by Hoffmann the Organizer
With events related to Ukraine moving very quickly and the rapid development of momentum toward negotiations to end the war, it is important for the peace movement to be clear about where those negotiations should lead. International relations scholar John Mearsheimer projects two starkly different potential outcomes of that process: a “frozen conflict” or a new security system for ALL of Europe. A lasting peace can best be reached by a new system of mutual security that includes Ukraine, Russia, and the rest of Europe. A “frozen conflict” would be the farthest thing from lasting peace.
A lasting peace would minimally have to be based on recognizing the security concerns of both Ukraine and Russia. That means obtaining mutually recognized resolutions on the fate of the four oblasts (regions) currently claimed, and mostly occupied, by Russia, and a mutually satisfactory definition of long-term Ukrainian neutrality. In an ideal world, it would create a security system including all European nations, not just those currently in NATO.
Negotiations that achieve only a cessation of armed conflict but leave the fate of occupied territories in contention or the question of neutrality unanswered amount, in Mearsheimer’s terminology, to a “frozen conflict,” not unlike the fate of Korea since the armistice in 1953 that put that war in suspended animation.
The frozen conflict outcome fails to meet the goals of either NATO, Russia, or the peace movement. The Russia-skeptics have always said “how can we trust Putin to abide by a peace deal?” In a frozen conflict, we cannot by definition, because the causes of conflict and mutual distrust are still in force – contested territories and non-neutrality – and remain ready to catch fire at any provocation.
And there will be very flammable hot spots ready to worry about: the four contested oblasts in the Donbas and around Crimea; the presence of NATO arms and personnel in Ukraine and at the contested border; the Black Sea; Belarus, Moldova, and Kaliningrad; the Arctic and the Baltic; and so on. Just as we continue to debate who is responsible for the current war (NATO provocation vs. Russian imperialism), what sets off any of these timebombs will also be attributable to either side, or, most likely, both.
A Korea-like standoff in the heart of Europe, with Thousand-mile frontiers and massive nuclear arsenals right at hand, is neither sustainable nor tolerable.
With rueful melancholy, Mearsheimer sees a frozen conflict as the only believable outcome, because he cannot see how Trump would be able to get Ukraine, the EU, or his own hawks to back down on the core issues of territorial concessions or neutrality without appearing to have capitulated to Russia.
The peace movement needs to be clear. When we call for ceasefire and negotiations, we are not looking to lay a fragile ice sheet over the conflict. Nor do we want to leave smoldering embers across the eastern frontier of NATO. We have a vision of a lasting peace, and that means a new security system that spans far over the NATO/Russia conflict to include all the stakeholders of Europe in a collective order based on cooperation and conflict resolution rather than ultimatums and saber rattling.
That goal, a zone of political and economic cooperation from Lisbon to Vladivostok, had seemed possible (despite ongoing NATO expansion eastward) for the first fifteen years after the end of the Cold War. Now, despite the rise of ethnic chauvinism and the horrors of fraternal bloodletting, such a peaceable system must be seen as not only possible, but necessary.
Hoffmann earned his pen name and sobriquet “the Organizer” through years of work on campaigns for peace, economic justice, and environmental sustainability in numerous cities and regions of the US, as well as in Europe.