PEACE-MAKER
Jose de Venecia Jr.
Former Speaker of the House
As of this writing, delegations from Moscow and Kyiv, respectively, were scheduled to meet in Belarus for a second round of negotiations on the raging military hostilities in Ukraine.
Although their first meeting did not produce a breakthrough, it is in the best interests of the two countries, indeed the world, to pursue a peaceful resolution to the conflict.
Russia is certainly far more militarily powerful than Ukraine, despite the Ukrainian people’s admirable courage and determination to defend their country, led by their president Volodymyr Zelenskyy. On the other hand, the sanctions imposed by the Western countries against Russia will inflict damage to its economy. The sanctions are much tougher than those earlier imposed on Russia following its annexation of Crimea in 2014.
The ongoing bloody confrontation in Ukraine affect not just eastern Europe but also Asia and the rest of the world, directly and indirectly.
History tells us that the solution to war is diplomacy.
The international community should strongly support continued negotiations and calls for immediate ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine, to put an end to the bloodshed and destruction, avert a humanitarian crisis, and prevent a possible global economic slowdown.
We had hoped that the earlier negotiations between Moscow and Kyiv and the diplomatic efforts by the UN, United States, and the European countries, especially by French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz who conferred separately with Russian President Vladimir Putin in the Russian capital, would prevent the dreaded military confrontation.
Indeed, the international community cannot afford another war as it is just beginning to recover from the deadly pandemic, which has claimed millions of lives throughout the world and devastated the global economy.
Asia and the world have had a surfeit of war and bloody conflict, but seem to have no end in sight for this carnage.
We sadly note the ongoing multiple crises in our Asian region: the extremist violence and hostilities in Syria, Iraq, and Libya; the fightings in Afghanistan, the unresolved Palestinian-Israeli conflict, the unending disputes between India and Pakistan over Kashmir and between Azerbaijan and Armenia over Nagorno-Karabakh, the continuing dangers and fears of explosion in the Korean Peninsula, the Buddhist and Muslim Rohingya difficulties in Myanmar, similar problems in Southern Thailand, and the maritime tensions in the South China Sea and East China Sea, among others.
The Philippines and the global community should encourage, support, and contribute to a peaceful resolution of the crisis in Ukraine. As we always say, we cannot give up on peace as the alternative, which is war, is immeasurably more costly and makes all of us losers.
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The center of global gravity is moving away from the Atlantic, where it has been during these last 200 years, to the Pacific.
And it is doing so, not so much because the West is weakening, whether economically or militarily, as because other power centers are growing in relative strength, in Africa, Latin America and Asia.
The Asia Pacific is home to the largest economies, the most powerful militaries, and the most attractive cultures.
As the balance of global power shifts from West to East, we in the Philippines and Asia should also strive to help prevent the outbreak of a new Cold War in the Asia Pacific, by encouraging the peaceful rise of every emerging great power in the nations of the G-20 and in BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) and supporting popular movements that advocate peaceful co-existence among the East Asian states.
Between Moscow and Washington, and between Washington and Beijing, mutual accommodation must be found, that gives the parties strategic reassurance and respect for their “core interests.”
Ironically, the hard peace between the earlier Cold War principals, the United States and the Soviet Union, had enabled the smaller countries to enjoy well over a generation of political stability and economic growth.
For us in Asia, at least for a long while, the age of ideological conflict is and should be over. We should reject a new Cold War in the Asia Pacific.
It has been said that the Pacific Ocean is large enough for the great powers. And we see no reason the relationships between the great powers should be adversarial. We see no differences between them that sustained diplomacy and understanding and real politik cannot resolve.