‘Negotiations’ Aren’t the Answer in Iran or Ukraine

(Photo illustration by Bill Kuchman/The Bulwark | Photos: Getty, Shutterstock)IT’S EASY TO START WARS, and far harder to end them. This is a lesson that both Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin are discovering, for a lot of the same reasons. Both began wars of choice on the assumption that they could conduct decapitation strikes, achieve favorable leadership changes, and end up in control of a puppet state. Trump clearly had Venezuela in mind; Putin probably had a situation more like Chechnya or Belarus. Instead, both ended up trapped in quagmires that they cannot negotiate their way out of.Nonetheless, the instinct of many Western analysts is to call for negotiations in both cases. That’s a foolish mistake. It assumes that an outcome favorable to everyone is possible, and the logic runs backw