On 24 March, the war in Ukraine will enter its fifth week with no clear and credible signs that the warring parties are nearer to a peaceful resolution to the conflict than they were a week ago despite the ongoing negotiations between Russian and Ukrainian negotiators and the Turkish and Israeli mediation efforts.
This week, Turkey said it was willing to host a Russian-Ukrainian summit meeting to facilitate reaching an agreement between Russia and Ukraine on an immediate ceasefire and the withdrawal of Russian forces from Ukraine in the framework of a diplomatic solution to the crisis. A Ukrainian official source told reporters on 17 March that his country would like Turkey to be part of the security guarantees that Ukraine would need in any future agreement with Russia.
In the meantime, and after incessant warnings from Washington and London that China is willing to provide economic and military assistance to Russia to circumvent the draconian and unprecedented sanctions that the West imposed on Russia after 24 February, US President Joe Biden had a two-hour telephone conversation with Chinese President Xi Jinping on 18 March.
One day previously during celebrations of St Patrick’s Day, Biden called Russian President Vladimir Putin a “murderous dictator, a pure thug who is waging an immoral war against the people of Ukraine,” using unprecedented undiplomatic language to address a fellow head of state. A few days before this, he had called the Russian president a “war criminal.” Such language has not been used since the end of World War II among the great powers, not even at the height of the Cold War that pitted the US and the former Soviet Union against each other from 1945 until 1991.
A telephone call between the US president and his Chinese counterpart might be expected to deal with diplomatic openings to end the war in Ukraine and the ways in which the two great powers could work together to encourage Russia and Ukraine to reach a peace deal that would lay the foundations for a lasting peace and security between the two neighbours.
However, though the US president, according to a White House readout of the call, stressed his support for a diplomatic solution to the crisis, he still repeated US warnings to China against helping Russia economically and militarily. He also implied that there would be “consequences” if China chose to provide Moscow with help and assistance.
A senior US official told reporters afterwards that Biden in his call with the Chinese president had been “laying out his assessment of the situation… and the implications of certain actions.”
It is interesting to note that the Chinese readout of the call highlighted the fact that President Jinping had rightly urged an end to the war in Ukraine. He also called for dialogue while criticising Western “sweeping sanctions against Russia.” According to the same readout, he told Biden that the US failure to “remain cool-headed and rational” – and many would agree with him – as it wages economic war against Russia could spark “serious crises” across the world’s commodity and industrial sectors, crippling the international economy.
Before the two presidents talked over the telephone, US Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman told the US network MSNBC, as quoted in the Washington Examiner, that the future of “Xi Jinping is with the United States, with Europe, with developing countries around the world” and stressing that his future, referring to the Chinese president, is not with Russia or Vladimir Putin.
I doubt China will take this seriously. After all, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi told his Spanish counterpart Jose Manuel Albares on 15 March that “China is not a party to the crisis, nor does it want sanctions to affect China.” He underlined the right of his country to “safeguard its legitimate rights and interests.”
This call between the two ministers came after US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan met in Rome on 14 March with Yang Jiechi, chair of the Committee for Foreign Affairs of the Chinese Communist Party, and warned the Chinese against aiding Russia. The meeting took place after a well-orchestrated campaign in the leading US news media and was based on quotations from “senior American officials” that China would respond favourably to Russian aid requests despite denials from Moscow that it has requested assistance from China.
Thus far, the West led by the US has not signalled that it is ready to engage Russia diplomatically to end the war in Ukraine. The way the conflict has developed over the last two weeks, with the increasing military assistance from the West to Ukraine in the form of lethal weapons, proves that it is no longer about Ukraine and its independence and sovereignty but rather is about an all-out confrontation, if not against Russia, then against the Russian president in person and his nationalist credentials.
What US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on 17 March could be revealing in this context, as he said that a simple withdrawal of Russian troops from Ukraine might not meet the standard by which the US would decide on sanctions relief against Russia. Washington would seek to make sure that “anything that is done is, in effect, irreversible, that this cannot happen again, that Russia won’t pick up and do exactly what it is doing in a year or two years or three years” from now, he said.
In other words, even if the war in Ukraine ends according to a negotiated deal between Moscow and Kyiv, something we all hope will happen quickly, the US will remain involved in an economic war against Russia.
On 24 March, the leaders of the NATO member states, including Biden, are scheduled to meet in Brussels, to be followed by a G7 summit meeting that will also be attended by the US president. Judging by the statements and actions of the last few days, either from Washington, London, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg, or the countries of the eastern flank of NATO, the chances of a diplomatic initiative coming out of the two summit meetings are almost nil barring a peace agreement between the warring parties in Ukraine.
As a result, the war in Ukraine will likely drag on until common sense prevails in the Western capitals and the West decides to turn Ukraine into bridge for peace and security between Russia and Europe instead of a battlefield to cut Russia down to size.
Europe needs to organise something akin to the Congress of Vienna to bring peace to the continent. In 1815, when the Congress was held, the European powers were the masters of their own destinies and the future peace of Europe. The Congress was the symbol of constructive and credible diplomacy, something that has been glaringly and regrettably lacking in recent days.
Perhaps today there are no leaders with the foresight and courage of the leaders that gathered in Vienna more than two centuries ago. They were true statesmen who saved Europe from the ravages and atrocities of war.
* The writer is former assistant foreign minister.
*A version of this article appears in print in the 24 March, 2022 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly.
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