I am not a practitioner of international diplomacy, nor do I have the academic heft to presume I can make a meaningful contribution to the discussion on the Russia-Ukraine conflict. But like many others, I am horrified at the humanitarian tragedy that has unfolded over the past 12 months. The UNHCR has estimated that 13 million Ukrainians – one-third of Ukraine’s population – have been displaced over the past year; 8 million are refugees outside Ukraine; another 5 million are camped in Ukraine. A different agency has estimated that approximately 2,00,000 civilian and military personnel have been killed or wounded during this period. This does not take into account the casualties caused by disease, hunger and cold.
I am no apologist for unprovoked aggression. It must be condemned without qualification. The argument that Russia must not be allowed to gain from its invasion – it would upend the established rules of international relations – and Putin’s ambition to create “Imperia Rus” should be checked does strike a chord. But I am also aware of the reality. There can be no victor in a conflict in which one of the combatants is a nuclear power and the other has the support of a nuclear coalition. The hard truth is that Ukraine cannot push Russia off its territory and Russia does not have the conventional capability to defeat Ukraine, at least not so long as the West provides it “blank cheque” support.
One must therefore ask the following questions.
Is there not a threshold beyond which the severity of human suffering renders meaningless words like “political sovereignty”, “national security” and “territorial integrity”? Has this threshold not been crossed in Ukraine? Should not, therefore, global leaders mellow their rhetoric and focus instead on bringing the fighting to an immediate de facto end ahead of and notwithstanding the absence of a sustainable, de jure peace.
I suspect I am not the only one posing such questions. A multi-country poll involving nine EU countries, the UK, China, India, Turkey, Russia and the US titled ‘United West; Divided by the Rest’ concluded that the majority of the respondents from the West wanted Ukraine to fight until it had secured a decisive victory whilst the majority of the “Rest” wanted the combatants to agree to a ceasefire even if as a result Ukraine had to give up territory. By implication, the latter placed a higher value on human lives than political concepts and/or physical territory.
The issue for the “Rest” is how to bring the fighting to a close. In this regard, I would suggest they look at history. There may be useful learnings from past conflicts where the carnage was stopped ahead of the resolution of political differences.
In his book Master of the Game: Henry Kissinger and the Art of Middle East Diplomacy, Ambassador Martin Indyk noted that Kissinger believed “conflicts between states would lead over time to the exhaustion of their powers” and that, therefore, peace processes should be “step by step”, “cautious” and “sceptical… designed to buy enough time for exhaustion to set in”. Kissinger used this gradualist playbook to get the “ exhausted “ combatants (Egypt, Syria, Israel) of the Yom Kippur war to cease military hostilities in 1974. He did not push for a permanent political or territorial settlement. A UN peacekeeping force was, in fact, mandated to monitor the buffer zone between Syria and Israel in the Golan heights to prevent a clash.
Professor Sergie Radchenko in an article for the New York Times has suggested that the Korean War of 1950-1953 may be of particular relevance. He notes that three years of fighting had led to the death of approx 3 million people without a military solution in sight. The combatants were “exhausted“ but the fighting continued. Eventually, under pressure from the post-Stalin leadership in Russia, China and North Korea signed an agreement with South Korea (and the US ) that was neither a “peace treaty” nor a “negotiated settlement” but which “froze” the military conflict. North Korea and South Korea are to this day technically still at war. But they are not fighting and no one is getting killed.
The India-Pakistan conflict of 1948 may also offer useful insights. In this case, the Karachi agreement of 1949 brought the fighting to an end. The UN was a neutral arbiter and it facilitated the decoupling of the political issues from the military conflict. A ceasefire line was drawn and the politics of Kashmir were put on the agenda for future negotiations. This line which was subsequently converted to the Line of control in 1972 following the Simla Agreement, does not constitute a legally established international boundary. India does not recognise Pakistan’s claim to what the latter refers to as “Azad Kashmir.” But India does regard the LoC as the de facto boundary and this is one reason why military conflicts between the two countries have been relatively short.
Intra state conflicts might also have relevance. The civil conflict between the Moroccan government and the rebel Polisario Front was brought to an end in 1991; that between the Government of Philippines and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front in 2003 and between the Government of Columbia and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Columbia (FARC) in 2016. In each of these cases, the priority was to end the fighting. Formal ratification of the “peace” agreement came much later, it at all.
No two wars are the same. So one must be careful about drawing analogies. But there is a humanitarian thread that links the above examples. Presidents Biden and Xi Jinping should pick up this thread. For they have the clout to push Presidents Zelenskyy and Putin off their entrenched positions. India should also look at its warp and weft. For it is the architect of the credo of non-violence and the chairman of G20. It also has comparable “soft power”. But before they do this, all must agree the Ukraine war cannot be won. It must be stopped. Therein lies the rub.
The writer is chairman and distinguished fellow, Centre for Social and Economic Progress
