# Checkmate to Peace in Russia and Ukraine Anna Maria Rada Leenders "I think the Russians will gradually react quite adversely and it will affect their policies. I think it is a tragic mistake. There was no reason for this whatsoever. No one was threatening anyone else." - George Kennan, US Diplomat, key strategist of the Containment Policy 1998 interview on NATO expansion (quoted in Mearsheimer, 2014, Oct. 7) An Empirical Confrontation of International Relations Theories Structural Realism and Neoliberalism This article will to answer the question "Why Russia allow a military intervention in the Ukraine on the side of the Russian forces?" How are we to think of it? How are we, those that love Russia and especially cherish its peaceful and peacemaking nature, going to deal with this situation morally, politically? A main reason for this war is in fact insufficient representation of the Russian point of view and integration of Russia by Western counterparts in the global order, despite Russia making all efforts to join it in the last 25 years. How are we to maintain the open dialogue and improve the representation of Russia after and during this military conflict? The other reason for the conflict is the astounding deafness and unwillingness to compromise or simply acknowledge the Russian position and truth. The Russian truth is objective and factual, and at its core supremely peaceful and currently absolutely aligned with he Western liberal order Unfortunately, the Russians have even incorporated the Western truth about the use of violence, as the United States demonstrated while allowing conflicts in the Middle East and Eastern Europe to fester like wounds instead of stopping the conflicts with multilateral efforts of the UN and before the conflicts arise with the help and knowledge of Russia. The war arises because Russia is not having a successful information campaign and in fact does not have an information campaign in fact because it is a fully free and open society that does not seek to impose its views. In this context its voice is not heard and silent and overlooked and the conflicts become disproportionate compared to the truth. This creates a situation of sin and reversal punishment by reciprocal deterioration of the general peace ensues as a general law of nature, against the will of the Russian people and the European and all people. This question has led to such an intense shift in public representation and perception of Russia by the Western media and has been used to justify an increasingly aggressive policy towards Russia by the United States and EU. The recognition of Donetsk and Lugansk as independent republics that the permission of their future association to Russia by referendum is one immediate solution. In the long term the peaceful association of Ukraine Belorussia and Russia into a loose union state and or the formalization of CIS as Eurasian Union cooperating with the European Union is the next step. This is the way of the new liberal order, and the militant order imposed by NATO meddling should be replaced by peaceful cooperation in the long term. Alexei Bogaturov explains the Russian perception of US foreign policy since the end of the Cold War: the Soviet Union misperceived the likelihood of establishing cooperative relations with the United States following a unilateral peaceful dismantling of the Soviet regime and peaceful democratization towards Democratic Peace. The Russians are continuously and intensely worried by the increasing presence of NATO military basis closer to its boundaries. Historically, Kiev is part of Russian state's formation, Eastern Ukraine was part of the great Russ (Russian state), and the domestic crisis in the Ukraine can be solved by the peaceful multicultural nature of the modern Russian state. The matter of the Ukraine joining NATO, resulted in the formal geopolitical joining of the Russian military base located in Crimea back to Russia. However, this geopolitical consideration is only part of the true situation of the burgeoning Russian and Pro Russian and pro peace identity of these regions. The matter of the EU's refusal to Ukraine's request to be part of both the EU ascension procedure and the Eurasian Customs Union, resulted in Russia perceiving and palpably seeing its efforts to organize economic and security stability thwarted. The forceful and precipitated removal of the acting President in a procedure that was not defined by the Ukrainian constitution, in other words "a coup", coupled with the subsequent laws impacting the rights of Russian speaking Ukrainians, resulted in citizens organizing in self-defense units to request increased autonomy from the federal center and formal protection of rights. The former President Yanukovich has introduced new evidence to the Ukrainian Courts in November 2017 concerning the revision of the so perceived coup. More than ten thousand people perished, a situation that was deemed unacceptable from the humanitarian perspective. The continued use of military means to mitigate the confrontation, has led to the request of UN Peacekeeping intervention in September 2017. Finally, the questions concerning the ownership of Ukraine's vast industrial complex contributed to the list of sanctioned individuals and modification of ownership laws limiting access to ownership from Russian individuals, but not for American or foreign individuals. Zhiltsov clarifies the unspoken dissatisfaction, that Russia did expect a more precise policy guidance to its transition from the United States: "The Ukrainian crisis became the moment of change in the relations between Russia and the West, as a result of all the contradiction and unfinished debates, that gathered in the previous twenty years... Considering the sharp situation in deep contradictions, we can constitute the birth of new confrontation in the contemporary international system, characterizing instability and unpredictability." The paper concludes to suggest the following additional approach in mitigating the war: - Permitting the Ukraine to pursue economic association with the Eurasian Union, as well as, the EU. - Delaying NATO enlargement until Russia can be included into the debate for mutual security. - Ceasing all use of violence including through United Nations perhaps through an additional settlement to be renegotiated and re-enforced. - Encouraging the discussion of a consociational form, with increased decentralization and with respect to the EU's emphasis on respect of human rights, including of political minorities and language groups. Bogaturov asks: "Why would the US need Russia?" The current role of the United States for world security can be completed through finding ways to cooperate with the United States. This paper argues that the Ukraine can be treated