Neither Moscow, nor Kyiv, nor the West are interested in negotiations now, especially since wars do not necessarily have to end this way.
A ghost called “a solution to the war through negotiations” wanders through Germany. This mantra rests on what has long been lost – the rule of law. But Vladimir Putin does not want to participate in serious negotiations. He gives orders to continue the war. And “friends of peace” cannot do anything about it.
Ulrich Reitz, editor-in-chief of the online section of the Focus publication, writes about this in his article, adding that Federal President of Germany Frank Walter Steinmeier was the last in the country to loudly declare that “every war ends at the negotiating table.” But we can definitely say that this is not the case. This is a myth.
“The word “negotiation” is associated with achieving balance, justice and peace. But this is a false impression. First, wars usually do not end with negotiations. And secondly, negotiations do not necessarily bring peace,” Reitz writes.
As an example, he offers to consider the experience of Poland. During the Second World War, it first became a victim of the pact between Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin, which destroyed the country. And later, Poland became a victim of Stalin and the Western allies. At the negotiations in Yalta, the Soviet dictator insisted that the Polish state come under the rule of his empire. The Americans and the British agreed to this during the negotiations in Potsdam in 1945.
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Poland lost almost half of its territory. As a victim of war. These losses were compensated at the expense of Germany. As a result of “expansion to the west”, hundreds of thousands of Germans were evicted. And not only because Stalin wanted some countries to be ethnically homogeneous. Western allies agreed with him, against human rights. So instead of the rule of law, the brutal force of fact played its role. The winner of the war determines the essence of victory, including the price of peace. There are no equal compensations from equal parties. Therefore, neither Russia nor Ukraine is currently interested in negotiations.
Putin gave the order to continue the war. Ukraine has decided that it will continue to defend itself against Russian aggression. Western industrialized countries have promised to help Ukraine. In other words, there is no room for negotiation. If Putin agrees to negotiations, he cannot be sure that he will be allowed to seize Donbas in the process. If Volodymyr Zelenskyy agrees to a dialogue, he also cannot be sure that he will regain control over the region occupied by the Russians. If the West negotiates, it will have to be prepared for Putin to try to put a price on Sweden and Finland joining NATO.
Peace will not begin when the guns fall silent
It will be a truce, not peace. And if anyone has demonstrated the possibilities of a hybrid war, it is Russia with its “little green men” in Donbas and cyber attacks against Western state bodies, in particular the German Bundestag. Therefore, while the fighting continues, neither Russia, nor Ukraine, nor the West will be interested in negotiations. That is why all open letters from “friends of peace” are meaningless. Because they demand peace at any price, which is possible only if the West stops supplying Ukraine with weapons. Thus, everything boils down to capitulation.
In open letters calling for such peace, their position is justified by the threat of “escalation”, which goes beyond the freedom of Ukraine. After all, all of humanity can perish due to the outbreak of a nuclear war between Moscow and the West. However, the editor-in-chief of Focus emphasizes that the very approach of such thinking is wrong.
“If the fear of nuclear war is so decisive, then NATO should immediately dissolve itself, and also advise the Baltic states, Poland, Romania, Hungary and East Germany to peacefully return to the rule of Putin's empire,” writes Reitz, adding that even then there is no peace will not. It will only be possible to avoid the use of military force.
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The director of the German Society for Foreign Policy, Christian Mölling, called this state of affairs “chaos without war.” This leads to another unpleasant conclusion: peace cannot be civilian, it requires a strong army. In a world in which the revisionist and imperialist Putin exists, the desire to achieve peace without weapons is naive or even dangerous.
The so-called “friends of peace” like to make references to German history. But they forget two important things. Germany became free from Hitler and peaceful thanks to the thousands of soldiers of the Allied army who died in the battles of the Second World War. Mölling notes that today people are more focused on preventing their own countries from becoming troublemakers than on fighting Putin, who has already become a real troublemaker.
Wars can end without negotiations
< p>Violence is not necessarily harmful, it may even be necessary. Surprisingly, international law also thinks so. Wars can end without peace negotiations or surrender. Combat determination and courage of defense can force the aggressor to leave the battlefield. The attacking party may suffer too great a loss to continue the war. The Russians, as well as the Americans, the British, the French, and, of course, the Germans, had this experience in the past.
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