What's The End State?

I was watching a Ukrainian's comment about the war on YouTube, and he made a key point: various political leaders have worried about "starting World War III", but it's important to be realistic: we're already in World War III. Right now, there's a massive tacit allied effort to wage a new war against Soviet revanchism, with Ukraine as the proxy, but the tacit alliance recognizes to one extent or another that the fate of Europe hinges on its outcome. The only remotely clear policy statement on allied war aims so far has come from Secretary Austin, “We want to see Russia weakened to the degree that it can’t do the kinds of things that it has done in invading Ukraine.”

That should be at least relatively uncontroversial -- as Jennifer Rubin says in the link, "In reality, Austin simply stated the obvious." But what does this mean in context? I've already said here that the end of this war, even if its immediate cease-fire result is just a reestablishment of Ukraine's existing borders, will nevertheless mean some additional set of measures that will weaken Russia enough to keep it from re-invading Ukraine. That's the closest thing to an allied territorial war aim that we have for now.

This leaves aside the question of how Russians can be tried and punished for war crimes, which is also an expressed aim of many allied leaders. But an international authority with the effective power of the Nuremberg tribunal will be needed within Russia, able to override former national police power to the degree that suspects can be effectively located, arrested, brought to trial and subject to punsihment. This would place the existing Russian state or its successor under some type of superseding international control. This in turn suggests that a full achievement of allied war aims would involve a reconstitution of the Russian state similar to what happend in Germany and Japan after 1945, and proposals for a postwar Russia that fall short of that are unrealistic.

Allied discussion before the end of World War II addressed these same problems. France and Poland were liberated, but what would protect them from re-invasion if Germany were able to rebuild as it had been and reassert itself? After all, the evidence was clear that the Paris Peace Conference and the Versailles Treaty had failed to accomplish the same objectives a generation earlier. The practical solution was the occupation of Germany, reduction of German territory, its partition into four temporary occuparion zones and two eventual successor states, and the political reorganization of those states under great-power supervision. These principles were agreed prior to and during the Yalta Conference.

It seems reasonable to expect that some type of international agreement similar in extent to Versailles or Yalta will need to establish conditions following the conclusion of the Russo-Ukraine war. On that basis, it's hard to assert that "World War III" hasn't already been started, and its resolution will lead to territorial relignment, as well as a new Russian constitution.

Unanticipated consequences following Yalta, however, were reification of postwar Poland under revised borders that awarded the eastern part of the country to the Soviet Union, which kept what Stalin had gained in the 1939 partition pact with Hitler, and which in turn transferred East Prussia and Silesia back to Poland from Germany. This will have serious implications that will now play themselves out in a new settlement with post-Ukraine Russia. Will eastern Poland remain Russian? What about Kaliningrad?

In thinking about a post-Ukraine War settlement, I discovered there are already numerous maps on the web from well before this year depicting potential partitions of Russia following a theoretical World War III. One goes so far as to represent itself as the outcome of the "2037 Treaty of Delhi". The one above is similar, though all these are fanciful and likely not predictive -- but they do reflect a consensus even before the current war that the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union would not be the end of the story, and a realistic assumption that World War III in whatever form would reflect a major revision to Russian territory.

One factor that I've already discussed has been the rise of Poland, which has been taking a leadership role in supporting Ukraine in this war, transferring its own tanks and other arms, as well as being a key transport corridor for other countries' contributions. In yesterday's post I discussed this issue at greater length.

But there are other territorial disputes that have been on the back burner since at least 1945 but would become pressing with a weakened Russia -- and again, a "weakened Russia" is now an implicit war aim for the US and other allies. Japan would almost certainly regain control of the disputed Kuril Islands and possibly Sakhalin. Stalin seized Karelia, several areas along the Finnish border, after the Russo-Finish war. Although Finland's policy has not been to claim these territories are disputed to avoid antagonizing Russia, its attitude appears to be changing, and a weakened Russia would be in less of a position to object to their return.

China and Russia have had a series of relatively minor border disputes, which have been at least theoretically resolved as of 2008. However, the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative, begun in 2013, envisions a series of possible rail connections between the Chinese rail network and Europe that could be economically threatening to Russia, especially considering the proposed route between China and Turkey running south of both the Caspian and the Black Seas. Both the Chinese and European rail networks, of which Turkey is a part, use the same rail gauge, which is not compatible with the Russian network. An international commission settling the Russo-Ukraine War could conceivably allocate Russian territory to China or other countries to allow completion of this standard gauge rail link, which would stimulate Eurasian trade while excluding Russia.

Other divisions of Russian territory, like those illustrated in the map above, more fancifully allocate wider swaths to China and even the US. At this point, they seem unlikely, put we simply don't know how the war will turn out, and we don't know what a post-Putin Russia will look like after a major military defeat. If, as in the map above, eastern Siberia is annexed by the US, this would make a Bering Sea rail tunnel a practical possibility, something that's been mooted since before World War I. Ths would, among other things, allow a standard gauge rail connection from North America to China, since both also use the standard European track gauge.

In addition, a weakened Russia and now a schism within Orthodoxy, along with a strengthened Catholic Poland, also means a renewed Catholicism in Ukraine. I don't think it's a coincidence at all that Pope Francis is increasingly involved in trying to settle the war.

Pope Francis said he has asked for a meeting in Moscow to help bring about an end to the war and warned that Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill, a key backer of President Vladimir Putin's fight against Ukraine, should not become Putin's "altar boy."

The pope's remarks came in an interview published on May 3 in the Italian daily Corriere della Sera.

In it, the pope revealed that 20 days after the war began, he asked the Vatican's top diplomat, Italian Cardinal Pietro Parolin, to communicate with Russia that Francis was ready to travel there in an effort to bring about an end to the conflict, which he likened to what took place in Rwanda 25 years ago. Although the pope did not use the word, the Vatican has recognized the 1994 violence by the Hutus against the Tutsis, which left more than 800,000 people dead, as a genocide.

"We have not yet had an answer and we are still insisting," the pope said of his request to meet with the Russian leader.

Francis has spoken with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky twice since the outbreak of the war and, in a break with diplomatic protocol, left the Vatican on Feb. 25, the day after the war began, to travel to Russia's embassy to the Holy See to register his concerns against the conflict.

. . . The pope also offered further details on his March 16 video conference with the Russian patriarch, saying that during their 40 minute discussion, "I told him: we are not state clerics."

Consider that Pope St John Paul had a major role in supporting Polish resistance to Soviet domination, the resulting collapse of the Soviet Union, and the end of the Warsaw Pact. This in turn set Poland on its current course to become a regional power comparable to its position before the Partitions . I would guess that Francis sees a reason to continue the Church's role in the region.