Ignorance, Causality, and the Lost Conditions of Peace: Why the Ukraine War Cannot Be Understood—Let Alone Ended—Without Sound Theory

What the Ukraine war has revealed with unusual clarity is not merely a crisis of security, but a crisis of judgment. This issue remains unresolved in ongoing peace negotiations, which only deepen the dilemma rather than resolve it. Consequently, these discussions have failed to yield meaningful progress towards peace.

At the core of this failure lies a fundamental epistemological error: the inversion of cause and effect. Friedrich Nietzsche, in his work Twilight of the Idols, identified this confusion as one of the most persistent and dangerous mistakes in human reasoning. He argued that people tend to moralize outcomes while ignoring the conditions that produced them and tend to treat effects as origins while elevating consequences into causes.

This error is not confined to mental acrobatics and philosophical speculations where it might lead to a stalemate in debate. In politics it results in catastrophic outcomes affecting real lives.

The war in Ukraine is commonly depicted as a geopolitical rupture—a sudden breakdown of order, an eruption of irrational aggression, a moral shock to Europe. Although this interpretation appears comforting, it is fundamentally incorrect. Wars of this magnitude do not arise from fleeting moments of madness; rather, they emerge from long chains of reasoning, diplomatic efforts, and moral failures that precede the first shot fired by years, sometimes even decades.

The case in point is Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014—eight years before the war’s commencement. In Western political and media narratives, Russia’s annexation of Crimea is frequently cited as the origin of the conflict and as a first step in supposed imperial expansion.

However, this interpretation reverses cause and effect and lays a harmful judgmental error at the foundation of the conflict.

Following the Maidan uprising, Russia faced—for the first time—a government in Kiev openly committed to NATO membership and hostile to Russian strategic interests. This was not a marginal concern. It directly threatened Russia’s access to the Black Sea and the operational viability of its southern naval forces.

In strategic terms, therefore, the annexation of Crimea was not an expansionist indulgence, but a defensive necessity. One may dislike this reality. But once ignored strategic reasoning is abandoned altogether; a neglect that has persisted ever since.

The same error in thinking – inverting cause and effect – has been applied to Russia’s Special Military Operation (SMO) that began in February 2022.

The prevailing Western narrative treats Russia’s military action as the cause of the conflict, rather than its effect. Acceptance of this false reversal—which is widespread among Western security elites—leads to the collapse of moral judgment into mythology. Responsibility, guilt, and blame are assigned without thorough and impartial analysis, diplomacy degenerates into provocation, and war is recast as one-sided righteousness and political necessity, rather than acknowledged failure and moral disaster.

Strategic literacy—seemingly rare nowadays—once provided a safeguard against such illusions. Carl von Clausewitz already made us understand that war is never an isolated act; it is the continuation of political conflict by other means, embedded in context, and shaped by threat perceptions, ideological aspirations, and power ambitions. Western leaders have insisted that Russia launched a War of Aggression “without provocation,” a demonstrably false claim.

For years, Russia clearly and consistently articulated the existential threat posed by NATO expansion into Ukraine. Diplomatic channels were pursued and red lines were stated, but proposals were rejected or dismissed—at which point the strategic situation crossed a classical threshold.

While International Law does not explicitly address preemptive war—except possibly as an exception under Article 51's Collective Defense Clause—preemptive war is neither new nor inherently illegitimate from a moral perspective.

As previously explained in my blog essay of August 12/08/2025, “Alaska Summit: President Trump is Setting Himself Up for Failure! No Peace Without Ending Zelensky’s Destructive Role and Changing the EU’s Flawed Stance,” strategic theory suggests that preemptive action may be justified when existential threats are imminent, diplomatic remedies have been exhausted, and delay would irreversibly worsen the strategic position.

This certainly does not sanctify war, but it places it within the tragic logic of statecraft, rather than within moral mythology. To deny this logic is strategic infantilism and the declaration of moral inferiority.

