The Greek diplomat, Evangelos Averoff, once remarked that “there is no such word as ‘never’ in human affairs.” A 40-year veteran of international politics and diplomacy, Averoff understood the fluidity of history.
His words deserve attention as debate intensifies over how to end the war in Ukraine. All parties involved must remember that nothing in international politics is immutable. Leaders in both Kyiv and Moscow know that any peace agreement can be revisited, reinterpreted, or even undone. Yet this truth does not absolve policymakers of the responsibility to craft agreements with care. Even if treaties are not eternal, their architecture matters.
History offers sobering lessons on what might be termed the fragility of the deal. The Treaty of Versailles in 1919 sought to lock Germany into a punitive settlement, capping its army at 100,000 men and restricting armaments. Within two decades, those constraints lay in ruins: conscription returned, rearmament surged, and by 1939 the Wehrmacht, more than two million strong, invaded Poland.
The interwar years were littered with broken promises. The Kellogg–Briand Pact of 1928 famously “outlawed war.” The Munich Agreement of 1938 ceded Czechoslovakia’s Sudetenland to Germany in the name of peace; it satisfied neither Hitler’s ambitions nor Europe’s security. The Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact of 1939 divided Central and Eastern Europe between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany — until Germany invaded the Soviet Union in 1941. Even some of the agreements that do endure, like the Korean Armistice, do so as uneasy truces, suspending war without ending it.
Closer to home, the 1994 Budapest Memorandum traded Ukraine’s nuclear arsenal for assurances of sovereignty and territorial integrity from Russia, the United States, and the United Kingdom, with China offering separate guarantees. Those assurances did not prevent Crimea’s annexation in 2014 or Russia’s all-out invasion in 2022. Budapest carried moral and diplomatic weight, but it did not eliminate Russian aggression against Ukraine.
The hard truth is that no settlement is ever final, no peace deal permanent. This lack of permanence must be both a comfort and a warning for Ukraine. In the short term, a peace agreement may mean agreeing to not pursue NATO membership, for now. But there is no such thing as never. In five or 10 years, it may return to the agenda.
The same principle applies to territory. When France lost Alsace and Lorraine in 1871, it did not relinquish its claims; it enshrined them. Maps were shaded black, schoolchildren learned of the “lost provinces,” and generations grew up in quiet mourning, waiting for the day of redemption. That day did not come until 1919. Ukraine may face a similar reality. Crimea, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia, Kherson — these names will not vanish from the national consciousness. No treaty can legislate away memory or extinguish hope.
Which brings us back to the general contours of peace. A treaty’s durability depends on power, incentives, and enforcement. Details do not guarantee permanence, but they shape immediate behavior, calibrate the cost of defection, and frame the politics of revision.
Verification provisions, sequencing, and enforcement mechanisms determine what happens on the ground. The Minsk agreements of 2014–2015 failed because their vagueness and lack of enforcement made them brittle. If Ukraine reaches a settlement, the granularity of clauses on demilitarization, border control, and occupied territories will matter — even if only for a time.
Contours set the cost of defection. Sanction snap-backs, conditional economic relief, and security guarantees tied to compliance transform violations from “regrettable” to “prohibitively expensive.” The Dayton Accords of 1995 did not reconcile Bosnia overnight, but NATO enforcement and external oversight raised the price of renewed war. For Ukraine, the difference between security assurances and security guarantees is critical: assurances are declaratory; guarantees imply commitments that carry consequences.
Finally, treaties frame the future. No agreement is final, but every agreement creates a platform for the next round of statecraft. Borders recognized, even provisionally, shape maps, textbooks, and investment. Such arrangements influence governance and identity, creating facts on the ground that are hard to reverse. A peace that codifies neutrality or restructures defense relationships lays tracks, like railroad ties, for future choices — ones that are hard to divert.
Ukraine must remember that any peace can be overturned. The questions are whether a settlement can maximize deterrence while permitting the creation of resilience and the possibility of recovery. Can it minimize incentives for renewed Russian aggression? That means privileging enforceability over elegance and establishing conditions for robust monitoring, clear timelines, defined consequences, and external support. Any concessions to Russia must be conditioned on compliance.
There are trade-offs. Some agreements are bridges; others are parking lots. Some freeze territory to buy time; others open pathways for reintegration. The choice is not between an “ideal” peace and a “compromised” peace; it is between a peace that leaves Ukraine safer and freer to decide its future and one that mortgages sovereignty for temporary quiet. Realities will change; realism demands that the structure we build today shapes those changes in Ukraine’s favor.
Averoff was right: never say never. But that is precisely why the contours matter. If nothing is permanent, then everything we write into a peace agreement — every clause, timeline, and guarantee — is a lever on the future. It may not move the world forever. But if crafted wisely, it can move it far enough for Ukraine to stand, rebuild, and choose its own tomorrow.
Andrew R. Novo is an adjunct professor of security studies at the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Washington, DC. He is also a Senior Fellow with CEPA’s Transatlantic Defense and Security program
The views expressed are entirely his and do not reflect the views of Georgetown University, the National Defense University, the Department of Defense, or the United States Government.
Europe’s Edge is CEPA’s online journal covering critical topics on the foreign policy docket across Europe and North America. All opinions expressed on Europe’s Edge are those of the author alone and may not represent those of the institutions they represent or the Center for European Policy Analysis. CEPA maintains a strict intellectual independence policy across all its projects and publications.
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