Rabat – A month ago, Russian forces entered Ukraine, sparking a conflict that is already producing a clear list of winners and losers that is likely to impact the world’s future.  International media is obsessed with which side is “winning” the conflict, but amid the fog of war  the reality appears to be that no side has a chance of anything resembling a victory.

In the”fog of war” no one can truly determine the situation on the ground, allowing for a flurry of disingenuous messaging from both Russia and Ukraine. 

The reality of any modern conflict is that war ends with either total defeat for one side (as in the US invasion of Iraq), or more commonly through peaceful negotiations, ideally through the UN’s conflict resolution mechanisms. These mechanisms commonly include initial peace negotiations, such as recently seen in Libya, followed by truth and reconciliation commissions, efforts to disarm the population and other trust building endeavors.

But given the current diplomatic isolation of Russia by numerous countries, traditional conflict resolution could itself fall victim to the onslaught on Europe’s eastern borders.

The conflict’s losers

Russia’s military offensive in Ukraine is producing a long list of unfortunate victims and, as is common in conflict, always those who were not involved in the decision to go to war in the first place. 

Citizens on the ground

Ukraine’s citizens top the list of clear victims of this conflict. Trapped between the geopolitical considerations of the world’s largest nuclear powers, Ukrainians face an impossible task. 

Media in the West have been eagerly cheering on the arming and deployment of citizens in the conflict, painting the resistance movement as a legitimate force that has the opportunity to stand up to Russia’s superior military through sheer grit and love of country.

Pulitzer-prize winning former war-reporter Chris Hedges emphasizes that arming citizens does little but produce cannon-fodder against a well-trained military force such as Russia’s. “The media loves this heroic narrative of mothers making molotov cocktails, but the dark reality is that you are just setting them up to be killed,” Hedges stated in a recent interview.

In many ways, Ukrainian citizens have become the West’s “freedom fighters,” despite their obvious inability to produce a short-term resolution to the conflict.

Meanwhile Hedges warns that “history, as well as all the conflicts I covered as a war correspondent, have demonstrated that when military posturing begins, it often takes little to set the funeral pyre alight.”

Families across Russia are similarly facing nothing but suffering, as their sons and daughters are asked to fight a war few support wholeheartedly. The decision to directly involve Russian forces in the eight-year old Ukrainian conflict pits two brotherly people against each other in an orgy of reluctant fratricide with no end in sight.

Citizens of the world

The conflict is revealing our economic interdependency, as people around the world  are feeling the conflict’s effects at their dinner tables and local gas stations. A spike in energy prices is having a knock-on effect on food and other costs, intertwined with Russia and Ukraine’s role as major wheat exporters.

Many in the developing world, dependent on cereal imports from Eastern Europe, are seeing the price of bread rise, while the closely-correlated likelihood of local political instability rises alongside it.

Both Russia and Ukraine also make important contributions to the global supply of fertilizer , needed to grow most food items. 

At the same time, the conflict is set to result in a flood of small-arms in the global illicit arms market, while producing a new generation of military-trained angry young men, and a waning sense of global peace and stability.

Free markets and globalization

The renewed conflict in Ukraine is set to again expand the artificial divide between East and West. After decades of Russia’s economic integration into globalized capitalism, international businesses are being shamed into undoing any business dealings in the country. 

The current push to isolate Russia is undoing the multilateral trade interdependence that has long been heralded as a crucial ingredient to creating peace and stability worldwide.

What the initial stages of the conflict revealed is that Egyptian bread depends on Ukrainian farmers, that avocado farmers in Brazil need Russian fertilizers and that Russians also enjoy the Big Macs and Venti Lattes sold in metropoles around the world. 

Yet, this sense of shared humanity and interdependence is rapidly being lost, as the Russian people are set to feel the impact of sanctions and economic isolation, while its former economic partners scramble to source their trade goods from elsewhere.

The conflict’s winners

Determining the “winners” in a conflict can be a difficult task. As former British PM Neville Chamberlain famously said, “in war, whichever side may call itself the victor, there are no winners, but all are losers.” The irony of the Ukrainian conflict is that it is unlikely any of the fighting sides can emerge victorious.

Russia appears conscious it cannot fully occupy or annex Ukraine, instead it focuses on solidifying its control over Russian-speaking border regions that can become key elements or bargaining chips in eventual peace negotiations. 