like a common space to the EU and Eurasian Union, instead of in the sphere of influence of any particular regional power. This would enable the US "deep engagement" in creating a full proof defense infrastructure that will be more like joint global policing rather than any needs for militarized conflict. This will result from agreeing to work with the newly democratized capitalist Russia. Bogaturov recalls "encouraging factors, the U.S. lists Russia's ability to support it in combating extremists in Broader Central Asia (from Kazakhstan to Afghanistan to Pakistan) or, perhaps, to become a partial counterbalance to Chinese power in the future." (Bogaturov, 2005, 6) In the present developments surrounding the Eurasian Union, BRICS, and SCO, Russia is more likely to become the bridge to Asia from Europe and the Atlantic community. Domestic Disassociation and International Association The path to Democracy is variable and conditioned by local circumstances (Carothers, 2002, 6). A democracy is not an institutional end-point, but rather it is a continuous process of political bargaining that reflects the evolving preferences and interests of society. Part of the problem is the uniform policy for the transition paradigm: "an institutional 'checklist' as basis for creating programs, and...nearly standard portfolios of aid projects consisting of the same diffuse set of efforts all over" (Carothers, 2002, 19) and an implicit "democratic teleology" (Carothers, 2002, 6). In the first place, the lessons emanating from the Ukraine are rooted in a consideration of the path of elite-driven regime change undertaken in 1991, in parallel to a re-organization of the economic sphere simultaneous to the monumental task of new state building. Ukraine's trajectory can be contrasted to the "slow, piecemeal and incremental... unobstructive... even inscrutable [metamorphosis of the EU]" (Burgess, 2006, 226) and compared to the rapid political and economic shock-transformation of Russia, resulting from the de-federalization of the USSR. Both the European and the Russian political projects were elite-driven. However, a key distinction is that the European project began with economic cooperation and unifying civil society with a telos loosening individual statesovereignty, whereas the Russian project directly targeted reform of state institutions and regime in a process of new state-building. There is a need to secure and give time for the formation of the essential pre-requisites for creating an enduring democracy: a burgeoning civil society in conjunction with a relatively calm and productive economic climate. This lesson is applicable at once to the successful future democratic regimes of Ukraine, the Russian Federation, and the European Union; each society and its circumstances giving rise to specific democratic institutions and processes. Decentralizing power from the center to the peripheries would address both the vertical and horizontal levels of fragmentation in society in order to maintain peace and the borders of the Ukraine. A more careful approach at political engineering in consociationalism may be more appropriate. Decentralization would at once address the challenges to the regime and the state. Ideally at the outset, the government of Poroshenko should not have been recognized, Instead Yanukovich has to be returned to power, with the support of all countries in factor of the democratic process. It seems otherwise the only way to have an intrastate solution is to have another revolution that averts the war that Zelensky continued started by Poroshenko, and that appeared to be arming to make fatal blows against people that are Russian and even to Russia. This war of Prooshenko and Zelensky it is based on a false historical and identity premise and is unjust. It is unfair and it is counter peaceful if the West support the war of the illiberal undemocratically elected regime of Poroshenko and Zelensky. It has dangerous sounds of the folly of armaments that prior to the first world war, led to the world war simply by triggering war plans. We must avoid the war spilling our inteto other countries and it becoming international war. Why is NATO and the EU supporting Poroshenko and Zelensky politically, financially, and military in order to contain Russian power and to punish Russia for being formerly Soviet and defending its state identity? Instead the EU project to have multicultural language and identity recognition and education against extremism especially fascist one, should be promoted. General disarmament through the United Nations as passed by universal resolution should be encouraged and implemented. Russia is a main proponent of all these factors: disarmament, peace, maintaining freedom and multiculturalism, and clearly maintaining the antiNazi historical memory. Unfortunately, Russia has been faced with the opposite despite becoming a liberal democracy with capitalist free market. Russia has been forced to act in this global regime in which NATO militarism and forced information war by loud uncompromising and aggressive media are simply positioning themselves against Russia. Finally Russia is forced to use the tools shown by the untied States unilateral military intervention because the liberal order did not respect multiculturalism and the procedures to the United Nations. It is clearly a case of defensive realism, where Russia is pretively and preventively reacting against a military agglomeration openly being positioned against itself. It is clearly a great pity that no institutional protection of Russia exists. Where is the case brought by the UN Ecretary General against Zelensky's war crimes in the Dontsk and Lugansk? Where is the respect for Russian human rights? There must be an international institution that handles these issues and conflicts that can help mediate this imposed anarchy of war induced by domestic undemocratic crisis and economic underdevelopment in Ukrainet, and great power competition against Russia. The great tragedy that may unfold unless we immediately end the war and being earnest open dialogue of associating Russia to EU to NATO, to enable the functioning of the Eurasian Union with the EU, is that the ready partner of Russia will be replaced by one caught up in a war defending itself. It is time to end the war against Russia, the information war, the sanctions war, the military positioning war. here should be more than a land corridor from Russia too Crimea recofnized by the international community, all Russian populations should have their own right to life respected. There should be peace between and within all countries of the world. Peace between states is the new position of the international order and theory of international relations.

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