Again, there is talk about achieving peace between Ukraine and Russia. It is much too early to see a concrete path towards peace or at least towards a ceasefire, but an agreement, even a weak one, seems to be more realistic today than at any time since the start of the full-scale attack on Ukraine by Russia starting in February 2022.
A peculiar meeting
Recently, the media followed a strange meeting between Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump on American territory - although Trump said he was going to Russia when he left for Alaska. For once, Boris Johnson had a correct and adequate description and evaluation of that meeting: ”This was perhaps the most disgusting episode in the entire vulgar history of international diplomacy. I was sickened by the way Putin was welcomed on American soil. I was sickened by the way he was applauded on the red carpet.” Boris Johnson expressed what many of us felt with horror and shame when looking at our tablet or television screen. (By citing Boris Johnson, we have to forget his shameful support of Brexit and how he handled COVID.)
The US security expert Andrea Kendall-Taylor underlined in an interview with Ravi Agrawal in Foreign Policy that the meeting was a big success for Putin: “Quite notably, there were no concessions from the Russian side. No pressure, no sanctions. It really was a great success for Putin. He raised the risk that the United States applies pressure to Ukraine and also bought more time to prosecute this war. It was a big win for Russians, a big loss for Ukraine, and a big loss for Europeans.”
And Europe?
It was difficult for Europeans to react adequately to the meeting between Putin and Trump. They would have had to express their disappointment and disgust. But they still need the US, and that means today: Donald Trump. They need him for continuing the backing of military defense of Ukraine against the ongoing aggression, especially concerning satellite systems and air defense. And they need him for achieving a ceasefire or a sustainable peace settlement.
At least European leaders reacted and supported the Ukrainian president in a meeting with Trump. A strong backing of Ukraine is particularly difficult, as Trump made it clear - already long ago - that he will in no way agree to a NATO membership for Ukraine. And he underlined the necessity of ceding land to Russia. He did all that already before meeting Putin. It seems he promised even part of the Donbas, which the Russian army could not occupy until now. He is in a strange way submissive to Putin, whatever the reason for that submission.
Europe is rather isolated in its support for Ukraine. Principally, the Europeans could do more to put pressure on Putin. They could be acting more severely against oil exports from Russia, including secondary sanctions on those who import oil, even if it would not be received with great sympathy by the oil importing countries. What should be done is certainly to use the frozen billions of Russian Central Bank reserves and hand it over to Ukraine for financing arms procurement and reconstruction investments. All that would be easier if it could be done with the US consent. But the general issue is how to rely on a non-reliable partner who is less and less a partner? And there is no other decisive partner for Europe, as China is fully supporting Russia.
Anyway, the US historian Michael Kimmage, in the newest edition of Foreign Affairs, gives Europeans the following advice: “In this conflict the Europeans need to be patient. Building up European defense industrial capacity will take years, and aligning Ukraine with European institutions will take decades. Europeans must learn to live with the pressures and difficulties of having a major ground war on their doorsteps.” Well, let’s hope the war will stop one day, even if the conflict will not be solved. Since even a frozen conflict remains a conflict, Europe will, for the longer term, have to live with such a conflict at its very center.
To be patient, does not mean to be silent. It is correct to demand more European engagement as the internationally active military analyst and author of Austrian origin, Franz-Stefan Gaddy did, when he rightly wrote in the Financial Times, “Europe needs to step off the sidelines on Ukraine”. Specifically, European leaders have to define what they mean by supporting Ukraine by a “coalition of the willing”. “If Moscow decides to test the coalition of the willing, it could quickly transform into a coalition of the unwilling. EU leaders have done a poor job communicating to their citizens what role Ukrainian plays in upholding Europe’s security.” Furthermore, one of the most fervent supporters of Ukraine, Poland, voted recently for a nationalist right-wing president who is ideologically fully on Trump’s side. In this connection, it was also widely noted that Poland was not represented in the European delegation to Washington, which supported President Zelensky.
Anyway, the deficiencies in the EU communication policy concerning security and defense are undermining its defense efforts enormously. Again and again, one meets people who are no friends of Putin, but doubt that Putin would even think about attacking a NATO country or even a neutral country like Austria or Switzerland. So why - they ask - should we spend more on defense? And many of those think: give Putin a sufficient part of Ukraine, and he will be satisfied. But will he? Or will he react according to the proverb “appetite comes with eating”?
What kind of peace?
Very often - when speaking about a peace deal - reference is taken to former war and conflict settlements. But in most of them, the aggressor has been politically and militarily defeated. This was true with Napoleon and Hitler. And also, after World War 1 the winners dictated the peace conditions without even listening to the losers. Agreements with the aggressor without security arrangements for the possible victims and threats against the aggressor, like in Munich 1938, postponed only the starting of the war. Appeasement is no remedy against wars. So, it will be paramount not only to have security guarantees by foreign countries but also to give full rights and capacities to Ukraine for self-defense. This is a must for peace to be sustainable. And that Donald Trump said he will “coordinate security guarantees” given by the Europeans is certainly rather an empty promise and no guarantee itself. Well, he wants to sell American weapons to the Europeans, who should give it to Ukraine.
Why are these security guarantees so important? The former US ambassador to NATO, Ivo H. Daalder, expressed it recently in a comment in Foreign Policy quite precisely: “As a signatory to the UN Charter, the Helsinki Final Act, and the Charter of Paris, Russia is legally bound not to change borders by force - except it has repeatedly done so in the past two decades. In 1994, Russia, along with the United States and Britain, signed a memorandum with Ukraine guaranteeing its sovereignty and sanctity of borders. No one - least of all Ukraine - can count on Putin’s word, whether in a treaty, legislation, or in law.”
Another issue is the territorial question. Whatever we would like to see, we have to be realistic. Ukraine will be forced to accept some territorial concessions. And it will be not only Crimea which will be at least de facto if not de jure accepted as Russian territory. It will be more difficult to draw a new - provisional - border concerning Donbas. These territorial concessions are certainly not just. But there cannot be a just peace after all that killings and destructions and with Russia not defeated. Justice and peace after wars started by an aggressor are in most cases not compatible, certainly not in this case. At the end, one has to choose between continuing the war hoping for a clear victory or ending the war with a peace agreement, which definitely is not fair.
What we need, is to keep the injustices of the peace settlement as small as possible, keep the fundamental conflict frozen, leave things open for mutual accepted corrections in the future and reduce the incentives for new aggressions to a minimum. This concerns aggression against Ukraine itself and against any other European territory.
As Europe and specifically the European Union is more and more left alone in defending Ukraine and with it the principles of democracy and freedom to choose, it is paramount to win the hearts and minds of the European Union citizens. In order to continue that military and civil engagement, the EU needs comprehensive and sophisticated communication with the citizens, organized on national and European level.
Dr. Hannes Swoboda, President of the International Institute for Peace (IP), started his career in urban politics in Vienna and was elected member of the European Parliament in 1996. He was Vice President of the Social Democrat Group until 2012 und then President until 2014. He was particularly engaged in foreign, enlargement, and neighborhood policies. Swoboda is also President of the Vienna Institute for International Economics, the Centre of Architecture, the University for Applied Science - Campus Vienna, and the Sir Peter Ustinov Institute.