Dear Friends and Colleagues,My thoughts on the problems of peacemaking in Ukraine. Any comments welcome.Robert SkidelskyDurable and Just? Reflections on Peacemaking in Ukraine
I
Why is peace in Ukraine so elusive? In one of those famous one-liners which provoke thought, the historian A. J. P. Taylor wrote: “Bismarck’s planned wars killed thousands; the just wars of the twentieth century have killed millions.” It is tempting to apply this to Ukraine.
Putin’s “special operation” of February 2022 was supposed to end in a few weeks with the installation of a satellite government in Kyiv. By their fervent moral and material support for Ukraine, the Western democracies have turned it into a “just” war which still continues. Putin’s “planned” war would have cost a few thousand casualties at most; the West’s “just” war has so far produced between 1.5m and 1.9m Ukrainians and Russians killed and wounded.
The warmakers unite in their praise of peace. Putin says it must be “durable”; Western leaders say it must be “just.” Between these two poles, the killing continues. Alone of the leaders involved, Trump has been willing to contemplate a peace which may be neither durable nor just. The killing, he repeatedly says, must stop.
What this suggests is that the value of peace is independent of the value of durability or justice. Although the Budapest summit has been cancelled, Trump may yet have another chance of making his longed-for peace deal with Putin. To ponder what this should involve, consider whether aims such as “durable” and “just” are sensible requirements for peace in general, and for a peaceful ending to this war in particular.
II
The ideal of permanent peace has undoubtedly had a huge appeal ever since the philosopher Immanuel Kant introduced it as a moral project at the end of the 18th century. Till then it had been assumed that war was a permanent condition of humankind, interrupted by periods of peace. For the historian Edward Gibbon, the second century AD was the happiest period in human history precisely because, for a brief time, the Pax Romana prevailed.
For Kant, the central requirement for perpetual peace was that all states should have republican – as opposed to autocratic or despotic – constitutions. As a result, he reasoned, they would be pacific and law-abiding. This argument led to the idea that democracy was the peaceful form of the state, autocracy its warlike form, and this view, over time, has been used to justify crusades for democracy, human rights, and the rule of law. It has been all too easy for the political West to frame their proxy war in Ukraine as an existential struggle between autocracy and democracy, whose only acceptable result must be the defeat of autocracy.
At the close of World War I, President Woodrow Wilson said the victorious Allies were fighting to make the world “safe for democracy” and thereby ensure that this was the “war to end wars.” Germany became a democracy; the League of Nations was set up to make peace permanent. The Second World War broke out twenty years later. Why was this?
One reason was given by Keynes in a famous prediction in 1919: if the Allies insisted on exacting reparations from Germany, “vengeance will not limp.” In other words, the pacification of Europe depended on debt forgiveness, not debt collection.
The peace which followed World War II lasted (in most of the world at any rate) for nearly eighty years, but this was far from Kant’s republican peace of justice. True enough, Germany and Japan, the main losers of the war, were forcibly re-democratised, and their captured war leaders executed. But the main reason for the long peace was not this act of Kantian disinfection, but the balance of terror between the United States and the Soviet Union.
Far from the advent of a just peace, postwar Europe saw ten previously independent states becoming either satellites or parts of the Soviet Union. And “unjust” colonial regimes kept the peace for much of that time in Africa and the Middle East. A Gibbon might well have recognised it as a golden age for those countries which lived under the umbrella of the Pax Americana.
However, the ideal of a perpetual peace based on universal values received a powerful boost with the collapse of Communism. In his notable essay The End of History? (1989), Francis Fukuyama predicted a pacific, Kantian world because the demise of Communism had removed the last obstacle to the universal reign of freedom and mutual respect.
It is this ideal of a world made safe for and by democracy which has fractured in both Ukraine and the Middle East. But the perpetual peace inspired by Kant’s vision was never a realistic picture of the human future. The reason lies in human nature.
III
Christian thought holds that while peace is the supreme and rightful aim of human striving, “original sin” prevents the attainment of either a permanent or a perfectly just peace in the “earthly city.” This being so, we should aim to attain on earth not the best possible peace, but the best peace possible. The question is: how durable or just does such a peace have to be to qualify?
For Augustine of Hippo, every peace was bound to be provisional “since we don’t know the hearts of those with whom we wish to maintain peace, and even if we know them today, we should not know what they might be in the future.” A peace that lasted a generation was the longest that could be reasonably expected of a “durable” earthly peace.
This is relevant to the Ukraine conflict. We do not know for sure that Putin will not go on from success in Ukraine to attack the Baltic States or Georgia; Putin does not know for sure that a Russian defeat in Ukraine will not embolden further NATO encroachment on what he thinks of as Russia’s “space.” So both sides look for “cast-iron” security guarantees against the other as the condition for ending the fighting. But in the nature of things, such guarantees cannot be made fully credible.
What is a just peace? A just state of affairs, according to Augustine, is the ordering of the relations of all creatures in just proportion according to God’s will; he calls this the “tranquillity of order.” Such bliss is unattainable in this world. However, even a “perverted” peace might be better than no peace.
In fact, the just war tradition associated with Augustine and Aquinas gives very little guidance on what a just earthly peace would look like. Augustine went so far as to suggest that even a condition of servitude might be just if it was deserved.
In a famous provocation, A. J. P. Taylor noted of the events leading up to the Second World War: “In 1938 Czechoslovakia was betrayed. In 1939 Poland was saved. Less than one hundred thousand Czechs died during the war. Six and a half million Poles were killed. Which was better—to be a betrayed Czech or a saved Pole?”
The question Taylor posed is fundamental to clear thinking about the great issues of peace and war: how much dignity and self-respect is it worth sacrificing for the sake of peace? Courage in adversity is one of the most admirable and admired human virtues. The determination to die gloriously rather than “live on one’s knees” has inspired acts of great courage throughout history. But in ethical terms, these are choices individuals must make for themselves.
By what right do leaders demand that their peoples “die gloriously” rather than live “on their knees”? By what right do Western leaders and media stir up Ukrainians to die gloriously on their behalf? The medieval practice of kings leading their troops into battle was at any rate more praiseworthy than the modern practice of politicians unleashing destructive wars from the safety of offices or bunkers.
In summary, invoking durability and justice as the necessary conditions of peace in Ukraine looks very much like a commitment to continue the war, heedless of cost, till the unobtainable is obtained.
IV
If an ideal peace in Ukraine is unattainable by negotiation, does it make sense for both sides to go on fighting till one or the other wins? Perhaps, if a victorious end to the war can be brought about quickly. But if, as most experts agree, neither a Russian nor Ukrainian victory is likely in the near future, it is right that both sides should settle for a peace that is less than ideal.
This requires not only that they moderate their righteous maximalism, but that they shift from subjective feelings of indignation to an objective assessment of the human costs of continuing to fight.
The practical conclusion which follows is that the relevant participants should agree a ceasefire along existing battle lines. The fear that such a pause would only give time for both sides to rearm for further conflict can be mitigated by interposing an international peacekeeping force—which must include both the United States and China—between the two armies, together with agreed measures of demilitarisation of air and sea.
Such a pause would fall short of the demand for durability or justice; but it might produce a sufficient tranquillity of order to enable genuine peace sentiment to flower. However, for this to happen, the relevant leaders will need to find the courage to negotiate. Only President Trump, for all his inconstancy of method, has so far shown it.
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Robert Skidelsky
Room 1-16Millbank House