortunes of American presidents. It requires a coherent and enforceable international framework.

That is what I propose.

The Missing Principle: Who Is Really Responsible?

Consider what we have established.

American intelligence agencies conducted operations intended to influence Ukraine’s political development during the Cold War. After independence, Washington invested substantial resources in Ukrainian civil society and political institutions while favoring the country’s integration with the West. American diplomats became involved in discussions about Ukraine’s future leadership during Maidan, while NATO promised eventual Ukrainian membership despite repeated warnings that doing so could produce a dangerous security confrontation.

The constitutional compromise of February 2014 collapsed, the war in Donbas followed, and the Minsk agreements were never fully implemented. European leaders subsequently acknowledged that the diplomatic process had provided Ukraine time to strengthen its military capabilities.

In 2019, American strategic researchers examined how increased military assistance to Ukraine could impose costs on Russia while potentially provoking escalation. In December 2021, Russia submitted formal proposals concerning European security arrangements, but no comprehensive agreement emerged. Then came the February 2022 war.

Meanwhile, enormous financial interests developed around military procurement, energy markets, agricultural resources, international investment, and reconstruction. Even after the war began, serious peace negotiations failed to produce a settlement.

What conclusion should we draw from this history?

My conclusion is that American policymakers and their NATO partners bear primary political responsibility for deliberately developing a strategic confrontation with Russia despite repeated warnings about its consequences. Successive Ukrainian leaders bear responsibility for knowingly participating in policies that increased the danger to their own country.

That is a judgment about the creation of the confrontation. Russia’s subsequent military decisions raise separate questions under the laws governing aggression and warfare. Those questions do not erase the responsibility of officials who made the preceding political decisions.

The evidence also supports a deeper criticism of the international system. We have become accustomed to treating geopolitical conflicts as though they involve only two countries: the host country and the country accused of threatening it. The outside power that financed political influence, supplied military capabilities, encouraged strategic alignment, and helped create the confrontation then presents itself as an innocent third party.

It is merely helping. It is defending democracy, protecting sovereignty, and assisting a weaker country against aggression.

This is the central deception that a doctrine of reciprocal strategic security must expose.

The true relationship involves three actors. The intervening power pursues strategic objectives against a rival. The host country provides territory, political cooperation, or military infrastructure. The threatened country responds to what it perceives as a developing security danger.

Yet when the confrontation turns into war, the intervening power presents itself as the host country’s benevolent protector, while the host population bears much of the destruction.

This arrangement creates an extraordinary moral hazard. A distant power can pursue geopolitical objectives while transferring a substantial part of the military and human cost to another country. Its own politicians may face limited personal consequences, its financial institutions may continue operating, and its media organizations may continue presenting the confrontation through a narrative in which the outside power bears little responsibility.

Meanwhile, the people living on the battlefield pay the price.

That is precisely the relationship we must change.

The Doctrine of Reciprocal Strategic Security

The doctrine I propose begins with a simple principle: no country has the right to pursue its security or geopolitical advantage by deliberately creating a threatening military confrontation on another country’s territory.

The rule must apply equally to everyone. It must also recognize that national sovereignty carries obligations toward the population living within a country’s borders, and that political leaders must be personally responsible for the consequences of their decisions.

We do not need another complicated international treaty filled with principles that governments can interpret however they please. We need clear rules that ordinary citizens can understand and that international institutions are capable of enforcing.

1. Restraint must replace the reliance on deterrence

Deterrence attempts to preserve peace by threatening an adversary with retaliation. Military alliances, strategic weapons, and the possibility of devastating counterattacks are intended to discourage aggression.

But deterrence has a dangerous weakness. It allows governments to continue building military threats against one another while assuming that nobody will cross the final line. The entire system depends on political leaders correctly calculating the danger, interpreting one another’s intentions, and remaining restrained at every stage of an escalating confrontation.

In a world armed with nuclear weapons, that is an extraordinary gamble.

Restraint begins earlier. Instead of threatening retaliation when a confrontation becomes dangerous, it establishes rules intended to prevent the confrontation from developing in the first place.

That is the foundation of the doctrine.

2. Great powers must respect reciprocal buffer zones

The central rule is straightforward. Countries bordering a major military power should remain militarily neutral or voluntarily align with that neighboring power. They should not join a hostile military alliance or permit their territory to become a platform for military operations directed against their powerful neighbor.

Belarus and Ukraine, for example, could maintain peaceful economic and diplomatic relationships with Europe while remaining outside NATO. By the same principle, countries bordering the United States should not become military platforms for hostile powers, and neighboring states of China should not be used to establish threatening military capabilities against China.

The rule must operate reciprocally. A great power receiving the protection of a neutral buffer zone must respect that country’s political independence and refrain from using its position to dominate its domestic affairs.

This is not a demand that smaller countries surrender their economic or cultural independence. It is a recognition that military alignment is different from ordinary international cooperation. A country may trade with whomever it wishes without becoming a military instrument directed against its neighbor.

The aim is to remove one of the most dangerous sources of confrontation between nuclear powers.

