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Although in history there are historical contingencies, major failures and mistakes, however, by and large a war does not break out unless there are a sufficient number of powers that desire it and it certainly does not break out when the powers that do not desire it outweigh those desires. This is also true in the case of the Ukrainian crisis.
Which want....
A flare-up in Ukraine that took an armed form would reflect certain tendencies. Russian planning towards NATO expansion
, with a focus on Ukraine's non-membership, had led to the choice of a show of force as early as spring 2021, and the formulation of the position that if there were any further negative developments for Russia there would be repercussions. The immediate aim was to prevent the Zelensky government from either making moves in relation to the eastern regions or moving towards NATO membership. This tactic was reminiscent, as a threat, of what had happened in Georgia in 2008.
At the same time, part of the US political and military establishment made it clear that it was looking for an excuse to take the confrontation with Russia to a new level and to give a more material form to the logic that a restraint similar to that shown towards the USSR was needed vis-à-vis Russia. This led to a peculiar desire for Russia to "make the move" so that both the sanctions that would put the rift into practice would take a more material form and the hands would be untied in the West for a more aggressive handling of relations with Russia as a whole, but also the potential "Eurasian" pole with China (already seen as a potential threat by the US).
The third pressure for escalation had to do with the situation in Ukraine itself. The nationalist shift and Zelensky's nationalist shift was also reflected in the various declarations about regaining the eastern provinces and Crimea, which in turn shaped an even greater scene of tension on the informal internal border line. Moreover, at times the climate was also fuelled by certain Western powers, as well as groups within the US, who saw in this escalation of the confrontation the way for the "containment" strategy.
... who doesn't want war
Yet at the same time there is a wide range of forces that probably do not want war. First of all there are several signs that the US government is wavering and part of it feels that the consequences of a conflict now would be far more negative than any benefits. Let's not forget that the US has already dealt with the whole social crisis with the pandemic and is in a phase of economic recovery but with new challenges such as inflation.
In this landscape, it is not a given that a large-scale international upheaval, which would also have an impact on the global economy, energy prices, stock markets, etc.etc. is something that the Biden administration wanted on the horizon of the Mid-Tem Elections, i.e. the elections that will take place in November and include the election of all the representatives and one-third of the senators. In this context, the Biden administration would like to demonstrate a geopolitical success, namely that it "prevented the Russian invasion of Ukraine" without the cost of the conflict, albeit at the risk that the way in which it presented the risk would have the characteristics of inflation.
Nor does Russia want to get involved in a war and suffer both the costs of prolonged engagement and economic sanctions, even though it is prepared for them and at the same time has the possibility of very hard hits on Ukraine. The Kremlin knows that all this will ultimately come at a high cost, which it wishes to avoid, hoping that by exerting pressure it will secure more.
At the same time the Ukrainian government has made it clear that it also does not want war, because it understands that in any case Ukraine and its citizens will be the big losers in any confrontation, paying a heavy price in terms of both people and infrastructure.
And of course European countries do not want an armed escalation, because they know that Europe will only incur costs from such a development, either in terms of skyrocketing energy costs or the multiple consequences of a more general geopolitical conflagration.
The delicate balance
Of course, not wanting war does not in itself mean that negotiations for the resolution of outstanding issues are successful, which in turn sustains the risk of war.
The immediate difficulty is to find a way to de-escalate tensions in a way that does not appear to be a unilateral retreat, even if that means two parallel and not necessarily converging narratives, where the US can argue that the threat of sanctions produced the desired outcome, while Russia can say that the way it used the armed threat was the catalyst.
The medium-term difficulty is precisely what to do about diplomacy. And here again the distance between the two sides is great. Russia is calling for a return to a 1990s conception of collective security, when the US was still promising to expand NATO, when in fact long before the Ukrainian crisis - historians of the future will probably identify the significance of the 1999 bombing of Yugoslavia as a turning point - the choice was exactly that. The US and other NATO member states may point out that Ukrainian membership of NATO is not imminent or 'not on the agenda', as the Ukrainian government implicitly but clearly admits, but this is far from a commitment. And of course it is a question of whether NATO can change its doctrine and return to a different logic for security in Europe, even if it agrees to discuss some issues.
At the same time there is the issue of the Ukrainian crisis itself. Here the crucial point is the Minsk agreements. These do offer a way out, which also answers the question of Ukraine's territorial integrity and overcoming a division that has cost the country so much. To put it schematically, it is the grid of provisions in the Minsk Agreements that can enable a territorially intact Ukraine to overcome the trauma of division. The provision for legislative and constitutional changes that will provide a form of self-government for the eastern provinces is what they amount to. However, they require not only dialogue between representatives of the 'separatists' and the Ukrainian government, which Kiev has so far refused, but also practical legislative initiatives that conflict with a certain climate of nationalism that sees them as 'retreat'. At the same time the issue retains a particular charge in Russia if we consider that it was, for example, the Communist Party, which is the main opposition force, that promoted the Duma resolution calling for recognition of the eastern provinces (a resolution which, of course, has no institutional impact).
Messages of the last few days
In the last few days there have been several messages that have contributed to the need for more diplomacy. The dialogue between Lavrov and Putin on Monday 14 February on the need to continue negotiations, the repeated expression of the position from Russian lips that the answers they have received on collective security issues are not satisfactory but have elements that can be discussed, Zelensky's speech on 14/02 essentially rejecting the possibility of an attack on 16/02, the partial - and in any case planned - withdrawal of some Russian military units, the statement by the German Chancellor Olaf Scholz that Zelensky has pledged to proceed with the legislative and other institutional changes included in the Minsk Agreements, Biden's statement that he is also insisting on the path of diplomacy all point in the same direction.
This clearly points to the option that there should be no armed escalation now. However, the question of diplomacy, which everyone wants, at least proclaimedly, to make room for, is not so simple. It requires overcoming real distances in terms of the concept of collective security and a genuine desire for 'peaceful coexistence', to recall the vocabulary of the previous Cold War, but also mutual respect between powers that are, however you look at it, superpowers.
Source: in.gr
Contents of this article including associated images are belongs Cyprus Times
Views & opinions expressed are those of the author and/or Cyprus Times
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