Donald Trump has touted his ability to end conflicts quickly – so much so, that it earned a mention in his preface to the recently published US National Security Strategy. Now, the “peacemaker-in-chief” has his sights set on a near-term end to the Russo-Ukrainian War. Reportedly, he seeks to have the deal done by Christmas, placing the Volodymyr Zelensky administration in the unenviable position of having to navigate a flawed approach to negotiations with the Kremlin while mitigating the potential loss of US support.
But as the Trump administration pressures Kyiv to accelerate negotiations, renewed conflict elsewhere ought to be a wakeup call. Hostilities have resumed between Thailand and Cambodia following the Trump-signed “Kuala Lumpur Peace Accord,” as well as between the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwandan-backed M23 forces, despite the peace deal signed and reaffirmed in Trump’s presence in Washington, DC. Moreover, Hamas has just threatened to block advancement of the US-brokered 20-point peace plan owing to alleged Israeli violations. These situations abroad offer important lessons that peace negotiators in Washington and Kyiv must heed.
The first is that it is impossible to guarantee peace through a single signing ceremony; rather, peace is a process. Few know this better than the people of Ukraine, who have had to suffer through the failures of the Minsk Protocols. “Minsk I and II” were meant to prevent Russian aggression after the Kremlin’s incursions into Donetsk and Luhansk and annexation of Crimea in 2014, but the world saw how durable those deals were when Russia’s full-scale invasion began in February 2022. The fact is that a peace agreement is just a single step in the process, and the size of that step depends on the nature and content of the deal. The subsequent implementation of peace agreements is tough, unrelenting work that requires commitment, resilience, and skill.
The US government has chosen to take on the role of peace broker; thus, it owns a share in the responsibility for ensuring the implementation of any agreement it helps produce.
Part of that responsibility comes in the form of security guarantees, President Zelensky affirmed that an agreement on defense commitments is one of three documents that US and Ukrainian negotiators have been working on alongside the now “20-point peace proposal” and an agreement on postwar reconstruction for Ukraine. The fact that the US government is considering an alliance level defense commitment is excellent for the durability of the peace process, but the resumed hostilities in Southeast Asia highlight some key issues – after all, Thailand is a treaty ally of the United States, and blood continues to be spilled there.
The reality is that a guarantee is not enough to prevent bloodshed.
The thing with security guarantees is that they are never as black-and-white as they seem on paper. In principle, a defense commitment means that if a country gets attacked, its security guarantor comes to its aid. But what if it is not a large-scale armed attack but a series of smaller, destabilizing incidents? Or, what if both sides blame the other for a precipitating event that triggers renewed military clashes, as is the case in Central Africa, Southeast Asia, and Gaza?
The reality is that a guarantee is not enough to prevent bloodshed. Again, this is a lesson that Ukrainians know all too well from the 1994 Budapest Memorandum. Perhaps people believe an “NATO Article 5-like” commitment will be better, but it will not be unless there are other conditions in place to make it so.
The best way to establish credible commitments is to have “boots-on-the-ground”; that is, the security guarantor’s troops in the country. This not only presents a clear signal to a would-be aggressor, it allows a government to have on-scene personnel who can help dispel any mis-/dis-information that might affect decision-making vis-à-vis defense commitments. While the Kremlin will balk at the presence of US armed forces in Ukraine, there are other options available than deploying combat-ready forces, such as employing US military personnel as unarmed third-party overseers of peace implementation.
The importance of third parties
This leads to the third lesson from the renewed fighting abroad: the importance of third parties in the peace process. At their core, third-party forces in postwar environments are meant to accomplish three functions: deter aggression, mitigate overreactions to incidents, and oversee the implementation of peace agreements.
Right now, there are no third parties in either Central Africa, Southeast Asia, or Gaza that have the capacity to accomplish all three of these functions. Negotiators seeking a durable cessation of hostilities between Russia and Ukraine must not make the same mistake.
What assists third parties in their efforts is clarity in the provisions of the peace agreements. The absence of specificity creates gaps that can be exploited by opportunistic parties, while depth and clarity add precision to implementation.
The two-page Kuala Lumpur Peace Accord was vague in its provisions, as was the 20-point peace plan for Gaza. While the agreement between the DRC and Rwanda was reasonably longer, it still lacked the depth required to underwrite a durable peace process. US and Ukrainian negotiators must ensure that the provisions they agree upon with the Kremlin are clear, consistent, and transparent to maximize outcomes in the implementation phase.
Peace deal is not the end
Which leads to the final important lesson here: the signing of a peace deal is not the end of negotiations; rather, it is just the transition to the next phase of negotiations. There will be negotiation on implementation of the deal that has been concluded; for example, prioritization of the implementation agenda, interpretation of the original provisions of the agreement, and dispute resolution, to name a few. But there will also be the follow-on negotiations aimed at addressing the root sources of conflict. If these efforts do not happen, then the risk of renewed hostilities will remain ever-present, so the parties to today’s negotiations must prepare a clear roadmap for the negotiations of tomorrow.
Ultimately, the acute security crises in Central Africa and Southeast Asia and the ongoing threats to the peace process in Gaza should inform the current Russia-Ukraine negotiations. They should remind negotiators that it is imperative not to rush to failure. They must lock in US commitments beyond the signing ceremony and not just on paper. Negotiators must ensure adequate third-party oversight in implementing a well-defined peace agreement, and they should be adequately prepared to continue the negotiating process even after a cessation of hostilities. As they pursue these objectives, the examples abroad will remain useful tools for illustrating why the aforementioned points are so important.
The views expressed in this opinion article are the author’s and not necessarily those of Kyiv Post.