Opinion Three years of the Ukraine-Russia conflict & lessons for India

Three years later, in the aftermath of the unexpected US-Russia rapprochement over ending the war in Ukraine and the preliminary talks in Riyadh, another tenet of European security looks frayed and muddied. The US-led alliance with western Europe was nurtured after World War II ended. It was later formalised in 1949 under the NATO banner as a collective security system and was deemed to be cast in stone and almost permanent. It has now been neutered by US President Donald Trump, who in his first month in office has nonchalantly diluted the sanctity of the transatlantic alliance.

Europe and Ukraine have been thrown under the bus even as a Trump-Putin “deal” is being negotiated to end the war. It may be recalled that candidate Trump had asserted in his 2024 campaign that if elected, he would end the war in Ukraine quickly, and it is evident that he is moving with visible determination towards that objective. Even before formal talks with Moscow had begun, the Trump team had declared that Ukraine aspiring to join NATO was no longer an option and that it would be unrealistic to expect Russia to give up the territory it had seized. Critics of the US President have slammed this appeasement approach and claimed that “Putin is playing Trump like a fiddle” to ensure that all Russian demands are met.

There is speculation that a Trump-Putin meeting to finalise the ceasefire may take place in February, even though the terms and conditions of this potential closure are not clear. Will Trump, who considers himself the ultimate deal-maker, be able to arrive at an equitable and sustainable agreement with Putin that will be in the abiding interests of Ukraine and Russia and, by extension, that of Europe and the US? Or will this be a short-term transactional deal to end the war as quickly as possible and place a triumphant President Trump in line for a Nobel Peace Prize?

Ending any war is a highly desirable objective and President Trump is to be commended for his commitment to peace. He has denounced war as being an avoidable and destructive option and even suggested that the US ought to reduce its defence spending. But given his mercurial and contradictory public pronouncements, it is difficult to deduce any underlying principles or grand strategic vision, barring the MAGA (Make America Great Again) clarion call.

In reaching out to Russia by empathising with Putin, what Trump has done is to effectively jettison the Biden policy of pushing back against Moscow’s aggression. There are many voices of dissent within the Trump team and the Republican Party who see this as an imprudent initiative. Whether Trump is seeking to undo the damage done by his predecessors, going back to Bill Clinton in the early 1990s, who broke solemn promises made to Moscow that NATO would not expand eastwards and stoke Russian insecurities, remains moot.

If a consensual, long-term US-Russia modus vivendi can be arrived at as part of the current Trump-Putin engagement, it would be akin to realising the seminal geopolitical holy grail that eluded former presidents Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev during the Cold War.

However, the very nature of major power contestation in the global strategic framework inhibits any such US-Russia normative consensus, and an uneasy status quo will prevail for as long as Moscow remains a nuclear power. A potential US-Russia rapprochement will have definitive implications for Europe that would feel vulnerable sans the American umbrella. Concurrently, both China and India will have to review their relations with a stable US-Russia dyad. For Beijing, the deeper anxiety will be that of a Washington-Moscow compact thereby allowing the US to compel China towards compliance with the kinetic Trump diktat.

The best-case scenario for Beijing would be a Yalta 2.0 where Trump-Putin and Xi Jinping agree to a new world order with spheres of influence, harking back to what Roosevelt-Stalin-Churchill had chalked out in 1945. But this would be fanciful. Given President Trump’s consistent track record of inconsistency, it would not be surprising if there is a total reversal of US policy and Russia goes back to being an adversary and the palpable European insecurity is again assuaged by the US.

In the current flux, there is one lesson that India can derive from the European strategic discomfiture: Do not neglect core military capabilities and ensure that defence spending is appropriate given perceived threats and challenges. Ekla chalo (walk alone, to borrow from Rabindranath Tagore) in honing military muscle has to be internalised by Delhi with much greater resolve and integrity than has been the case till now.

The writer is director, Society for Policy Studies