Is a partition war awaiting Ukraine?

Unlike his first term in the White House, US President-elect Donald Trump appears determined to fulfill many of his election promises. His cabinet appointments – from pro-Kremlin Tulsi Gabbard to Director of National Intelligenceto vaccine skeptic and conspiracy lover Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., as Secretary of Health and Human Services– confirm Trump’s commitment to a scorched earth campaign against American institutions and perceived “internal enemies”. and your victory speech suggests that he is serious about “ending wars” – starting with the one in Ukraine.

Trump has been around for a long time affirming that would end the war in Ukraine in the 24 hours following his assumption. There has been much speculation about the agreement that Trump has in mindand all scenarios have something in common: the dismemberment of Ukraine. If this is to be the cost of peace, the grim history of territorial partitions is worth considering.

Few events create such lasting enmity; few have caused more devastating violence. The three partitions of Poland that took place in the late 18th century are perhaps Europe’s closest parallel to Trump’s vision for Ukraine. Beginning in 1772, the Austrian Habsburg Monarchy, the Kingdom of Prussia, and the Russian Empire seized and annexed territory, dividing the Polish lands between them and erasing what had been Europe’s largest state by land mass.

In the face of such submission, violent resistance is almost inevitable. The Poles carried out periodic guerrilla campaigns during the occupation, with major uprisings in 1831 and 1863. Resistance continued well into the 20th century, led by the independence campaigns by Josef Piłsudski – punctuated by acts of terror – before the First World War. The enmity with Russia, in particular, endures to this day, and the Kremlin must answer for the violence of the Stalin era against the Polish people.

In the case of France, it harbored hatred towards Germany for decades because of recovery of Alsace and Lorraine by Kaiser William I in the new German Empire after the Franco-Prussian War of 1879-71. Reconciliation between both countries did not begin until the 1950s, with the emergence of the European Coal and Steel Community (precursor to the current European Union) and NATO.

Similarly, the British decision to split Ireland, keeping the northern province of Ulster as part of the United Kingdom, incited a civil war between those willing to cede Northern Ireland, led by Michael Collins, and those who rejected any treaty that did not grant Ireland full independence. That peace war savage lasted only two years, but left a legacy of terror – both Catholic and Protestant – that recently ended with the Good Friday Agreementnegotiated by the United States, in 1998.

However, perhaps the most brutal partitions occurred in Asia in the 20th century. In 1932, the Empire of Japan separated Manchuria from the Republic of China and created the puppet state of Manchukuo. The ruthless regime of the Japanese Kwantung Army for 13 years – which included the enslavement of millions of people, perverse medical experiments and the mass killing of minorities – became a kind of model for the Nazis in Eastern Europe. So deeply rooted is Chinese resentment over Imperial Japan’s savage occupation that, to this day, Chinese leaders invoke it to stoke opposition to the policies of modern democratic Japan.

However, in terms of lives lost directly from a partition, nothing can compare to the dividedn of the Indian subcontinent in 1947, after the withdrawal of the British, between India, with a Hindu majority, and Pakistan, with a Muslim majority. The partition triggered one of the largest migrations in history – involving some 18 million of people–. Muslims headed to Pakistan (which included present-day Bangladesh) and Hindus and Sikhs to India. Sectarian violence – including rape, arson and mass murder – killed 3.4 million people.

In the 77 years since the partition of the British Raj, India and Pakistan have fought four wars, the most recent of which – the so-called Kargil War of 1999 – took place when both countries already possessed nuclear weapons. There is no glimpse of a historical rapprochement there, in the manner of France and Germany.

The partition of Vietnam in 1954 – into a northern area, governed by the communist Viet Minh, and a southern area, governed by the Republic of Vietnam – was equally bloody, as it triggered two decades of war that left until three million of dead Vietnamese. (Surprisingly, the Vietnamese They don’t seem to hold a grudge to the United States, which lost 58,000 soldiers before retiring in 1975, for his role in its national agony).

And then there is the partition of Palestine in 1947-48 between an independent Jewish state and an independent Arab state. This decision by the United Nations unleashed decades of hostility, oppression, terrorism and wars that continue to this day. You only have to look at the ruins of Gaza to see the horrible legacy of partition there.

So what could a partition of Ukraine represent? In the fight for their territorial integrity since February 2022, Ukrainians have shown courage and dynamism, qualities that they will undoubtedly put into practice to rebuild their country. But given the magnitude of the losses human and economic who have suffered, it will be difficult for them to submit silently to the idea of ​​partition. It will be especially difficult given that Russian President Vladimir Putin has made no secret of your vision that Ukraine is not just a “neighboring country”, but that “modern Ukraine was created entirely by Russia” and should therefore only exist under the Russian umbrella.

In any possible future peace negotiations, Ukrainians know that their best chance of avoiding further Russian interference is through strong international security guarantees – if not immediate membership in NATO. Trump appears to loathe current U.S. security commitments, but America’s failure to provide such guarantees could also be detrimental to Russia.

Putin came to power after a devastating war and a insurgency prolonged in the Russian republic of Chechnya, which included terrorist attacks of Chechen separatists in Moscow and other Russian cities. Already in 2022, Ukrainians they promised a guerrilla war against Russia. Without other options, that risk will only increase. Trump should try to persuade the Kremlin of the need for fair negotiations; Otherwise, post-partition terrorism may reach Russia, possibly on a larger scale than Chechens ever imagined.

Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2024.
www.project-syndicate.org