1 00:00:00,330 --> 00:00:06,720 Bye. Thank you very much to the Oxford Peace Studies Network for the invitation to speak today. 2 00:00:06,750 --> 00:00:10,470 It's great to see you and see such a great turnout. 3 00:00:11,160 --> 00:00:19,500 So as you've heard, I'm involved in peace reps Ukraine team say we've this program within peace wrapped has been running 4 00:00:19,500 --> 00:00:26,340 since October last year and we're working very closely with Ukrainians on the ground in Ukraine. 5 00:00:26,340 --> 00:00:35,670 And our research is really about co-creating knowledge with those that are experiencing the impacts of violent conflict. 6 00:00:36,210 --> 00:00:44,850 And in that context, we part of our part of our research is building a network of local researchers on the ground in Ukraine, 7 00:00:45,060 --> 00:00:55,020 spread across different territories, and using their insights into local conditions to feed ideas into our wider work and 8 00:00:55,020 --> 00:01:00,150 to really build evidence based understanding of what is happening in this conflict. 9 00:01:00,810 --> 00:01:08,490 And one of the big priorities for us, particularly in the run into the Ukraine recovery conference, is Ukraine's economic needs. 10 00:01:08,760 --> 00:01:16,919 And in the talk I give today and I don't think I didn't realise we get got a generous 15 minutes that she had planned for ten. 11 00:01:16,920 --> 00:01:22,770 So if I don't if I don't need ten you can tell me off because that was my intention. 12 00:01:23,100 --> 00:01:32,549 And so and that will affect some of the analysis that I give you today, because Ukraine really isn't in a good place economically at the moment, 13 00:01:32,550 --> 00:01:38,130 as well as the appalling crimes that are committed in the course of the Russian invasion, too. 14 00:01:38,850 --> 00:01:46,170 So the question I'm really going to engage today is what does the war against Ukraine tell us about our changing world? 15 00:01:46,500 --> 00:01:54,420 And I many people in my discipline, international relations, argue that this is really a return of geopolitics. 16 00:01:54,960 --> 00:01:59,070 It's a return of great power politics in another discourse. 17 00:01:59,070 --> 00:02:02,070 It's the revenge of the revisionist powers. 18 00:02:02,550 --> 00:02:11,100 And I think all of these categorisations of the war against Ukraine are quite misleading and often made by people, to be honest. 19 00:02:11,100 --> 00:02:16,500 You on aren't really getting insights to what's happening in Ukraine on the ground, 20 00:02:16,680 --> 00:02:25,500 but speaking much more at a international geopolitical level, even an ivory tower level, if you want to put it pejoratively. 21 00:02:25,920 --> 00:02:27,690 And they have a few things in common. 22 00:02:27,690 --> 00:02:36,420 I think the first is that they're very state centric in their understanding of this conflict, particularly this idea, geopolitics, 23 00:02:36,630 --> 00:02:44,370 political geography, that the most important thing about the world in which we live is fundamentally territory and who controls it. 24 00:02:44,580 --> 00:02:50,250 I think that's a quite mistaken assumption when it comes to the course of this conflict. 25 00:02:50,400 --> 00:02:53,940 It misses out by two elements that I think we need to consider. 26 00:02:54,540 --> 00:02:59,400 The second is a question of time, which is really important in this idea of return, right? 27 00:02:59,670 --> 00:03:08,790 It's drawing on a kind of cyclical view of history that there's something that was present in the past that's just returning, it's coming back. 28 00:03:09,090 --> 00:03:14,190 And so there's a resurgence of, if you like, a past sense of affairs. 29 00:03:14,850 --> 00:03:18,629 The war is regenerated, something that we thought had lost. 30 00:03:18,630 --> 00:03:25,230 And I think that's also quite mistaken because it's not asking the question we I think we need to ask about this war, 31 00:03:25,230 --> 00:03:31,500 and that is what's new, what's distinctive, what's changing in global politics. 32 00:03:32,670 --> 00:03:38,730 The other question, I think, is around the causes of the conflict that this often gets wrong. 33 00:03:39,060 --> 00:03:47,430 If you think of it in terms of territory that the great powers, great states, there are security claims on the international order. 34 00:03:47,790 --> 00:03:53,880 This can also lead to the, I think, the false claim that NATO's expansion caused the war. 35 00:03:54,240 --> 00:03:58,229 And there's quite a good body of evidence to show that this simply isn't the case. 36 00:03:58,230 --> 00:04:10,260 I mean, one data point could be Putin's statement in May 2002, where while he didn't renounce Russia's historic opposition to NATO expansion, 37 00:04:10,530 --> 00:04:13,950 he certainly indicated that he was extremely relaxed about it. 38 00:04:14,160 --> 00:04:16,140 And even in the case of Ukraine, 39 00:04:16,320 --> 00:04:25,979 explicitly stated that that the decision of whether Ukraine should join NATO or not was a decision that only Ukraine could make 40 00:04:25,980 --> 00:04:35,820 independently a correct actually position made at a time when Russia's relationship to the West was obviously very different. 