Limited to a small cohort of coerced, bribed, and marginal allies or partners, Russia is heard as a global supplicant shopping for security assistance, economic shelter, and strategic rehabilitation. Lacking an exit ramp to the West, who better than China to invest in an underpriced gas station and overstocked nuclear warehouse? And who better than Russia to satisfy China’s interest in willing, capable, and compatible allies at a time when many of its neighbors appear to be building up their own forces to complement or even activate the U.S. deterrent?

To be sure, China’s embrace of Russia’s intervention in Ukraine raises “questions and concerns,” as Putin acknowledged, and it is cautiously focused “on issues concerning their respective core interests,” his Chinese counterpart pointedly added. Yet, support for Moscow carries a heavy price since it further isolates China from the United States and Europe. In other words, the war in Ukraine is not a winner for China which can ill afford to manage the global instability and upheaval produced by Russia’s invasion along with growing challenges at home. If nothing else, Putin’s fiasco in Ukraine serves as an example of how China should not act abroad.

In the Global Rest, Ukraine also confirms that every war does not count equally; human suffering gets a different billing depending on its victims and location. “Ukraine must win this war … Ukraine belongs in the European family,” Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the EU Commission, declared in May. This civilizational divide underlines a perceived Western indifference to other wars in Africa, Syria, Afghanistan, and elsewhere.

After 200 days of fighting, the Ukrainians have demanded an open-ended $5 billion monthly allowance on top of the over $60 billion in military and non-military assistance already provided or pledged by the United States and the EU. This amounts to about one-third of the total cost of the Marshall Plan (in current dollars) for rebuilding half of Europe after more than five years of total war. But who is counting if it is “over here” in the white world? As secretary of state Antony Blinken keeps saying, confidence is back but humility remains de rigueur. There will be no instant resurrection of a U.S.-led Western world after all. And looming ahead of Cold War II, countries like India and Turkey hope to lead the next network of non-aligned states that refuse to condemn Russia, are beware of China, are weary of Europe, and mistrust the United States.

Living in fear again is no fun. Yes, of course, there is the fear of climate change, the fear of guns and their indiscriminate killing, the fear of the missing paycheck or the unexpected bill, the fear of inflation and the next recession, the fear of Donald Trump and MAGA Republicans or Biden’s Democrats and socialism, and the fear of Covid-19 and the next pandemic. But perhaps worst of all, there is now the old fear of total war that previous generations fought to end and the fear of nuclear conflict which was thought to have ended with the Soviet Union.

Yes, this is the time to talk, however hard it is to do so. Absent diplomacy, too easily equated with so-called appeasement, there will only be more war. Russia should not be driven to strategic desperation, however much it has earned the punishment and however satisfying that would be. Volodymyr Zelenskyy cannot also be allowed to become reckless, however much he wants to win a war he was widely expected to lose but has heroically won already. Better to remember now the victories the United States squandered from Douglas MacArthur’s landing in Inchon before China’s intervention during the Korean War to President George W. Bush’s war in Iraq after Saddam Hussein’s capture and before the rise of the Islamic State. We now know that wars are no longer won by the stronger party.

Talking will not necessarily end the war but it will end the killing. It will not restore all of Ukraine’s sovereignty but it will keep it on track without growing costs that may soon prove irreversible and unbearable for all. The United States should not spurn the moment before it becomes too late.

Simon Serfaty is Professor and Eminent Scholar (emeritus) at Old Dominion University, and the Zbigniew Brzezinski Chair (emeritus) in Geostrategy and Global Security at the Center for Strategic & International Studies (CSIS). His most recent book is America in the World from Truman to Biden: Play it Again, Sam (Palgrave/MacMillan, Fall 2021).

Image: Reuters.