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Clever men explain why a ceasefire in Ukraine would not be a good idea. It would enable Russia to re-arm. (Ukraine is constantly being armed by America without need for a ceasefire.)
To me the war looks like one that neither side can win. If one side can win it I think that side is Russia, by sheer size of her armed forces.
Had the two warring sides made peace in 1915 the civilised world would have been saved. Or at the end of 1917, when Lord Lansdowne wrote his letter.
A German invasion of Poland might have been avoided had Britain not given Poland a guarantee in 1939, but this is very speculative and Beck was utterly stubborn and inflexible.
After the fall of France in 1940 Britain might have listened to what peace overtures Hitler had to make, as Halifax advised, but much better (for France and the Low Countries especially) not to have gone to war the previous year.
In 1955 the USA and Adenauer should have accepted Khrushchev's proposal for a united, democratic, neutral Germany, which would have freed East Germany from Communism, hugely benefited Germany and ended the cold war.
But once wars and cold wars start emotions become involved.
Lord Home, who accompanied Chamberlain to Munich in 1938, told me that as Prime Minister he would have used the hydrogen bomb if he thought Britain in immediate danger of attack from Russia 'because in that situation emotions become involved'.
I am not necessarily pro-western or anti-Russia but all this talk of war-mongering neo-cons not wanting peace or a cease-fire irks me. Let us have the following thought experiment: Ireland is a powerful nation, hundreds of millions, with nuclear weapons etc. Invoking the reunification of the island, Catholic, maybe even Gaelic-speaking Irishmen in Northern Ireland, her army invades Northern Ireland. Not being content with it, it continues to the Hebrides, and, invoking some spurious historic links, Scotland as it is strategically important for them and has offshore oil and gas fields. Ireland = Russia, Northern Ireland = Donbas, Scotland = the entire Black sea coast, Scotland's oil and gas fields = Crimea and its deep sea port.
ReplyDeleteNow Ireland and England fight it for two years, it becomes a costly attrition war and the front lines do not move much. Would England (i.e. Ukraine) agree to a peace treaty or ceasefire? Maybe yes if the only change would be the annexation of Northern Ireland (Donbas). But it is unconceivable that she agrees to peace with Ireland still occupying Scotland. So Ukraine cannot agree to a peace that would include the formal loss of the territories that she does not control today.
For the Russians peace is equally unacceptable: Why would they, while still holding the Black sea coast, agree to retreat, relinquish Crimea and content themselves with the Donbas? In exchange of the lifting of the sanctions and participating in world trade? Weren't their goals regime change in Kiew, pulling Ukraine out of the gravitational field of the US, EU and NATO, making it a post-Soviet Russian puppet state? What would they achieve if they pulled out now and kept the Donbas or even Crimea? Some territory of which they have millions of square km. But Ukraine would stay firmly in the West's sphere, so all this would have been for naught.
A cease-fire instead of a peace treaty? Its advantage is that the loss of lives stops. Politically it would lead to a Northern Cyprus situation. 50 years later we still live in the fantasy in which we consider the state of Cyprus the legitimate sovereign of the northern part of the island.
Obviously Russia won't give up what she holds. A ceasefire is how the war will end.
DeleteI see few nations with the stature or the experience stepping forward to put together a peace agreement. Weak, distant and non-influential nations like South Africa or Brazil don’t count.
ReplyDeleteNorthern Ireland has two distinct populations in it, and there are now all kinds of measures to protect the civil rights of the Roman Catholic minority, including the power-sharing arrangements of the Good Friday Agreement. For about fifty years the US has put great efforts into defending the nationalists, by the way, but in the eastern Ukraine it has supported the most blatant Ukrainization policy, clearly aimed at driving ethnic Russians out of the country. England has not recently been trying to force any Irish speakers to switch to English, confiscating their churches, closing their schools and TV stations, and so on. It has also not been fighting a war in Ireland aimed at stopping secession, bombarding Irish-speaking villages, and so forth.
ReplyDeleteYou seem to be confused about Sevastopol, which has never stopped being the main Russian naval base. You would need to explain your idea that the Russian claim to go on using that is “spurious” and say why it ought to fall into the hands of NATO instead.
It might be better to focus on the real territories and populations at issue, instead of suggesting parallels which are far too simplistic
I know my analogy is not a good one. It is difficult to find two other opposed parties that treat each other in a way as similar as possible to Ukraine and Russia.
ReplyDeleteMy intention was to not so much to explain the causes as to create a parallel in British terms (Ireland, England, Scotland), to bring it closer to our host, Paul. My point was: imagine a power occupies Northern Ireland and Scotland for whatever reason. How do you image the peace terms in this case? Would England give in and say "fine, you can have Scotland"? (Ukraine say Russia can have almost the entire Black sea coast of Ukraine.) Or the occupying power agreeing to retreat without being militarily forced to do so?
