How to cite this journal: Author, Date of the post, WMO Conflict Insight, Title of the post, ISSN: 2628 6998, https://worldmediation.org/journal/
ABSTRACT
The current conflict in Ukraine has been one of the main topics addressed at the 2022 NATO Summit. The organization’s conclusions on how to approach the conflict left unresolved questions regarding the nature of international conflict management strategies. This article aims to relate NATO strategies toward Russia’s aggression with the “Security Dilemma”, and to explain how conflict management measures applied by the international community may only result in a stalemate of tensions rather than help disputants approach one another onto a peaceful and lasting settlement.
KEYWORDS
Ukraine, NATO, Conflict Management, Conflict Resolution, International Security, Russia, Security Dilemma, Sanctions, EU.
INTRODUCTION
That the world is a much more unpredictable and confrontational place than 12 years ago with a “more contested security order” has been one of the main conclusions reached at the 2022 NATO Summit. According to the organization, the current unstable character of international security, especially considering the crisis in Ukraine and the recognition of Russia as a direct threat could be lowered by increasing member-states defense expenditure. As for the handling of Russia’s aggression on its neighboring country, keeping up with international sanctions, in cooperation with other international actors (such as the EU), seems to be the main course of action. It remains unclear, however, if these measures may be counterproductive and exacerbate the tensions instead of stopping conflict escalation, as they are needed to do.
MAIN CORPUS
The Problem with the Measures
The common decision of NATO members to increase their defense expenditure as a way of reducing the challenges of the current security order could be easily related to the “Security Dilemma”; an explanation of how policies increasing state security tend to decrease the security of other states, which may find said security difference as provocative. This would lead to a sort of “defense race”, making the international arena prone to greater tension and conflict outbreak. Thus, increasing defense expenditure, rather than reducing it, may raise the instability of the global security order as well as the risks of wars, and seems counterproductive in the light of the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, where the efforts should be put into building measures that prevent the conflict from escalating to higher hostility levels while approaching the disputants towards non-armed understandings.
As for international sanctions, particularly those of economic character, they have been established by several states, especially among NATO and EU members, as an attempt to force Russia to stop its aggression and seek a peaceful settlement instead. Although sanctions are sometimes useful in holding states accountable for their actions in the international arena, it seems like they won’t be entirely successful in the case of stopping Russia’s aggression on Ukraine, even though they will make war expenditures higher for Moscow. The efforts to block Russia from the global economy could lead Russia to strengthen relations with China and India, shifting the current geopolitical reality without ceasing the aggression. Even if sanctions did persuade Russia to work towards a peaceful settlement, it is not likely that such settlement would be a lasting one, given that it would be based on coercion.
Moreover, the measures agreed by NATO appear to attempt to force Russia into a settlement without addressing the background of its conflict with Ukraine, which goes way back to the advent of NATO and EU integration processes in eastern European countries that used to belong to the former Soviet Bloc, which Russia still had some control over, and that had been read by the latter as a provocative move by western organizations. The response of Russia seems to have unleashed old geopolitical quarrels based on Cold War dynamics that have led international actors to the point where they find themselves today.
SUMMARY *
The article applies a single analytical frame consistently. Measures adopted to increase the security of one side are experienced by the other as threat, and the response confirms the original fear, which is the structure Jervis described as the security dilemma. On this reading, higher defence spending and economic sanctions are not neutral instruments of pressure but moves within that dynamic, capable of raising the cost of the war without altering the decision to wage it, and capable of producing a settlement that holds only as long as the coercion behind it does. The author’s further claim is that the measures address the conduct rather than what he takes to be its background, and that a settlement reached without engaging that background will not last.
CONCLUSION
Conclusions and Outlook
The main strategies agreed by NATO at its 2022 Summit regarding the conflict in Ukraine appear to be counterproductive and rather ineffective in approaching the disputants to a peaceful settlement. The main issue seems to be their coercive character, which fails to unveil the real background of the conflict, increases the security order’s instability, and facilitates conflict escalation. This conflict is particularly delicate because of its deep roots; unsolved cold war dynamics and quarrels would have to be addressed. The parties and interests involved contribute to its fragility; one of the main questions that arise here is that of Ukraine’s sovereignty as a State and its willingness to join organizations such as the EU and NATO, which seems to collide with the aims of Russia to keep control of that former Soviet Bloc area.
The establishment of a peaceful process to solve the dispute appears hard to reach not because of its problematic background, but because of the lack of willingness to build and use strategies that unveil the real power issues behind it. This is not new; coercive and threatening strategies to force states into settlements have been built inside the dynamics of international relations for a long time and appear to be making conflict resolution strategies to move back instead of forward. Real peaceful conflict management based on mutual understanding is not likely to be possible unless the “defense race” ceases to be fueled.
POTENTIAL SOLUTION *
The security dilemma is a powerful analytical tool and its application here requires one qualification that the article does not make, without which the analysis misdescribes the case.
Jervis’s dilemma concerns states that arm defensively and are misread as threatening. It is a tragedy of misperception, in which neither side intends aggression and both end up preparing for it. That is not the situation before us. One state invaded another, and the invasion had begun before the measures under discussion were adopted; the increase in defence spending and the sanctions are responses to a war in progress rather than moves that provoked one. The distinction matters because the remedies differ entirely. Where the problem is misperception, the answer is reassurance, transparency and restraint. Where one party has resorted to force, reassurance is read as weakness, and the framework that applies is deterrence rather than the security dilemma. Applying the dilemma to a case of actual invasion produces the recommendation that the party defending itself should arm less, which is unlikely to be what the author intends.
Two further points follow. On sanctions, the author’s assessment is supported by the research he cites and by a considerable literature besides: sanctions rarely reverse a decision already taken, they impose costs on populations more reliably than on decision makers, and they generate the alternative alignments he describes. What they do achieve is constraint on capability over time, and their principal function is often signalling rather than compulsion. Judging them by whether they end a war sets a standard they almost never meet anywhere; judging them by whether they narrow the resources available for waging one is more informative.
On the question of what a settlement would contain, the article is right that a coerced agreement will not hold, and this is where mediation practice has most to offer. Durability depends on both parties being able to defend the outcome at home, which in this case means that Ukraine’s security must be assured by something, whether alliance membership, bilateral guarantees or a credible neutrality with enforceable backing, and that any arrangement must be one a Ukrainian government can present as consistent with its sovereignty. It also means, uncomfortably, that a settlement neither party can accept today may become acceptable later, which is why the immediate work in conflicts of this kind lies elsewhere: humanitarian corridors, prisoner exchanges, the grain arrangements negotiated in this war, nuclear safety at occupied facilities. Each was achieved while the fighting continued, each saved lives, and each demonstrates that channels remain open even where a political settlement does not.
Finally, a note on the framing of causes, which this journal should treat carefully. Explaining why a party acted is part of any mediator’s work and it is not the same as endorsing the action; a mediator who cannot articulate an adversary’s reasoning cannot negotiate with them. But the account must be complete. Alliance enlargement was in every case sought by the states that joined, for reasons rooted in their own histories, and a framing that presents those states as objects over which others contest omits the very party whose sovereignty the article elsewhere identifies as the central question. The strongest version of this analysis holds both: that the security concerns of a great power are real and must be addressed in any settlement, and that they do not confer a right to determine the alignments of neighbours, still less to invade them.
* Added by the WMO Editorial Team
REFERENCES
References
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Supplementary references added by the WMO Editorial Team
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