The following remarks responded to a comment that the allies of Ukraine were not doing enough  to reach peace with Russia.

1.  It is not a matter of punishing Putin, but of  protecting a nation from annihilation by Russia.
2. Ukraine needs assistance for that purpose, and we and other free nations have a moral obligation to give it.
3. Those supporting Ukraine – including Australia and me – will have an interest in any settlement offer.  We will be like a lawyer acting on legal aid.  If the client unreasonably refuses to settle, we withdraw the aid.  
4. We are no way near that now, and I have not seen articulated what might be described as a reasonable offer of settlement from Russia.  (If Australia got invaded, and the US said we should settle by giving up a slice of Queensland, we would see that as a breach of trust of Trumpian proportions.)
5. It is above my pay level to say if our strategic interests are suited by having Russia engaged in such a war, but I have seen it said by respectable people – like Timothy  Snyder.
6. The settlement issue looks moot until one reasonable opening appears.
7. If it does, then I think the position of the allies should be guided by two principles.  We should give the benefit of the doubt to the  people attacked.  And we should do all we can to deter other belligerent regimes.  (Russia, China and Iran are similar.   They mistreat their own people so that they can mistreat other peoples.  Serial pests.)
8. I pay little attention to the posturing of the aggressor.  It comes from someone who is not used to being checked.  He is cruel and evil and a coward, but not insane.  People who say they are not bluffing usually are. 
9. And it sounds childish to say to Ukraine you can only use our weapons at home against an invader. There is an old saying we probably got from England – if you don’ like the heat, don’t go near the bloody kitchen.
10. As it happens, there are many precedents  of the quagmire Russia finds itself in.  I wrote the note below ten years ago in a book about revolutions.  I agree with Pitt the Elder.

Guerilla Wars

On 4 July 1976 the colonists formally declared their independence with a document prepared by a number of lawyers and others, setting out in detail, although not with any objectivity, the grounds upon which the colonists were entitled to say that they were discharged from any further obligations to the English crown.

Although the Americans like to see themselves as having been the underdogs, they won the War of Independence, as they call it, and it is not hard to isolate some of the reasons why their position was eventually so much stronger than that of the English.  You can apply the following criteria to the American War of Independence – or to the Vietnam War, the Russian war in Afghanistan, the second Iraq war, or the present military operations in Afghanistan.  The phrases ‘home team’ and ‘away team’ are used for convenience and not to detract from the significance of the wars, or the valour shown and losses taken by those who actually fought them and are fighting the present one.

1. The away team is the biggest in the world, or as the case may be, the only empire in the world, or the second biggest.
2. The away team is a regular professional army while the home team consists of amateur irregulars.
3. The professional soldiers in the away team have no advantage over the amateurs in the other team because they have not been trained for this kind of war and people who fight for the cause are more reliable than those who do it for money.
4. People defending their own soil are far more motivated than those who cross the world to try to bring them into line.
5. The away team has massive resources and advantages in population and war matériel (such as the navy) and technology, but the home team has local knowledge. 
6. The home team can move more quickly, avoid pitched battles, and use guerilla tactics, which are sometimes referred to as terrorism, and which, as we saw, the British objected to as not being fair play.
7. The away team has problems with morale and supplies that just get worse as time goes on.
8. The away team finds that winning requires more than just winning battles – they may beat the army of the other side, but they will not beat the country, which has widespread support among its people (even if the people are otherwise split).
9. The away team has a hopeless dilemma – it has to hit hard to win, but every time it hits hard it loses more hearts and minds.
10. The home team finds it is easy to generate heroes and leaders; the away team finds it is easy to sack losers.
11. The home team out-breeds the others – the result is just a matter of time.
12. The war becomes one of exhaustion and attrition, which in turn exaggerates the above advantage of the home team.
13. Because of its felt superiority, its actual ignorance, and its sustained frustration, the away team resorts to atrocious behaviour that it would never be guilty of in a normal war, or against an enemy of its own kind.

In short, the American colonists felt that they were fighting on the moral high ground, a position that they have never surrendered. Appalling crimes were committed on both sides, especially in the civil war in the south between the Patriots and Loyalists. There were, Churchill said, ‘atrocities such as we have known in our day in Ireland.’ Professor Gordon S Wood said that the ‘war in the lower south became a series of bloody guerilla skirmishes with atrocities on both sides’ (like Vietnam). But for the intervention of the French, this civil war – guerilla war may have gone on for years and degenerated into what would happen in Latin America with ‘Caesarism, military rule, army mutinies and revolts, and every kind of cruelty’ (like the Roman Empire).

But the terrorism on both sides ceased and the result was dictated by the sentiment expressed at the time by another former Prime Minister of England. The older Pitt, by this time the Earl of Chatham, one of the most experienced war time leaders England has ever had, knew what the home ground advantage meant: ‘My Lords, if I were an American, as I am an Englishman, while a foreign troop was landed in my country, I would never lay down my arms – never, never, never.’