3. Foreign political interference must be prohibited

No foreign government may organize the coercive overthrow of another country’s elected government, finance armed political subversion, or use another country’s territory to establish prohibited military capabilities against a third state.

The same rule must apply to intelligence agencies, covert political operations, and foreign-directed campaigns intended to destabilize another country’s constitutional order.

Governments must resolve disputes through diplomacy rather than covert operations, political manipulation, and military pressure.

A government that knowingly allows its territory or institutions to be used for such operations must also bear responsibility. It cannot claim innocence merely because the financing, weapons, or strategic objectives came from abroad.

4. Sovereignty carries a duty to protect

Every government has an obligation to protect the fundamental rights and security of the people living within its borders, including ethnic, linguistic, and religious minorities.

Territorial integrity is not a license to persecute a population. A government that systematically violates the rights of a community or fails to protect it from serious violence must be required to provide effective remedies.

When a population suffers grave and persistent violence or persecution, the international community must act. Formal complaints must be investigated, violations must be stopped, and protection must be provided.

But what happens if governments ignore those complaints, international institutions fail, and the violence continues?

Under this proposed doctrine, a neighboring state may undertake protective military intervention as an exceptional last resort when serious danger has been established through verifiable evidence, peaceful remedies have failed, and the action is necessary to protect the endangered population.

Where the existing state can no longer provide lasting protection, the affected population must also have a credible path to determine its future political status. That may mean autonomy, independence, or voluntarily joining another state. Such a decision must reflect the freely established will of the population rather than the unilateral choice of the intervening government.

No population should be condemned to indefinite suffering simply because international institutions are unable or unwilling to provide effective protection.

5. Political leaders must bear personal responsibility

Political office does not provide immunity from international crimes. Those who knowingly organize unlawful foreign intervention, manufacture threats to justify aggression, or participate in criminal operations causing widespread suffering must answer for their decisions.

The same principle applies to military commanders, intelligence officials, financiers, corporate executives, and other individuals who knowingly participate in such crimes.

Responsibility must be established through independent investigation and, where criminal conduct is proven, through a fair judicial process. Elected office and claims of national interest must not shield an individual from prosecution.

And responsibility must never be transferred indiscriminately to entire nations. An American farmer does not bear personal guilt for decisions taken by the American president. The same applies to Russian, Ukrainian, and every other population.

Responsibility belongs to those who actually made the decisions.

6. The rules must apply equally to everyone

International institutions must have the authority to investigate prohibited foreign intervention, establish responsibility, require preventive measures, and refer criminal conduct to competent courts.

Their work must not be paralyzed indefinitely because the accused country is powerful or possesses a veto.

The present international system is poorly suited to this task. The UN Security Council gives permanent veto power to five states—the United States, Britain, France, Russia, and China—while Africa and Latin America have no permanent representation. International financial institutions also distribute influence unequally, often giving wealthy countries considerably greater power over decisions that affect poorer nations.

A doctrine intended to protect the world cannot depend entirely on institutions that may be unable to act when powerful states disagree.

International institutions should provide impartial investigation and accountability, but their political paralysis must not leave endangered populations without protection. Nor may any state use their weakness as an unlimited excuse for military intervention.

The rules must apply to America, Russia, China, and every other country without exception.

They must also apply to past conflicts where existing laws may have been violated. New rules will govern future conduct, while investigations into earlier events can establish historical responsibility and identify crimes already prohibited at the time.

The purpose is simple: to prevent another Ukraine by establishing responsibility before a political confrontation develops into a military catastrophe.

Ukraine Must Be the First Test

A doctrine of international responsibility cannot remain an abstract philosophical exercise. It must address the events that revealed the need for it, and Ukraine should become one of the first major cases for a comprehensive international investigation.

The investigation should begin with the history of foreign strategic involvement and trace the relevant decisions through Maidan, NATO policy, the war in Donbas, the failure of Minsk, the 2021 security negotiations, and the opportunities for peace after February 2022.

It should examine the actions of American, European, Russian, and Ukrainian officials, without assuming that their responsibilities are identical. It should investigate whether political or financial interests improperly influenced decisions concerning military assistance, sanctions, reconstruction, investment, and negotiations.

The public should be able to see the evidence, including documents held by governments, intelligence services, international institutions, and private organizations materially involved in the decisions under examination.

I believe the decisions of Johnson, Biden, Blinken, Zelensky, and other key political figures deserve particular scrutiny. The same applies to financial institutions and corporations whose interests may have influenced the policies that sustained the confrontation.

Where crimes under existing law are established, the responsible individuals should face prosecution. Where political decisions were dishonest or reckless without constituting criminal offenses, the findings should still become part of the historical record.

The objective is not revenge against Americans, British citizens, Russians, or Ukrainians. It is accountability for the people who actually exercised political power.

Ordinary citizens should not be punished for the decisions of their governments. But officials who knowingly commit crimes should not escape responsibility by claiming merely to have acted in the national interest.

A democratic mandate is not a license to commit crimes.

How to End the War in Ukraine

A durable settlement cannot merely freeze the military confrontation while preserving the political arrangements that produced it. It must address the fundamental security dispute.

