[Peace-discuss] Even RAND Corporation says to "[avoid] a long war" with Russia via Ukraine

[J.B. Nicholson]

https://www.rt.com/news/570618-rand-came-up-with-solution/

Titled "As the Pentagon's favorite think tank calls for a swift end to the Ukraine 
conflict, is the mood shifting in Washington?" Felix Livshitz points out that even 
RAND Corporation is saying to end the war with Russia via Ukraine.

> The RAND Corporation, a highly influential elite national security think tank
> funded directly by the Pentagon, has published a landmark report stating that
> prolonging the proxy war is actively harming the US and its allies and warning
> Washington that it should avoid “a protracted conflict” in Ukraine.
> 
> What are the US' interests in Ukraine
> 
> The report[1] has an unequivocal title, “Avoiding a long war: US policy and the
> trajectory of the Russia-Ukraine conflict,” which provides a strong indication as
> to its contents.
> 
> It starts by stating that the fighting represents “the most significant interstate
> conflict in decades, and its evolution will have major consequences” for
> Washington, which includes US “interests” being actively harmed. The report makes
> it very clear that while Ukrainians have been doing the fighting, and their cities
> have been “flattened” and “economy decimated,” these “interests” are “not
> synonymous” with Kiev’s.
> 
> The US ending its financial, humanitarian and particularly military support
> promptly would cause Ukraine to completely collapse, and RAND cites several
> reasons why doing so would be sensible, not least because a Ukrainian victory is
> regarded as both “improbable” and “unlikely,” due to Russian “resolve,” and its
> military mobilization having “rectified the manpower deficit that enabled
> Ukraine’s success in the Kharkiv counteroffensive.”

[1] https://www.rand.org/pubs/perspectives/PEA2510-1.html

Later the RAND report discourages nuclear war with Russia:

> The think tank believes the Biden administration “has ample reason to make the
> prevention of Russian use of nuclear weapons a paramount priority." In particular,
> it should seek to avoid a “direct nuclear exchange” with Moscow, a “direct
> conflict with Russia”, or wider “NATO-Russia war.”

Livshitz' essay concludes:

> All these factors make “avoiding a long war…the highest priority after minimizing
> escalation risks,” so RAND recommends the US “take steps that make an end to the
> conflict over the medium term more likely,” including “issuing assurances
> regarding the country’s neutrality,” something that Moscow had requested before
> the conflict began, to deaf ears, as well as “sanctions relief for Russia.”
> 
> However, the report warns against a “dramatic, overnight shift in US policy,” as
> this would be “politically impossible – both domestically and with allies,”
> instead recommending the development of “instruments” to bring the war to a
> “negotiated end,” and “socializing them with Ukraine and with US allies” in
> advance to lessen the blow. This process should be started quickly though, as “the
> alternative is a long war that poses major challenges for the US, Ukraine, and the
> rest of the world.”
> 
> What this proposal ignores is that Western leaders have consistently proven they
> cannot be trusted to respect or adhere to treaties they have signed and brokered
> with Russia, such as the Minsk Accords, which former German Chancellor Angela
> Merkel has admitted were never intended to be implemented, but rather to buy time
> for Kiev.


The signing of the Minsk accords has been confirmed as a sham -- a way to give 
Ukraine time to build up its military -- at least 3 times I know of by former German 
Chancellor Merkel, former Ukraine President Poroshenko, and former UK Prime Minister 
Johnson.