Description
The Russo-Ukrainian war has been accompanied by competing global visions for the post-war settlement, discrete articulations of the parameters of the peace, and the debates over possible and desirable ways of establishing accountability for the aggressor. The nature and ambitiousness of the envisioned peace (the cessation of hostilities versus a just and sustainable peace), along with varying understandings of Russia’s ‘strategic defeat’ and Ukraine’s victory, ranging from the denial of Russia’s strategic war aims to Ukraine’s fast membership in the EU and NATO, have become part and parcel of the discussions about future deterrence and containment strategy, post-war condition of Eastern Europe and the international order at large. This paper investigates the recurring political and academic exchanges during 2022-2024 about the envisioned endings, peace settlements, and Ukraine’s security-political future-related scenarios as distinctly charged political designs for the post-war interaction order between the United States, Europe, Russia, and the so-called Global South. Various peace plans (e.g., Zelenskyi’s 10-point Peace Formula, the Chinese-Brazilian ‘Friends of Peace’ plan), policy visions and rumours against the backdrop of the incoming Trump administration’s emergent policy on the issue display distinct historical understandings and political framings of deterrence, containment, appeasement, assurance and humiliation. The visions of future peace reflect definite temporal sources and reference points of ontological security for Ukraine, its regional neighbours, Europe, the US and the institutional West at large. The nature of the end of this war marks the ‘end times’ to wildly varying degrees for the engaged actors across the globe. Peace agreement as a ritual component of ending a war has become a political battlefield over envisioning future world order, demonstrating the malleability of the notion of deterrence therein.
