Noam Chomsky, Ukraine, and Diplomacy

On 4/13/2022, the socialist magazine Current Affairs published an interview between its founder Nathan Robinson and the well known left-wing intellectual Noam Chomsky. Throughout the interview, Chomsky makes a series of good points about topics like the US empire and nuclear war, but one take of his has rubbed many people the wrong. During the interview, Chomsky says the following:

So I’m not criticizing Zelensky; he’s an honorable person and has shown great courage. You can sympathize with his positions. But you can also pay attention to the reality of the world. And that’s what it implies. I’ll go back to what I said before: there are basically two options. One option is to pursue the policy we are now following, to quote Ambassador Freeman again, to fight Russia to the last Ukrainian. And yes, we can pursue that policy with the possibility of nuclear war. Or we can face the reality that the only alternative is a diplomatic settlement, which will be ugly — it will give Putin and his narrow circle an escape hatch. It will say, Here’s how you can get out without destroying Ukraine and going on to destroy the world.

We know the basic framework is neutralization of Ukraine, some kind of accommodation for the Donbas region, with a high level of autonomy, maybe within some federal structure in Ukraine, and recognizing that, like it or not, Crimea is not on the table. You may not like it, you may not like the fact that there’s a hurricane coming tomorrow, but you can’t stop it by saying, “I don’t like hurricanes,” or “I don’t recognize hurricanes.” That doesn’t do any good. And the fact of the matter is, every rational analyst knows that Crimea is, for now, off the table. That’s the alternative to the destruction of Ukraine and nuclear war. You can make heroic statements, if you’d like, about not liking hurricanes, or not liking the solution. But that’s not doing anyone any good.

Chomsky is not wrong: Mindless chest beating about not giving anything to Russia is not helping Ukraine — at least, in the short term. However, and this is the issue I really have with the crowd that argues we should negotiate with Russia, Ukraine is not the country that is not attempting to negotiate, that would be Russia.

I want to be very clear when I write this, because Chomsky’s statement has already been misinterpreted by dishonest people trying to paint him as pro-Russia: Chomsky never said that Ukraine should unconditionally surrender to Russia, saying he did is a strawman argument. However, the only form of surrender that Russia will accept at this moment is unconditional, that is a fact. Zelenskyy has already made it clear that Ukraine will not join NATO — which Putin used to claim was his red line — and that did not stop Russia.

However, let’s give Chomsky the benefit of the doubt and assume that this time, the United States gives just the right negotiations to where Ukraine can still remain an independent nation and Russia can have some of what it wants. This leads to another important question: What is the west going to do to stop Putin from threatening nuclear war every time he doesn’t get his way? As I write this, Putin has also threatened nuclear war if Sweden or Finland attempts to join NATO. Should no country be allowed to join NATO if Putin takes issue with it — basically giving him, an authoritarian oligarch, veto power over who joins a military alliance made up of democracies that he is not even apart of?

I would gladly accept the vast majority of negotiations that resulted in taking away Putin’s power to bring the world to the brink of nuclear war. However, that is not something that Putin seems willing to agree to at the moment. On the contrary, Putin seems to love the fact that he could start a nuclear war anytime he feels like, hence why he keeps using this power anytime things might not go his way. You can only negotiate as far as both sides will go, and Russia simply has no interest in negotiating anything in thinks it might win.

The fact that Putin has no interest in negotiation is best seen when he attempts to negotiate. Just last week, Putin announced that peace talks with Zelenskyy had reached a “dead end,” and said the only option was continuing the war. Meanwhile, Zelenskyy declared last month that he would gladly negotiate with Putin if Putin was willing to. Meanwhile, Zelenskyy’s desire to negotate has openly been supported by the Biden Administration.

However, Putin’s offers to Zelenskyy basically came down to allowing him to do what Ukraine has been fighting to prevent him from doing. Russia still has not budged on allowing Ukraine to join NATO nor allowing the two portions of Ukraine that Putin declared independent to remain as Ukraine. Instead, the most Putin has offered is the option of removing his military presence from Ukraine — which is good, but that would also be the same result as if Ukraine were to unconditionally surrender.

I should stress, this is not me saying that negotiations with Putin are a fundamentally bad idea — I have never endorsed such a position and I never will. This is me saying that Putin does not want to negotiate, and negotiations can only happen when both sides are willing to come to the table and discuss.