Great map!
I doubt Poland really wants western Ukraine as an actual integral territory of its own, within new borders. What a headache that would be. Having to deal with a bunch of Ukrainians and multi-culti stuff. I get the strong impression they prefer being a pretty much mono-ethnic country. They’ve been there, done that, got the bloody T-shirt, and don’t want to go back to multi-culti. (And the EU elite looks down on Poland as well as Hungary for their liking being mono-ethnic.)
I have no doubt that if Western Ukraine somehow ends up as a NATO protectorate (similar to Kosovo) the Poles will want to take a lead position there (and benefit from all the reconstruction $, etc., too). And settle the refugees now sheltering in Poland there as well. And try to use it to move into a stronger and more powerful position re NATO and the EU, maybe punch above their weight a bit. Why shouldn’t they?
I agree that poor Ukraine has always had shifting borders, and has never been its very own country and is well ... problematic. It sits on serious and ancient fault lines. (The very name means “on the frontier/at the borderlands”). Its current borders could only have stood had remained neutral (on the Finnish or Austrian model) and served as a bridge between East and West (which could have made for prosperity done right). But the fragile new Ukraine would have had to carefully toe the line of neutrality, and resist the mighty forces seeking to use it to their own ends.
That was perhaps asking too much of a fragile new country with a very bloody history, one that spent the full 70 years under communism (that extra generation *does* make a big difference), had zero experience or history of governing itself, and had been the most corrupt in the old USSR. Add in the regional resentments and affiliations, and it’s almost a wonder it lasted as long as it did even without all the outside interference. (Although of course I believe the outside interference in Ukraine to be its main cause destruction.)
The reality is that Crimea and eastern Ukraine are of existential importance to Russia. Russia (and Putin) could live with a neutral Ukraine that leased them Sevastopol and did not impede through traffic or trade and did not belong to NATO or host American bases. They might not like it particularly, but willing to live with it, even willing to put up with Ukraine forming a trade relationship with the EU similar than Norway’s.
But no. It was not to be. So here we are. Fine kettle of fish we cooked.
I’ll be upfront. I think we should have listened to George Kennan and Angelo Codevilla instead of Wolfowitz (and that fool Fukuyama). I think we squandered our two golden decades as Sole Hegemon of the Planet. We should have switched from building up China (now to the point it’s our near-peer competitor — and intent on “Sino-forming the world” as Goldman aptly puts it) and been kinder to Russia (which can never be the peer competitor China can). And not tried to turn the Muslim World into a garden of flowers of democracy (what a joke) or pursued the crazy tack that making China rich would turn it into some sort of benign and friendly Jeffersonian democracy. Foolishly pushed and pushed a reluctant Russia into the arms of China.
Welcome to our new unipolar world. Watch what all China is up to on various fronts (including tech), and all we are not up to. I’ve said from the beginning of this tragic and idiotic Ukraine fiasco that whoever wins, China is the real winner.
As for your question about Scholz picking up the phone if they tell him it’s Putin calling about Königsberg (a question I find highly clever and amusing), I imagine his ears would perk up like a hound dog’s at the word “Königsberg” and be right on that call! Ya know, Kaliningrad does make for a messy map. And Germans do like things to be tidy.