Russia and Ukraine: Let us break the cycle

The cycle begins with a series of small local or regional conflicts. They were curtain raisers of the progression. In the first cycle, such conflicts began in Balkans. At the start of the second turn of the cycle in the 1930s, these small wars included the Spanish civil war, the Japanese assault on China and the Italian attacks on North Africa. The third sequence in the late 1940s begins with similar events, the Greek civil war, the Berlin blockade, the initial Korean War.

Then, the next stage of the cycle evolves. These small outbursts escalate into larger disputes which draw major powers into prolonged battles. Vast numbers are destroyed and displayed in the big time struggles. Witness WW1 in which about 20 million died, WW11 in which about 50 million died, and the cold war, essentially 40 years of combat in which around 40 million died in 130 local and regional wars of which, Korea ,Vietnam, Afghanistan, and the Central America conflicts are best known.

These great and costly struggles have been won by powers which espouse values of freedom and democracy. Initiating war was profitable, that was how rich empires were created. But in the second half of 20th century wars have become ruinous for the provocateur or the invader. Recalls what Afghanistan cost the defunct USSR, what Vietnam cost the United States, what Suez cost the United Kingdom, what war in the Falklands cost Argentina, what the invasion of Kuwait cost Iraq, this is merely a short tally. Wars of international aggression are now the quickest way to national ruin.

A fourth cycle
Three decades or so ago, at the end of the Cold War, history presented us with an unusual condition- a clean stage on which to design a brave new world. The old ideological cobwebs and hang-ups had been swept away: Communism, anti-communism, nonalignment faded into irrelevance. For a few years, things appeared exceedingly positive.

Peace agreements, arms control treaties, collective responses to cross-border aggression were symbols of the early 1990s. A cluster of global conferences, town meetings of the world sponsored by the United Nations, such as the Rio Earth Summit of 1992, prepared a new planetary agenda. Ideas of internationalism, interdependence, global community andsustainable development dominated practical discourse.

Democracy, the ideological victor of the Cold War, was expanding rapidly: Even the stalemate in South Africa was peacefully resolved. Globalised electronic capitalism captured the economic imagination of nations and about three billion people were baptised into market-and this seemed to assure a future of expanding prosperity. Soon, however, this proved a false dawn. These constructive evolutions were challenged by several barbaric forces.

Onto the world stage marched resurrected specters from the past and dreadful fresh horrors-ethnic nationalism, religious fundamentalism, international terrorism, the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and transformational crime cartels. Most of the past decades have been a great global struggle between the positive elements liberated by the end of the Cold War and these instruments of fear and disorder. Do we see brewing another titanic battle for the human prospect? In recent years, the balance has largely tilted towards the negative.

Circumstantial evidence suggests that we are entering the early stages of a fourth turn of the cycle. Little wars splutter in the Balkans, the Caucasus, the Persian Gulf, Afghanistan, all over Africa, and in parts of Asian, grow in the Taiwan Straits, the North-South Korean divide and invasion of Ukraine. Larger nations such as the United States, Russia, China, and Great Britain are becoming involved. Fearful ideologies are gaining ground. International peace keeping systems are not working well, the United Nations Security Council shows the same irresolution that paralysed it’s Council during the Cold War and in the time of the League of Nations.

The message of history
How can we prevent this apocalyptic vision from hardening into reality? How can we hold back the cycle from its fourth and maybe fatal rotation?
The antidote is in the infection. The political experiences that provide evidence of repetitive formations send us signals and instructions which could help us to evade, moderate, or bypass the worst of another cycle. One of the messages is that liberal democracy is a possible prophylactic against some cyclical disasters. It is obviously good to strengthen at home and abroad for all the conventional reasons, liberty, and popular representations and so on. But modern liberal democracy has three other features important in our context of cycles:

First, democracies do not often go to war with other democracies. A more democratic world would be a less troubled world. Second, democracy ventilates important modern issues and brings them into the public arena, for example, human rights and women’s rights and environmental questions. If repressed, as they always are by authoritarian governments, these concerns will explode into violence. Such massive social disruptions could give thrust to the cycle and accelerate its destructive trail. Third, as economic Nobel laureate Amartya Sen has pointed out, famine is most frequently generated by a lack of freedom, not a lack of food. Famine and upheavals associated with them begin the chain reaction that ignites cyclical disturbances.

Thus, it is possible to conjecture that sustaining and expanding democracy could well prove a buttress against the onward progression of cycles. It is encouraging that in recent years, for the first time in human history more than one-half of the world’s people live in some form of democratic governance.

There are a few selective lessons and thoughts which can perhaps point the way to avoiding the drama of another cyclical sequence, enabling us to break the cycle and make exclusively a 20th century phenomenon. The near time perspective suggests that a fourth cycle has just commenced. Yes, if we are attentive to the signals of history, the outcome is not inevitable and we may grow in human freedom and dignity without the catastrophes of the 20th century. This is why our time, our turn is a moment of such extraordinary historical significance. A moment that challenges statemen across the globe to transcend the cycle that dominated 20th century. To fail in such an endeavour is to consign humankind to rerun of the 20th century tragic history.
Aduwo is Permanent Representative, Centre for Convention on Democratic Integrity (CCDI), a non-governmental organisation with United
Nations Consultative Status.