Just in case anyone doubted that the Quincy Institute is a giant con, here is a message its leaders sent out a month ago in outrage that anyone would accuse the institute of being insufficiently critical of Russia. Quincy poses as a "critic" of U.S. foreign policy. In reality, it's an enabler. Quincy is there to buttress NATO propaganda, but give it a "vigorous diplomacy" spin. It poses as a critic of "forever wars" (whatever the hell that means) but doesn't in any way challenge a single assumption of U.S. foreign policy. As this statement shows, Quincy fully supports the Biden administration policy of limitless arming of Ukraine.

Quincy burnishes its credentials by tilting at straw men. "We are against forever wars," it cries. But who supports "forever wars"? Not even Bill Kristol or David Frum wants their wars to go on forever. They like wars that will advance U.S. global hegemony, but they don't want such wars to go on forever. That's why architects of war invariably sell their wars to the public by promising that the next war, unlike previous wars, will be very brief, a matter of a few days, a cakewalk. If a war goes on forever, it's bad for business: people turn against the war, antiwar and antimilitarist sentiment spreads among the population back home, popular rage gets directed at the instigators of the war, there is intense reluctance to undertake any more "brief" wars.

So Quincy is breaking into an open door here. Moreover, sending arms to Ukraine seemingly in perpetuity would surely guarantee a forever war. Unless of course Quincy buys the Biden/NATO line that the longer the war goes on, the more likely is it that Russia will give up. No evidence for that, and adhering to such belief has very little to do with the "realism" that Quincy supposedly advocates.

Quincy does serve an important function: It enables NATO supporters to get on board and go on urging various NATO projects while pretending that they are in favor of "diplomacy." "Give me diplomacy or give me death!" It's an entirely meaningless catchphrase, of course. Is it something Antony Blinken would be reluctant to mouth? Of course not. He's as "pro-diplomacy" as the next man and, doubtless, as against "forever wars" as the next man.

As the Ukraine crisis shows, "diplomacy" was tried for eight years--and went nowhere. There were the Minsk Accords! What happened? Neither Ukraine nor France nor Germany ever took the Minsk seriously, and made not the slightest attempt to implement the accords. Neither did the United States or NATO. Instead, they poured arms into Ukraine and encouraged Kiev to resolve its problem in the Donbass by force. None of that makes any appearance in this apologia from the Quincy "Give Us This Day Our Diplomacy" Institute.

If you call for "diplomacy," particularly "vigorous diplomacy," it's incumbent upon you to suggest the outlines of a possible deal that could end the war. Whenever Quincy does that, through its mouthpiece Anatol Lieven, the best it can come up with is some variant on the Minsk Accords--Minsk III, to use their favored parlance. But that horse bolted the stable long ago. There's no way to bring it back. Russia will never accept any agreement that no one took seriously for eight years and would not take seriously again, not after all of the sacrifices Russia has made.

Russia would only agree to another Minsk--in other words, another Minsk con--if it were to lose this war. Minsk III would, in other words, be a humiliating deal the West would ram try to ram down Russia's throat. That will never happen. Russia will never allow itself to lose this war. Therefore, any likely peace agreement will entail a substantial loss of territory for Ukraine, including its Azov Sea and maybe even Black Sea coasts. Any suggestion though that Ukraine must be ready to cede territory will be met with howls of indignation in Washington. Quincy's place in respectable society will be put in jeopardy. Soros funds might dry up.

The furthest Quincy is prepared to go is to issue rote declarations that maybe Ukraine should consider giving up on Crimea--and that only after a 15-year process, an internationally-supervised referendum or whatnot. This of course is absurd. For Russia, the Crimea issue was settled in 2014, and has no intention of reopening it. Quincy's Minsk III or Crimea proposals have nothing to do with "realism" or "restraint" or any other of its buzzwords.

Any embrace of "diplomacy" today must at the very least come up with a mechanism that will ensure that the new "diplomacy" will be very different from the old. This Quincy has of course no idea how to do. So it continues denouncing Russia, bemoaning the "absence of diplomacy" and posing as fatuous "critics" of U.S. foreign policy.

George Szamuely

https://quincyinst.org/press/quincy-institutes-position-on-russia-ukraine/?mc_cid=2625de094c&mc_eid=91b0f071a0