Dem
51
GOP
49
Russian president Vladimir Putin sat for an interview over the weekend that aired yesterday. And in it, he said "We are ready to negotiate with everyone involved about acceptable solutions" to the war in Ukraine.
At this point, let us climb into the time machine and travel back to February 1865. With the Southern war effort going poorly, Confederate President Jefferson Davis dispatched Confederate VP Alexander Stephens, Confederate Asst. Sec. of War John Campbell and Confederate Sen. Robert M.T. Hunter (D-VA) to meet with the Lincoln administration to discuss potential terms for ending the war. Lincoln was wary, and so kept information about the Hampton Roads Conference under his (stovepipe) hat as best he possibly could. He even held the meeting on a boat, the River Queen, so as to limit the possibility that Stephens, et al. might be spotted by reporters.
Lincoln was wise to be wary. At the meeting, it was clear that the Southerners had not accepted that slavery should be brought to an end. Stephens and his colleagues took the position that the institution might be preserved in some form, or that Southerners might at least be compensated for their loss of property. That was unacceptable to Lincoln, not only because he'd been re-elected on the promise of ending slavery, but also because he wasn't willing to accept that over a million Americans had died (and countless millions more had been maimed) just to maintain the status quo ante bellum.
Stephens was no fool, and was a long-time friend of Lincoln, dating back to their days as fellow Whigs serving in Congress. It is not likely that he expected the President to bend on the slavery issue. However, the VP knew full well that the legislature had just adopted the Thirteenth Amendment, and that it still needed approval from the states in order to become law. He had hope, with some justification, that if conservative Republicans believed that they could secure an immediate end to the war by abandoning the Thirteenth Amendment, they'd make that deal.
The bottom line, then, is that Stephens and his fellows were not really negotiating in good faith. They were "negotiating" with an eye towards salvaging as much of the pre-Civil War South from the jaws of defeat as was possible.
We do not claim to be experts in what is happening in the mind of Vladimir Putin. And, unfortunately, our Russian Affairs Consultant is busy preparing for Christmas on January 7. You know, Russian Orthodox Church and all. Still, we are mindful of Sherlock Holmes' observation that there is little new in the annals of crime, and that the same patterns play out over and over. And, in our experience, the same applies to diplomacy. So, we conclude that Putin is channeling his inner Alexander Stephens (Aleksandr Stivens? Александр Стивенс?) and is just trying to secure a peace agreement where he doesn't have to admit fault, and where he doesn't have to give up anything.
In case there is any doubt on that point, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has already announced that if there is to be a peace, Ukraine must accept the Russian annexation of Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson. As with Lincoln and slavery, that's a dealbreaker for Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Putin certainly knows that, so his offer to negotiate is just so much hot air.
When Alexander Stephens showed up at Hampton Roads, he represented a government that was desperate and that was on the verge of a final and complete defeat. Is Putin at that point? We doubt it. Nonetheless, he wouldn't be maneuvering like this if he hadn't concluded that the glorious victory he anticipated isn't happening, and that his best option at this point is to cease hostilities as soon as is practicable. The question now is which leader blinks first on the four occupied Ukrainian territories. (Z)