In the complex conditions of the modern world, Ukraine is faced with challenges that require a review of traditional approaches to international politics and security. Political scientist Gennady Druzenko emphasizes that attempts to appeal to international law and the UN Charter do not bring the desired results, because the rules that once ensured stability have today undergone significant changes.
UKRAINE: BETWEEN JUPITER AND TAURUS
The era of rules is coming to an end. Rules are always based either on the balance of power of powerful players, or on the dominance of one person who establishes these rules and ensures their implementation. The first model of maintaining world order (quite unfair, but real) sank into oblivion with the end of the Cold War. The second is ending before our eyes due to the rise of autocracies led by China and the fatigue of the United States to bear the burden of global leadership alone.
The tragedy of Ukraine is that it appeals to rules (international law, the UN Charter, etc.), while the rules no longer work. As long as there was one Jupiter and hundreds of bulls in the world, the main rule was that bulls must act according to the rules and only Jupiter has the right to exceptions to the rules (such as the UN Security Council-sanctioned bombing of Serbia in 1999 or the invasion of Iraq in 2003). The famous Latin proverb Quod licet Iovi, non licet bovi worked perfectly until some bulls felt like Jupiters, and the real Jupiter, tired of endless wars and internal turmoil, was unable (or unwilling) to put them in their place.
And if the real Jupiter broke the rules when they seemed not too fair to him, then the bulls who pretended to be Jupiters break the rules primarily in order to prove that they are no longer bulls - from now on Jupiter will have to negotiate with them. If someone thinks that for Putin the destruction of Ukraine is a goal in itself, I will allow you to disagree. The subjugation of Ukraine for the Kremlin ghoul is a means of proving to the West (and primarily the USA) that Russia will no longer play by the rules - it will establish them at the negotiating table, as it was in Yalta almost 80 years ago, or as a fait accompli, by the right of the strong.
And it is not a fact that the West will not later accept the Russian offer. At least for now, it is not ready to fight on the side of Ukraine, nor to ensure a decisive turning point in the war in favor of Ukraine. I do not know for sure whether it cannot or does not want to. Most likely, the latter. And if it does not want to, then why should it not admit at one unkind moment for Ukraine that it is necessary to negotiate with Russia about a new world order, because it destroyed the old one, and the West was unable to punish it for this. By the way, the idea of returning the world to a “concert of great powers”, which should replace American hegemony, does not belong to Putin - its most prominent apologist was the late Henry Kissinger.
Until a new balance of power is established in the world, appealing to rules is a weak argument. If these rules worked, Russia would never have attacked Ukraine. The Kurds would have had their own state or the Kosovars would not have had their own. Abkhazia and South Ossetia would have been part of Georgia. The US would never have invaded Iraq (at least without a UN Security Council resolution). And NATO member Turkey would not have purchased Russian weapons or applied to join the BRICS.
What can we oppose to this world that is becoming chaotic before our eyes? Only our own subjectivity and our own power. But for this we need a completely different model of Ukrainian statehood: effective, fair, capable. In 2022 — contrary to all predictions — Ukrainians proved to the world that they want to live in their own state. Now it remains to agree on what this state should be. So that the ship “Ukraine” does not sink in turbulent times, while the world is in a zone of turbulence, states are sorting out who among them is Jupiter and who is the bull, and the “concert of great nations” now looks more like a cacophony than a polyphony.
The key to Ukraine's survival is not in NATO or the EU (we may simply not live to see these associations), it is in a radical reform of Ukrainian statehood. If we have already demonstrated an indomitable will to live, then we should take the next step and admit that will alone is not enough - we need an effective mechanism for self-organization, survival, and development of the nation called "state.".
Without a radical reform of Ukrainian statehood, we have every chance of perishing in this world of Jupiters and bulls. Or becoming an eternal pasture for them…
