Pathways to a possible peace...

Do pathways to peace in Ukraine exist sooner rather than later?

This article explores several facets of the conflict in Ukraine that are not widely known and that may contribute to a negotiated peace when that comes about, hopefully sooner rather than later!

Although NATO was a beneficiary when Ukraine gave up its substantial nuclear arsenal in 1994 (the third-largest stockpile in the world at the time) to promote the cause of world peace, it may not have been a signatory to the OSCE-hosted Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances.

The memorandum included security assurances against threats or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of Ukraine, Belarus, and Kazakhstan. As a result of other agreements and the memorandum, between 1993 and 1996, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Ukraine gave up their nuclear weapons.

Russia, the United States, Britain, and (in a more limited fashion) China, however, were signatories to this international treaty that guaranteed that Ukraine would never need its nuclear weapons to defend itself.

Memories are short, but commitments like these matter. If solemn assurances like these mean nothing, no nation in future will be willing to give up its nuclear arms in exchange for security assurances as this could become an existential error - especially with the passage of years...

What is not widely known is that President Putin, early in his rule, had wanted Russia to become a member of NATO without having to go through the usual application process and standing in line. He also sought closer economic ties with the West to help Russia prosper, and was a proponent of democratic reforms in Russia, which made him popular with the Russian people. Bureaucratic rules, however, presumably prevailed...

Several observers with a knowledge of historical precedents have noted that President Putin's concerns about Ukraine joining NATO (or, to a far lesser degree, the European Union) is similar to President John F. Kennedy's security concerns about the installation of Soviet nuclear-tipped ballistic missiles in Cuba.

Dismissing either set of security concerns (America's during the Cuban Missile Crisis, or Russia's concerns over Ukraine's neutrality) by citing other principles that rightly or wrongly both America and Russia do not both currently share risks a major conflict as the unfolding and tragic events in Ukraine have demonstrated.

What could and should have been achieved peacefully through negotiations is now being subjected to the vagaries and uncertainties of war, unfathomable human suffering, violations of the United Nations Charter and international humanitarian laws (that Russia and all other nations are signatories to), threats of nuclear first strikes by President Putin, the bombing of nuclear facilities, the initiation by 39 nations led by Britain of formal investigations by the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague, future economic reparations from Russia to Ukraine that could last for decades (as Iraq's reparations to Kuwait have, for 30 years, under UN supervision) and an invasion of Ukraine without the consent or knowledge of the Russian people (who have close cultural and historical ties with the people of Ukraine) which could spill over across Europe, and even the world.

At the end of this conflict, with all its uncertainties and imponderables, President Putin might finally get his original wish, with NATO accepting Russia's membership without having to stand in line, and constitutional / governance arrangements similar to the kind that Germany and Japan experienced after the Second World War in return for closer economic integration and prosperity.

... And as they did following the Second World War circa seventy-five years ago, all nations on both sides of the conflict will declare, "Never Again!!"

Imon Ghosh has served as Director of the Academy of HRD, Ahmedabad (India’s premier institution specializing in human resources development for all organizational forms), Head of Training for a Fortune 100 MNC in India, Senior Consultant to the United Nations Institute for Training & Research (UNITAR) and as an NHRDN National Professor.

He is a life member of the All India Management Association, National HRD Network and the Indian Society for Training & Development, as well as the Indian Economic Association, Indian Econometrics Society and the Indian Society of Labour Economics.

Imon is the author of books on Inflation, and on Reducing Poverty to Accelerate Economic Growth, as well as a chapter on India's Sustainable Economic Growth: Challenges & Prospects published in the United Service Institution of India's Strategic Yearbook 2017. (The USI is Asia's oldest think tank, founded in 1870.)

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