Or do you suggest that Ukraine should sign a peace treaty accepting the military situation of today (Donbas, Crimea, southern Ukraine go to Russia) and say that it is not the same thing as England agreeing to the annexation of Northern Ireland and Scotland by Ireland? Do the different circumstances that you cite (differences that I do not contest) justify that in Ukraine's case such peace terms would be acceptable but in UK's case not?
Some people blame a stubborness in America, in the West, and in Ukraine for the war, they say America is a war monger. (Obviously they are the great winner.) But this does not mean that they are the cause for which peace is impossible, that it is they who block peace. Peace is simply impossible today and in the very near future. No party can yield to the other. Can you really reproach Zelensky that he does not cede the occupied territories? The only thing that he could (maybe!) concede (but he wont, and maybe this we can reproach him) is the Donbas. But the Russians would not have fought all this war only for a de jure recognition of the control that they already had de facto before the war.
Russia leased the Sevastopol base from Ukraine before they annexed Crimea. The initial lease was to expire in 2017, but in 2010 the two countries signed an agreement by which the lease was extented to 2042 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kharkiv_Pact). However, to quote Wikipedia, "[t]he ratification process in the Ukrainian parliament encountered stiff opposition" and passed with a majority of 52%. Indeed you are right when you say that Russia never stopped using it. However it could be that the Russians got less confident about Ukraine honouring the 2010 agreement after Maidan. Can you imagine a peace treaty today saying "Crimea is Ukrainian territory, Russia pulls out all its troops and administration but Ukraine agrees to continue to lease the port of Sevastopol to the Russian navy"?
Under international law Sevastopol is Ukrainian territory, even Russia recognized Ukraine's frontiers before 2014. So Russia has no claim of using Sevastopol. It is only granted the permission to use it, for a limited period of time, by the sovereign (Ukraine) and it is subject to renegotiation, potential extension, but also to a potential stop of the grant. I don't say that Sevastopol ought to fall in NATO's hands. I say that, as Ukrainian property, its owner has the right to use it as it sees fit.
Scotland is a terrible choice in this case, as it is an ancient nation state with borders that have changed hardly at all since the Middle Ages. (It did gain Rockall in the 1950s.) The concept of the Ukraine as a country dates from the 20th century.
DeleteThe idea that Russia should allow Sevastopol to fall into the hands of NATO might be supported by a specialist in international law, but from a geopolitical point of view it is absurd, whatever the legal position. After NATO’s aggressive announcement in 2008 (driven by the US, in the face of strong opposition behind the scenes from Germany) that Georgia and the Ukraine were going to join NATO, existential wars became almost inevitable, and indeed war in Georgia came within months. If the Ukraine had wanted peaceful coexistence with Russia at any point after the Donbas war broke out, it could have settled it simply by allowing the two regions self-government within what became the Minsk framework.
The terms for peace Russia spelt out in March 2022 were (1) independence to be granted to the Donbas “republics”, (2) the Crimea to be ceded to Russia, and (3) permanent neutrality to be established in the Ukrainian constitution. As you say, having fought a long war, Russia will now want more gains. Can we imagine Kiev accepting the loss of any territory? Yes, if that is the only way to get a peace settlement at a time when its armed services and population can’t take any more. Almost all European wars end in that way, and things like morality and outrage do not come into it. The winner takes the spoils, and the lawyers draft a treaty for everyone to sign to give effect to it.
Some people seem to think that when Kiev can take no more, NATO forces should seize the parts of the country not yet occupied, end the recognition of the government in Kiev, and try to create a partition along the lines of Korea. One thing that stands in the way of that is that the ongoing costs would be terrifying, and they would mostly fall on the EU, which by then will not share the aims of the US.
I don't think that Ukraine is exhausted yet. There is only one resource that could be exhausted: manpower for the army. The West will provide all the rest: weapons, military hardware, training, intelligence, food, and energy.
DeleteI come from a country without much military past and my feeling is that there is great apprehension among Romanians about war. No-one dreams of glory, all want to be left alone, almost no matter the price. Therefore it was quite strident to my ears when I heard a French colleague (with a son in the navy) saying that Russia breaking through would be inacceptable to NATO and therefore "we" (France, NATO) would then have to deploy ground troops in Ukraine. That would plug the drain of the only exhaustible resource (Ukrainian manpower) but I think it is crazy, it won't happen, NATO would not deploy ground troops in Ukraine.
As I see it, it is a sort of sit-and-wait (not really sit, but grind-and-wait) game, they continuously grind each other for 10-15 km here and there, Sievierodonetsk a year ago, Bakhmut this spring), not so much for the value of what they get (a heap of rubble in the middle of an infinite plain) but for grinding down the other. I guess Ukraine knew it would lose all these cities, but I think they are quite smart: they fight not to keep them (they know they can't) but because the attacker must commit many more resources then the defender. The west waits for internal unrest in Russia à la November 1918 in Germany (the oligarchs or the army staging a coup, the population starting generalized demonstrations for regime change in all cities -- why would they?) and Russia waits for Ukraine to collapse, for the West to wear off, for administration change in the USA (who knows if it would bring real change? I am convinced that a Republican administration would continue on the same line, but I might be wrong.)