Kyiv similarly knows it cannot stop Russia through any conventional warfare, and that it doesn’t stand a chance against a true shock and awe campaign by Russia. Amid the fog of war, Ukraine appears to be simply releasing news about Russian losses and valiant Ukrainian defense efforts to produce its own narrative to benefit eventual peace negotiations.

With both warring parties conscious about the absence of any real conditions that would signal a victory, the current “winners” of the conflict have little to lose in the ongoing fighting.

The US

Currently, as is common in war, the undisputed beneficiaries of the conflict are located far from the front lines and have little stake in the wellbeing of people in Moscow or Kyiv. 

The conflict in Ukraine has produced immense net positives for the US, boosting its envisioned role as “leader of the free world.” After decades of waning influence and horrific military blunders in Iraq, Libya, Syria and Afghanistan, the US is rapidly regaining its role as the world’s policeman. 

Over the past five years, the US unilaterally withdrew from three landmark treaties that aimed to ease tensions with Russia, including the Open Skies agreement and the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces treaty. Tensions in the region were on the rise long before the renewed fighting in the Ukraine war, with allegations that the US was even involved in the 2014 revolution that sparked the crisis.

In 2022, unconfirmed US intelligence reports resulted in unprecedented tensions ahead of the renewed fighting in Ukraine, and US media have been eager to support further military action in Ukraine and paint the conflict as a precursor to World War III. With little scrutiny, the West rallied behind the US, providing confidence within Ukraine that the West would be there to defend its borders from any Russian incursion. 

As Russian boots crossed the Ukrainian border however, it became clear that the West was predictably unwilling to risk war with nuclear-armed Russia, instead opting to flood Ukraine with weapons as a means of “support.” This highly profitable yet risk-averse approach effectively pits Ukrainian citizens against professional Russian soldiers, and undermines any effort towards conflict resolution. 

Meanwhile the narrative of a Cold War-style “domino-effect” has again taken root, promoting dangerous escalation through the idea that a Russian “victory” in Ukraine would embolden it to attack NATO members despite their membership-related security guarantees. 

Yet in the US, President Joe Biden can declare himself to be a “war-time president,” ahead of contentious midterm elections, while the US is once again the clear leader of Europe and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), spurring on military expenditures that arms manufacturers across the US are welcoming with open arms.

Furthermore, the current conflict is helping the US resolve long-term points of friction within the NATO alliance. It has pushed Germany to expand military spending and voluntarily end its expanded gas pipeline with Russia, increasing Europe’s dependency on US gas. Meanwhile the conflict is further leveraged to attempt to push Turkey back into NATO’s good graces. 

NATO

Another clear beneficiary of the conflict is NATO itself. Having lost its clear mandate to defend against Soviet Russia in the 1990s, the alliance is once again seen as a value tool against the tyranny of international real-politik. Less than three years after having been declared “brain dead” by French President Emmanuel Macron, NATO is  alive and kicking.

Yet, few have questioned to what degree NATO itself is a player in this realpolitik. For decades US and NATO officials have warned that the eastward expansion of NATO would trigger a new conflict with Russia, undermining decades of Russian efforts to integrate into global markets and diplomatic forums.

With Russia again being presented as a threat to global peace (conveniently ignoring the West’s role in the ongoing conflict in Yemen and its role in the greater Middle-East) NATO has reinvigorated its mandate. Facing a new threat, NATO members are voluntarily boosting their military spending, a noticeable change after decades of ignoring NATO demands to spend a larger share of their GDP on the military.

The specific demand for NATO members to spend a specific amount of their resources on the military has made NATO an important tool to expand global arms sales amid a global context that is relatively more peaceful than any time in the past.

Arms manufacturers

No one is set to benefit from the current conflict as much as international arms manufacturers. From Boeing to Raytheon, the stock prices of arms manufacturers have soared in the US and Britain, benefiting multinationals with far-reaching influence on governments in London and Washington. 

Few have wondered what will happen in the coming years to the thousands of assault rifles, rocket-launchers and other “defensive” weapons being sent to Ukraine. Even fewer have wondered what will happen once the fighting dies down and a generation of frustrated, well-armed and trained irregular soldiers seek new economic opportunities and an outlet for their anger.

Such remnants of conflict have fueled new wars and instability in the last decade. The flood of weapons and fighters in Libya helped oust Muammar Ghaddafi, and still fuels conflict across the Sahel to this day. Such unfortunate consequences are more rule than exception in the messy business of foreign interference in conflict. 

