Macron proposed a selective ceasefire - just in the areas that hurt the most. (He wants a no-fly zone, protection for the ports and for the energy system.)
Marco Rubio proposes a ceasefire - a ceasefire in military terms, but no agenda for a settlement.
How to explain this ceasefire proposal, coming from the losing side, which is obviously going to be rejected?
How to explain the Europeans turning their gaze away from the reality of defeat and wanting more war?
Chas Freeman captures it nicely, "they are inhaling their own propaganda".
Maria Cajas put it this way, "victory is preferable to peace". This is doubling down on defeat.
At least America, with its focus under the new administration in Washington shifted from Wall Street to Main Street and being responsible for this catastrophic mess, is waking up to reality. Perhaps Trump can appear as the strong man and blame the West's failure on the Russians, but the Europeans continue to behave irrationally. We cannot understand their behaviour as the product of reason, we can only understand their behaviour in psychological and historical terms.
COGNITIVE DISSONANCE
GROUP THINK
That simple triune brain model is helpful - when the going gets tough, reason is the xasualty, emotion takes charge. Groupthink is bolstering the fantasy view described above. Groupthink creates its own narrative or really it is just delusional collective propaganda. The Russians are trying to recreate their Empire. They are ready to once again to march on Paris. Russia's armies are being supplied by China. They are purely a war economy funded by oil.
HISTORICAL AND MILITARY PERSPECTIVE
That is history. From a historical and military standpoint, this is nothing new. Europe has a long tradition of fighting wars long past the point of reason, from Napoleon’s doomed Russian campaign to Germany’s insistence on total war in 1944–45.
The West's insistence on continuing the war despite facing defeat echoes the "descent from rational to emotional" described in triune brain theory. Rational planning goes out of the window and gives way to purely emotional responses - fight or flight you might call it.
Faced with humiliation, European elites react not with pragmatic adaption, but choose to die on the altar of their beliefs. At least, they will first go through the stages of denial, anger, and in this case, what looks like self-destruction.
The result? A desperate, last-ditch attempt to look strong like in days of yore and to shift the blame onto Russia, as seen in the repeated carbon-copy framing of the ceasefire proposal as “the ball is in Russia’s court.” ... And when Russia says nyet?
The implicit strategy is to paint Russia as the intransigent party, keeping Western public opinion engaged in this elite fantasy of victory, rather than the inevitability of peace on unfavorable terms. Pushing this kind of propaganda has discredited the mainstream media and this lack of bu-in to to the elite's vision or to accept what that means for the lives of ordinary people, explains Trump's victory, and why Romania is currently such a horror show with the EU fragantly defying the democratic will of the people.
In short, this refusal to negotiate is not about strategy, it is about emotional collapse in the face of defeat, a psychological and political inability to let go of an illusion of enduring supremacy built over decades. Our leadership, fuelled by hubris and vanity, is in denial of the facts.
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