Inside the box, and the Beltway, the thinking all along has been that we must draw a line at Ukraine, else Putin and the barbarians will soon be on the steps of Warsaw and then Berlin and Paris.

Besides, Russian aggression and aggressors are morally bad. We owe it to posterity and civilization not to crumble before them.

Those are valid points. On the other hand:

We are where we are. Where we are, is Vladimir Putin make some understandable miscalculations.

One, he miscalculated America’s willingness to support foreign countries. After all, he had witnessed Joe Biden’s Afghanistan surrender debacle.

Second, he underestimated the Europeans. After seeing them under-commit to military defense for generations, he reasonably assumed they would not stand in the way of his little conquest.

Imagine his shock that they and the Americans did. Consider his awe that his little adventure served to increase the military expenditures of NATO nations, and drove into NAT0 two new members, Sweden and Finland (which shares an 830-mile border with Russia).

Third, Putin underestimated the skill, resources and resolve of Ukraine itself. Again, that’s understandable. When Russia took over the Crimean Peninsula of Ukraine six years earlier, Ukraine offered little resistance, while Barack Obama and NATO offered none at all.

Fourth, Putin overestimated the skill, resources and resolve of his own military. Russia’s historical strength militarily has been sheer manpower, but manpower alone is not enough in modern wars. A war that Russia was supposed to win in weeks has turned into a three-year standoff where Putin is resorting to cannon fodder in the form of untrained conscripts, prison inmates and North Korean mercenaries.

Stalin beat the Nazis faster than Putin has beat the Ukrainians.

So that’s where we are. Ukraine cannot win, simply because they lack the military to invade and subdue Russia.

However, Russia could lose, in theory. If the war stands unchanged for another three years and another million casualties, you can call it a loss for Russia, even though it won’t be much of a win for Ukraine.

But I doubt Ukraine can hold on for another three years. Moreover, I doubt that Putin is willing to let another three years pass in the present status quo.

To change the stalemate, Putin has four options. The first three are (1) just go home, which he won’t do, (2) up the ante with even more men and machines, which will sacrifice more lives and treasure on both sides, and (3) go ballistic.

The ballistic option is meant literally. The Russian military might be inept in conventional warfare, but they do have a full nuclear arsenal including both nuclear bombs and “dirty” nuclear weapons. Russia has already hinted at “dirty” nukes in bombing the containment structure of Chernobyl, site of the worst nuclear radiation accident in history.

Ukraine is helpless against Russian nukes. They can only hope that a retaliatory strike by NATO against Russia would deter Putin.

But Putin has shown himself to be a gambler. He might gamble that there would be hell to pay – a soft hell in the form of sanctions – but no retaliatory nuclear strike.

He’s probably right about that. After all, Ukraine is not even a NATO member. NATO would probably not risk ending the world over Ukraine.

The inside-the-box thinking, unfortunately, is still focusing on winning the last war – the initial war of invasion. But the way to win that war was to make sure it was never fought – by making clear to Russia that NATO had the commitment, resources and power to make an invasion a fool’s errand.

The West failed to make that clear. Before the first shot was fired, Obama, Biden and the pusillanimous Europeans lost the war of invasion – even though Russia has still failed to win it.

The current Ukrainian war is the war of attrition. It’s a stalemate that is costing hundreds of billions of dollars, euros and rubles, and millions of casualties.

This war of attrition won’t last forever, because Putin has his Option (3). Namely, the next Ukrainian war – the nuclear war.

So that leaves Option (4). Isn’t it in everyone’s interest to negotiate a compromise where Ukraine gives up some real estate and regroups, while the Russians mostly go home saving face?

There’s an amount of real estate in appropriate locations that should be acceptable. The areas now controlled by Russia are populated with people who already tilt toward Russia in comparison to the rest of Ukraine. And this isn’t Mar-a-Lago; the real estate of Ukraine is mostly cheap farmland.

Ukraine has plenty of it. It’s bigger than France, Spain, Germany, Italy and Poland. Apart from Russia, it’s the biggest country in Europe. It sounds crass, but Ukraine can afford to pay for peace with a little of their own real estate.

Does that mean it’s morally right that they do? Of course not. But we’re being pragmatic about the world as it is. We’re thinking outside the box, right?

OK, you say, but there’s another issue related to the moral repugnance of a peace-for-property deal. It rewards Putin for his foreign aggression, thereby encouraging more such aggression. See, Hitler, Poland 1939.

That’s a valid criticism. On the other hand, in contrast to Hitler in Poland, Putin in Ukraine has paid an exorbitant price in money, lives, prestige, and geopolitical power. He never would have agreed in advance to this price, and it’s unlikely he’ll be willing to pay a similar price next time.

If a sliver of Ukraine is Putin’s conquest, he can’t afford another. And he knows it. Putin has been taught his lesson. Now, he’s a cornered Russian bear.