{"id":1673284,"date":"2022-10-05T06:36:07","date_gmt":"2022-10-05T10:36:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1673284"},"modified":"2022-10-05T06:37:44","modified_gmt":"2022-10-05T10:37:44","slug":"elon-musk-is-right-the-russia-ukraine-war-needs-to-end","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/elon-musk-is-right-the-russia-ukraine-war-needs-to-end\/","title":{"rendered":"Elon Musk Is Right, The Russia-Ukraine War Needs To End"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">20<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Felon-musk-is-right-the-russia-ukraine-war-needs-to-end%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1673284&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><div><\/div>\n<p>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\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.businessinsider.com\/ukraine-ambassador-elon-musk-russia-crimea-twitter-poll-response-2022-10?utm_medium=referral&amp;utm_source=yahoo.com\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">a pro-Putin stooge<\/a>\u00a0by guardians of the Official Narrative. His suggested peace plan was dismissed out of hand as \u201cRussia-friendly\u201d and, as The Washington Post\u2019s\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/politics\/2022\/10\/04\/elon-musk-draws-fire-russia-friendly-ukraine-proposal\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Olivier Knox put it<\/a>, \u201cdesigned to lock in Russian territorial gains.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>But Musk\u2019s idea shouldn\u2019t 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\u2019s time for the war in Ukraine to come to an end. One need not be \u201cRussia-friendly\u201d 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.<\/p>\n<p>Given the options, the responsible thing to do is think through how a settlement might be reached \u2014 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.<\/p>\n<p>Musk proposed a four-part deal: Re-do the elections in the recently annexed areas of eastern Ukraine, this time under United Nations supervision; leave Crimea as part of Russia; assure a water supply to Crimea; Ukraine agrees to remain neutral.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<span class=\"1t86GHucL7\"><\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"500\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">Ukraine-Russia Peace:<\/p>\n<p>\u2013 Redo elections of annexed regions under UN supervision. Russia leaves if that is will of the people.<\/p>\n<p>\u2013 Crimea formally part of Russia, as it has been since 1783 (until Khrushchev\u2019s mistake).<\/p>\n<p>\u2013 Water supply to Crimea assured.<\/p>\n<p>\u2013 Ukraine remains neutral.<\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Elon Musk (@elonmusk) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/elonmusk\/status\/1576969255031296000?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">October 3, 2022<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><\/span>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<p>The plan isn\u2019t perfect, obviously, but it\u2019s a far cry from Kremlin propaganda. It recognizes something that sharp observers of the conflict could see even before Russia\u2019s invasion in late February: With its current borders, Ukraine can have territorial integrity or political independence, but it can\u2019t have both.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>My friend Mario Loyola\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/2022\/02\/04\/in-russia-crisis-ukraine-should-trade-land-for-independence\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">made precisely that argument<\/a>\u00a0in these pages weeks before the war began, noting that Ukraine\u2019s present-day borders date from 1954, when Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev \u201cgave\u201d 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.<\/p>\n<p>But those borders were never meant to be \u201creal.\u201d When the Soviet Union collapsed decades later, the United States recognized the situation was untenable and helped arrange for the return of Ukraine\u2019s nuclear arsenal to Moscow and broker an agreement for Russia to retain access to its Black Sea Fleet in Sevastopol. But even these adjustments didn\u2019t create a stable situation, as Loyola writes:<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote\">\n<p>A glance at the map of 1991 should have made people wonder whether Ukraine, in these artificially enlarged borders, could even be a viable state. It wasn\u2019t at all clear that Ukraine would be strong enough to maintain both political independence and territorial integrity given the weight of vital Russian interests involved.\u201cRussia is never as strong as she looks, Russia is never as weak as she looks,\u201d the saying goes, and the map of 1991 reflected a state of Russian weakness that was bound to prove fleeting.<\/p>\n<p>Ukraine had no problem controlling the territory as long as it accepted Moscow\u2019s control. But the moment it definitively broke away from Moscow in 2014, it immediately lost control of those areas that were most vital to Russian interests, and nobody with an even minimal sense of Russian and Ukrainian history can pretend to have been taken by surprise.