Ukraine and Gaza: order, not peace, needed to end hostility …. Dr Muhammad Ali Ehsan
History is not about the past only, but about the change as well. We read history to learn from it but if we fail to read the change, we may never benefit from the lesson history teaches us. Conditions, circumstances and environment change and when we divide history into various eras, we realise that some of the analogies from the past are very pertinent but the benefit that we can draw from them is only possible if we understand the changed environment in which they may be replicated. For the scholars of international relations and more particularly those belonging to the realist school of thought, peace is not an achievable or a desirable objective. You can have peace only if you prepare for war and the only way to promote peace is to have balance of power in place. Since the nature of international system is anarchic, we would never have absolute peace but an environment and conditions of more or less peace. The resolution of two conflicts, one in the Middle East and the other in Ukraine, are currently on top of the global agenda for peace.
This article aims to rely on some lessons from the past, quote analogies and see why these conflicts cannot be resolved. To start with I would like to quote Henry Kissinger who believed that we should work on creating order and not peace. As an American diplomat he created a Middle Eastern order that lasted for over 30 years. He achieved that by having one clear political objective – pursue order and not peace in the Middle East.
Another diplomat of great skills, Woodrow Wilson who belonged to the liberal school of thought and who as American President pursued his famous ‘Wilsonian Peace’ left a deep mark on the understanding of diplomats like Kissinger. Wilsonian peace only led to the appeasement of Hitler and his later conquest of Europe. This important event in history ended the liberal agenda of quest for peace and convinced the realist minds like Kissinger to believe there was nothing in international relations as ‘perpetual peace’. Ironically, Emauel Kant the 18th Century great German philosopher had earlier written that the state of war would lead any warring states ultimately to exhaustion and they would than prefer peace to the misery of war. It is my belief that Russia, Ukraine and Israel all suffer from exhaustion of war and there is a room for diplomacy to play its role and try and create not peace but order in both the regions.
But first I would like the readers to understand the change in the environment of these regions and for that I divide the history of these regions in three periods.
In the first period that I call the 90s decade, Soviet Union disintegrated and Russia lost its standing as a great power. In the Middle East, the US had no interest in promoting democracy; and autocracy was the glue that was holding the US-led order together in the Middle East. In the next period, from 2000 to 2010, the US pursued the global war on terror in both the regions – in the former Soviet Union republics colour revolutions were supported by the West, and the US invaded Iraq and subsequently projected it as the first Middle Eastern country that would be democratised. However, when Hamas won free and fair elections in both Gaza and the West Bank, it was pulled aside and not recognised. Even the democratic government of Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt was removed in a 2013 coup that had the American support.
When this period was coming to a close, the US status as a unipolar power was waning but it continued pursuing two objectives – one, continue encroaching the Russian sphere of influence and expanding NATO eastwards; and two, share the Middle Eastern region with Iran by preventing a nuclear Iran from coming into existence.
The third period, from 2010 to 2020, saw President Trump overturn President Obama’s policy of sharing the region with Iran and instead initiated ‘maximum pressure campaign’ against Iran. Arab Spring had set in in 2011 and the US could no longer guarantee the survival of some of the Arab regimes supported by it. Russia had emerged as a great power by the beginning of this period and it reclaimed Crimea and came to the Middle East to support the failing government of its client state Syria. In this era three other dominating factors changed the dynamics of the Middle Eastern politics. One, China initiated BRI and only in the Middle East invested $123 billion in BRI-related projects. Two, Iran, deprived of the nuclear deal, started reasserting itself and attacked the oil installations of Saudi Arabia to which the US failed to respond. Three, Mohammad Bin Salman, the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, emerged as the first Arab leader with a changed regional and world view. His inability to find a military solution to the political crisis in Yemen, the continuing humanitarian suffering and civil wars in the Middle East, and the US failure to give Saudi Arabia security guarantee pushed him for a peace deal with Iran.
Currently, Ukraine is in deep trouble. It has allowed itself to be used by external forces that seek much larger strategic ends. The stalled offensive by Ukrainian force in Kursk might face the same fate as Hitler’s 6th Army in Stalingrad. Yet, history tells us that when almost a similar fate was about to be met by Anwar Sadat’s 3rd Army in Sania Peninsula in the six-day war, diplomacy prevailed and Egyptian 3rd Army was prevented from being destroyed. This diplomatic intervention enabled Sadat to enter a peace deal with his dignity intact. President Zelenskyy must also be enabled to enter negotiations with Russia with his dignity intact.
In case of Ukraine, the world needs to follow the same model. Diplomacy must intervene and the world must seek a step-by-step approach to create an order in that region. A similar approach should be applied in the case of Iran. Instead of being seen as a part of ‘axis of resistance’, Iran needs to be integrated in the region. Both Russia and Iran must also agree to the just and fair ends that diplomacy may propose for creating order in both regions.
The US has done a lot in the last three decades to manipulate international order with a view to holding an upper strategic hand. Today, the great powers are no more ready to submit to America’s militarised foreign policy. Diplomacy to ensure creation of an order on the principle of balance of power in both the regions is the right way forward. All militarised attempts to seek solutions to the ongoing conflicts will only push the regions and the entire globe towards unnecessary uncertainty and instability.
Courtesy Express Tribune