As the UN Secretary General visits Russia and Ukraine, thinking aloud about the possibilities of mediation, the mind wanders to a conversation that took place soon after the 1967 Middle Eastern war. One American official said to another regarding Israel’s determination to remain in occupation of the territories it had just conquered: ‘Can you imagine… they don’t want to withdraw until they make peace’. If this logic holds regarding Ukraine, it’s hard to imagine peace there ever coming about. And so long as there’s no peace in the Donbas, given the war’s occupation of the political centre-stage, there’s no peace in Europe. The solution to this dilemma is not for a preponderance of players to choose from a menu of options for the war’s termination. It is rather for them to agree to disagree, publicly at least, on the de facto partition of this territory as a first step to diminishing the symbolic value of territory itself. Peace in Europe has rarely been made in any other way. |