Historian Richard Sakwa: The West Chooses Self-Destructive War Over Peace | GEH With Radhika Desai

Richard Sakwa and Radhika Desai examine why Europe's leaders continue to escalate a war that most Europeans no longer support. They show that the firing of Ukraine's defense minister for being "too honest," alongside protests in Kyiv and Lviv, exposes a Zelensky government that has abandoned even the pretense of democratic accountability, while Gallup polling finds two-thirds of Ukrainians now want negotiations to end the war. NATO's Ankara summit revealed a alliance divided 31 to 1, yet European elites keep deepening their commitment to a war they cannot win against a nuclear-armed power, treating negotiation itself as capitulation rather than a path to peace. This refusal comes as the war escalates both horizontally, with drone and missile strikes now reaching deep into Russia, and vertically, with hardliners in Moscow openly discussing nuclear deterrence. Sakwa argues that Russia is entering a genuinely post-Western but not post-European phase, rejecting the Atlantic system while still identifying with European civilization, and that Europe's elites are choosing economic and civilizational self-harm over acknowledging any of Russia's legitimate security concerns.