41 00:04:37,290 --> 00:04:47,099 And I think the the other question that we need to consider here is whether that leads into the conclusion that really, you know, 42 00:04:47,100 --> 00:04:54,000 the nature of the military balance of forces between states is actually the most decisive one, 43 00:04:54,300 --> 00:04:59,700 because actually it's not just the military balance of forces, it's how individuals like Vladimir. 44 00:05:00,340 --> 00:05:06,190 Imagine that distinction, how they think about the balance of forces between states. 45 00:05:06,820 --> 00:05:12,510 And then the final point of critique I want to make against some people in my discipline, not the whole discipline. 46 00:05:12,520 --> 00:05:17,680 I have to say that some people. And the final point, because I think this gets wrong, 47 00:05:18,940 --> 00:05:25,810 whether you can actually achieve strategic efficacy for military intervention in the world today, 48 00:05:26,080 --> 00:05:32,409 if you think about the conflict purely in terms of this return of great power politics, 49 00:05:32,410 --> 00:05:39,459 I think what you miss is the great power politics isn't very effective in achieving the aims of great powers. 50 00:05:39,460 --> 00:05:45,820 And I think here I'm drawing on the work of my LSC colleague Mary Couto, who argues, 51 00:05:45,820 --> 00:05:54,940 I think very correctly that military intervention overseas isn't effective in bringing about what we can refer to as compelling, 52 00:05:54,940 --> 00:06:00,010 as compelling as states to behave in a particular way. 53 00:06:00,670 --> 00:06:05,649 So then the second so that's the first point I want to make in my, 54 00:06:05,650 --> 00:06:15,200 my first 5 minutes and the war that I want to get across that critique of how we think about the war of Ukraine and then the globe. 55 00:06:15,220 --> 00:06:19,060 It's not about great power politics. Well, what's going on here and here? 56 00:06:19,060 --> 00:06:23,770 I want to argue that it's better to see the war against Ukraine as a sign of the 57 00:06:23,770 --> 00:06:29,079 fragmentation of world order that's taking place on lots of different levels. 58 00:06:29,080 --> 00:06:34,420 One level, I think, is the level of ideas of ideology, a kind of discursive level, 59 00:06:34,420 --> 00:06:39,760 where that's where there's a much greater fragmentation of identities. 60 00:06:39,760 --> 00:06:48,550 And within that context, within that frame, there's a rise of ethno nationalism, authoritarianism in many states all over the world, 61 00:06:48,790 --> 00:06:56,380 and that Putin's Russia has seen one of the most extreme examples of this wider trend to authoritarian ization. 62 00:06:57,160 --> 00:07:01,750 The second part of this fragmentation that picks up on what Alex was saying 63 00:07:01,960 --> 00:07:07,150 earlier is that the world is going through a period of economic transition. 64 00:07:07,150 --> 00:07:15,670 So the paradigm of free market neo liberalism has displaced significantly and in fact is being inverted. 65 00:07:15,670 --> 00:07:24,400 So, you know, whereas 20 or 30 years ago, big corporations were asking the state to get out of their lives as much as possible, 66 00:07:24,610 --> 00:07:29,200 leave them alone so that they could get on with the task of making money. 67 00:07:29,500 --> 00:07:40,030 That's no longer the case. The paradigm has shifted really quite significantly because now corporations are interested in what states can do for them. 68 00:07:40,450 --> 00:07:43,479 One buzzword that's often used is de-risking. 69 00:07:43,480 --> 00:07:47,320 How do you reduce the risks of the investments that we make? 70 00:07:48,340 --> 00:07:57,130 The corporations are obsessed with talking about security considerations and geopolitics in for their investments in this new world order. 71 00:07:57,580 --> 00:08:04,390 And what this is a sign of broadly is that markets are becoming much, much more dependent upon states. 72 00:08:05,590 --> 00:08:10,090 Then there's a related aspect to this, too, which is to do with environmental change, 73 00:08:10,090 --> 00:08:17,320 which obviously this is part of the economic transition, which I think is driving this fragmentation. 74 00:08:18,550 --> 00:08:23,860 Part of the reason that corporations are so interested in de-risking their investments is 75 00:08:23,860 --> 00:08:29,260 because of the extraordinary ecological threats that the world is facing all the time. 76 00:08:29,470 --> 00:08:37,510 And that, again, is making politics and political security a more and more important consideration for capital. 77 00:08:38,800 --> 00:08:45,400 And then there's this other aspect that I think you really see in the civic response to the war against Ukraine, 78 00:08:45,940 --> 00:08:50,080 that if you think of the war just in terms of what's happening in Ukraine, 79 00:08:50,410 --> 00:09:00,130 you're going to miss out on all of the transboundary connections that are part and parcel of Ukrainians everyday resistance to the invasion. 80 00:09:00,670 --> 00:09:06,879 One of my colleagues in East Carolina, Jessica Shaw at your Colonial University, 81 00:09:06,880 --> 00:09:13,300 has been studying the extraordinary civic response in Poland to the challenge of migration. 