Describing the war as “unprovoked” and demonizing its initiator is simply malicious propaganda.

The refusal of Western elites to acknowledge legitimate Russian security concerns, the instrumentalization of Ukraine as a forward strategic platform, and the systematic replacement of diplomacy with moral exhibitionism have created the conditions for war. Once these conditions were in place, escalation was no longer an aberration, but a structural outcome.

The tragedy of Ukraine can thus not be separated from the intellectual collapse of Europe’s post–Cold War order. Politics was stripped of philosophical seriousness; strategy was reduced to slogans, and moralising (not moral) language replaced genuine judgment. In such an environment, peace ceased to be a goal and became a rhetorical ornament.

This failure also explains why current peace proposals remain so implausible. Plans built around militarization, buffer zones, or permanent foreign troop deployments repeat the very logic that produced the war, promising stability through force while ignoring the underlying causes for insecurity.

History teaches a different lesson as outlined in the previous blog of 01/09/2025. In 1955, Austria regained sovereignty not through alignment, but through neutrality. By renouncing bloc politics, Austria transformed itself from a strategic object into a stabilizing subject. Neutrality was not weakness, but strategic intelligence grounded in restraint.

Applied to Ukraine, the logic is straightforward and highly relevant: a neutral Ukraine—outside NATO, free of foreign troops, and committed to peaceful coexistence—would remove the core driver of the conflict. Militarization should not and cannot secure sovereignty where predictability and restraint can.

The deeper lesson, however, goes beyond Ukraine. The war exposes what happens when politics loses its transcendental grounding—when duty, dignity, and moral responsibility are replaced by utility, ideology, and moralising posturing. In such a world, power is mistaken for principle, and destruction is justified as virtue.

All of this I’ve addressed in the Philosophy&Strategy video series on YouTube. I provide the links below. The forthcoming videos in this series will tackle the following three steps whose illumination is indispensable for peace in Ukraine: first, the epistemological error of attributing false causalities; second, the strategic misreading of aggression and responsibility; and third, the conditions of a sustainable peace rooted in neutrality rather than militarization.

YouTube Videos:

Idealistic Realism: Grand Theories of the 1990s: https://youtu.be/aXtt7QJBU2E

From Kant to Crisis: The Forgotten Foundation of Political Reason: https://youtu.be/1HCz7D-bhOM

The Brzezinski Curse: From the Grand Chessboard to the Ukraine War: https://youtu.be/uQp5Dq5iaNk

The Revival of Mises:Transcendental Economics in a Changing World: https://youtu.be/sRd71gDxELk

The Only Path to Peace in Ukraine: Neutrality, Not Militarization!

Already three years ago, in my blog essay of February 23, 2022, entitled “The Responsibility for this War in Ukraine is on the West's Side” (https://www.edwinseditorial.com/2022/02/russian-statesmanship-against-ukraine.html), I argued that President Volodymyr Zelensky should have taken a lesson from Austria in 1955. When Austria regained full sovereignty after ten years of Allied occupation, it did so not by aligning with one bloc against another, but by promising to declare itself—once national sovereignty has been established—permanently neutral under International Law. That singular act—born of prudence rather than pride—enabled Austria to secure peace, prosperity, and exert an honored role as mediator between East and West throughout the Cold War.

Ukraine could have chosen a similar path. By declaring itself neutral—not necessarily according to International Law, just as a political declaration for future national strategic orientation—Kiev could have preserved peace, avoided devastation, and positioned itself as a bridge for cooperation and commerce rather than a battleground for weakening Russia. Instead, under pressure from the Biden White House, the neoconservative establishment, and Russophobic warmongers eager for contracts and profits, the dilettantish Zelensky chose confrontation. The result has been catastrophic: hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian soldiers dead, millions displaced, a ruined economy, shattered infrastructure, political opposition crushed, the Orthodox Church persecuted, and Europe dragged into the bloodiest war a generation after the Cold War’s end.

