By Rajan Menon
The war in Ukraine has lasted for more than five months. As the bloodletting and destruction continue, the West faces rising inflation, and many economists warn that recessions may be coming. With winter coming, Europe is panicking about gas supplies. And on the military front, there are fears that the war could spread or escalate, spiraling into a clash between the world’s two nuclear superpowers.
For these and other reasons, the calls for a political settlement are understandable. The reality, however, is that there is not a shred of evidence that shows that Moscow and Kyiv are prepared to even start preliminary negotiations aimed at ending the war, let alone agree to a cease-fire. And believing that a larger deal involving the disposition of territories could be around the corner is just plain fantasy.
The calls for diplomatic settlement, which have been made on military and humanitarian grounds, differ in logic and substance. Some proponents of negotiations argue that Ukraine lacks the military muscle to oust Russia from its territory. They believe fighting on in hopes of achieving that goal will produce more carnage and destruction, increase Ukraine’s economic burden, and make its postwar recovery, already a Herculean task, even harder. They understand that any deal that Ukraine strikes with Russia now will require surrendering some of the land the Russian army has occupied since the February 24 invasion, but insist that Ukraine will find itself in a far worse predicament if it does not make this difficult choice now. And they are skeptical that the advanced Western weaponry that flowing into Ukraine, in particular the M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS), will result in anything that can be categorized as a Russian defeat.
Others make the case for a diplomatic solution on humanitarian grounds alone. They point, for example, to the 12 million Ukrainians who have become either refugees or are internally displaced (including two-thirds of the country’s children) and to the destruction of Ukraine’s schools, hospitals and health clinics, homes and apartment buildings, and infrastructure. They also call attention to the wider ill effects attributable to the war. These include skyrocketing global food prices that threaten to increase hunger and malnutrition in places where people are already impoverished, the potential of a debt crisis in poor and middle-income countries as Western central banks raise interest rates to curb inflation, and the hardships created by surging in energy prices. The recent decline in global food prices doesn’t reassure them, especially as experts warn that prices would surge again. Costs are still 23 percent higher than a year ago, and the July 22 agreement brokered by Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and UN Secretary General António Guterres to allow grain exports from Ukraine and Russia is subject to uncertainties.
This piece was originally published in The Nation on July 28, 2022. Read more HERE.