Opinion | The end of the Ukraine War and the 'Korea Outcome'
By Tom Fowdy
Last week an article appeared in the Financial Times (FT) stating that anonymous western officials were exploring the possibility of a "frozen peace" in the Russo-Ukrainian war. In this purported arrangement, fighting would permanently stop and Russia would of course remain in the territories it occupies, but there would nonetheless be no "peace treaty" or diplomatic recognition of the aforementioned changes. Instead, the article goes on to claim that Kyiv joining NATO would absurdly be part of such a deal. I describe this proposed outcome as a "Korean War" conclusion to the conflict, whereby the Korean War in 1953 was frozen via an armistice without a formal peace treaty, creating an uneasy political status quo 71 years onwards whereby neither Korean state recognizes the other.
It has been my inclination for a long time actually that the Ukrainian conflict may have this kind of outcome, unless of course Russia manages to win on absolutist zero-sum terms. First of all, it is the longstanding foreign policy doctrine of the United States never to make strategic concessions to adversarial states, but rather to maintain maximum advantage in a long-term view with formalized peace only being acceptable if it is on American terms. Hence, on the North Korean issue the United States actively resists a formalized end to the Korean War as it hurts its military presence in East Asia. It is in the US's strategic interest for the frozen conflict status quo to continue to uphold its leverage as a "security guarantor" over South Korea and Japan.
Hence when Trump attempted to make deals with North Korea, the US establishment resisted it on the condition that it could only go ahead if the DPRK accepts zero-sum, American terms regarding denuclearisation, knowing fine well this was not possible. Thus once Trump was gone, all peace overtures with North Korea collapsed as the Biden administration reset US foreign policy towards multilateral alliance building, the NATO aspect which soon led to the war in Ukraine. Thus, by convention, it is completely improbable that the United States would ever agree to a peace treaty which recognised Russian dominion over Ukraine, in whole or part. This is precisely why American and British officials thwarted the proposed peace agreement of 2020.
Instead, the United States will want to end the conflict in a way which preserves its strategic interest of maintaining its power projection in Europe as a means to containing Russia. It is for this reason the US has invested so much in the survival of the Ukrainian state with the explicit intent of integrating whatever is left of it, following the war, into the western alliance system. Hence, while Russia sees Ukraine's entry into NATO as a fundamental red line, it is quite obvious that once the fighting is stopped Kyiv will be admitted into the alliance, just like South Korea became allied to the United States and West Germany became a founding member of the North Atlantic Alliance itself. Likewise, the occupied territories by Russia will not be recognized, ever.
This creates a strategic dilemma for Moscow. If this outcome was to be the eventual conclusion, then it is absolutely fair game to concede that Putin's war in Ukraine was a highly costly failure, exactly how US foreign policymakers intended to be. Russia taking roughly 20% of the country in exchange for Ukraine joining NATO, the very publicly utilized justification for the war in the first place, seems a bad deal. Thus, in the Kremlin's strategic point of view, the war should theoretically continue until Russia has enough clout to demand Ukraine does not join NATO is a condition for ending it. Anything else could only be viewed as a politically humiliating defeat.
However, it is worth noting that what is intended, hoped for, and what is actually achieved are two different things. Western foreign policy makers, in particular Jake Sullivan, have long been banking on an outcome whereby Russia is militarily and economically exhausted to the point it is no longer able to continue fighting and therefore is forced to accept this "frozen peace", being deprived of the opportunity to subdue Ukraine into one sided terms, all while avoiding escalation into a broader war. But for the time being, there is no signs of this actually happening, much to the aghast and miscalculations of many. In 2022, western officials attempted to design and implement a sanctions regime which according to them would swiftly economically cripple Russia, it didn't.
On the other hand, we can see plenty of cracks on the Kyiv side, including growing discontent over losses and mobilization, depletion of infrastructure and western political fatigue. Ukraine's complete collapse, militarily and economically, has been prevented by western aid, yet there is evidence of their morale starting to crumble, especially as the propaganda overtones and hopes of zero-sum victory did not materialize. With 2024 going in its favor, Russia currently believes it has the initiative so it has no intention to agree to a "frozen peace" right now especially with the Presidential election looming.
But what lies ahead? Who knows, although it is looking more likely that 2025 could mark the war's conclusion. Until then, each side will continue to fight over every single inch of territory for every scrap and morsel of leverage they can get.
The author is a well-seasoned writer and analyst with a large portfolio related to China topics, especially in the field of politics, international relations and more. He graduated with an Msc. in Chinese Studies from Oxford University in 2018.
The views do not necessarily reflect those of DotDotNews.
Read more articles by Tom Fowdy:
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