Some NYT commentators, right- and left-wing alike, have suggested that NATO should give in to Putin’s demand that Ukrainian NATO membership should be taken off the table–permanently. After all, it was never going to happen in any event, so what do we have to lose? It could prevent a war! It makes perfect sense!
The problem is that the record shows very clearly that Putin wants to swallow Ukraine whole; he won’t be satisfied with a mere statement of neutrality, no matter what he says today. Appeasement simply won’t work.
You could make a case in 1938 that Hitler’s statements about his territorial ambitions were reasonably credible. It only became obvious after he stomped into the rest of Czechoslovakia that he wasn’t going to settle for areas primarily populated by ethnic Germans. Today, by contrast, we already know that Putin doesn’t consider Ukraine to be a real country, and views its reasonably democratic government as a bad example for his domestic opposition. It would thus be extremely stupid to take his current statements about Russian security concerns at face value.