Safely removed from the horrors of war, it’s easy to frame Ukraine’s struggle purely in ideological terms. Times columnist and former Conservative MP Matthew Parris, a rare voice of British conservative realism, offers a sobering corrective. Two years ago, he captured the sheer horror of the conflict. The Russian military sends “over the top a wave of their youngest and least experienced recruits…to mop up the Ukrainian bullets”. Once the rookies are mown down and the Ukrainians running out of ammunition, Russia sends in its more “valuable” soldiers.
Meanwhile a Ukrainian private recalls an exchange of corpses. “Four truckloads of Russian dead were swapped for three truckloads of fallen Ukrainians”. The private said many of his fallen comrades were accomplished university graduates.
Parris accepts estimates of 200,000 cumulative deaths. And it’s why he cautions against cosplaying the conflict from afar – “good slavs” vs. “bad slavs”.
Ideology vs practicality
But two years on, armchair generals still frame the contest as a moral crusade rather than a brutal war of attrition. Canadian cartoonist Michael de Adder was retweeted approvingly for comparing Donald Trump to Neville Chamberlain. Invoking the historical spectre of appeasement dismisses any talk of negotiation. This infantile idealism ignores the obvious. As Parris writes more recently, “sooner or later a deal over Ukraine must come”.
Believing this doesn’t diminish Ukraine’s moral case. Emmanuel Macron succinctly outlines that Russia is the aggressor and Ukraine is the victim. And Western powers were right “to help Ukraine and sanction Russia”. But what are the outcomes of continuing this war? Either we keep funding the slaughter of young men in a stalemate. Or we step it up a notch. Follow de Adder’s logic and the result is World War Three.
Foreign policy in 2022
Western solidarity in early 2022 was impressive. And it took Russia and its ragtag allies by surprise. It marked a decisive shift from Obama’s impotence over Crimea in 2014 and the unenforced “red line” in Syria.
Ukraine’s subsequent early victories were thrilling. The media understandably delighted in the idea that Russia had horribly miscalculated. And perhaps it would even lose territory. But as the conflict drags on, scale asserts itself. Russia’s military may be outdated and inefficient but size matters.
Why realism?
Realism must take precedence. Putin is a thug and a kleptocrat but not an ideologue. Russia is a broken and corrupt state. It doesn’t represent an existential threat. Many recoil from the idea that Russia will tangibly benefit from its invasion. That it will likely gain Ukrainian land in any negotiated peace. But Putin’s grander ambitions of marching on Kiev have been conclusively quashed. As has his autonomy to meddle in “Greater Russia” as he sees fit.
The war has inflicted immense damage on Russia. Sanctions have crippled key industries. The country’s brightest minds have fled. Its military has suffered catastrophic losses, forcing the Kremlin into desperate recruitment drives. Even at home, Putin’s grip has shown cracks, most notably in the brief but dramatic Wagner mutiny.
A realist end to the conflict must not erase this humiliation. This is why the relativism of Trump’s inner circle is so concerning. That was laid bare in the now-infamous Oval Office meeting. Frustration with President Zelensky’s grandstanding and hesitation over a minerals deal boiled over into outright hostility. There may be valid concerns about Ukraine’s leadership, but attacking Zelensky so publicly and without qualification suggests the administration sees no clear right or wrong in this war.
Relativism vs realism
David Sacks was one of the biggest cheerleaders of this verbal assault. The White House AI and crypto czar is a relentless critic of Zelensky. He supports the foreign policy philosophy of Jeffrey Sachs and John Mearsheimer, traditionally figures of the left. The latter’s “offensive realism” argues great powers are compelled to act aggressively to ensure their own survival. Meanwhile Sachs tends to believe US foreign policy has been generally pernicious and overreaching.
Both are essentially sympathetic to the concept of “might is right”. Bigger powers are entitled to assert their dominance over smaller ones. Yet they apply this in an explicitly anti-Western context. Russia and China always have just grievances while the West is persistently impetuous and overzealous.
It’s very different to the realism espoused by someone like Elbridge Colby. Currently nominated as Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, Colby’s approach is rooted in strategic pragmatism. US military resources are limited. It must preserve those resources for the true great power conflict with China. Putin is an iniquitous autocrat. But his war is a vain land grab rather than a threat to US hegemony.
Traditional conservative realism
Colby’s realism is a return to a recognisable tradition in the Republican party. The neoconservativism of George W Bush was the aberration. That group of thinkers believe in a muscular foreign policy, consistently confronting tyranny whether it directly threatens US interests or not. But that philosophy is discredited by misadventures in the Middle East following 9/11. Former adherents like current Secretary of State Marco Rubio accept its demise.
This realism may make us morally uncomfortable. But it stems from essential truths. War has huge costs and unintended consequences. On his recent visit to Ukraine, Parris says he “cannot overstate the detestation of Russia, the shock and indignation encountered everywhere”. Yet he “cannot understate the difference between what Ukrainians want and what they expect. They had a growing recognition that a settlement…must come”.
We must hope that these realist instincts prevail in the Trump administration. That war is always an undesirable last resort and that the US cannot continue to act as the world’s policeman. Nevertheless, no moral equivalence should be drawn. A peace deal must recognise Russia’s transgression.
Strategic realism
This separates strategic realism from the thinking championed by Sacks and his allies like Tulsi Gabbard. They do not merely reject “forever wars” on practical grounds. They see all former administrations as fundamentally corrupt, drawing moral equivalence between Western interventionism and authoritarian expansionism. They find common ground with figures like Jeremy Corbyn, united in the belief that US power is always and everywhere destructive.
Foreign policy implications
And if the U.S. retreats into a posture of indifference, allowing other great powers to act with impunity, what does that mean for NATO and other US allies? And what message does it send to Xi Jinping as he looks across the Taiwan Strait?
