Towards a deliberately built peace: the inevitable negotiations on Ukraine

The likelihood of either side in this war ever being in a position to dictate settlement terms to the other is remote, and that means talks are inevitable.

Hill Times, Opinion, June 22, 2023

Though their land is devastated by war, what many Ukrainians fear is an early ceasefire.

As deep as the desire is to silence the guns, it is hard to get past the understandable suspicion that a ceasefire now would launch a settlement process that would reward aggression and ignore Ukraine’s full sovereign rights. Converting current fighting front lines into de facto boundaries would enshrine injustice rather than restore peace.

While that fear defines the central challenge facing advocates of an early ceasefire, those doubling down on the war effort—arguing for whatever-is-needed-for-as-long-as-it takes—also face a challenge. They have to get past the prospects of thousands more dying, more homes and infrastructure destroyed, with recovery indefinitely deferred. And to that ongoing carnage must be added the risks of escalation to the unparalleled horror of nuclear attack and the growing possibility of war spreading to neighbouring countries.

It’s a devil’s choice. Ukrainians—not those of us who watch from afar—are fated to make it. While the international community must respect their choice, it also has a duty to be as vigorous and determined in pursuit of a just peace as it has been in support of the right to self-defence.

The likelihood of either side in this brutal war ever being in a position to dictate settlement terms to the other is remote, and that means negotiations are inevitable. Of course, neither Ukraine nor Russia is now inclined towards negotiating, but it is only prudent to start getting ready for the inevitable. Readiness is as important to negotiating peace as it is to fighting a war.

While overtly supporting Ukraine, middle power states like Canada and Brazil—a partner to Russia in the BRICS bloc of counties, and one that has remained neutral on the war and supports negotiations—could and should be proactively exploring a mechanism to undertake basic groundwork on a peace process for when the conflicting parties finally reach that point. Major entities, like the United States and NATO, could and should also appoint peace envoys with mandates to investigate ceasefire and peace process possibilities, while supporting Ukraine.

Consultations with the warring parties, as well as with independent experts, could already be assessing the parties’ openness to preliminary or indirect dialogue, exploring settlement options, testing their viability, and building an inventory of credible negotiating ideas and proposals available to the parties. There are, after all, key issues that are not amenable to being settled on the battlefield.

Even substantial battlefield success for Ukraine would not settle the governance and sovereignty questions that so plagued it in the years before Russia’s overt invasion. Are the Minsk proposals for semi-autonomous, self-governing regions under the Ukrainian constitution in rebel areas still relevant? While the eventual status of Crimea is unlikely to be determined by the war, now is the time to ensure that talks will include a credible participatory process toward a long-term settlement.

The battlefield is also unlikely to yield any insights into how a post-war Ukraine might effectively navigate its position on the strategic fault line between Russia and NATO. The neutrality commonly proposed before the 2022 invasion has been rendered passé by a war that has clearly driven Ukraine to the western side of that fault line, but Ukraine will not escape its neighbourhood nor the need for stable relations with next-door Russia. Redefining and restructuring the Ukraine-Russia relationship would thus be another issue to be usefully explored by a peace commission or forum.

And there is broad acknowledgement that the international strategic order will not be stabilized after the war without a new modus operandi among the United States, NATO, Russia, and ultimately China. Russia came to the present disastrous war with genuine security grievances. None of those in any way justified invading Ukraine, but future stability requires that they, too, be addressed.

The current response of most Western states to the aggression on Ukraine is essentially to send weapons to the battlefield and then sit back to see what war brings—and what it brings is ongoing death, destruction and the promise of more of the same, along with little hope for a decisive or just outcome. But it’s not too late for the steadfast support of Ukraine to be expanded to include the exploration of a path toward an early, just, and durable peace.

Peace is not a by-product of war. It has to be deliberately designed and constructed.

Ernie Regehr is co-founder of Project Ploughshares and senior fellow in Arctic security and defence at the Simons Foundation Canada. He is author of Disarming Conflict: Why peace cannot be won on the battlefield.

The Hill Times