The abandoned road outside of Debaltseve, Ukraine, which fell to rebels after the announcement of a new ceasefire
Last Thursday’s peace deal, hammered out by French President Francois Hollande, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Russian President Vladimir Putin, and Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, was designed to restore a fragile ceasefire to war-torn eastern Ukraine. Yet as soon as it was inked, pundits and commentators began to doubt its longevity, as rebels repudiated portions of the deal and European diplomats expressed doubts. A similar September peace plan had been quickly violated almost as soon as it was enacted. Though only time will reveal the success or failure of this latest attempt at Ukrainian peace, the prospects seem gloomy. The New York Times noted that Ms. Merkel’s remarks on the peace plan—the plan she herself negotiated—seemed to characterize the deal as “inauspicious” at best. Referring to one’s own deal as an “illusion” is perhaps not the most hopeful of signs. Ultimately, what doomed previous talks and threatens last week’s effort is the lack of any reliable deterrent to Mr. Putin.
Were Russia or Russian-backed rebels to break the cease-fire, neither have much to lose. Even if the Russian Army were to openly cross the border and drive to Kiev, neither the war-weary American public nor the peaceful European electorate would rush to start a war with nuclear-armed Russia over a country lacking much geopolitical significance. Indeed, Ms. Merkel has even disagreed with President Obama’s more stringent sanctions regime against Russia.
By committing themselves to diplomacy, the United States and European Union have played their hand—all while Russia has demonstrated a willingness to deploy military force. Domestically, Mr. Putin’s deployment of rampant nationalism over Ukraine has sent his approval ratings to record highs, even despite economic sanctions and a large drop in the price of oil. For him, personal political incentives line up with Russian military opportunities, giving him little reason to abruptly stop pressing Russia’s claims over eastern Ukraine.
During the past fifty years, disputes like this would have been sent to the United Nations, formerly the preeminent forum for resolving geopolitical disputes and, more importantly, providing a neutral military force to guarantee stability—yet the Blue Helmets are notably absent from eastern Ukraine. Sadly, the organization that John F. Kennedy branded humanity’s “last best hope in an age where the instruments of war have far outpaced the instruments of peace” has become sidelined, itself lacking the instruments of war needed to lend credibility to its instruments of peace. Instead, it is mired in bureaucracy and caught up in cumbersome diplomacy, unable to play any serious role in the fast-developing geopolitical crises of the twenty-first century. From Georgia to Darfur to North Korea to Iran to Ukraine, diplomatic initiatives have cut out the United Nations Security Council. In a globalizing world composed of nations with globalizing interests, few regions—and precious few geopolitical hotspots—are areas of mutual agreement among the five veto countries, the United States, the United Kingdom, France, China, and Russia.
Ironically, today’s geopolitical climate has been the victim of its own success. We live in the most norm-bound era in centuries. The widespread rejection of the use of force to settle international scores combined with the global reach of media and its ability to shame offending countries has largely kept the peace in the post-Cold War era. Yet as Russia begins to cleverly and covertly flout these norms, the United Nations has been left out-of-practice and toothless. These problems are compounded by the present political climate in the United States, infused with a neo-Vietnam Syndrome that has benched the only nation with the real military capacity to field significant overseas military deployments. It is little wonder that smaller nations like Ukraine are often powerless in the face of Russian aggression.
Ultimately, diplomacy rests on an ability to convince leaders that their best option is compromise—an impossibility if the implicit “or-else” remains at best a neoconservative pipedream. If the West wants a stable Ukraine, the United Nations holds the key, endowed as it is with the imprimatur of impartiality and legitimacy. Only a treaty backed by the highly credible use of legitimate force will dissuade Mr. Putin from pressing his luck further. If this current deal fails, instead of trying for a third Hail Mary peace plan, Ms. Merkel and Mr. Hollande should devote their efforts to a broader solution. Nations like Russia that flout global norms should find their veto power in the Security Council nullified or sidestepped, if not in law then in practice. In Ukraine, peace without force is no peace at all.
Photo Credits: Viktor Kovalenko, Wikimedia Commons