(This post is translated from the Facebook page of Peter Weisheit, member of the Swedish solidarity group Ryssland ut ur Ukraina (Russian Out If Ukraine)
There is a sentence that reverberates in every TV debate, every panel and every social media feed: war is not solved with weapons but with diplomacy. It sounds civilized. It sounds morally superior. It sounds like the adult voice in the room.
The problem is that history repeatedly proves that it is wrong.
This is not a comfortable truth. But it is a necessary one - especially when Europe's biggest war since 1945 is still raging in Ukraine.
The illusion of comfort
The notion that diplomacy stops war is based on a romantic idea of conflict: that both sides want peace and only need to be put at a negotiating table.
But assault warfare doesn't work like that.
Not a single great modern offensive war has been stopped by early calls, pleas or one-sided concessions. Diplomacy has always been there - but as a conclusion, not as a substitute for resistance.
The Second World War did not end in conference rooms but in Stalingrad, Normandy and Berlin. The Balkan War was only ended when military power changed the reality on the ground. Korea. Kuwait. Same pattern.
The diplomacy came after the aggressor had lost faith in the profitability of violence.
Diplomacy without power is theater
Diplomacy is a tool. A crucial tool. But it only works when backed up by power.
Without deterrence, diplomacy does not become politics of peace - but political theater.
An aggressor who thinks violence works does not negotiate to end a war. He bargains to win time, divide opponents and weaken the will to defend. Conversation then does not become a way out of violence, but a continuation of violence by other means.
This is not a theory. It's a historical pattern.
And that's exactly what Ukraine is facing today.
The dangerous moral reversal
The most problematic development in today's debate is not that diplomacy is being demanded - but at whom the demands are targeted.
Suddenly those who defend themselves have to explain themselves.
Why don't they give up territory?
Why they accept military support?
Why they are “prolonging the war”?
The aggressor fades in the background. Responsibilities are equally distributed. Violence appears as a natural phenomenon instead of a conscious political decision.
This is not ethics of peace. This is moral confusion.
When self-defense is presented as the problem, reality has already begun to invert.
Diplomacy without deterrence is surrender
If diplomacy is carried out without military pressure, it means in practice that aggression is rewarded.
Territorial gains are accepted.
Violence becomes a strategy that works.
No autocrat learns peace from this. He's learning that it works.
This is why the requirements for "quick negotiations" are so dangerous when they lack the requirements to stop the aggression first. They wear capitulation in the language of humanism and comfort in the responsibility.
What diplomacy can actually do
Diplomacy is indispensable - once the violence is stopped
It's a peace maker.
It stabilizes post-war periods.
It reduces the risk of new conflicts.
But it can only work when the aggressor has understood that military violence no longer provides a free lunch.
Only then diplomacy has a real chance.
Ukraine's fight is about more than Ukraine
Therefore, the war in Ukraine is not just a regional conflict. It is a test of a fundamental principle: whether violence should pay off in Europe in the 2000s.
Demanding that Ukraine stop defending itself in the name of diplomacy is not a peace strategy. It's a strategy to make aggression rational.
And if aggression becomes rational - then more wars await, not fewer.
The story is very clear.
It's only the excuses that keep coming.
Whoever wants peace must first ensure that violence does not pay.
Only then can diplomacy start to work for real.
[end of post]

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