“Natural” ways of resolving the Ukraine Crisis
Current US policy has framed the Ukraine conflict in a static view of what is commonly termed “World Order.” While the term has no international definition and is widely contested, at its core “world order” connotes a view where economically or militarily dominant nation states police the planet. Putin and NATO are both captivated by such a Cold War nostalgia for order that is no longer relevant to complex changes in environmental and social systems on our planet. We need to move from such a narrow view of World Order to a more naturalized vision of what I call “Earthly Order.”
Instead of making this a hard fight between whether Ukraine’s border should be delineated along the old Ukrainian SFSR, or based on ethnic majoritarianism, we need to consider the underlying resource factors behind this invasion. As the late Senator McCain noted in 2014, Ukraine was the jewel of the Soviet crown because of its rich arable land, vast mineral wealth and massive manufacturing infrastructure. The fact that the bitter battle for Mariopoul has occurred at a steel plant is emblematic of the resource nationalism of this conflict.
A key stumbling point in trying to chart a peace agreement has been an inability of both sides to consider hybrid solutions which recognize the resource interdependencies which could benefit either side. Rather than having a stylized view of world order with ossified notions of hard borders and protectionist control, we need to consider creative options on how territories can share aspects of access and governance. Such a pragmatic view would not undermine American or Western principles and lead to a more durable peace agreement that does not compromise our values.
While hard borders can play a vital role in times of crisis, economic exchange that is linked to comparative advantage and market efficiencies provide a more natural means of crafting governance arrangements. Without relinquishing sovereignty Ukraine could develop an autonomous governance arrangement with the Eastern territories. Flow of oil, gas and even water (in the case of the North Crimean canal) across political borders has been another point of contention which has exacerbated the current conflict. If assurance mechanisms between nation-states could be developed around natural resource flows, the potential for conflict escalating to war would be severely reduced. On the western side of the Black Sea, Ukraine and Moldova have maintained a hybrid border arrangement where a sliver of Moldovan territory is sandwiched between Ukrainian lands (which I visited in 2018). The separatist region of Tranisteria is nearby with Russian troops presence as well and a frozen conflict situation has emerged.
There is an even more compelling case in point within the Eastern Black Sea region. The autonomous region of Adjara within Georgia has largely avoided war because a hybrid governance mechanism was established between the Georgian territory and the breakaway territory. The Russians maintained a military base within this territory as well until 2007. The capital of the region, Batumi, is a resource hub for oil from Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan and its oil refinery handles Caspian oil from Azerbaijan. By “naturalizing” a notion of order in this vital Black Sea location and considering the vitality of resource infrastructure and market efficiency, a pragmatic series of concessions were made that satisfied all sides. Over a decade the breakaway region felt secure enough in its relationship with Georgia and vice versa that the constitutional court of Georgia is now in Adjara.
For those who think that such a path towards pragmatic peace would erode sovereignty, we only need to consider variations of national order which we have accepted in the past. Iraqi Kurdistan provides one example of how a hybrid governance mechanism has been workable within the existing United Nations system. Until trust can be built to have more defined mechanisms for ascertaining preferences for self-governance, such hybridity is a way of both saving human lives and natural systems on which we all depend.
The logic of such an approach is predicated not just in social and political science but in the natural science understanding of complex adaptive systems. For example, the development of cities has been well-studied and their growth follows many of the same “power laws” of scaling that we find in fundamental physics. A means of developing such a naturalized view of world order is to consider such resource complementarities through more nimble multilateral economic governance mechanisms such as the G20. In the case of the Ukraine war, there are existing institutions of cooperation such as the Organization for Black Sea Economic Cooperation, which recognizing ecological connectivity and also have an environmental mandate. Henry Kissinger’s sharp comments at Davos this year suggesting land concessions for peace would be met with less opprobrium if seen from the lens “Earthly Order.” In his magnum opus on “World Order” Kissinger noted power and legitimacy as the two key elements of a sustainable order. Add to this a recognition of natural systems of connectivity that transcend borders and we begin to chart a more durable geography of peace.
Saleem H. Ali, Distinguished Professor of Energy and the Environment at the University of Delaware, is the author of Earthly Order: How Natural Laws Define Human Life (Oxford University Press, 2022).
