A specter of the Cold War has appeared in the political debate about the future of Ukraine: it is the fear that the country will break in two as happened with the Korean Peninsula. The stagnation on the front, without any of the sides being able to unbalance the balance, has caused more and more political and academic voices to observe the possibility that, just as happened between North and South Korea, there will be a cessation of conflict. the hostilities that lead to two opposite realities, that of a free Ukraine integrated into the Western bloc, and that of an annexed Ukraine de facto for Russia.
The end of World War II led to the division of the Korean Peninsula, until then occupied by the Japanese Empire. The part north of the famous 38th parallel would be protected by the Soviet Union, and the southern part, by the United States. After failed attempts at reunification, two new states were proclaimed in 1948, communist Korea and Korea allied to the United States. North Korea began a war of invasion of the south in 1950 that provoked military intervention by the United States, under the protection of the United Nations. China participated militarily in favor of the north, while the Soviet Union provided resource support. In 1953, the armistice was signed by which both countries temporarily ceased hostilities, without there being a peace agreement. And so it continues until today.
The Korean scenario has always been on the table in the Ukrainian crisis. Numerous academic analyzes already pointed to 2022 in this sense. But it has been this year when the fear of the partition of Ukraine has progressively taken shape. Last January, Oleksii Danilov, secretary of Ukraine’s National Security Council, warned: “We are being offered the Korean option. ‘Here there are some Ukrainians, here other Ukrainians and here there are no Ukrainians.’ I am convinced that one of the options they will offer us is this 38″ parallel. Oleksii Arestovich, a well-known Ukrainian public commentator and former advisor to President Volodymyr Zelensky, stressed the issue in February: the country could end up “in a two-Korea scenario.” “The worst thing of all,” Arestovich added, “is that the West thinks this way, and we are totally dependent on them.”
The words of Danilov and Arestovich were spoken before the Ukrainian counteroffensive began – it began in June – and in which both Ukrainian society and its allies in NATO had expectations of success that have proven to be exaggerated. Russia continues to occupy 18% of Ukrainian territory. It is the same percentage since last November, since the last victorious Ukrainian offensive, when half of the province of Kherson was liberated.
Former United States President George W. Bush brought up the korean option in a conference on September 8 at the annual meeting of the Yalta European Strategy (YES) group, a political conference held in kyiv. Bush introduced in his speech the possibility that the war, as in Korea, would divide the country and never formally end. Asked if Ukraine should give up part of its territory to achieve peace, Bush responded that this was a decision that the Ukrainians must make, and that the United States and the rest of the allies will support them if they decide so or if they want to continue fighting.
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Both Zelensky and the high command of the Ukrainian Armed Forces ask for more time, they ask for support for a war that lasts years, but not all of Kiev’s international partners are for the work, as the president himself has acknowledged. In his speech on September 19 at the UN General Assembly, the Ukrainian president said he was “aware of the attempts to reach shady agreements.” [de paz] Behind the scenes”. It was clearer in an interview, also from this September, with The Economist. Zelensky admitted that he had detected a change in some of the international leaders with whom he meets regularly: “I have this intuition, reading, listening and looking into their eyes when they tell me ‘we will always be with you.’ And I see that he or she is no longer here, he or she is not with us.”
On Wednesday there was a clear example of the fragility of these alliances. Poland has been one of Ukraine’s most unconditional supporters in the war and despite this, a bilateral conflict over agricultural imports has caused an earthquake in which the Polish Prime Minister, Mateusz Morawiecki, assured on Wednesday that no new shipments of weapons to Ukraine, beyond those already agreed. The Polish president, Andrzej Duda, even compared his neighboring country to a desperate person who drags those who want to help him to death: “It is as if we were dealing with a drowning person. Anyone who has tried to help someone who is drowning knows that it is extremely dangerous because he can drag you into the depths.”
Four options for the future
A gloomy report on the future of Ukraine in 2040 was presented at the annual conference of the YES group. The document, which has been prepared by Ukrainian politicians and summarized by MP Oleksii Zhmerenetskii, offers four possibilities for the future, and only one is positive. The first establishes that Russian domination can lead to a world war if the invading country decides to attack other Black Sea States. The second option indicates that, after Ukraine is forced to agree to a ceasefire by ceding territory, popular anger will bring ultranationalist groups to power and turn the country into an autocracy. The third option indicates that Ukraine disintegrates into multiple autonomous regions. The fourth option, the positive one, is the one that contemplates that Ukraine wins the war and expels the Russians from its territory.
He korean scene It would be part of the second option, which predicts a serious danger of democratic reversal in Ukraine. In fact, an advisor to the Slovak Foreign Ministry explained to EL PAÍS this September that one of the main concerns of his Government is that, when the time comes to force negotiations between the two sides, Ukraine will take an authoritarian path.
