“Against wars, one could say that they make the victor stupid and the vanquished spiteful,” wrote Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900). The German philosopher had no shortage of reasons to reflect on the matter. A contemporary of Chancellor Bismarck, Nietzsche experienced all the great Prussian victories – against Denmark, Austria or France itself in 1871 – but he knew how to anticipate that winning a war is easier than winning a lasting peace: that triumphant Germany would lose its two great war conflicts, originated in imperfect peaces.
The year 2023 has been the worst in terms of wars since the end of the Second World War: one in every six inhabitants of the planet has been exposed to a conflict, according to CIDOB. However, it is not the dead in the Sahel, Sudan, Burma or Ethiopia that “matter”. The war has two focal points in capital letters (those that affect the pockets of Westerners): Ukraine and Gaza, two conflicts that shake the foundations of the world order established in 1946 and devalue the United Nations Organization. And they test the United States’ ability to govern the world, just now when its priority seemed to be the Pacific region.
Ukraine and Palestine are two classic scenarios, very much from the old days, a China in the shoe of the predictions that the world axis had shifted in this 21st century to Asia, where the emergence of China turned Taiwan into the focus of all the looks and the fears. Suddenly, overnight, Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, 2022 and the terrorist organization Hamas broke into Israel on October 7, 2023, knowing that the worst massacre of Israeli civilians since the Holocaust would provoke a military response. without half measures.
How will the two conflicts present themselves in 2024? Uncertain. They are not symmetrical but they share an advantage facing an end in a matter of a few months: the objectives for declaring victory by the president of Russia and the prime minister of Israel are sufficiently ambiguous that this – victory – could be declared. today Vladimir Putin sets it on the “denazification, demilitarization and neutrality status” of Ukraine while Benjamin Netanyahu aspires to destroy the military and government capacity of Hamas in Gaza. If necessary, both could be satisfied today without presenting themselves to their respective peoples as responsible for a failure…
The outlook for Ukraine is tilting towards Moscow’s interests in 2024. “We need support, since we simply lack ammunition,” President Volodymyr Zelensky stated at the end of the year, in an increasingly dramatic tone. Time is against Ukraine, which he sees support from the United States and the European Union cooling.
Kyiv’s failure in the spring counteroffensive in the south, the absence of air hegemony and the difficulties in making up for casualties – in 2024 they would need to mobilize between 450,000 and 500,00 men, according to Zelensky – as well as the delays in US economic aid. The US and the EU greatly weaken Ukraine and lower its morale of victory. In Europe, the Hungarian president hinders the agreement to give Ukraine 50,000 million euros between 2024 and 2027. Arguments to encourage negotiation…but downwards.
Russia may be tempted to freeze the war and delay negotiations until the US elects a president. If this were Donald Trump – who boasts that he would “end the war in 24 hours” – the bingo would be called by the Kremlin. Everything points to an indefinite partition of Ukraine, like the Korean Peninsula or Cyprus itself, two entrenched conflicts. The “authentic” Ukraine could continue negotiating with the EU but never with NATO, a red line for Russia. A pro-European Ukraine demographically affected because it has 4.3 million citizens abroad, spread across the rest of Europe, many of whom may choose not to return.
Israel knows well how difficult it is to manage its victories. It has not lost any of the nine it has fought since its founding, in 1948 by mandate of the United Nations (today, its great critic). The most notorious, the Six Day War, brought him more territorial conquests than he could take on (Gaza, the Sinai Peninsula, the West Bank and the Golan Heights).
“As the Bible says, there is a time for peace and a time for war,” Prime Minister Netanyahu often says, whose fate seems cast once the conflict ends. Something that has already been written before about the Israeli prime minister with the longest years in power (16) and one of those responsible for derailing the 1993 Oslo peace process.
This time of war is a drain on Israel in economic terms (the 360,000 reservists have left their jobs and each day of war costs around 200 million dollars) and international reputation, something that does not worry the Israeli Government as long as The US maintains its support (which borders on unwavering).
Speculating about the end of the war is a lot of speculation. The United States urges and asks for “weeks and not months.” For the Muslim world, where Hamas only has two authentic and disparate supporters (Qatar and the theocracy of Iran), bombing Gaza in March, when Ramadan begins on the 11th, would be an affront that would force responses and inflame the populations (the fear of the majority of Muslim rulers, almost all autocrats). At the moment, Israel flatly rejects deadlines…
Winning peace requires a colossal international effort. No actors are guessed, neither main nor supporting. Joe Biden has to strike a balance to unite the Democratic electorate and at the same time not antagonize the Israel lobby. Palestine has two invalidated voices (Hamas in Gaza and President Mahmoud Abbas in the West Bank). The temptation to agree to a peace without major changes, a peace to carry on until the next war, will be great.