Now, after three and a half years of war, Ukraine stands on the brink of defeat. Its population is war-weary, its resources are exhausted, and its masters in Washington, Brussels, Berlin, Paris, and London scramble to save face. They continue to feed their public the myth of a coming Ukrainian victory, painting Russia as bled dry and overextended, while behind closed doors they know that they are lying and desperately search for a way out.

But what solutions do they now offer? Fantasies of a massive buffer zone in eastern Ukraine and a peacekeeping force manned by tens or hundreds of thousands of foreign troops to “protect” Ukraine from further Russian encroachments. This is sheer insanity. The same elites who failed Europe and betrayed Ukraine before the war are repeating their errors now in fantasies for peace arrangements. They pretend that stability lies in endless militarization—when in fact the very opposite is true.

My recommendation has not changed since February 2022 and it would now be even more important to implement: the Austrian archetype would still be the best model. If Ukraine declares itself neutral—outside of NATO, committed to peaceful coexistence—no foreign “peacekeepers” would be required. No Article 5-type guarantees, no restoration of a bloated NATO-style army rebuilt in a hollowed-out society, no endless arms shipments to an exhausted nation. Neutrality would suffice for credible assurance of peace.

To suggest otherwise and regurgitate the untrue assumptions of late—to insinuate that Russia is bent on occupying Kiev, subjugating all of Ukraine, and marching across Europe in some neoimperialist campaign—is as false now as it was in 2022. Russia’s “Special Military Operation” was not an imperialist war of aggression. It was, as I argued then and repeat now, a strategic necessity forced upon Moscow after every diplomatic overture was rejected and every legitimate Russian security concern mocked. Without the West’s refusal to engage in serious and meaningful dialogue, there would have been no war.

A just postwar settlement must therefore rest on simple realities. First, the territories now under Russian control in the east and south will remain under Russian control, unless and until a neutral government in Kiev emerges that can be trusted to deal in good faith with both West and East. Second, no foreign troops—NATO or otherwise—should be stationed in Ukraine. Third, Ukraine’s sovereignty must be preserved not by militarization but by renunciation of bloc politics. All of this, if need be, replenished by a non-attack treaty signed between NATO and Russia.

This also would require political renewal inside Ukraine. A government of neutrality and reconciliation could not be led by men such as Zelensky or Poroshenko, whose politics have been defined by hatred for Russia and subservience to Western dictates. Nor can it be founded on the suppression of religion and opposition parties or eradicating Russian language and culture in the oblasts in the east and south of Ukraine. Ukraine’s rebirth requires leadership capable of elevating itself beyond the animosities that poisoned the post-Maidan years. In this sense, even the restoration of President Yanukovych as an interim caretaker could be envisaged, until genuine elections are possible under conditions of stability and inclusion.

This will be controversial to Western ears, which have been deaf to factual reasoning for much too long. But one must remember: Ukraine is not an enemy of Russia. It is the cradle of Russian identity, a Slavic sister nation. Putin has never sought its eradication, only its refusal to be weaponized against Moscow by foreign powers. Once Washington and Brussels acknowledge this, peace becomes possible.

The larger question is whether Western leaders are capable of recovering their senses—intellectually, morally, and strategically. Can the neocons beleaguering  the White House and its chorus in European capitals, abandon their delusions of military triumph and accept neutrality as the only workable foundation of peace? Can they finally give peace, rather than perpetual mobilization and war faring, a chance?

This is not just about Ukraine. It is about Europe’s survival. The post–Cold War opportunities for peace were squandered by arrogance and blindness. But history may yet offer a second chance—if Europe has the courage to seize it.

If only this essay could reach Donald Trump himself—or at least one of his close advisors, like Secretary of State Marco Rubio! The time has come for a statesman to break with the disastrous course charted by neoconservatives and their European imitators. Neutrality, not militarization, is the only path forward—for Ukraine, for Europe, and for the West.