Do ‘Great Power’ settlements help or hinder peace and stability?

It is difficult to assess the general impact of the new Trumpian world order on Ireland and the rest of Europe. But some significant lessons may be drawn from the course of events in Ukraine, in Palestine and in Ireland.

One is that the fate of small countries and communities should not be decided, as in the past, by the current ‘great powers’. This is the realpolitic that is currently playing out in Ukraine between Trump’s United States and Putin’s Russia and between the United States and its close dependant Israel over the fate of Gaza and the West Bank.

The concept of ‘great power’ diplomacy has been built into the structures of the United Nations with untrammelled veto powers for the ‘Permanent Five’ in the United Nations Security Council – the United States, Russia, and China with the UK and France as also rans. That has severely reduced the powers of the United Nations in dealing with many current conflicts. And it is inherent in the Statute of the International Criminal Court which is binding only on states that sign up to it, notably not including the United States, Russia and China. This triumvirate is one that the European and African Unions and the Arab League are finding it difficult to join or curtail.

Peace in Ukraine

On Ukraine the current impasse dates back to the failure of other international bodies, the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) and NATO to impose proposed settlements. The OSCE in which both Russia and the United States are members, was unable to secure the implementation of the Minsk Agreements which would have granted a measure of self-determination to the largely pro-Russian peoples of the Donbas. The Crimea which has long been a Russian holiday resort and naval base and was transferred from Russia to Ukraine only in 1958 might also have been treated separately. But NATO – comprising the United States, Canada and almost all European states except Russia, Ireland and until recently a few neutrals in Scandinavia – has not been able to agree on any direct NATO involvement or firm security guarantee to Ukraine for fear of sparking a new world war. And most military experts think that Ukraine on its own cannot win a war against Russia. Now, following Trump’s insistence on more proportionate European contributions to European defence, Europeans are pursuing Keir Starmer’s idea of a ‘coalition of the willing’ and the alternative EU proposal for a new ‘European Defence Union’ to permit the involvement of the United Kingdom.

But Trump’s promised peace deal is up against a refusal by Putin to accept any limit to his war aims of taking over Ukraine and excluding any NATO presence or guarantee. Kicking Russia out of the Council of Europe and the G8 has not worked. It would be better to keep them in, make them pay some reparations – by confiscating their assets – and build credible military deterrents if they break a deal. Remember that Turkey, which worked with the UN to secure grain exports in the Black Sea, is still a valued NATO and Council of Europe member despite its invasion and occupation of Northern Cyprus and its dictatorial President. Remember too that UN peace-keeping is essentially about stopping the fighting and deploying UN or other international troops along established ceasefire positions to discourage and monitor further territorial incursions, as in Kashmir, Cyprus, Lebanon, Kosovo and conflict zones in Africa, rather than attempting to restore previous boundaries by force.

The underlying problem is the inability of many of those involved to accept that in some contested border areas the idea of absolute sovereignty and territorial integrity should give way to more complex governance structures that recognise different identities and aspirations of their peoples, as has been accepted as an essential foundation of peace here in Northern Ireland. The participation in the latest US/Ukrainian peace proposal of Jonathan Powell, who has written widely on involving all sides and starting with mutual confidence building measures, is a welcome pointer to a more flexible approach. The best strategy may be to get all sides to agree to some specific de-escalation, as on energy facilities and in the Black Sea, rather than insisting on immediate overall peace.

Peace in Gaza

On Gaza there has been more limited involvement by other than the United States and Israel, due to the reluctance on all sides to put serious pressure on Israel to accept that there needs to be effective sharing of the land ‘between the river and the sea’. Fear of accusations of anti-Semitism is a major factor in this. Instead most states have supported Israel’s right to act in self-defence following the Hamas attacks in October 2023. Yet the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court, most international lawyers and many third world states regard Israel’s response as clearly disproportionate, clearly amounting to war crimes and potentially to genocide. Only Ireland, Spain and Belgium among European states have joined in this. Israel has responded by breaking off diplomatic relations with Ireland and withdrawing its ambassador. But Israel with support from Trump seems to be set on continuing their bombing attacks and aid embargoes on Gaza and similar military action in the West Bank, aiming to force Palestinians to move elsewhere. There is even a risk that the United States and some others may be held complicit in genocide by continuing to send military supplies and financial support to Israel. Here too there needs to be an acceptance of Hamas and Hezbollah as potential partners in a peace deal provided they commit to exclusively peaceful means, rather like the acceptance of IRA/Sinn Féin into the governance of Northern Ireland.

Economic and political impacts in Ireland

In addition to its commitment to neutrality and UN-based peace monitoring Ireland is now subject to 20% US trade tariffs as a member of the European Union. It is also at risk of further sanctions due its huge trade imbalance with the United States resulting from the presence in Ireland of major American pharma corporations attracted by its long-established low rates of corporation tax and other incentives which have long been unpopular in Europe. This has already been specifically raised by President Trump though tariffs on pharmaceuticals are currently exempted. There are obvious concerns that either may seriously reduce the current budgetary surpluses in the Republic. Whether the unique status of Northern Ireland under the Windsor Framework will be affected is not yet clear, though it may benefit from the lower 10% tariffs imposed on the rest of the UK. But it will also suffer from the global tariffs on vehicle imports to the US unless the UK is able to negotiate a new trade agreement.

All this leaves Ireland in an increasingly exposed position within Europe both in defence and in trade. The incoming coalition government is proposing to remove the current bar on the deployment of Irish troops without explicit UN Security Council approval, which would be subject to veto by Russia. But even if this formal barrier is removed, the deployment of Irish troops in Ukraine under the usual monitoring-only role for UN peace-keepers would set it aside from other UK, French and potentially German deployments with a more robust mandate. Nor would Irish troops add much by way of a security guarantee against a future resumption of Russian aggression. Military deployment is a better deterrent than the threat of criminal prosecutions.

A New World Disorder

These developments leave us all in an awkward position on what is now increasingly called the ‘old world order’. The re-emergence of ‘great power’ ordering of conflict outcomes is undermining many of the ideals established in the aftermath of the last world war. But the focus of attention in Europe on working together to protect Ukraine from effective elimination as an independent, though substantially smaller, state sits uneasily with the absence of any equivalent effort to protect what is left of Palestine as a homeland for the Palestine people. There are obvious and worrying double standards in the approach by most European states to action for the protection of Ukraine from Russian aggression and the reluctance to act for the protection of a promised Palestinian state from Israeli expansion in both Gaza and the West Bank. What is required in both is not only effective economic sanctions to punish Russia and Israel for unlawful land-grabbing but coordinated military deployment to deter them from continuing their destructive warfare against those fighting for their right of self- determination.

If there are any lessons from this worrying turn of events they may perhaps be summarised in a few simple bullet points:

conflicting demands for sovereignty and territorial integrity in contested borderlands often make it more difficult to negotiate peace, not least as the leaders of different ethnic or communal groups tend to resist compromise;
to achieve a measure of peace and stability it may be better to devise ways of sharing lands and powers in areas of this kind rather than to fight over exclusive sovereignty;
great or adjacent powers can assist in persuading warring parties to agree that making a messy peace is better than shooting and bombing each other and destroying their towns and villages;
relying on national and international experience and assistance, not least by the United Nations, in developing and recognising special provisions for divided communal aspirations is a better path to peace and stability than insisting on old world conceptions of ‘nation states’.