Ukraine Peace by Peace

 “Hypocrisy is a tribute vice pays to virtue”.

Francois, Duc de la Rochefoucauld

August 23rd.  On this day in 1939 Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia signed the Non-Aggression Pact” which not only paved the way for Hitler’s September 1st invasion of Poland but also set the scene for the most climactic event of the twentieth century – the June 22^nd, 1941 Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union.  It was as cold and calculated an exercise in cynicism and hypocrisy as any in Europe’s long and undistinguished history of hypocrisy.  The Pact gave time to both Berlin and Moscow in return for Poland’s land. Is something similar about to happen in Ukraine?

There is a phrase that always raises my concerns: “The official policy is…”. It normally means there is an unofficial policy which is pretty much the opposite of that stated in public. That is precisely why last week there was a micro-frenzy when a senior NATO official appeared to suggest that Ukraine might have to accept the loss of land to Russia in return for membership of the Alliance.  For the record, he did not say that.  The official in question is known to me and he is the consummate professional.  The person chairing the meeting at which he is alleged to have suggested is also one of my closest friends.  The suggestion, such as it was, took place as part of a two-hour panel discussion as one of many scenarios that might transpire given the nature, scope, and levels of support for Ukraine.  What the reaction did reveal is how many governments are indeed thinking along those lines.

There are certain realities that Ukraine and its Western partners must now confront.  As I suggested in May, and despite the heroic efforts of Ukrainian forces, the Ukrainian counter-offensive is stalling because it never had the necessary military weight to break the Russian land bridge in eastern and southern Ukraine, let alone re-take Crimea.  At the forthcoming meeting of NATO defence ministers in October it will also become apparent that the Allies have already given 90% of what they are going to give Ukraine, whether it is delivered as promised or not. As the Rasputitsa or General Mud begins to impose itself the war will become a stalemate.  The question will then become what the Alliance and its fellow travellers can do for Ukraine come the spring and the new campaign season.  A season, I might add, that will coincide with NATO’s 75^th anniversary celebrations in Washington.

The stalemate is about more than two exhausted armies stuck in the Ukrainian mud.  The Russo-Ukraine War is also geopolitical Rasputitsa.  China is determined that Russia will not lose and is supplying Moscow directly with helicopters and other vital materiel, and indirectly using North Korea as a conduit for other materiel.  Today, a “Crimea Summit” is taking place in Kyiv with President Zelensky talking about preparations for re-taking Crimea.  However, the West, for all its verbal and actual support of Ukraine, has not and is not doing enough to ensure Ukraine has any chance of reclaiming its pre-2014 borders, let alone its pre-1991 borders. The news that the Danish and Dutch will send ‘dozens’ of F-16s to Ukraine with American approval is to be welcomed, but it will not be a war game-changer.

Worse, there are countries inside the Alliance, with Belgium and Italy to the fore, who are suggesting that the war has proven Russia to be a paper tiger and that there is little urgency to fulfil the goals set out in the 2022 NATO Strategic Concept. Any strategy pause, for that is what this stalemate will amount to, will thus give Russia the time and space it needs to learn the lessons of its own incompetence and rebuild its armed forces, whatever the economic consequences. That is precisely what former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev meant when in May he suggested the war could last for decades.

There are several peace initiatives/peace feelers underway, most notably that being proposed by the Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.  What strikes me about all these peace initiatives is how very European they are. The history of European peace treaties are traditionally built on a celebrated lack of principle by which the aggressor is partially rewarded for its aggression in return for the aggressed being partially compensated.  Even the Congress of Vienna and the treatment of defeated Nazi Germany by the Western Allies fitted that pattern.  The only ‘peace’ treaty that did not was the 1919 Treaty of Versailles and that simply created the conditions for World War Two.

Therefore, the governments saying that, “The official policy is…” are looking at alternatives. This is because Ukraine’s backers are not going to step up further which means that when they say it is up to Ukraine to decide when the war ends, it isn’t. At some point there will be a ceasefire, that will turn into some form of typically European ‘peace’ by which Russia gets to hold on to some of the Ukrainian land it has conquered in return for what is left of Ukraine being offered NATO membership.

And, if Ukraine does not get NATO membership? It will be conquered peace by peace.  It is as clear as mud!

Julian Lindley-French  

Addenda

1. My sources are impeccable and extremely well-placed. However, after I posted this piece a very senior Italian official said Italy was absolutely not retreating from its commitments to the goals set out in the NATO Strategic Concept 2022. 

2.  The assassination of Yevgeny Prigozhin yesterday tells one everything one needs to know about the Russia and its dangerous elite.  It also explains why Ukraine is fighting for its life and all and any democrat must support it.   

Emperor Xi

 “Woe and death to all who resist my will”.

Kaiser Wilhelm II

August 4^th, 2023. On this day in 1914 World War One broke out. It was caused by the insane imperial ambitions of a deluded ultra-nationalist German emperor, Kaiser Wilhelm II. In September 1939 World War Two was caused by the insane ultra-nationalist ambitions of Chancellor-for-Life Adolf Hitler.  In fact, almost all systemic wars have been caused by ultra-nationalists in power for life.  The Russo-Ukraine War was launched by the Russian ultra-nationalist President-for-Life Vladimir Putin in thrall to the even more extreme nationalists with whom he has surrounded himself. And now in Beijing there is a new Chinese ‘Emperor’, President-for-Life Xi Jingping who is showing all the signs of the same mix of absolute domestic power, insane ambition and deluded ultra-nationalism.

The first signs of Xi’s growing megalomania were the October 2022 humiliation of his predecessor Hu Jintao, by having him forcibly ejected from the Great Hall of the People. Like all ultra-nationalists Xi’s power base is the military, the burgeoning People’s Liberation Army (PLA).

And, like all past emperors he is moving first to quell any dissent within the Chinese Communist Party, whilst weakening adversaries abroad. Over the past month Xi has ‘vanished’ China’s erstwhile Foreign Minister Qin Gang and purged almost all the senior officers of the PLA Rocket Force. Abroad, China is engaged daily in industrial levels of cyber attacks and espionage, with the US now trying to eradicate malware Washington believes the Chinese have inserted into critical national infrastructure upon which the American armed forces depend.

There was one other thing the ultra-nationalists of the past have with the ultra-nationalists of the present – a distracted free world in denial about the systemic threat they pose. Xi has made the aims of his ambition clear: the forced reintegration of Taiwan into the Chinese state, the forced subjugation of states around the South China Sea into a Chinese sphere of influence, the expulsion of the United States from East Asia, the use of Chinese money to push the West out of the Middle East and beyond, and debt traps to create de facto Trojan Horses within both NATO and the EU.

European states are belatedly awakening to the threat. This week the Italian Defence Minister warned about the threat posed by Italy’s membership of Beijing’s Belt and Chains Initiative. At the July 2022 NATO Madrid Summit, the Alliance finally confirmed that “the PRC’s malicious hybrid and cyber operations and its confrontational rhetoric and disinformation target allies and harm Alliance security”.  In July 2023, a report by the UK’s House of Commons Intelligence and Security Committee said that China had penetrated almost all levels of British society and government whilst London’s response was fragmented and disjointed.  As ever, the British cannot decide which is more important: Chinese money or the threat China poses.  

Whilst it is vital the West continues to talk to China and avoids ‘war is inevitable’ syndrome it is also now vital that China is made to realise the costs it would incur if Xi were ever to go for broke (for that is what it would mean) and attempt to realise his ultra-nationalist ambitions.

When will we the West ever learn?

Julian Lindley-French