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>All of that to say, freezing Ukraine\u2019s 1991 border in place all but guaranteed a future conflict, which is now upon us. The Biden administration could have responded by insisting that Ukraine and Russia work out a negotiated settlement that addressed the territorial problems everyone knew had been festering for decades. Instead, Biden opted to throw our lot in with Ukraine to the tune of\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.defensenews.com\/congress\/2022\/09\/16\/how-a-republican-rift-on-ukraine-could-complicate-future-aid-packages\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">$67 billion and counting<\/a>, making Ukraine a\u00a0<em>de facto<\/em>\u00a0member of NATO and guaranteeing that the war can grind on indefinitely \u2014 or escalate into a wider, possibly nuclear war.<\/p>\n<p>Certainly, absent U.S. funding and support, Ukraine would have long ago negotiated a political settlement that involved some adjustment of its borders or some assurances of its neutrality. Indeed, negotiations early on in the war, back in March, brokered by Israel and Turkey were predicated on just such an exchange: In return for guarantees of Ukrainian neutrality (meaning Ukraine would never join NATO), Russian forces would withdraw from Ukraine. Those talks broke down in early April around the time then-British Prime Minister Boris Johnson\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2022\/04\/09\/world\/europe\/boris-johnson-kyiv-ukraine-aid.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">made a surprise visit to Kyiv<\/a>\u00a0and met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.<\/p>\n<p>Now, more than seven months into the fighting, the Biden administration seems intent on closing down any possible remaining off-ramps that could bring about an end to the war. We can\u2019t know for certain that the U.S. was behind the sabotage of the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines (although it\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/2022\/09\/30\/its-not-crazy-to-think-biden-sabotaged-nord-stream-to-deepen-us-involvement-in-the-ukraine-war\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">makes more sense than assuming Russia did it<\/a>), but the attack is just the sort of thing that risks widening the war beyond Ukraine and rendering a bilateral negotiated settlement impossible.<\/p>\n<p>Is it possible Biden doesn\u2019t\u00a0<em>want<\/em>\u00a0this war to end in a compromise between Moscow and Kyiv? Is the view\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/2022\/03\/11\/unlike-past-conflicts-with-russia-escalation-in-ukraine-risks-pulling-the-west-into-war\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">expressed back in March<\/a>\u00a0by Secretary of State Antony Blinken, that the war will continue until Russian forces are driven from a totally intact and politically independent Ukraine, the end state that the White House is working toward? If so, it would suggest that a negotiated peace isn\u2019t really what the Biden administration wants out of this, but rather something more like regime change in Moscow, which is exactly what Blinken\u2019s scenario would portend.<\/p>\n<p>If that\u2019s the goal, then something along the lines of Musk\u2019s peace plan is exactly what you\u00a0<em>wouldn\u2019t<\/em>\u00a0want. It\u2019s the sort of thing you\u2019d want to denigrate as Kremlin propaganda or the rantings of a deranged billionaire. You certainly wouldn\u2019t want anyone to take it seriously, because then ordinary people might get the idea that there\u2019s a way out of this war that doesn\u2019t involve escalation and that prevents the U.S. from getting drawn in deeper than we already are.<\/p>\n<p>But if your goal was for something other than regime change in Moscow, say, for an end to the fighting and a settlement that both Ukraine and Russia could live with, then you\u2019d want to start thinking about what such a settlement might entail. And it might end up looking a lot like what Musk threw out there, to the immediate consternation and fury of the corporate press. Imagine that.<\/p>\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator\" \/>\n<p>\n  John Daniel Davidson is a senior editor at The Federalist. His writing has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the Claremont Review of Books, The New York Post, and elsewhere. Follow him on Twitter, @johnddavidson.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>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<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":518,"featured_media":2315279,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1673284","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1673284","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/518"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1673284"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1673284\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2315279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1673284"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1673284"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1673284"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}