We are setting up an entirely false choice over Ukraine that, if pursued, could unnecessarily undermine European unity. Last week a poll for the European Council on Foreign Relations showed two camps in European public opinion emerging: a larger peace camp (35%) that wants to cut and run now, and a smaller justice camp (22%) that wants to push ahead until victory. In fact, if you look at the detail, there are three groups, with the biggest single group (43%) choosing both peace and justice.
This divide between peace and justice is reflected in public polemic, too. At one extreme there is Henry Kissinger, arguing at Davos that Ukraine should concede territory now to secure a ceasefire and warning us to avoid humiliating Vladimir Putin. Not surprisingly, this provoked a sharp reaction from those who correctly point out that Putin shows no sign of being ready to negotiate seriously or respond to concessions. More likely, a pre-emptive cringe would not only fail to secure a lasting peace, but would also leave Putin in a position to return and grab more of Ukraine once he regroups his forces.
At the other extreme, passionate Ukraine supporters such as Anne Applebaum and Timothy Snyder believe that all negotiation is appeasement, and that Ukraine must be backed against Russia until total victory is achieved. Conveniently, they never actually define what victory is. Is it driving Russia back to 23 February lines? Or out of Ukrainian territory altogether? Does Ukraine have to keep fighting until the Russian armed forces are permanently disabled and Putin unseated?
In this debate we seem not to have learned any of the lessons of our history. You can only impose terms on a country if you invade and conquer it, as the allies did in Germany in 1945. Otherwise, even “winners” have to negotiate, as at Versailles in 1919. And since no one is proposing that Ukraine invades Russia, Volodymyr Zelenskiy is right to maintain that this war will have to end with a negotiated settlement. Russia will continue to exist as a neighbour of Ukraine, and will still have much larger armed forces. There will only be a lasting peace if we do not leave Russia nursing a grievance, isolated and waiting for the next opportunity to invade.
There is always a tension between peace and justice when you try to solve a conflict. If President Santos Calderón of Colombia had told Farc leaders in 2012 that he wanted peace but they would have to go to jail for 30 years, it is a fair bet they would not have been interested in negotiating. Equally it would have been wrong to accept a blanket amnesty after 50 years of war, leaving victims without satisfaction. Instead, Santos set up a system of transitional justice to achieve a balance between peace and justice, to give past victims the closure they deserved while making sure there were no new victims in future. There will have to be the same balance between peace and justice in Ukraine.
Fundamentally, this debate loses sight of the essential fact that it is the Ukrainians doing the fighting, not us. We could have come to their defence as we did for Poland in 1939 (too late), in Kuwait in 1991, or in Kosovo in 1999. But we chose not to. Therefore only Ukrainians have the right to decide when to negotiate and what concessions to make. They must not be pressured again into a peace agreement they cannot deliver, as they were in Minsk in 2014. Nor must they be pressured into an endless war.
Putin is not yet ready for serious negotiations. But he may become ready, depending on his calculus after the battle of the Donbas, so we need to be prepared. He could declare a ceasefire in place, as he did in 2014, holding on to the territory he has gained. That would leave Ukraine with another frozen conflict, which Putin would exploit to prevent the country moving down the path to a European future. Such a ceasefire would be a trap. Ukraine may need to insist on fighting and talking at the same time to secure a satisfactory agreement. It should be supported in those negotiations by its allies, who hold the key to sanctions and security guarantees to deter Russia from invading again. We should act now to create a group of friends of Ukraine to offer that support, as other negotiation processes have done.
The greatest guarantee of Ukraine’s secure future lies in the EU’s hands. If Ukraine is offered candidate status now and a clear track to membership, even if lengthy, then it will be far harder for Russia to invade again. This would also give Ukraine’s government the levers and incentives it needs to fundamentally reform a system still too dominated by a corrupt Soviet-era legacy of oligarchs and kleptocrats. It is difficult for the EU, which is very aware of its past mistakes in letting countries in too early. But it knows Ukraine is a special case.
We also need to expand the current negotiation agenda. Early Russia-Ukraine talks were too stacked towards Russian demands in terms of territory and the neutrality of Ukraine. A new agenda needs to be balanced with Ukraine’s priorities: justice for the crimes committed, rebuilding the country and recognition of Ukraine’s territorial integrity. The issue of territory is, in the end, a zero-sum game. We will need to increase the pie to find ways to allow trade-offs. That requires a wider negotiation on the future of European security, including a new conventional forces agreement and a new relationship between Nato and Russia.
The false dichotomy we risk setting up for ourselves now between peace and justice in Ukraine will play into Putin’s hands. The unity displayed so far has put new life into the EU and Nato, and we should not imperil it. If we want this to be the last European war then we must concentrate on setting the table for the right kind of negotiation, rather than arguing unnecessarily about how much we are prepared to eat.
• This article was amended on 23 June 2022. An earlier version gave the percentage of Europeans classed by a poll as being in the “justice camp” as 25%, rather than 22%.
Jonathan Powell was Tony Blair’s chief negotiator on Northern Ireland while chief of staff to the prime minister, 1997-2007, and is the chief executive and founder of Inter Mediate, a charity devoted to helping end armed conflicts
