Stopping the fighting might soon be in everyone’s interest but there are conflicting priorities. Those who delight in criticising necessary-but-imperfect trade-offs will baulk at advancing peace and prosperity.

There are countless ways this war could end but an ‘unconditional surrender’ is extremely unlikely. Complex negotiations await and pursuing best-case outcomes will necessitate distasteful compromises.

Cancelling singers, comedians and actors is a by-product of a broader movement to silence those who don’t accept the supposed inevitability of progressive positions prevailing. Meanwhile, the autocratic leaders of Russia and China are aggressively seeking to upend the rules-based international order.

The coming weeks could either go well for Russia’s army or as badly as the last few. If the region around Kherson is retaken by Ukrainian forces and the Kerch Bridge is then more decisively damaged, large numbers of Russian soldiers and civilians would be trapped. This could, and should, then trigger intense hostage-style negotiations as temperatures and supplies decline.

Expelling Russia’s army from Ukraine will not ensure an end to the fighting. Russia’s leaders will prefer years of punctuated ceasefires to an official end of the war as they don’t want to discuss war crimes or reparations. A truth and reconciliation commission will not be forthcoming.

Progressives want to invoke principles of the current world order to prosecute perpetrators of atrocities. But Russia has the world’s largest accumulation of nuclear weapons and natural resources, while it and its key ally, China, the world’s largest manufacturer, have veto rights on the UN Security Council. Avoiding NATO being fully at war with Russia and refortifying the rules-based foundations of our international system are higher priorities than meting out justice for war crimes.

Such prioritising is difficult for those who routinely criticise the West while ignoring how much progress has been achieved by, at critical junctures, wisely prioritising when choosing among unattractive options. The best-case outcome would include Russia and China becoming leery of each other. Circumstances are very different, but as with Nixon’s outreach to China a half century ago, this outcome is unlikely but achievable.

World-changing manoeuvre

Many leftist ideologues resist giving Nixon credit for his world-changing manoeuvre, as the former US president was widely discredited – for unrelated reasons. But being quick to sneer at those deemed unworthy is an unaffordable indulgence when the global order is under threat.

Ukraine’s army has been so impressive that respected commentators are talking about the break-up of the Russian Federation and even Russia. Putin’s position is far less secure than it was only a month ago and if he goes, Kremlinologists anticipate his replacement would be an even more ultra-nationalist hardliner.

Biden’s campaign trail commitment to make a pariah out of Saudi Arabia’s crown prince appealed to his staunchly progressive supporters. They now expect him to ostracise Putin even more aggressively. While many on the left dismiss those who disagree with them as being intellectually or morally inferior, leaders must confront and engage with their highly illiberal counterparts. There is nothing diplomatic about ‘naming and shaming’.

Globalisation made deterrence neither automatic nor outdated. Rather, it, along with climate change concerns amid a thriving cancel culture, greatly complicates the geo-political challenges and trade-offs that must now be managed.

The greater Ukraine’s success at degrading Russia’s conventional military capacity, the more scope there will be to recalibrate energy sanctions as a gateway toward broader discussions. For some reason Putin thinks we are living in the 18th century but aside from that he tends toward being pragmatic. It is Xi’s China that represents a truly formidable threat to the world order.

It would be harder for China to unravel the rules-based global order if those who are quick to judge others as unworthy weren’t also so effective at labelling development shortfalls as injustices caused by the West. They frequently attribute remaining large clusters of poverty to colonialism’s legacy while ignoring how so many of today’s most successful countries are former colonies.

Countries which export finished goods to Western nations have much higher median incomes and far better prospects than those reliant on shipping raw materials to China. That South Africa’s top export destination is China reflects an unwillingness to invest in workers so they can add value to exports. Consequently, lifetime prospects are bleak for the two-thirds of our ‘born free’ young adults who are unemployed. China is an ideal trading partner for ruling elites of resource-endowed countries who are uninterested in developing the talents, and expanding the freedoms, of their people.

Great-arc-of-justice proclamations

A generation ago the Berlin Wall crumbled, followed by Mandela’s jail-to-presidency journey. Later, America elected its first black president. World leaders could make great-arc-of-justice proclamations. Many pundits and professors interpreted this as open hunting season on Western civilization.

The Second World War ended with the US dropping two atomic bombs on Japan. It is easy to convince those unfamiliar with the specifics that this was an astoundingly egregious act. Soon after the war ended, the Japanese people learned that their military leaders’ hopes rested on the presumption that the loss of lives – mostly Japanese lives – from a land invasion of Japan would lead to the US relaxing its demand for an unconditional surrender. While such reasoning may sound preposterous, the North Vietnamese government employed such a strategy to defeat the US and South Vietnamese a quarter century later.

In 1945, it was harder to defend the US position of demanding unconditional surrender than it was using nuclear bombs. Both remain debatable but, with hindsight, it is abundantly clear that the Japanese should have surrendered much sooner. Their pursuit of imperial ambitions was even more brutal than Putin’s has been.

It took steely vision to see that Germany and Japan surrendering unconditionally was necessary to construct a stable post-war global order. The Marshall Plan followed and both countries soon began to prosper as did, eventually, most of the world. What has been airbrushed out of textbooks and public opinion is that the US providing security guarantees, through the permanent stationing of US troops in Germany and Japan, was essential for those defeated countries, and then most of Europe and later East Asia, to thrive.

The ambitions of autocrats like Putin and Xi are incompatible with a world that advances peace, prosperity and freedoms. Because Russia and China are too powerful to defeat, negotiations must balance ideals and threats. The urge to cancel must give way to cautious collaborating.