Ukraine’s future military status must be resolved through enforceable arrangements. Under the doctrine I propose, Ukraine would remain militarily neutral, outside hostile military blocs, and free from foreign offensive deployments directed against Russia. In return, its political independence, domestic self-government, and right to maintain peaceful economic relations with Europe and Russia would be respected.

The rights of Russian-speaking Ukrainians and other minorities must be protected, while Ukraine’s national language, culture, and political independence remain secure.

The unresolved territorial disputes require negotiated arrangements that address the rights and security of the populations living in the affected regions. A settlement may require painful territorial compromises, and political leaders must examine those possibilities seriously rather than assume that continued warfare will necessarily restore every contested territory.

International monitoring, humanitarian arrangements, prisoner exchanges, reconstruction, and credible procedures for resolving future disputes must form part of the settlement.

There must also be accountability for the decisions that brought the war about.

But accountability should serve prevention rather than vengeance. The priority is to stop the killing and prevent another generation from inheriting the same confrontation.

A Doctrine for the 21st Century

The war in Ukraine should be a warning to the entire world. It demonstrates what happens when geopolitical rivalry is allowed to override the interests of ordinary people. It exposes the consequences of political interference, failed diplomacy, economic dependency, and political institutions that reward confrontation rather than cooperation. Above all, it reveals a fundamental weakness in our understanding of international responsibility: we generally begin assigning blame only after military force has been used. By then, the political failure that produced the war has already occurred.

The Doctrine of Reciprocal Strategic Security begins much earlier. Unlike conventional security doctrines based largely on deterrence, it is founded on restraint. Rather than continually building military threats and relying on the fear of retaliation to prevent war, it establishes clear rules intended to prevent dangerous confrontations from developing in the first place. Reciprocal buffer zones, respect for political independence, protection of minorities, and the prohibition of hostile foreign interference are not merely diplomatic ideals. They are practical principles intended to remove the conditions that lead nations into conflict.

The doctrine also changes how we understand responsibility. A geopolitical confrontation often involves three actors: an intervening power pursuing strategic objectives, a host government allowing its country to become involved, and a threatened state responding to the developing danger. All three have responsibilities, and none should be allowed to hide behind the familiar language of national security, sovereignty, or international solidarity. Most importantly, responsibility must ultimately be traced to individuals: the politicians who made the decisions, the officials who organized the operations, and those who knowingly financed or facilitated unlawful conduct. Ordinary citizens should not bear collective guilt for decisions taken in their names.

The international community must develop mechanisms capable of investigating these decisions, establishing responsibility, and preventing prohibited conduct before another catastrophe occurs. Such mechanisms must not depend on the goodwill of powerful governments or be paralyzed by their political interests. The same principles must apply to every country, without geopolitical privileges, selective standards, or exemptions for powerful states.

Ukraine should be among the first cases examined. The United States and European governments must account for their roles in developing the confrontation, while Ukrainian leaders must answer for their decisions concerning military alignment, minority protection, and failed diplomacy. Financial institutions, corporations, and other actors whose interests may have influenced these policies must also be investigated. Where crimes are established, the individuals responsible must face justice. Political office, corporate influence, and claims of national interest must never provide immunity for criminal conduct.

But the larger objective is not punishment. It is to change the political relationships that repeatedly turn neighbors into enemies. There is something profoundly wrong with an international system in which countries are encouraged to regard one another as permanent threats, while political leaders present confrontation as evidence of strength.

Consider the relationship between people. A successful marriage does not depend on one partner constantly provoking, humiliating, or attempting to dominate the other. It depends on compromise, mutual understanding, shared interests, and recognition that the well-being of one partner is connected to the well-being of the other.

The same applies to nations. Croatians and Serbs do not need to hate one another because of historical grievances. Ukrainians and Russians do not have to remain permanent enemies, nor must the United States and China organize their relationship around an endless struggle for global dominance. Nations have far more to gain from cooperation, trade, cultural exchange, and mutual prosperity than from constantly preparing for the next war.

The underlying problem is institutional. Our political systems frequently reward conflict. Nationalist movements mobilize followers through fear, military industries benefit from arms procurement, and governments justify extraordinary powers by pointing to external enemies. Meanwhile, ordinary people bear the cost. This is closely connected with the central argument of my book, Flawed Democracy and How to Fix It. We do not need to change human nature to create a more cooperative society. We need to change the relationships between people by changing the institutions and incentives governing those relationships.

The same principle applies internationally. A country that benefits from peaceful cooperation with its neighbors has reasons to preserve those relationships. A country encouraged to become the strategic instrument of a distant power may expose itself to dangers that the distant power does not have to endure. The purpose of the Doctrine of Reciprocal Strategic Security is to replace these destructive incentives with rules that make peaceful coexistence more advantageous than confrontation, while holding those who deliberately violate them personally responsible.

We have spent centuries developing doctrines for winning wars. It is time to develop one that prevents the conditions that lead to them.

Because lasting peace does not come from defeating every enemy. It comes from changing the rules that turn neighbors into enemies.

Sources and Further Reading

Current developments and diplomacy

Historical intervention and NATO

Human rights, minority protection, and international law

Economic interests and political influence

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