A China-sponsored peace plan is worth a try

Many Asian countries who have managed countless disputes are likely to support such an attempt

A billboard showing Chinese President Xi Jinping with a slogan which reads "Remain true to our original aspiration and keep our mission firmly in mind", in Beijing, on February 28. AFP

Do leaders around the world want the war in Ukraine to end? Or do they want nothing less than President Vladimir Putin to be pushed from office during some sort of “colour revolution” in Russia? Answers to those questions were signalled by the responses to the 12-point peace plan laid out by China last Friday.

Nato Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg immediately dismissed it out of hand, saying: “It is not a peace plan. China doesn’t have much credibility because they have not been able to condemn the illegal invasion of Ukraine.” On the same day, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken told the UN Security Council: “No member of this council should call for peace while supporting Russia’s war on Ukraine and on the UN Charter.” No surprise there, really (although Beijing would surely dispute supporting either the war on Ukraine or one on the UN Charter). After all, US President Joe Biden said nearly a year ago that Mr Putin “cannot remain in power”, and last April, US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin declared: “We want to see Russia weakened to the degree that it can’t do the kinds of things that it has done in invading Ukraine.” For them, the goalposts moved early on from securing an end to the war, to crushing Russia.

But Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy – whom the most bellicose western leaders have consistently said should be the final arbiter of what is acceptable to his country or not – did not reject the proposal. Quite the opposite. He said he would like to meet Chinese President Xi Jinping to discuss it. “Let’s work with China on this point,” he added. “Why not?” French President Emanuel Macron went a little further. "The fact that China is engaging in peace efforts is a good thing," he said on Saturday, and revealed that he planned to visit Beijing in early April to seek Mr Xi’s help in ending the war

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France's President Emmanuel Macron (R) and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky walk on the tarmac of Velizy-Villacoublay airbase as they prepare to board a flight together, en route to Brussels for a summit at EU parliament, on February 9. Pool/ AFP

Mr Macron is absolutely right to do so, just as he has been one of the wisest of voices in simultaneously condemning the invasion while warning “we must not humiliate Russia, so that the day the fighting stops, we can build a way out through diplomatic channels”. Whatever people think about the government in Moscow, that has to be correct in terms of Russia itself in the long term.

I applaud Macron for not giving up without even trying

I believe that Mr Macron is also correct in thinking that any chance of peace has to be grasped. And this could be a chance. The likes of Nato’s Mr Stoltenberg evidently take China’s proposal to be a cynical ploy; but then they assume the country always acts in bad faith in any case. Not only should that assumption be challenged, but the naysayers are forgetting that China doesn’t want this prolonged war which, amongst other things, risks its own economic future and is in clear contravention of the first point in its peace plan. That states: “The sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity of all countries must be effectively upheld.”

There is no doubting that in the current circumstances, it may be exceptionally hard to reach an outcome that both sides can accept. But I applaud Mr Macron for not giving up without even trying.

What is the best that could come out of any discussions that could end the war swiftly? It would probably have to be some form of fudge that allowed both parties to save at least some face, and would require supremely dextrous diplomacy to overcome the reality that parts of Ukraine have now officially been declared to be part of Russia. How could the two presidents fashion an agreement that didn’t make one of them appear to be humbled and vanquished?

Being neither a Metternich nor a Kissinger, I don’t have the answer. But I do believe that some kind of non-maximalist, pragmatic solution might find plenty of support from the many Asian countries who have managed countless disputes that are never definitively settled but which have, most of the time, not led to armed conflict. China, South Korea, Japan and Russia all have disagreements over islands in the seas off East Asia, as do Thailand and Cambodia over ownership of a temple complex, and central Asian states over parts of the Fergana Valley. In fact, there are way too many disputes to list them all. The point is that, on the whole, the avoidance of war has been prized over resolutions that wholly satisfy one party and leave the other feeling cheated.

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Much of the Global South might back a compromise, too – and their opinion is important, for it is not for western countries to decide that the only way this war stops is with a new Russian revolution that could lead to a disastrous civil war.

Also at the UN on Friday, the UAE’s ambassador Lana Nusseibeh said that she was “under no illusions” that peace efforts, including by UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres, would be easy. “Too much blood has been spilt, too much damage has been done,” she said. I myself have been moved by the heart-rending and superbly detailed reports from Ukraine by the academic and journalist David Patrikarakos. How can one be ambiguous in taking sides?

But a quick victory, by either Ukraine or Russia, appears extremely unlikely. Mr Macron seems to be the only western leader who understands that however unsatisfactory a Chinese-brokered fudge or compromise might be after everything Russia has done, it would still be better than hundreds of thousands more deaths. Good for him, I say, for not giving up on hope.

Published: March 01, 2023

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Sholto Byrnes is an East Asian affairs columnist for The National