Peacekeepers in southeastern Ukraine are suddenly back on the global policy agenda, and Asia now has its first major opportunity of this century to rescue Europe from itself – and, by extension, to save the world entire.
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The recent announcement by Russian President Vladimir Putin at the BRICS summit in Xiamen to the effect that Russia was in principle open to a peacekeeping force in the Donbass comes over two years after the Ukrainian government first announced its own interest in a peacekeeping force. The Asian setting for the Russian announcement should not be lost on observers.
If the Russian peacekeeping proposal, driven probably by the economic urgency of removing Western sanctions and the political need to “solve” the Ukrainian crisis before the 2018 World Cup and presidential election, comes some two years too late, it remains as true today as it was in 2014 that the continuing bloodshed in the Donbass cannot be staunched without an interposition force to separate the warring sides. Whether one calls this war, in which well over 10,000 people have died and which still holds hostage the future of the European continent, a civil war or a proxy war (or both), the fighting continues because the Minsk ceasefire regime has not been able to overcome the basic “security dilemma” driving the belligerents. This “security dilemma” means that, in the absence of trust between the warring sides (and there is no trust at all), every withdrawal by one side is perceived by the other as an opportunity to advance. In “game theory”, if the game (the war) is viewed as indefinite, then a ceasefire can be seen by all sides only as a window to regroup and rearm before the next round of fighting.
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko with soldiers at a military base in the eastern Ukrainian town of Chuguyev, Kharkiv region. Photo: EPA
A United Nations peacekeeping force – professional, legitimate, with the right composition and mandate – is the only way to convince all warring sides that the game (the war) is definitively over. Of course, “ending” the bloodshed is not enough on its own to meet the larger interests and needs of Russia, Ukraine and key Western countries, and so a UN force must be packaged within a larger strategic agreement that has economic, political and military dimensions.
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What should be the composition of the UN peacekeeping force? It cannot be made up of soldiers from Nato countries, as this would be opposed categorically by Russia. It cannot, equally, be made up of soldiers from the countries of the former Soviet space (today’s Collective Security Treaty Organisation), as this would be opposed by Ukraine. This leaves Asia as the lone continent able to supply peacekeeping troops that would be respected by, and acceptable to, both the Russians and the Ukrainians.
