It is indeed not surprising that prominent rich Americans of the hard right like Elon Musk and David Sacks are in contact with the Kremlin and are propagating its demands in exchange for ending its war on Ukraine. The logical fallacy that one should negotiate for peace with someone who wants to destroy you has already been pointed out repeatedly on this website.
There is, however another important characteristic to the barbarity of “peace with diplomacy” in this case as promoted by Musk and Sacks. These men still believe they live in a world where global powers can and should sit together on the negotiating table to carve out pieces of land between them Treaty of Westphalia style.
There are clearly two very distinct positions in the West one can take with regard to Ukraine. One can support Ukraine with anti-imperialist principles and in favour of a rules-based order and by doing so, one would be respecting Ukraine’s sovereignty and the wishes of the Ukrainian people. On the other hand, the other position is to view the world in the way Russia wants to project it: as a multi-polar world order where several world powers can dictate borders by sheer imperial might. What Russia is proposing is a very clear return to imperialism.
Russia’s threats that it would use a nuclear weapon in order to conserve Crimea is a historic precedent on Europe’s doorstep which should not be respected. Given that Putin is threatening to use nuclear weapons if his hold over Crimea is threatened, Europe should absolutely make sure that Russia loses Crimea along with its nuclear weapons so as to prevent any future threats and imperial brinkmanship through the use of nuclear weapons.
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