If Washington really wanted to push for peace they could, since Ukraine is running entirely on US support.

But peace is not what Washington has been after since this conflict started in 2008.

It seeks to decouple from Europe, while abolishing Ukraine's status as stabilizing neutral buffer, putting the Russians and the Europeans at daggers drawn.

The Europeans and the Russians fight each other to a bloody pulp, while the US takes care of business in the Pacific, this time with China as the big bad instead of Japan. WW2 with colors reversed - the same situation which landed world hegemony in Uncle Sam's lap.

He may be crazy enough to cut off all funding. But even then I can’t see Ukraine agreeing to this plan as it’s written. — Mikie

Cutting off funding and arms and intelligence would not be crazy.

Ukraine cannot win the war, that is clear. The more it goes on the more Russia will want for its trouble.

That's the dynamic that's created when a peace is not agreed swiftly: both sides have a psychological need to "show something" for the additional bloodshed, but the losing side generally never achieves that, requiring more fighting to try to make up for the losses. Who does make battlefield gains and increases their military leverage is the winning side, who then demand more, making it even harder for the losing side to capitulate.

So a tragic process of chasing ever increasing demands: as things get worse, what could have been negotiated even 6 months ago would be totally acceptable but there's now additional demands that are too hard to swallow ... though again in 6 months again they would be acceptable but there is now still more demands to compensate the additional 6 months of fighting.

The losing side never has more leverage, always less (what it means to be losing), and therefore continued fighting always makes things worse and not better. The exception being the intervention of other forces, a la Rohan coming to save Gondor at the last moment, but that is clearly not going to happen for Ukraine.

Losing a war means you have less, not more, say in the peace settlement.

As for Ukraine accepting, it of course depends on what you mean by "Ukraine". If by Ukraine we're talking about Zelensky ... he seems pretty clear to Ukrainians that they may have no other choice but to accept a deal. The straight up Nazi factions and other organized crime groups are presumably less likely to ever accept such a deal, but even they maybe compelled by the disposition of forces on the ground, preferring to rule over the rest of Ukraine rather than lose more territory.

The strategy of the Russians has been to fight in what is essentially one large cauldron in the South-East of Ukraine, maximizing the distance personnel and supplies need to travel and maximizing the distance with NATO radars and other signal processing. As a corollary, minimizing the distance with their own country and logistics.

The farther Ukrainians need to go to reach the front the more likely their movements can be spotted and analyzed as well as interdicted with standoff munitions. The more fuel, vehicles, and time it takes also, effectively reducing the effective quantity of everything.

However, simply because the war has stayed in the South-East Ukraine for so long does not mean it will invariably stay that way, that is just lazy thinking.

Once Ukraine is attritted enough and cannot arrest Russian advances, then Russia can go basically anywhere: keep pushing up from the south but also re-invade from the North or anywhere along the border.

The basic geographic strategic problem Ukraine has, that compounds greatly their capacity problems, is that there are no choke points. Fighting has been mostly in the South-East because that's where Russia has chosen to fight, not due to any geographic necessity.

Manning what is effectively a 3000 km contact line (counting Belarus) simply takes a lot of soldiers. There's no way around that. You need soldiers manning some interval of the contact-line and borders, as at least a "trip wire" warning system, and then you need a lot of soldiers in reserve to then go and stop offences.

Once Ukraine's army is simply below this large amount of soldiers required, then in order to defend against one offensive Ukraine needs to start deprive other parts of the front of essential man power ... so the Russians can just attack there.

It becomes a simple numbers game that Ukraine can't defend everywhere in addition to this process causes efficiency to rapidly degrade, resulting in the consequence is Russia can make large gains in territory at little cost to itself.

Naturally, the problem of no geographical choke point is a problem Ukraine has now, but there is one big exception that is the Dnieper, so Russia may take all of Ukraine East of the Dnieper.

Military planners likely view that as a long term solution to security needs.

Politically, there's not really much international consequence for taking all of Eastern Ukraine (as the West already did max sanctions), but there would remain the political issue of managing all of Eastern Ukraine and how much that would cost (with a lot of unkowns such as the likelihood of an insurgency and how damaging and how long it would last).

It seeks to decouple from Europe, while abolishing Ukraine's status as stabilizing neutral buffer, putting the Russians and the Europeans at daggers drawn.

The Europeans and the Russians fight each other to a bloody pulp, while the US takes care of business in the Pacific, this time with China as the big bad instead of Japan. WW2 with colors reversed - the same situation which landed world hegemony in Uncle Sam's lap. — Tzeentch

While I agree this was definitely the plan when all this started, I think it's less clear now to what extent the US has the capacity and will to continue this plan.

This focus on Venezuela could be indication of even the neocons abandoning the above global ambitions.

Why wouldn't they have the capacity? Eastern Europe is one false flag away from all-out war, and the US + Allies (Anglosphere, Japan, South Korea, etc.) are more than a match for China.

Venezuela is a small fish, and US involvement there is probably just an expression of the Monroe Doctrine, which is a cornerstone of US geopolitics. (No great powers or great power influence in the western hemisphere)

↪boethius Why wouldn't they have the capacity? Eastern Europe is one false flag away from all-out war, and the US + Allies (Anglosphere, Japan, South Korea, etc.) are more than a match for China. — Tzeentch

Yes, they certainly have the capacity to start these wars, but it's unclear if they have the capacity to end them successfully.

Venezuela is a small fish, and US involvement there is probably just an expression of the Monroe Doctrine, which is a cornerstone of US geopolitics. (No great powers or great power influence in the western hemisphere) — Tzeentch

Agreed, but the sudden escalation could be indication of deescalating elsewhere, consolidate imperial assets in the Western hemisphere.

Europe is already consolidated as vassal states with no independent foreign policy, locked into decades of LNG, social media, AI, and defence purchases ... having European vassals fight Russia could be killing a golden goose that's currently nice and safe in its cage delivering golden eggs on a regular basis. There may not be a need to upset that relationship.

Point being the alternative to WWIII is consolidate imperial power over Europe and the Americas, let Russia and China have their corner of the cake. Continue to context the Middle-East and Africa but in a friendly rivalry sort of way that happens to kill millions of people, but we don't have to talk about that.

If there's no way to start and then win WWIII, appreciating what you have starts to look pretty attractive.