Battlefield to conference room

Today’s US/EU/Russia/Ukraine Joint Diplomatic Statement aims to de-escalate a conflict that has been spiraling for weeks.  The steps it proposes are straightforward:

All sides must refrain from any violence, intimidation or provocative actions. The participants strongly condemned and rejected all expressions of extremism, racism and religious intolerance, including anti-Semitism.

All illegal armed groups must be disarmed; all illegally seized buildings must be returned to legitimate owners; all illegally occupied streets, squares and other public places in Ukrainian cities and towns must be vacated.

Amnesty will be granted to protesters and to those who have left buildings and other public places and surrendered weapons, with the exception of those found guilty of capital crimes.

The Organization for Cooperation and Security in Europe (OSCE) is to provide monitors, as had been hoped in Crimea (but Russia did not permit it, preferring to annex the peninsula).

Like many diplomatic statements, this one is well-intentioned but riddled with ways to wriggle out.  There will always be violence, intimidation or provocation on which one side can base its own violence intimidation or provocation against the other.  Disarmament of armed groups generally requires a superior force to undertake the task.  Which building and other seizures are illegal is in the eye of the beholder.  Where are those who allegedly committed capital crimes to be tried and by whom?

Whether the statement is a turning point will depend on political will.  It is difficult for me to imagine that President Putin is ready to de-escalate.  He has been on a winning wicket both in Ukraine and in Syria.  Why would he want to stop now?  The statement presumably forestalls further EU and US sanctions, but he knows as well as everyone in the DC and Brussels press corps that agreement on those was going to be difficult.  Ukrainian military and police action to counter Russian-sponsored takeovers in the east has so far failed.  I suppose Putin knows even better than this morning’s New York Times that Russia’s economy was on the rocks even before the Ukraine crisis.  It will get worse, but since when did Putin or Putinism worry about the economy?  Oil prices around $100/barrel are all he has needed to get Russia up off its knees.  Crisis helps keep the oil price up.

So I’ll be surprised if this agreement holds, or even begins to change the perilous direction Ukraine is heading in.  But the statement includes an important bit that should not be ignored:

The announced constitutional process will be inclusive, transparent and accountable. It will include the immediate establishment of a broad national dialogue, with outreach to all of Ukraine’s regions and political constituencies, and allow for the consideration of public comments and proposed amendments.

The Ukraine crisis, like the Syrian one, is fundamentally a political crisis:  it is more about perceptions of legitimacy and distribution of power than about who military balance or who speaks which language.  We’ve seen in Libya, Egypt and Syria the results of failure to conduct an inclusive and transparent discussion of the kind of state their people want and how its leadership will be held accountable.  It is very difficult to move from violence to the negotiating table unless one side is defeated or both sides recognize they will not gain from further violence.  Tunisia and Yemen have done it, but they are the exceptions, not the rule.

The odds of successfully moving from the battlefield to the conference room in Ukraine are low.  But that is the challenge our diplomats now face, along with the OSCE monitors.  I can only wish them success, no matter how unlikely that may be.