Contours Of A Possible Peace In Ukraine: India Has A Role To Play
The choice is not between the military option and the political option. The only choice is the political option. Every war concludes with peace negotations. You can take that option early, or you can take that option late. You can negotiate peace when there has been little damage, a lot of damage, or total damage. It is smart to move early.
Russia has had grievances. It fancies itself the only country being able to stand up to the United States, the supposed sole superpower.
This is a multi-polar world. The US ceased being the sole superpower a long time ago.
Putin fishes in conspiracy theories. You read zany brainy ideas on the internet and think it is not possible anybody believes these. But Putin has been waging an entire war with QAnon type material. You don’t wage war because some people seem to be working for transgender rights in the United States! Are you not secure in your masculinity, Mr. Putin?
Russia is a smaller economy than Italy. Italy is no challenge to the United States. The nuclear weapons Russia and the US have are only good for mutually assured destruction. That is not challenge. That is suicide.
The US is a challenge to itself. When a large power starts printing money recklessly, it is on its way out. World history attests to that trend.
I think standing up to the US is important. That is why India has kept buying Russian oil. The Indian government answers to the Indian voters. Those Indian voters can not survive substantially higher oil prices.
Ethnic Russian minorities in countries like Ukraine must have their grievances. But they must also pale in comparison to the grievances of the ethnic minorities inside the Russian Federation. Putin’s so-called mobilization has been calls for genocide on several ethnic groups inside Russia. Dress up, pick up that rifle and go die, all of you.
If Putin is allowed to change borders at will, half the borders in Africa might come into question. Political forest fires might crop up in many parts of the globe. The US-Canada border might be the only settled border on the planet. There is no arguing a line of latitude.
Putin is a dictator. If you can not speak freely, if you can not peacefully assemble and protest, you live in a dictatorship. Russians live in a dictatorship. And they know it.
Putin’s military misadventure in Ukraine is how dictatorships work. The supposed strongman has to keep making the moves of strength or his regime will collapse. Putin going into Ukraine is Putin wanting 20 more years of power inside Russia.
Threatening nuclear strikes is enough offense. Putin does not need to drop a nuclear bomb somewhere for the world to impose much tougher sanctions on the regime. Putin should not be allowed to issue threats.
The moment that threat might become credible, Putin will put himself under tremendous pressure. Somebody in his inner circles might come to conclude getting rid of Putin is the only way to survive. Why die with the madman? But that can not be the world’s plan. The world needs to intervene and make peace.
You don’t make peace with friends. By definition you make peace with enemies.
Putin might prefer China, because China is not neutral. China is a Russia waiting to happen. Look at what just happened in Taiwan. Putin might prefer Turkey, because Turkey is a small power.
But the best candidate to make peace is India, and more specifically the Indian trio Modi, Jaishankar, and Doval. You don’t make peace by asking for permission from the US, or Russia, or Ukraine. You proactively make peace. You go in because you don’t want your people to pay more for oil, because you don’t want Africa to pay more for wheat, because you want to take the atom bomb out of the equation for the world. A country that aspires for a veto power in the UN Security Council should actively engage with all parties and force peace upon them, against their will if necessary. You can always name and shame. Heck, you could shame the military-industrial complex in the United States. To a hammer, everything looks like a nail. Defense contractors get to make money, but not by taking the world to the brink of nuclear catastrophe.
Peace means to demilitarize all contested areas. Russia needs to agree to get its troops out of all areas that it did not have in 2013. Ukraine also has to agree to do the same. UN peacekeeping troops will have to step in to maintain law and order in the said regions.
If Russia does not agree to this withdrawal, then there will be no peace. The Ukrainian army is on schedule to hand over an Afghanistan to Putin possibly by winter, or perhaps Spring. That could lead to a collapse of the Russian Federation. Russia could become the size of Ukraine.
Then the contested areas have to be demarcated. The contested areas are not Crimea plus the four regions. The contested areas are only Crimea and the original two contested regions. Ukraine has to be willing to hold Scotland style referendums. I think Ukraine stands to win them. It can rejig its constitution to institute full-fledged federalism and great autonomy to those regions.
Of course there will be campaigning. And Ukraine gets to convince people that they will be better off as part of the European Union.
Ukraine could agree to not join NATO for a 10-year period with guarantees from the major powers that its borders after the referendums will not be violated. In 10 years NATO will likely have become irrelevant with no help from Putin.
There will be no peace unless war crimes are investigated. A neutral committee could look into that. There will be no peace unless Russia pays for the rebuilding of the damage it has done. Putin has plenty of money in the western banks.
There are those who want Putin to go. Russian troops moving back to Russia brings back all those Russian men who have fled the motherland to avoid getting drafted. I think they will take to the streets when they are back. But that is not the business of the peace process. That is a separate topic. Whether Putin goes or stays is for the global Russian population to decide.
