By Dr Bertrand Ramcharan
Director of the International Peace Conference on the Former Yugoslavia (1992-1996); Former Chancellor of the University of Guyana
Wars end in one of four ways: victory; defeat; a negotiated peace; or a stalemate. Historically, the great majority of conflicts has ended in stalemates.
To end a conflict, it helps to understand its history. In the four years I participated in peace negotiations and peacekeeping operations in the former Yugoslavia, I obtained a key historical insight from the book of Nobel laureate Ivo Andric, The Bridge Over the Drina: that in Balkan history the power of the Ottoman Empire, and then the Soviet Empire, had held together the fractious nations that constituted the former Yugoslavia. Once the Soviet Empire ended, and Tito died, violence raised its head with deadly consequences. An understanding of history helped in the peace negotiations. I wrote about the negotiations in my book, International Peace Conferences.
And now we have the Ukrainian conflict before our eyes with its murderous violence and global economic impact, and we need to understand its history. Orlando Figes has written a highly acclaimed book, The Story of Russia (2022) that provides valuable historical insights.
A leading authority on Russian history, he discusses possible outcomes of the conflict: a military defeat for Russia, which he thinks unlikely: a stalemate, which is distinctly possible; “a Russian victory of some kind” which he thinks “is the most likely outcome of this war.” He does not think that NATO would be ready to join Russia in a nuclear war.
For students of world order, there are useful historical insights in Figes’ book. The first historical insight is that NATO’s decision in 1999 to bomb the Serbs over Kosovo, without authorisation from the UN Security Council, established a dangerous precedent that Russia subsequently used in places like Georgia, Crimea and Ukraine.
The USA and its allies would again subsequently bomb Iraq and invade it without authorisation from the UN Security Council. And still later, there would be great controversy over the ways in which NATO powers used force in Libya in what some have asserted was a gross misuse of a Security Council resolution without any accountability to the Council itself.
The second historical insight from Figes’ book is that, as Russia came out of the former USSR, NATO and the EU missed an opportunity to end the historical cycle of misunderstanding between Russia and the West. “Instead of trying to bring Russia into new security arrangements for Europe, NATO kept it isolated. … The effect of Western actions was to reinforce the Russians’ own resentments of the West.” In his first term as President, Vladimir Putin had signalled that he was ready to join NATO and the European Union. He considers that Russia was treated without respect.
The third historical insight from Figes’ book is that NATO’s eastward expansion poisoned its relations with Russia. George Kennan, the father of the containment policy, had warned that it would be a ‘tragic mistake’ for NATO to encroach on the territories of the former Warsaw Pact. NATO’s incorporation of the former Soviet satellites made it come across as an anti-Russian alliance, reinforcing age-old Russian feelings of resentment of the West. Figes writes: “By provoking Russian aggression, NATO had created the very problem it was meant to counteract. It was as if it needed an aggressive Russia to justify its existence.”
The fourth historical insight from Figes’ book is that Russia sees this as an ‘existential war’ and that “a number of Kremlin ideologists believe that Russia’s future lies in a Eurasian bloc, opposed to Western liberal values and US global power, with China as its main ally”. In the Kremlin’s understanding this is a war not just about Ukraine but about the ending of the US-dominated global order and economy by the growing power of Eurasia.
The fifth historical insight in Figes’ book concerns the future role of the UN Charter, of international law, and of the values of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. China, the pre-eminent power in any future Eurasian alliance, seeks to use the UN Charter to its advantage. It contests the validity of many rules of international law and openly challenges the values of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Russia has views that go in similar directions. According to Figes, President Putin advocates ‘sovereign democracy” and “traditional values”. By ‘sovereign democracy’ is meant that Russia should be free to choose its own political system and call it a democracy. “Any attempt by the West to verify that claim or dictate the meaning of democracy (in terms of liberal freedoms, human rights, rule of law, respect for the sovereignty of neighbouring states, and so on) was dismissed as meddling in Russia’s internal affairs.”
As to ‘traditional values’, President Putin, in his Millennium Manifesto of December, 1999, declared that while the liberal freedoms Russians had obtained since 1991 were universal values, Russia’s strength lay in its ‘traditional values’ of patriotism, collectivism and submission to the state. He stated: “For Russians, a strong state is not an anomaly to fight against. On the contrary, it is the source and guarantor of order, the initiator and main driving force of any change.”
The sixth historical insight in Figes’ book relates to Russia’s campaign to restore pride in its history. This is something that Russia shares with China. The Russian world, President Putin has declared, is a family of Slavs, the Russians, the Ukrainians and the Byelorussian, “who shared a common history, religion and cultural inheritance from Kievan Rus”, where historical Russia began in 862. It is this historical perspective that led President Putin to war in Ukraine. It is a similar Chinese historical perspective that many fear might lead China to seize control of Taiwan, which it considers an integral part of the Chinese motherland.
One can offer two conclusions from these insights. First, nations, including Great Powers, must show respect for one another’s point of view and be ready to engage in constructive dialogue. Second, everyone must respect the international law of the UN Charter and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. There must be one law for all.
