Image: Alexander the Great depicted in the ‘Alexander Mosaic’, House of the Faun, Pompeii
To stop the war in Ukraine the Europeans will need to untie two Gordian knots, and there doesn’t appear to be an Alexander the Great among them. If the wartime rhetoric of Russian revanchism and neo-imperialism are put aside, Russia’s strategic objectives boil down to maintaining the security of its borders. For Ukraine’s supporters that makes the problem of security guarantees seem intractable, and for Ukraine itself, the issue of where Russia now regards its borders to be seems to be an irresolvable obstacle to peace.
First security guarantees. Simply put, by ‘security guarantees’, the Europeans must envisage a mechanism which enables Ukraine to be confident that an agreement to end the war will be kept by Russia. In other words, the security guarantees would mean that were Russia to resume hostilities contrary to an agreement, there would be consequences of sufficient gravity as to cause them to desist.
Security guarantees which could achieve this would presumably require a potential rapid and powerful military response force, as ceasefire monitors or a reassurance force don’t amount to guarantees. Probably in their strongest form this would imply a treaty level agreement between Ukraine and, at least, the major European powers like the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, and Poland, that committed them to war with Russia if Ukraine were attacked.
A similar treaty arrangement with France and Britain in 1939 didn’t prevent the invasion of Poland by Germany, the Soviet Union, and the Slovak Republic. At that time, neither France nor Britain were in a position to seriously challenge the invaders militarily. The military challenges apparent then would need to be avoided for such an agreement to be viable now. The lesson from 1939 would be that the consequences for breaching the peace agreement with Ukraine would need to be certain and forceful.
This is of course complicated by the NATO membership of the lead states of the ‘coalition of the willing’. Gordian-like, it seems unlikely that Russia would enter any peace agreement that permitted European or American troops on Ukrainian soil, with the latter an extremely unlikely prospect in any event. The looming possibility of NATO forces being stationed in Ukraine was a major factor in Russia’s decision to commence the war initially.
The alternatives for the Europeans are complex. Forward basing sufficient forces – aircraft, ground troops, missiles, drones, intelligence assets, and air defences – just within NATO boundaries in the Eastern member states, but not under NATO auspices, and to maintain a force level there, would be a complex and expensive option.
Further, there is a question of symmetry here. If a peace agreement was reached that saw the stationing of European forces in Eastern Europe to provide a guarantee, a mirror image response could only be expected in Russia. If sanctions were lifted, Russian military industrial capacity, already significant, could be modernised and expanded with Chinese assistance, and funded again by oil revenues. Over time a formidable and flourishing military-industrial complex could emerge in Eurasia, and the cooperation between Russia, China, and North Korea, and potentially India, increase.
In geopolitical terms the conflict between Ukraine and Russia could escalate to a stand-off between Europe and Eurasia. In the long run, it is possible that the vast Arctic Exclusive Economic Zone that Russia possesses, combined with the massive market and industrial capacity of China, could see Russia rapidly outpace Europe, and especially Ukraine, in wealth and power once the war ends. In the ‘age of tariffs’, China’s trade with the developing world is accelerating and its demand for energy and raw materials can be met in large part by Russia. This may not transpire, as the trajectory of events postwar is impossible to predict, but the possibility can’t be discounted.
The second significant obstacle to peace lies in the competing territorial claims. The statements of the Europeans seem to suggest they envision an efflorescence of democracy and prosperity in a rebuilt and restored Ukraine following a peace deal. This expectation could be unrealistic. At least in the immediate future Ukraine faces not only the restoration of contested politics, a controversial constitutional referendum on the peace, but also a population shrunken by war and a diaspora not at all enthusiastic to return, the need to care for veterans, and making the Europeans live up to their promises to fund reconstruction. Depending on the concessions Ukraine has to make, it could transition to a chaotic and unstable failed state.
Equally, the Russian regime cannot easily relinquish the claim to all of the Eastern Ukrainian Oblasts any more than Ukraine’s President Zelenskyy can. We can stand on principle and cry about international law, but within Russia the political reality is that these territories are now constitutionally part of Russia’s national territory in the same way they are constitutionally part of Ukraine. This might be the most difficult Gordian knot. The fact that only Russia and some satellites recognise Russia’s claim is peripheral to the perception of the Russian political elite, and it appears highly unlikely that Russia’s President Putin can readily relinquish these territories now. To abandon them would be interpreted as stark evidence of Russia’s defeat and humiliation, an outcome likely to make it difficult for him to survive politically.
There may be diplomats and strategists in the European capitols with minds as sharp as Alexander’s sword, and who could design a meaningful security guarantee that could be put in place in time to give Ukraine the rock solid confidence that a cessation of hostilities won’t just give Russia breathing space. And at the same time they may come up with a solution to the geographical conundrum of both Ukraine and Russia claiming constitutional rights to the same territory.
It is to be hoped so, or this conflict will grind on.
Copyright Mike Scrafton. This article may be reproduced under a Creative Commons CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence for non-commercial purposes, and providing that work is not altered, only redistributed, and the original author is credited. Please see the Cross-post and re-use policy for more information.