82 00:09:13,540 --> 00:09:19,929 And this isn't just a question of the humanitarian considerations for migrants in Poland, though, 83 00:09:19,930 --> 00:09:25,300 of course, that's very, very important to make sure that the refugees are well looked after. 84 00:09:25,510 --> 00:09:35,170 It's also about the self activity of Ukrainian civil society organisations inside Poland and how they're interacting with their homeland, 85 00:09:35,410 --> 00:09:42,910 whether that's raising money for humanitarian relief that is then going back to Ukraine or also it has to be said, 86 00:09:42,910 --> 00:09:49,240 raising money for the Ukrainian military directly through crowdfunding platforms to support the war effort. 87 00:09:49,870 --> 00:09:54,040 This is this is part and parcel of this sort of fragmented picture. 88 00:09:54,040 --> 00:09:59,650 And in a way, migration and diasporic links are a feature of this sort of global. 89 00:09:59,700 --> 00:10:05,220 Rising worlds, this fragmented, globalising world that we've grown used to. 90 00:10:06,420 --> 00:10:18,360 So each of those trends boundary levels, ideas, ecology, economic linkages, civic mobilisation and shaping how states respond to the war itself. 91 00:10:18,780 --> 00:10:23,939 And this certainly leads into, I think, if you like, opportunities of this global fragmentation. 92 00:10:23,940 --> 00:10:30,030 Maybe there's an opportunity in this new environment for progressive economic paradigm change. 93 00:10:30,330 --> 00:10:34,889 Maybe there's opportunities within this fragmented environment for developing 94 00:10:34,890 --> 00:10:39,660 sustainable peace strategies that address in different ways each of these levels. 95 00:10:39,930 --> 00:10:43,680 Perhaps a new internationalism, we might call it. 96 00:10:44,100 --> 00:10:51,600 But of course, there are also extraordinary dangers, and we would be foolish not to emphasise those. 97 00:10:52,080 --> 00:10:52,860 In Ukraine, 98 00:10:52,860 --> 00:11:04,290 I think the principal danger lies in the intersection of economics and security and how those two elements are interacting with one another. 99 00:11:04,810 --> 00:11:12,030 My fear is that the economic situation in Ukraine is so negative, with around one in three people looking for work, 100 00:11:12,540 --> 00:11:21,120 unable to find it, that a certain state that the society might has a risk of some form of fragmentation or breakdown, 101 00:11:21,390 --> 00:11:28,500 and that would create an environment in which the Ukrainian resistance loses its kind of civic character, 102 00:11:28,500 --> 00:11:35,910 its democratic character, potentially, or finds it much harder to sustain that civic democratic character. 103 00:11:36,270 --> 00:11:40,860 Unfortunately, in the fragmented world in which we're living in, we have many, 104 00:11:40,860 --> 00:11:48,479 many examples of conflicts that go through this process of fragmentation and then become very, 105 00:11:48,480 --> 00:11:54,960 very difficult to stop, especially when lots and lots of groups emerge that have in one way or another, 106 00:11:55,110 --> 00:12:01,530 a interest in perpetuating a cycle of violence, perhaps as a means of survival and so on. 107 00:12:01,770 --> 00:12:05,610 So this is a clear risk at the same time. 108 00:12:05,610 --> 00:12:14,640 And with that economic exhaustion, we also, I think, could say equally on the Russian side, but for slightly different reasons. 109 00:12:14,910 --> 00:12:25,050 And this conventional war, this high intensity conventional war, very different to the conflicts that my colleagues on piece reps peace rep study. 110 00:12:25,350 --> 00:12:36,120 This high intensity conventional war may lead to a situation where both sides lose the ability in one way or another to continue to fight the war. 111 00:12:36,480 --> 00:12:41,549 On the Russian side, that would not be due to domestic economic exhaustion, 112 00:12:41,550 --> 00:12:50,250 but the impact of sanctions and its ability to procure the high end manufacture of high tech 113 00:12:50,700 --> 00:12:56,729 weaponry and the high tech weaponry that it needs to sustain the tanks that it's using and losing, 114 00:12:56,730 --> 00:13:05,670 it has to be said in the conflict itself. With that, exhaustion comes a clear risk, very clear risk of violent escalation. 115 00:13:05,940 --> 00:13:09,780 That poses a question, a challenge, of course, for peacemaking. 116 00:13:10,350 --> 00:13:16,950 So then in the final the the final remark, and I conclude, I don't know if I was successful on my 10 minutes. 117 00:13:16,950 --> 00:13:22,380 I suspect not, but I think that was more like 15, they say the relationship. 118 00:13:22,410 --> 00:13:32,880 So, yes. So I think any any peace in Ukraine, we have to put at the forefront the question of peace with justice, not peace at any cost. 119 00:13:33,180 --> 00:13:37,320 And for a sustainable peace to have to be achieved. 120 00:13:37,590 --> 00:13:45,180 That has to be a recognition of a peace that's compact, encompassing, compatible, excuse me with international law, 121 00:13:45,510 --> 00:13:54,870 recognising territorial integrity, the principles of the rule of law system, and the principles of sovereign equality and democracy. 122 00:13:55,140 --> 00:13:55,650 Thank you.