LAST week, about 100 delegations from countries and international organizations attended the Switzerland-hosted Summit on Peace in Ukraine aimed at crafting a path that many participants said could pave the way to ending Russia’s war on Ukraine. Yet notably, Israel’s participation while Russia’s absence has left a strange, albeit strategic message to the international community. The joint communiqué —capped a two-day conference (June 15-16) — was marked by North- South division. Many attendees expressed hope that Russia might join in on a roadmap to peace in the future. Needless to say, the core failure of the summit lies in the western adopted pursuit of double standards on the Israeli war in Gaza.
The division over the communiqué: There has been a division over the said communiqué, those who signed the communiqué include : Australia, Austria, Canada, Chile, Costa Rica, Cote d’Ivoire, the European Commission, the European Council, the European Parliament, France, Georgia, Germany, Ghana, Greece, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Kenya, Kosovo, Latvia, Norway, Palau, Qatar, Serbia, Turkey, Ukraine, the UK and the US. South Africa’s reasons for not backing the communiqué were different. India, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Thailand, Indonesia and the United Arab Emirates attended the summit, represented by foreign ministers and envoys, but were among those who did not sign the joint communiqué.
Conceptually, the summit communiqué focuses on three areas in which 84 of 100 attending states and international organizations came to agreement. First, they emphasized the importance of the safety of nuclear energy and nuclear installations and the inadmissibility of the threat or use of nuclear weapons. Second, they noted the importance of not weaponizing food security and ensuring the uninterrupted availability of Ukrainian agricultural products on the global market. Thirdly, all prisoners of war must be released by complete exchange. All deported and unlawfully displaced Ukrainian children, and all other Ukrainian civilians who were unlawfully detained, must be returned to Ukraine.
Ukraine’s western supporters: Ukraine’s two most important supporters in the West are the US and Germany. A deadlock in Congress delayed the US’s military support package by more than six months, which helped shift the military balance in eastern Ukraine in Russia’s favour. Germany is Ukraine’s largest supporter in the EU. Olaf Scholz, the German Chancellor, never misses an opportunity to signal his red lines. Earlier this month, the German permanent representative to the EU, Michael Clauss, forced a second delay in the EU’s latest sanction package against Russia. What Germany objects to is the idea that exporters would be forced to guarantee that their products do not find their way into the Russian markets.
However, the absence of many leading nations from the Global South greatly weakened the summit’s potential impact, suggesting that Ukrainian diplomats still have much work to do at the bilateral level. Significantly, key participating countries including Brazil, India, South Africa and Saudi Arabia seemed to have been ranked not to sign the official summit communiqué supporting Ukraine’s territorial integrity. Since 2022, these countries remained reluctant to back Ukraine or openly condemn Russia’s invasion “None of the participants in the ‘peace forum’ knows what he is doing there and what his role is,” Dmitry Medvedev, Russia’s former President and now Deputy Chairman of the country’s Security Council, said.
Role of strategic thinking? For Putin, continuing the Ukraine war seems a strategic victory —in what the Russian leadership sees as a conflict with the West——not Ukraine per se. As for the Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy , for whom the earlier proposals—tabled in Istanbul talks in 2022 or as part of the Minsk process—were not pragmatic. Though the previous peace negotiation opportunities symbolized in 2022 were squandered, it is believed that any peace measure that could actually be achieved via diplomatic dialogue would be considered better than what Ukrainian people have been enduring for the last three years.
China’s peace initiative for Ukraine, advocating freezing the conflict along the current front line, is a notion which is rightly endorsed by Moscow. And above all, this argument holds a strong conviction in Russia, China, including the developing nations that since the western countries have failed to pressurize Israel to honour a ceasefire measure because of this western double standard, the peace notion drive of the western diplomats to end the Russian war in Ukraine holds no sway. Given the fact that as Israel is not honouring the World Court Order on Gaza, how can Russia be compelled to withdraw its forces from Ukraine?
Global South & Western failure to halt the Gaza war: the question of the day is: Will support for the West’s cause in Ukraine lead to a more egalitarian and consistent rules-based world order? Or will it reinforce the hierarchical status quo, characterized by the selective compliance with international law across different wars and occupations? This quandary has been evolving in the minds of many of the Global South since the outbreak of the Ukraine war in February 2022. Meanwhile, South Africa’s case against Israel at the ICJ was welcomed as a rare exception to the tide of post-colonial realism, characterized by the pursuit of “national interests” and depoliticized developmental and security-driven imperatives across the Global South since 1991. Accordingly, the provisional measures announced by the ICJ on 26 January 2024 were viewed by many observers as “a moment of the Global South”.
Conclusion: The global task of devising a strategic plan to halt war in Gaza and Ukraine —profoundly navigating a peace drive—needs to be mutually propelled by the North-South nations. Amidst the growing complexity, time-varying dynamics, and unpredictability of the national and geopolitical landscape, as well as the diversity of the community and the agendas of its members, the future peace process could only bear fruit if diplomatic efforts are centred with equality and mutual respect of international law.
—The writer, an independent ‘IR’ researcher-cum-international law analyst based in Pakistan, is member of European Consortium for Political Research Standing Group on IR, Critical Peace & Conflict Studies, also a member of Washington Foreign Law Society and European Society of International Law. He deals with the strategic and nuclear issues.