“Win peace”
There are academics who are arguing that the Korean option may be the least bad for Ukraine. The main supporter of this thesis is Stephen Kotkin, one of the most recognized experts on the history of the Soviet Union and Russia. From his position as an academic at Stanford University and the Hoover Institute, Kotkin argues that for Ukraine the time has come “not to win the war, but to win a lasting peace.” In an August 25 interview for War on the Rocksone of the most reputable means of analyzing the war in Ukraine, Kotkin found that the events on the battlefield prove that the moment of euphoria has passed and the Russian army “did not crumble.”
For Kotkin, the Ukrainian victory is joining the European Union and a new security model, whether within NATO or in a defense agreement similar to the one South Korea has with the United States. “Do you need the entire territory for this?” Kotkin asks. He is not clear that it is possible, not only in terms of military resources, but also in terms of the social reality of the areas annexed by Russia with the support of the Donbas separatists: “In Crimea [península del mar Negro anexionada ilegalmente por Rusia en 2014] There are already more than two million Russians. If Crimea is liberated, will these Russians be expelled? Will there be ethnic cleansing like the one the Russians carried out with the Tatars [pueblo nativo de Crimea]? Because these people are, in addition, a potential focus of insurgency.”
“South Korea does not have all the territory, but it has security after an armistice,” Kotkin explained in a Hoover Institute conference last July: “It is an imperfect solution, because it left many families divided, but South Korea is one of the most prosperous societies in the world. “Ukraine can follow this path.”
The division of Germany
Kotkin is not the only one who thinks this way. In a debate organized on September 8 by the American radio NPR, prominent experts were betting on the same thing. Carter Malkasian, former advisor to the US General Staff and director of the defense analysis department at the Naval Postgraduate School, stated that “the Korean armistice model could be the best option, although nothing guarantees its success.” Jong Eun Lee, retired South Korean military officer and professor of Political Science at the University of North Greenville, was also clear in this sense: “It is controversial to say it, but after such a long division, which has left [en Corea] “A cultural, political, economic difference, perhaps better than starting a war, or unifying the two countries in a way as costly as in Germany, a progressive peaceful coexistence is more realistic.”
The German case has also been widely used to understand what the future holds for Ukraine, but there are notable differences, because the two Germanys, like the two Koreas, were States formed and recognized internationally. Furthermore, there was no armed conflict between West and East Germany. The German case is used from kyiv to demonstrate that despite the Russian occupation of part of its territory, free Ukraine can be a member of NATO, as was the Federal Republic of Germany.
Malkasian reiterated an aspect that all the military analysts consulted in recent months by EL PAÍS agree on: “Negotiations will be possible as the fighting continues and both sides become exhausted, accumulating large losses.” Malkasian stressed that the only way for this to happen, for peace negotiations to take place in the future, is precisely through long-term military support from Ukraine’s allies in NATO, because “it is the only way for Ukraine to maintain its position and certain pressure on Russia.”
“Without a major Ukrainian military advance or a major political change in Russia, the two sides will find themselves in the same situation as the Korean forces in 1953.” [cuando se firmó el armisticio], they will find themselves blocked in a war line that advances little, on one side or the other.” This was written last August by John Feffer, an academic at the American Institute for Policy Studies. Feffer believes that with this blockade, and after enormous wear and tear on both armies that predisposes them to negotiate, the international community will propose an armistice. But Feffer is less than optimistic about an end to hostilities. Firstly, because, unlike the two Koreas, the borders of the territories annexed by Russia are not recognized by the international community. And experience, according to him, shows that “Russia, as it did in Georgia and Moldova, will use the situation to destabilize Ukraine.” Ukraine, for its part, “will want to convince the population of the occupied eastern territories to reunify to become part of prosperous Europe.”
The Israeli model
There is another country that for Zelensky is a role model, Israel. In numerous interventions, the president has declared that Ukraine must militarize itself for a life in constant threat, and must have an anti-aircraft defense system that allows its cities to develop despite periodic bombings. Kotkin has criticized this idea of transforming Ukraine “into a fortress state” because “it does not help achieve lasting peace” and because it would hardly marry with EU membership.
And could Ukraine be a member of the European Union in a permanent military conflict with Russia? The Ukrainian Foreign Minister, Dmitro Kuleba, gave the answer in an interview with EL PAÍS in July 2022: Cyprus, which has part of its territory occupied by Turkey, is a member of the EU. “Europe is full of conflicts that remain under the layer of endless negotiations,” Kuleba added, “I am sure that if there is a will to find a political solution, there will be a way for Ukraine to become a member of the EU.”
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