Solution to Ukraine war might lie elsewhere

The annual Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore usually produces headlines, as befits one of the Asia-Pacific’s most important security conferences with high-level attendees from around the globe. This year it also yielded a surprise, in the form of a peace plan for Ukraine. It was put forward by Indonesian Defence Minister Prabowo Subianto, who appears not to have mentioned it in advance to President Joko Widodo. “That’s from Pak Prabowo himself,” Widodo said on Tuesday. “Maybe I will send the invitation today or tomorrow to ask for an explanation of what the Defence Minister said.”

That aside, Prabowo’s proposal deserves attention, not least as he is a substantial figure who is well-known throughout the region: a former special forces general who has run for the presidency twice and is viewed as the candidate to beat, thus far, in next year’s election.

His four-point plan calls for a ceasefire, with both sides withdrawing 15 kilometres from their current frontlines in order to establish a demilitarised zone, UN peacekeepers enforcing the truce and the UN then leading referendums in “disputed territories”.

Predictably enough, the plan was immediately rebuffed by Ukrainian Defence Minister Oleksii Reznikov, and the EU high representative for foreign policy, Josep Borrell, both of whom were also present. But it was welcomed by Cui Tiankai, China’s former ambassador to the US. And Prabowo’s words will ring true to many in South-East Asia. “We in Asia have our share of conflict and war, maybe more disastrous, more bloody than what has been experienced in Ukraine,” he said. “Ask Vietnam, ask Cambodia, ask Indonesians how many times we’ve been invaded.” Prabowo will have known that bringing a swift end to the conflict would probably be the imperative for most in the region.

Finding a way to stop hostilities – while leaving political and territorial issues unresolved – would allow Ukraine to recover, and hopefully thrive

They are far from alone. Many believe that after more than a year of fighting, it seems increasingly unlikely that either side can achieve a decisive military victory, not just in the coming months but possibly for years. As Samuel Charap, senior political scientist at the Rand corporation and a former US State Department adviser, writes in a new essay for Foreign Affairs magazine: “The United States and its allies thus face a choice about their future strategy. They could begin to try to steer the war toward a negotiated end in the coming months. Or they could do so years from now. If they decide to wait, the fundamentals of the conflict will likely be the same, but the costs of the war – human, financial and otherwise – will have multiplied.”

Charap suggests an armistice on the lines of the one that brought an end to the Korean War in 1953. That, he writes, “dealt exclusively with the mechanics of maintaining a ceasefire and left all political issues off the table. Although North and South Korea are still technically at war, and both claim the entirety of the peninsula as their sovereign territory, the armistice has largely held. Such an unsatisfactory outcome is the most likely way this war will end”.

This is so close to Prabowo’s proposal as to make no difference. Given that Prabowo made his speech on Saturday and Charap’s essay was published on Monday, there is either something in the air or it is clear that a wide range of security experts from very different backgrounds are coming to similar conclusions.

This is not about letting Russia, or President Vladimir Putin in particular, off the hook. Prabowo made it clear that he did not “equate the invader and invaded”. Charap refers to “the unspeakable horrors of Russian occupation” and accuses Moscow of having “committed an unprovoked act of aggression and horrific war crimes”.

The National