Hegseth Replaces Deception with Reality

Washington presents the terms for a peaceful settlement

US Secretary of Defence Pete Hegseth presented some realities and conditions for peace that burst the bubble of deception - which has kept the war going. Hegseth argued there would be no NATO membership for Ukraine, Ukraine would not recover its territories, and the US would not offer any security guarantees. Such a position has been criminalised across the West as a betrayal of Ukraine, but the opposite is true as ignoring reality has been the source of destruction. To quote Niccolò Machiavelli: “Men will not look at things as they really are, but as they wish them to be - and are ruined”.

Hegseth outlined a painful reality that is dangerous to ignore. First, regarding territorial losses:

“We want, like you, a sovereign and prosperous Ukraine, but we must start by recognizing that returning to Ukraine’s pre-2014 borders is an unrealistic objective. Chasing this illusionary goal will only prolong the war and cause more suffering”.

Second, NATO expansion was taken off the table:

“the United States does not believe that NATO membership for Ukraine is a realistic outcome of a negotiated settlement”.

Third, the US will not participate in any security guarantees:

“Security guarantees must be backed by capable European and non-European troops. If these troops are deployed as peacekeepers at any point, they should be deployed as part of a non-NATO mission and should not be covered under Article 5… To be clear: As part of any security guarantee, there will not be U.S. troops deployed to Ukraine”.

The End of Dangerous and Immoral Deception

They understand in Ukraine that the war has been lost and that even more men, territory and infrastructure will be lost if the war continues. Yet, there has been a belief that if Ukraine only fights a bit longer, then its determination would convince NATO to enter the war. However, this is a proxy war where Ukrainians are used to fight Russia. The efforts to keep hope alive and speak about future NATO membership have been a NATO deception to keep the long war going.

On the first point, the territorial losses are painful, humiliating and will complicate any future Ukrainian recovery. Yet, the alternative is not between losing the territories currently under Russian control or recovering them, rather it is between losing the territories currently under Russian control or losing even more.

On the second point of removing NATO membership from the table, it was always common sense that any future peace would have to be based on restoring Ukraine’s neutrality. The well-known and well-documented reality is that Russia considers NATO’s incursion into Ukraine to be an existential threat, and Russia would never accept it, much like how the US would not accept Russian military bases and missile systems in Mexico. Any appeal to allowing Ukraine to decide its membership in military alliances or appeal to international law does not change that reality. Threatening the survival of the world’s largest nuclear power was always going to trigger a fierce response, although Russia’s industrial and logistical advantage meant it would win with conventional weapons. We can remain in our bubble and denounce all common sense as Russian propaganda and treason, but refusing to accept how things are instead of how we wish them to be, will result in more devastation.

On the third point of the US not participating in offering any security guarantees, it is important in any peace agreement to remove all incentives for restarting the conflicts. Security guarantees could incentivise Ukraine to restart the conflict with NATO on its side, which would be reasonable given the humiliating and devastating peace agreement it will have to accept. The US refusing to participate and arguing that NATO’s Article 5 will not apply, suggests that the Europeans would stand alone. European leaders have already been clear that they will not place their troops in Ukraine without assurance of support from the US. In other words, there will be no serious security guarantees.

Is this an unfair and one-sided peace by taking into account Russian security concerns and largely ignoring valid security concerns of Ukraine and its great suffering? Yes, it is. But this is also the consequence of losing a war. A much more favourable peace was available in March 2022, but the US and UK sabotaged it and the Europeans remained quiet. NATO is now out of weapons, Ukraine is out of manpower, and Russia has won the war. Russia has the advantage and rejects any ceasefire in which the fighting can restart in a few years, they want a permanent favourable political settlement. The US did not give Russia “a gift” by accepting these terms as the media now suggests, the alternatives were either to accept the current Russian terms or accept much worse terms as the Ukrainan army collapses.

NATO expansionism was a manifestation of unipolarity after the Cold War. Peace in a unipolar system does not depend on mitigating mutual security concerns, on the contrary peace derives from overwhelming dominance to the extent one does not have to take into account the security concerns of adversaries. Unipolarity is over, and it is therefore necessary for the US to make priorities as it cannot dominate everywhere. Making it abundantly clear that America intends to shift strategic focus away from Europe and towards Asia, Hegseth also argued that the US was no longer “primarily focused” on European security. Shock waves go through a Europe that created an ideological bubble for itself with comfortable narratives of liberal hegemony that are divorced from reality.

The Immorality of Ignoring Reality

The Europeans have learned to speak and frame all issues in the language of morality. While this creates a sense of virtue, it is also the source of intolerance as opposing voices are always scorned as immoral. As the US has popped the bubble, it is worth reflecting on what has been done in the alternative social reality we constructed for ourselves.

The West has championed narratives that were intended to signal support for Ukraine. Fake narratives were created to preserve the war enthusiasm in the West and mobilise public support for a long war. Governments, the media and fake “NGOs” claimed for three years that Ukraine was winning, Russia was taking more losses, the Russians were running out of weapons, the Russian economy would collapse etc. These were all lies, and those who threatened the narratives with facts were smeared, censored and cancelled.

The reality is that only a small minority of Ukrainians wanted NATO membership before 2014, and NATO knew it would likely trigger a war. The Western-backed coup in 2014 that toppled the democratically elected government was unconstitutional and did not have majority support in Ukraine. The CIA, MI6 and the government they installed in Ukraine began covert operations against Russia from the first day after the coup, before Russia took Crimea and a revolt started in Donbas. NATO and Ukraine sabotaged the Minsk peace agreement from 2015 to 2022 even though they had accepted it as the only path to a peaceful settlement of the conflict. Zelensky’s landslide election victory in 2019 based on a peace platform was reversed following threats from Western-funded “NGOs” and right-wing groups. The US and NATO rejected Russian demands for security guarantees in 2021 even as they knew Russia would take military action without it. The US and UK sabotaged the Istanbul negotiations in 2022 in which Russia would have pulled its troops back in return for Ukraine restoring its neutrality – something both Russia and Ukraine agreed to. Then, the NATO countries boycotted all diplomacy and rejected any negotiations to end the war for almost three years as hundreds of thousands of young men died needlessly on the battlefield. Promises of future peace NATO membership after the war motivated both the Ukrainians and the Russians to keep fighting. Russia can, for example, accept that the historical Russian city of Odessa remains part of a neutral Ukraine, but will annex the region if it risks ending up as NATO territory and a front against Russia. Even now that the war has been lost and a majority of Ukrainians want negotiations, there is still opposition to peace negotiations in Europe. This has all been done under moral slogans and the banner of “supporting Ukraine”.

The people who called for diplomacy, mutual understanding and negotiations over the past 10 years were not propagandists for the Kremlin who had to be smeared and purged from society, they merely rejected NATO's fake war narratives and recognised the disaster awaiting by refusing to see the world as it is, as opposed how we wish it would be.

If deception destroyed Ukraine, then perhaps reality can save it.

[Many thanks to Matthew Alford for the audio reading of this article.]