On outcomes – Thomas Friedman in NYT:

‘The goal of Ukraine is to win, he said. The goal of the European Union is a bit different. It is to have peace, and if there is a price for that, some leaders in Europe would be ready to pay the right price. The U.S. is far away, and for the U.S., he added, it is not the worst thing to keep the war going to weaken Russia and make certain it doesn’t have the energy for any other adventures.
To be sure, he added, the E.U. is more united than before the war started. However, in the next few months things will get quite difficult. There will be a big divide in the E.U. — and it will get more and more difficult because the goals will become more and more different, the former statesman said. Even if the public statements are the same, the E.U. is divided on how to deal with the war — not on the big question of whether Putin is right or there is a threat, but on how to deal with the whole situation, especially where the populist backlashes emerge when people get totally stressed this winter.
Some European leaders will begin to ask, “Is there a way out through negotiations?” Sure, some like the Baltic countries will 100 percent support Zelensky. But others will not care about freezing for Donetsk or Luhansk, he concluded.
As Michael Mandelbaum, the author of “The Four Ages of American Foreign Policy,” put it to me: Putin may smell this and decide that his best move to save a shred of dignity and “expose the divisions in the E.U. is by announcing that he is ready to negotiate a cease-fire in place and would resume gas shipments to the E.U. if a deal can be done. But this would surely require providing Zelensky with the inducement of permanent, binding security guarantees — perhaps full NATO membership.” This outcome is dirty because it would mean that Putin got away with both murder and grand larceny, showing that he can change the borders of Europe by force. But if you don’t think some Europeans (and more than a few MAGA Republican members of Congress) wouldn’t seize it and press for it if the war stretches to winter, you are fooling yourself.’

(…)

‘All of this helps explain the undertow I detected in Europe last week, the sense that this war could end in many different ways, some better, some worse, but none easy.
And that’s even without Outcome 4 — something no one can predict.’

Read the article here.

I have a weak spot for Friedman. He loves to predict and he loves to hedge.
But he is right that the loner war will go on the more the EU will openly show its divisions.

And unless there is a palace coup or more than that in Russia Putin will get away with murder, for one he has nuclear weapons. And he’s not an exception. The populist backlashes in the West are Putin’s most loyal partner, sometimes openly, sometimes more covert, sometime consciously, sometimes unconsciously.

War is messy, democracy is messy in its own way.