If it is stagnant, does the above mean that it is time for a ceasefire? Not really, at least not now. And there are several reasons. The first and most important has to do with what the general and Chinese scholar Sun-Tzu (544-496 A.C.), author of “The Art of Democracy” said about two and a half millennia ago, in the sense that wars only end when one of the parties runs out of will to fight, which clearly has not happened, in addition to the fact that, secondly, both governments retain the support of their respective countries, which continue to consume their respective narratives, however false the one presented by Putin is considered in the West. Third, with or without sanctions, Russia retains a large arsenal that comes from its superpower past, and in the case of Ukraine, NATO continues to deliver advanced weapons, despite the latest refusal by the United States to provide long-range missiles. In any case, the US seems to maintain its strategy of seeking as much as possible a regime change in Moscow.
After the failure in Kiev, Moscow seems today to focus its strategy on the control of the Donbas and its territorial union with Russia, a vital necessity to be able to speak of a victory, however partial, in order to separate that territory from Ukraine and above all, to take away the exit to the sea, in this case to the Black Sea, and there to negotiate from a position of greater strength, before the cost of war becomes difficult to finance.
In the case of Ukraine, its objective is to avoid being transformed into a Mediterranean country and if Russia fails in that objective, to be able to think of a counteroffensive, which will grant it a respite from the relentless bombing to which it has been subjected, and the suffering that has led millions of Ukrainians to leave the country as well as internal displacements.
Being stagnant, the question is who resists the longest and this includes other actors, since the war is not only present in the theater of weapons, but it is also affecting other scenarios. In that sense, there is an internationalization on different fronts, since the realization that Russia’s destructive power was both in its fragility and in its strength has had consequences not only in the stagnation of the combat front, but also in at least two other aspects: the first has to do with energy, since it has contributed to a worldwide increase in prices, a process that probably came from before, but that has undoubtedly been consolidated by the war. The second is even more serious, for global economic health, and has to do with food production, where the combination of sanctions on Russia, and destruction and theft of food in Ukraine, has created a very unstable scenario, which could even create famines and political instability in poorest countries, as indeed, it is already happening in Sri Lanka. In addition to the food itself, Russia and Ukraine are very important producers of the fertilizers needed to produce them.
In addition to the increase in inflationary pressures worldwide, this scenario could have effects as unexpected as other countries pressuring Ukraine for an unfavorable negotiation and undermining the support given, since Europe already seems divided on how to address the energy issue. Even in the United States, the issue of November’s midterm elections looks set to revolve around the economic health of the country and not Ukraine. And in that sense, today all the polls agree on a defeat of the Democrats and President Biden, which can undoubtedly affect the course of the war, since increasingly the White House is going to have to focus on domestic politics.
For Ukraine it has been a war that can fulfill the same role as for the former Soviet Union was the German invasion in the Second World War, its great patriotic war. For Ukraine, being attacked by Russia has brought its consolidation as a country and national project, as it has had a resistance that has strengthened its pride and unity. However, this stagnation can represent a danger, due to the habituation it can generate not only in other countries, but also in its own population.
This war has brought novelties not only in the war itself, but also in other aspects. The first has to do with this unprecedented attempt to cancel Russia and the russian, not only as a sanction from government to government, but to very diverse activities, which include the economic, but also the artistic and the sporting. The question is what happens if the country is impoverished, but Putin remains in power.
In the history of sanctions very different results are seen, and often the desired objective is not achieved, as evidenced by the survival of the Cuban revolution. Even in Russia’s own case, although the current ones are qualitatively different, the sanctions that followed the war in Georgia and the occupation of Crimea, were far from achieving the purpose of curbing the Kremlin’s appetite.
Second, as the issue has been raised, success will depend largely on the financial health of the dollar as the world’s savings instrument. In that sense, the attempt to force the purchase of Russian gas in rubles has had limited success, although the ruble has so far resisted much better than expected the attempt to expel its use internationally. Perhaps the fate of the dollar will be in whether or not the United States manages to avoid a recession and whether or not globally it remains the almost unique instrument in the fuel market, and this may depend on whether or not Saudi Arabia decides to accept Chinese payments in yuan, a decision that is not linked to the Russian invasion, but whether or not the US nuclear negotiation with Iran is advancing, as the ayatollahs are the main enemies of the Saudis.
If Russia’s embargo succeeds and creates the conditions for its defeat, there may be another unexpected effect, and that is that it has seemed something new, which is the total cancellation of an entire country by governments and international civil society of many others as punishment. This can open countless appetites for other countries to be boycotted by different adversaries in future war conflicts, which can affect the United States itself or allies such as Israel or others.
In any case, what surrounds this attempt to cancel Russia shows that, unlike the cold war, there are not two competing economic systems in the world, but only one, the one that revolves around the concept of the market, in some of its forms. What differentiates the forces in competition for dominance is the greater or lesser presence of the state, and whether society is organized through freedom or dirigisme.
Another third front where the fence of the possible has been run is human rights, and just as the war of the former Yugoslavia opened the possibility of prosecuting sexual abuse as a war crime, there is no doubt that the real-time monitoring of various crimes committed in this war, it has opened unthinkable possibilities to document these violations, even with the use of cell phones and artificial intelligence. I do not believe that the conditions are yet in place to pursue Putin’s responsibilities in the Russian case, but possibilities have been opened that did not exist, to continue to be launched in this field, and to apply them to other invaders in future conflicts, which even increase in the case of liberal democracies, due to the lower tolerance of their Citizens and media to accept these crimes.
A last and very main element is China, which seems to be reacting to what Biden said, and denied by his subordinates in relation to Taiwan. China has been acting prudently and has not delivered the level of unconditional support to Moscow, which was expected, although it would be naïve to expect that it would want a defeat for Russia and a triumph for the United States. With world leadership at stake, China will want to surpass every other country in the coming decades, and Russia is seen as a very valuable asset.
With this new scenario of war deadlock, and the crises on the way to energy and food, with possible consequences in political instability, the million-dollar question is whether it strengthens or harms China, and if it were the former, if that helps it to continue climbing, and without firing a shot.
Without having an answer, personally I believe three things, the first is how right the Prussian Carl von Clausewitz was in defining war in general as the continuation of politics by other means, also applicable to this conflict. The second is Churchill’s characterization of Russia when he said in 1939 that it was “a riddle wrapped in a mystery, within an enigma”, and the third, how much continuity is found in the Russian attitude towards Ukraine in the tsars, the communists and Putin.
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