kaart
Since NATO’s inception at the beginning of the Cold War, the alliance has continued expanding eastward. Current applicants and countries desiring membership fall along the border between Europe and Russia, creating more tensions between the West and East.
How should the U.S. view its alliances? The past, the present, and the future of U.S. alliances
Dit is een sterk ingekorte versie van een artikel uit Foreign Affairs.
THE TALKS THAT COULD HAVE ENDED THE WAR IN UKRAINE
As Oleksii Danilov, the chair of the Ukrainian National Security and Defense Council, put it on May 2: “A treaty with Russia is impossible—only capitulation can be accepted.”
Samuel Charap
Sergey Radchenko
Ukrainian Presidential Press Service / Reuters
And then there is the Russian side of the story, which is difficult to assess. Was the whole negotiation a well-orchestrated charade, or was Moscow seriously interested in a settlement? Did Putin get cold feet when he understood that the West would not sign on to the accords or that the Ukrainian position had hardened?
Even if Russia and Ukraine had overcome their disagreements, the framework they negotiated in Istanbul would have required buy-in from the United States and its allies. And those Western powers would have needed to take a political risk by engaging in negotiations with Russia and Ukraine and to put their credibility on the line by guaranteeing Ukraine’s security. At the time, and in the intervening two years, the willingness either to undertake high-stakes diplomacy or to truly commit to come to Ukraine’s defense in the future has been notably absent in Washington and European capitals.
A final reason the talks failed is that the negotiators put the cart of a postwar security order before the horse of ending the war. The two sides skipped over essential matters of conflict management and mitigation (the creation of humanitarian corridors, a cease-fire, troop withdrawals) and instead tried to craft something like a long-term peace treaty that would resolve security disputes that had been the source of geopolitical tensions for decades. It was an admirably ambitious effort—but it proved too ambitious.
To be fair, Russia, Ukraine, and the West had tried it the other way around—and also failed miserably. The Minsk agreements signed in 2014 and 2015 following Russia’s annexation of Crimea and invasion of the Donbas covered minutiae such as the date and time of the cessation of hostilities and which weapons system should be withdrawn by what distance. Both sides’ core security concerns were addressed indirectly, if at all.
This history suggests that future talks should move forward on parallel tracks, with the practicalities of ending the war being addressed on one track while broader issues are covered in another.
KEEP IT IN MIND
On April 11, 2024, Lukashenko, the early middleman of the Russian-Ukrainian peace talks, called for a return to the draft treaty from spring 2022. “It’s a reasonable position,” he said in a conversation with Putin in the Kremlin. “It was an acceptable position for Ukraine, too. They agreed to this position.”
Putin chimed in. “They agreed, of course,” he said.
In reality, however, the Russians and the Ukrainians never arrived at a final compromise text. But they went further in that direction than has been previously understood, reaching an overarching framework for a possible agreement.
After the past two years of carnage, all this may be so much water under the bridge. But it is a reminder that Putin and Zelensky were willing to consider extraordinary compromises to end the war. So if and when Kyiv and Moscow return to the negotiating table, they’ll find it littered with ideas that could yet prove useful in building a durable peace.
Red text in italics represents Russian positions not accepted by the Ukrainian side; red text in bold represents Ukrainian positions not accepted by the Russian side.
LEES VERDER
AUTEURS
SAMUEL CHARAP is Distinguished Chair in Russia and Eurasia Policy and a Senior Political Scientist at the RAND Corporation.
SERGEY RADCHENKO is Wilson E. Schmidt Distinguished Professor at Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies in Europe.
BRON
FOREIGN AFFAIRS – 16 april 2024
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Uitgelicht: bron
