The voices emerging from the G20 summit confirm the North-South divergence between support for continued war in Ukraine and immediate cessation of hostilities accompanied by genuine negotiations. Nine months after the hostilities began, the war of attrition in Ukraine remains stalemated at the high tables of global diplomacy. Despite the Russian withdrawal from Kherson and its euphoric repossession by Ukraine, the declaration of the “beginning of the end of war” by President Volodymyr Zelenskyy comes across more as a defiant call to continued fighting than a serious prediction.
Prospects of a quick, decisive victory of one side over the other or of a negotiated solution are nowhere in sight. The front in eastern Ukraine moves as the NATO-backed forces of Ukraine succeed in pushing the Russians back. But new fronts open at sea, in air, cyber space and in random bombardment of targets far away from the actual fighting.
Further dampening the prospects of negotiation, the objectives of the belligerents keep evolving as the war unfolds. The initial Russian objectives to neutralise Ukraine and make it a buffer between NATO and its own territory, and protect the interests of the Russian minorities of Ukraine have morphed into territorial annexation. Ukrainian objectives, relentlessly voiced by President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and repeated by the US and the EU, are total defeat of Russia, war reparations to be paid by it (as Germany had to after the Second World War) and regime change in Moscow. The two objectives are totally incompatible. This forecloses any scope for negotiation.
The Security Council, where tit-for-tat resolutions by the belligerents keep getting stuck in the intricacies of superpower rivalry, stays paralysed. The latest evidence of its failure to arrive at any form of concerted action was the Russia-sponsored draft resolution on Ukraine’s alleged bio weapons. It failed to get adopted as only two veto-wielding Council members — Russia and China — voted in its favour, while the other permanent members, US, UK and France, voted against it. The other Council members, including India, abstained. A similar political impasse occurred shortly before this. India was among four countries that abstained on a draft resolution at the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) condemning the referenda organised by Russia in Kherson, Zaporizhzhia, Luhansk and Donetsk. The UNSC resolution, sponsored by the US and Albania, failed to pass the 15-member Council, despite winning 10 supporting votes, after Russia used a veto to block it. While the UNSC remains paralysed, the risk of a wider war between NATO and Russia is rising by the day.
Two questions emerge as salient from this stalemated conflict. Why has war in Ukraine become protracted? And what price is the restoration of akhand Ukraine — restoring the country to its 2014 borders and regaining the Crimea peninsula, currently under Russian occupation? The causes that account for the protracted nature of the war in Ukraine resemble those of the Second World War which lasted four years and led to between 40 to 50 million deaths. Long drawn-out wars are caused by strategic depth of the belligerents, diffuse targets, moving and incompatible war objectives, and the induction of third parties with a stake in keeping hostilities alive. These factors at work in prolonging hostilities in the Second World War are eerily similar to the persisting conflict in Ukraine. The additional factor that weighs in to make the conflict even more protracted is the nuclear option, available to both sides. This has created a balance of terror, egging the belligerents on, but making them stop short of any decisive action on the ground. Provocative actions such as the assassination of Daria Dugina, the daughter of a prominent Russian nationalist, part of a covert Ukrainian campaign or attack on the bridge connecting Crimea with mainland Russia, could widen the conflict, or even trigger a nuclear war. This adds a chilling dimension to the dangerous stalemate.
Who pays the cost of protracted war? The sheer asking of this question makes it disappear and reappear in the shape of heady rhetoric about democracy and sovereignty, underpinned by thinly disguised national interest, masquerading as high principle. Vast sums of tax-payers money are being diverted into the military-industrial complex and proxy war of NATO. The steep rise in prices of essential commodities and inflation have hit all across the globe but its impact is asymmetric. The poor suffer relatively more. And, despite the pro-war propaganda that the western media beams out, the presence of six million refugees from Ukraine, spread out across Europe and the long lines of people who have remained in that ravaged country, queuing up for essential commodities such as water, tell another story of the real victims of war.
The Indian position, asking for an immediate cessation of hostilities and the start of negotiations, has been consistent throughout but has had little impact on Western policies or public opinion. India, from the outset, has reiterated the country’s commitment to global governance and struck a delicate balance between the belligerents. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s message to Russian President Vladimir Putin that “now is not the era for war”, and his call for immediate cessation of hostilities at the G20 reiterate the Indian position. Not long ago, such a stance by a country of the Global South would have drawn opprobrium from the West. But India is also a valuable ally for the West in the QUAD — an Indo-Pacific alliance aimed at China — and a lucrative market. India’s neutrality is thus accepted grudgingly in western capitals, perceived more as a cynical pursuit of its narrow self-interest than a serious global policy option.
The costly, protracted war in Ukraine can be an opportunity for the Global South whose leaders have long chafed at Western hegemony over global politics. Currently, though far from the actual theatre of fighting, they nevertheless face the consequences of the Western failure to bring hostilities to an end. The Ukraine imbroglio can give the Global South an opportunity to claim a place at the high table of global diplomacy. An initiative by the South, possibly led by Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, working jointly with Turkey, and with the implicit support of India and China, can offer to broker a deal between the belligerents, and police the deal, operating through the United Nations General Assembly. These three countries have shown considerable dexterity in dealing with the West and Russia.
As the lethal European winter approaches and the risks of a widening conflict grow, the window of opportunity that is still open, might close. The time for the Global South to act is now.
The writer is an emeritus professor of political science at Heidelberg University
