Last week, Russian President Vladimir Putin pitched a version of a “geopolitical armistice” to President Donald Trump at their ad hoc Ukraine war summit in Anchorage.
On Monday, Ukrainian president Volodomyr Zelensky and a delegation of European leaders assembled in Washington to discuss how to respond.
60 Percent Solution for Ukraine War?
Donald Trump is signaling that his priority is an end to the conflict. To channel my interior Duke Leto (from Frank Herbert’s Dune series), justice is not the driving imperative of this process.
Let us therefore set aside the complaints as to whether what Ukraine might be asked to pay is just or fair, because the focus now seems to be on finding a sustainable “60 percent solution” for Ukraine that the U.S. is prepared to sustain.
Asia Meets Europe
As the process moves forward, what is striking is how Asian precedents may set the parameters for a cessation of hostilities in a European conflict.
The first is whether Ukraine, Europe, and the United States are prepared to accept the divergence between the formally recognized boundaries of Ukraine and actual lines of control. A line of control is not a de jure admission of a change in territorial composition but a de facto acceptance of on-the-ground realities upon which cessation of hostilities can occur without the formal abandonment of legal claims.
Most notably, this has served as the guiding principle in regulating the relationship between India and Pakistan, where the legal positions of both countries, especially concerning Kashmir, do not set the day-to-day parameters of where the line of exercised jurisdiction for both New Delhi and Islamabad is delineated.
Even more critical, a maritime “line of control” defines the boundaries of jurisdiction between the Republic of China on Taiwan and the People’s Republic of China, despite both states insisting on the principle of the indivisibility of the Chinese state.
While tense and in no way a guarantee that conflict cannot flare up, a status quo in both East and South Asia has largely held intact for the last eighty years, without formal resolution of boundary issues.
Just as Pakistan has never abandoned its legal claims to Kashmir yet accepts the line of control as an operative frontier, it seems that a putative peace process for Ukraine accepts that a similar dichotomy may become operative as the basis for a settlement.
The second relates to the question of security guarantees. Here, the Taiwan Relations Act provides a possible model. It allows the United States to provide continued military assistance and equipment to a government it does not technically recognize as a separate state, but with the goal of preventing Beijing from using force to resolve the political disputes stemming from the Chinese civil war.
The Warranty
Yet this guarantee comes with a number of “warranty” clauses, both overt and implicit.
A government in Taipei does not have a blank check to rely on those security guarantees being honored if it takes steps that the U.S. feels are provocative.
Most critical is the prohibition against a unilateral declaration of independence, but the U.S. would also not underwrite efforts by Taipei to change the status quo by taking back control of territories that the KMT lost jurisdiction over after 1949 or if Taiwan were to engage in a covert program of destabilization or assassinations on the territory of the PRC.
U.S. assistance is also calibrated to focus on weaponry that would repel a PRC attack, rather than enhancing Taiwan’s capabilities to carry out significant strikes deep into the People’s Republic. The United States also does not base its forces or stage its equipment on the island, despite its critical geostrategic location as part of the first island chain.
China has learned to live with these security arrangements even as Beijing intensely dislikes them, and the United States makes clear to Taiwan that there are steps that, if taken, would void those guarantees.
What Happens Next in the Ukraine War?
If Russia is not on the verge of collapse and is prepared to sustain its operations in Ukraine to achieve Putin’s strategic objectives, and if Europe and the United States have reached a point where their ability and more importantly willingness to offer aid and assistance to Ukraine is sufficient to hold the line but not reverse Russian gains, then finding ways to make the current stalemate more sustainable becomes the guiding approach.
Asia’s security system rests on a recognition that power matters and that justice does not always drive the search for stable arrangements that can prevent the start or resumption of large-scale fighting.
About the Author: Nikolas K. Gvosdev
Nikolas K. Gvosdev is a Senior Fellow at the National Security Program at the Foreign Policy Research Institute. Gvosdev received his doctorate from St Antony’s College, Oxford University, where he studied on a Rhodes Scholarship. A frequent commentator on Russian and Eurasian affairs, his work has appeared in such outlets as Foreign Affairs, The Financial Times, The Los Angeles Times, and Orbis, and he has appeared as a commentator on CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, National Public Radio, and BBC. He is the co-author of US Foreign Policy and Defense Strategy: The Rise of an Incidental Superpower, and the co-author of Russian Foreign Policy: Vectors, Sectors and Interests.
Military Matters
The F-22 Raptor Just Keeps Getting Better
Joe Snow
August 19, 2025 at 9:42 am
There is no stalemate in Ukraine. The Russians are pushing the Ukrainians back steadily, and have been for a long time. Ukraine is going to lose. It’s time for Zelensky to stop sending his people to die, needlessly, and surrender.
doyle-2
August 19, 2025 at 10:13 am
The conflicts in Asia today don’t involve topmost or foremost euro nations, which today now have all evolved (to a certain degree depending on each particular case) into ultra warlike proto-fascist entities.
That’s the one exact very dangerous & most massive lethal problem hounding the Ukraine issue today, even if the terribly evil genocide joe isn’t anymore in the white house.
Who are the people directly responsible for the current Ukraine conflict.
The EU, the western media, genocide joe, and NATO’s jens stoltenberg.
Of that four, only one today is absent. The EU, the western media and NATO are ALL still in favor of WAR WITH RUSSIA.
Bloody all-out war with Russia.
So, any measure or step or plan to bring about an armistice or peace to eastern Ukraine must take THAT into account.
The nazis MUST withdraw from Donbass, abandon their claim to Crimea and allow a line to be drawn on the ground to build a Korean dmz-type fence all along the front.
A continuous unbroken fence that’s proof against all obstacles including floods, rains, natural disasters, and sneak crossings.
Can trump make that possible.
Unlikely, trump often changes his mind, fast like greased lightning, depending on who’s the loudest bellowing to him, either in the white house, or at a big media conference.
Thus, for Russia, the step forward from now is lonely and forlorn, and the only answer or solution is to slam the nazis to complete smithereens, using nukes if necessary.