Western arms manufacturers couldn’t find a “better” conflict than the current clash in Ukraine. It isolates its main competitors in Russia, spurs on military spending, and dismisses the idea that more weapons lead to a more volatile and unsafe world for all of us.

Sacrifices on the altar of war

While there are currently undisputed winners and losers to the ongoing conflict, the war is set to create an altogether greater and more holistic threat to us all. 

Good versus Evil

The current war has shown that in the 21st century, we are all still drawn into the dualistic Manichean view of “good versus evil.” This notion clouds our judgment, eviscerates options for conflict resolution and paints our enemies as motivated by nothing but an incomprehensible sense of malice and stereotypical villainy.

The way in which Russian President Vladimir Putin has been painted in Western media, as motivated only by a pure sense of erratic wickedness, undermines any effort to see both sides’ perspective, a key component in the UN’s conflict resolution mechanisms. 

Meanwhile, the international isolation of Russia at all diplomatic and economic platforms risks pushing the country into a corner from which it can never leave without losing face. 

Military strategists throughout history have recognized the importance of leaving an avenue for your surrounded foe to retreat. 

From Chinese strategist Sun Tzu and the tactics of the Mongol empire up to modern warfare, it is generally recognized that without means for escape, a surrounded enemy will fight to the death. Therefore it is in both sides’ advantage to avoid such a situation by allowing a corridor for escape, in order to save lives and reduce the violence needed to subdue a foe.

Dangerous isolation

The current isolation of Russia is meant to punish Russia for its clear breach of post-Nuremberg conventions on interstate warfare, yet risks fueling even greater conflict if there is no path left towards peace through diplomacy. 

As with any conflict, the greatest victims are likely to be future generations, in Eastern Europe and across the globe. The Ukraine conflict appears set to undermine a sense of global security, stability and peace, boost militarism, and pit the West against the East in a renewed Cold War. 

After two decades of a unipolar world led by the US, the conflict is set to once again ask governments around the world to “pick a side,” as divisions and tensions are fueled by mutual mistrust and misunderstandings. 

Finding a peaceful solution to the Ukrainian conflict demands us to attempt to understand both sides of the conflict, and eschew notions of a black-and-white conflict between pure good and evil. 

Russia’s geopolitical concerns can be assuaged without surrendering Ukrainian territory, while reducing international arms proliferation, strengthening arms control treaties and limiting the risk of fueling further wars. 

Geopolitical realism vs 21st century “rights”

Renowned internal political scientist, veteran and West Point-graduate John Mearsheimer describes the conflict as a logical reaction by Russia, and Ukrainian and international resistance to the conflict as a misunderstanding of the reality of global realpolitik. 

Mearsheimer emphasizes that the US itself would never allow a foreign foe to exert undue influence over its neighbors and could use its Monroe Doctrine to intervene militarily if its neighbors would use their legal autonomy to do so. It is a global misunderstanding of the rights of nations, Mearsheimer argues, that is causing a disconnect on the Ukraine conflict. 

“States usually pay attention to international law as long as they are in their strategic interests,” he argues in a recent interview. However, he adds that “if there is a conflict between international law and a country’s strategic interest, the country will always privilege its strategic interests, and international law and human rights will be pushed off the table.”

”In the international system, might makes right,” Mearsheimer describes as the driving factor behind both Russian and US foreign policy.

For an internal relations expert such as Mearsheimer, the conflict can easily be resolved if Ukraine recognizes the geopolitical reality and finds a modus vivendi with Russia. “If the Ukrainians were smart, they would divorce themselves from the United States,” Mearheimer recommends.

While peace and diplomacy is an available option that both sides of the conflict are likely to favor, sensationalist international media continue to ignore any meaningful discussion on conflict resolution. 

“Even if the Russians lose, in the process they will destroy Ukraine”, Mearsheimer warned before adding that “from Ukraine’s point of view, that’s not a good thing.”

Mearsheimer’s analysis has since led to University of Chicago students trying to “cancel” him, accusing him of “Putinism” and presenting “anti-Ukrainian ideology” for not neatly aligning with the problematically uniform media narrative on the conflict.

Driven by the black-and-white “othering” of Russia and its leadership, Putin’s Russia has been demonized to the point where negotiations would be seen as a “deal with the devil.” Meanwhile, sanctions and ongoing fighting are unlikely to resolve the conflict. 

As long as the media and politicians focus more on who is “winning” the conflict in the short-term, we risk forgetting what we all could lose in the long-term.