Macron, Starmer and Zelenskyy, March 2, 2025 -- Lauren Hurley / No 10 Downing Street, OGL 3, via Wikimedia Commons
By Vijay Prashad
The whole thing is a fiasco. The theatrical drama in the White House’s Oval Office triggered a series of predictable responses around the world. Outrage at US President Donald Trump for his rudeness and ridicule for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy were some of the reactions. Then, the failure of French President Emmanuel Macron to create a European agreement with the United Kingdom’s Keir Starmer and Zelenskyy revealed the absolute dead ends that confront this exhausted war in Ukraine. The question that these discussions provoke is simple: is there an exit for this war?
Permanent War
If the war aims of Zelenskyy and his European partners are to weaken Russia or to overthrow the government of Vladimir Putin, then this war might either go on forever or accelerate into a dangerous nuclear scenario. Opinion polls in Russia show that Putin’s approval rating is now at 87%. Even with a mountain of salt, this is far higher than the approval rating in France for Macron. With Russia’s economy resilient during this war, it is unlikely that it will be further weakened with the continuation of hostilities. What the evidence shows, however, is that Europe’s economy is suffering from war inflation that has not been reduced. If this war is to continue, Macron said, then European states would have to increase their military spending to 3% or 3.5% of their GDP. This would further damage the living situation of most Europeans. Would young, working-class Europeans be willing to go and man the dangerous frontline in Ukraine on behalf of a war aim (weakening Russia) that is impossible? It is unlikely. (There is a separate cruelty of middle-class Ukrainians fleeing the country for Western Europe and then working-class Western Europeans being asked to come and defend that country for them).
A permanent war will lead to unnecessary loss of life in Ukraine and to a permanent economic crisis in Europe. It is also unlikely because the United States will not financially and militarily back such a war indefinitely, resulting in the collapse of any long-term European commitment to Ukraine.
The Korean Solution
If neither Ukraine nor Russia are willing to move to a ceasefire and then a negotiated settlement (which would include security guarantees for all sides), then there is the possibility that the current frontline that stretches from northern to eastern Ukraine will become a permanent Demilitarized Zone (DMZ). Ukraine would thereby be divided indefinitely with an immense waste of social wealth to maintain a perpetual frontline. This is the most likely scenario, although it might not be palatable for Europeans to have a Korea within their continent.
The South Korean military maintains 600,000 troops along the 38th Parallel, alongside almost 30,000 US troops. Much the same is the situation in the north. Billions of dollars are spent annually on surveillance and logistics for over 900 square miles of territory that is not available for economic use. Europe would have to underwrite this Korean solution for Ukraine for eternity (just as the United States provides guarantees and funds to South Korea, and China does the same for North Korea).
A Security Consortium
The Helsinki Process that emerged to bring the US and USSR into negotiations in 1975 and that formed the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) has played almost no role for peace in the war on Ukraine.
The only interlocutors that have been given permission to speak about the war in Ukraine on behalf of Zelenskyy have been the United States, the Western European leaders, the leaders of the European Union (EU), and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Leaders from Europe’s east – apart from those who are integrated into the NATO-EU – have been either silent or told that their opinions do not matter. But it is these eastern European countries that share with Ukraine the fact of having a border with Russia, and it is these countries that most need to form a security consortium that includes Russia and provides mutual guarantees. Those countries that directly share a border with Russia’s west are – from north to south – Norway, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Belarus, Ukraine, Georgia, and Azerbaijan (Lithuania and Poland share a border with the Kaliningrad Oblast, which is a Russian exclave on the Baltic Sea). Three of them (Finland, Estonia, and Latvia) are members of NATO and of the EU, while one of them (Norway) is a NATO member but not in the EU.
Would it be possible for these eight countries to call a conference with Russia on the broader issues of security rather than the narrow issue of Ukraine? That three countries that border Russia are already NATO members (one of them, Norway, was a founding member in 1949) suggests that the problems in Ukraine are separate from NATO membership itself. Rather, they stem from anxiety about a border line created in a hurry when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991 (this impacts Estonia, Latvia, Belarus, Ukraine, Georgia, and Azerbaijan, but not Norway and Finland, which were not part of the Soviet Union).
In the early 1980s, former Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme chaired the Independent Commission on Disarmament and Security Issues, whose 1982 report Common Security: A Programme for Disarmament made the case that ‘The task of diplomacy is to limit, split, and subdivide conflicts, not to generalize and aggregate them’. In other words, all conflicts cannot be settled at the same time. A ceasefire is good in itself; the issues to resolve need to be separated, and those that are easier dealt with first to build confidence. To bundle all issues into one problem makes a dispute intractable.
The countries that border each other, including those that border Russia to its south and east, must live next to each other. They cannot lift themselves out of their geography and go elsewhere. Ukraine cannot be relocated to France. It must remain beside Russia. In that case, these countries need to find a way to build trust.
To begin with, the assertion that one cannot trust a neighbour is the worst way to build confidence between the peoples of neighbouring countries. Neither the EU nor NATO (without full US military backing) can subordinate Russia and force it to bow before Ukraine. A British cabinet minister said last year that his country would last only six months in a full-scale war with Russia. Meanwhile, a Kiel Institute for the World Economy report suggests that Germany is spending its money buying weapons but does not have a standing army capable of self-defence, let alone winning an offensive war against Russia. Europe, without the United States, is a shadow.
It would behove all parties if a country that borders Russia calls for such a security consortium to be built and if it is able to get guarantees from NATO not to expand further eastward and from Russia to draw back its military from the border regions. There are long relations among these countries, with families on both sides of the border. Any lessened tension in general is good for humanity, and if such a manoeuvre will lead to peace in Ukraine, that would be far better than a permanent scar on this part of the European continent.
Vijay Prashad is an Indian historian, editor, and journalist. He is a writing fellow and chief correspondent at Globetrotter. He is an editor of LeftWord Books and the director of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. He has written more than 20 books, including The Darker Nations and The Poorer Nations. His latest books are On Cuba: Reflections on 70 Years of Revolution and Struggle (with Noam Chomsky), Struggle Makes Us Human: Learning from Movements for Socialism, and (also with Noam Chomsky) The Withdrawal: Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, and the Fragility of US Power.
This article was produced by Globetrotter and No Cold War.
Comments