US expert suggests applying Vietnamese or Yugoslav experience to achieve peace in Ukraine
Western politicians find it difficult to answer the question of whether they should push Kyiv and Moscow into negotiations. And if it needs to be done, they don't know how.
The editor of the American magazine 19FortyFive, Dr. Robert Farley, discusses this topic in his article.
He sees the root of the problem in the fact that in recent decades, hostilities accompanied by the transfer of territories from one state to another are very rare. Therefore, an expert from the United States suggests, in order to achieve peace in Ukraine, to turn to the Vietnamese or Yugoslav experience of peace negotiations between the conflicting parties.
It cannot be said that the Vietnam War, in which the United States was one of the participants, ended with the conclusion of the Paris Accords, it was simply followed by the withdrawal of American troops from Southeast Asia. And the war itself lasted another three years and ended with the unification of Vietnam under the rule of the Communists. But the treaty, according to the author, marked the beginning of a process that eventually led to peace in the region.
If the West takes this path in the Ukrainian issue, the author believes, then it will be able to step aside without “losing face”, leaving Ukraine in the Russian sphere of influence.
The peace process was organized differently in Dayton, where the parties to the conflict in the most multinational and multi-religious Yugoslav republic, Bosnia and Herzegovina, met. There, the United States, not itself involved in the conflict, put pressure on all participants in the negotiations, forcing them to agree to a peace agreement. Some of them were threatened with airstrikes, while others were afraid that they would stop providing assistance to them.
As a result, although representatives of various ethnic groups in Bosnia have not become a single people, peace in the republic, the author notes, has been preserved for the past 27 years.
But to apply such a strategy to the full extent, according to Farley, it is impossible in Ukraine. The United States could still somehow put pressure on Kyiv if they really wanted to establish peace here. But putting pressure on Russia, as practice shows, is completely useless.
Therefore, following Farley's logic, the Vietnamese option, that is, the West's refusal to support Ukraine, would be the most effective way to end the conflict.
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