Opinion With no end in sight for conflicts in Gaza and Ukraine, the search for a middle ground

It was refreshing to see the spirited arguments in the Congress among philosophers from Europe, different parts of Russia and Asia, on how diverse folks sharing the same living space can achieve a common, collective identity. Drawing on the “Russian idea” of Pushkin, Dostoevsky and Berdyaev, the Russian contributors came up with the concept of “Eurasian identity” which, they argued, unites the diverse folks of the vast country that spreads across Europe and Asia. This raised general, comparative and cross-national questions and spilled over to discussions of India, Sri Lanka and the “Arab mind”.

Both the general tenor of the conversations and the insights that emerged were striking. How might we achieve a meaningful dialogue between adversaries, when the Self and the Other are locked in battle without shared terms of discourse? What might incentivise opponents to engage with one another? Which resources — ontological, epistemological, material and communicative — might constitute the level playing field for a dialogue?

The general drift of the conversations was an important takeaway from the Congress. A meaningful dialogue between adversaries becomes possible when they recognise, and accept the sacred beliefs of one another. Conflating ontological realism regarding cultural diversity, and its epistemological construction in terms of a unified vision of society, is a necessary condition for legitimate order in diverse societies with multiple faiths and regional identities. Whether “Eurasian philosophy” offers a cohesive set of beliefs and underpins Russian society is open to deeper empirical investigation.

While the Russian philosophers struggled to define Russian collective identity, I ventured out to look for social resonance of the Eurasian identity, and to see how Russian people were coping with the mundane problem of getting by in their everyday lives. I could get the sense of a society coping with, and living side by side with a war of attrition. The sanctions have given a boost to local industry and commerce among and across different regions of the far-flung country. Some sanctioned Western commodities are finding their way into Russia through a circuitous route. “Isn’t there a war going on?” I asked my guide. Her answer — “Sometimes one has to fight to keep what belongs to one” — concentrated my mind.

She, like millions of Russians, has been brought up on the heroic stories of the battles of Kursk, Leningrad and Stalingrad. The Second World War cost 27 million Russian lives. It affected practically every family. These sentiments that unite the elites and masses of Russian society today are eerily similar to what had prolonged the Second World War. Reports about how ordinary people in Ukraine are coping with war show a development of national solidarity and resilience in that war-torn country, akin to what I saw in Russia. The symmetry feeds into a frozen conflict which, other things being equal, is likely to endure.

There is a valuable lesson here for Western backers of Ukraine who have reduced the complexity of protracted war and its deep psycho-historical underpinnings to absurd simplicities of “sanctions, ammunition and cash”. The grim history of conflict shows how, when ideology gets the upper hand over realism, and conflicts of interest and perceptions are boiled down to the clash of ideologies, the consequence becomes horrendous. By some calculations, between 70 to 85 million people paid with their lives “to make the world safe for democracy” in the Second World War. Its outcome, the Cold War had its own “Good-vs-Evil”, leading to mass slaughter: The Korean war (1950-53, approximately three million casualties), Vietnam (1955-75, 3.8 million war casualties), and closer to date, Afghanistan (2001-2021, 1,76,000 casualties).

Demonising adversaries can actually become a self-fulfilling prophecy. It is high time to look beyond the Manichean categories of democracy versus authoritarianism which are much in evidence in global platforms such as the moribund United Nations Security Council, the European Union, or the annual security conference in Munich. One finds little evidence in their deliberations of the search for a middle space between aggression and capitulation, where adversaries could negotiate their legitimate interests, leading to a win-win solution. Attempts in this direction by smaller powers lead to the predictable American veto. What one hears mostly is the blatant language of war-mongering, by political and miliary leaders and public intellectuals, far away from the killing fields.

The search for a middle ground between capitulation and aggression — in Ukraine, Gaza and other intractable local conflict regions of the world — has never been more important than now. The real challenge in our digital age when complex issues are boiled down to soundbites, is to expose the interests of powerful states and corporations that profit from war mongering. Just underneath the lurid media images and alluring ideological slogans about the promotion of liberal democracy lurks their ruthless quest for power and profits. They take the focus off the real danger of the conflict spilling out beyond the region, and escalating into nuclear war. In these dangerous times, the nuanced approach of Indian diplomacy to seek the middle ground between polarised positions is the best way forward.

Mitra is an emeritus professor of Political Science at Heidelberg University, Germany