Endgame in the Conflict in Ukraine?

Historian Niall Ferguson has argued that the current prognosis of the conflict in Ukraine is intermediate between the condition of South Korea in the 1950s and South Vietnam in the 1970s. This article will examine the veracity of this analogy that Ferguson is drawing and inter alia reflect on the possible endgame in the conflict in Ukraine. 

In 1950, the communists in Korea launched an armed struggle to reunify the Korean Peninsula. To try to prevent this denouement, the US armed forces intervened. This triggered the joint intervention of China and the Soviet Union. This struggle lasted until 1953 and claimed millions of lives (especially due to carpet bombing by the US armed forces). Negotiations between the two sides effectively restored the status quo that existed in 1950. 

In Vietnam, the struggle to reunify Vietnam by the communists was based on learning from what transpired in the 1950s in the Korean Peninsula. Therefore, the communist forces engaged in guerrilla struggle in South Vietnam, led by the Viet Cong. 

During the conflict, the communist forces in Vietnam were supported by both China and the Soviet Union. The US armed forces, who were opposed to the communist-led reunification of Vietnam, engaged in aerial attacks on North Vietnam as well as South Vietnam. But US ground forces, which operated in South Vietnam against the Viet Cong, did not cross the border between South Vietnam and North Vietnam. 

As a result, the struggle continued into the 1960s due to the determined resistance of the Viet Cong, involving the loss of millions of lives due to indiscriminate attacks by the US military in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. By 1970, the US decided to withdraw its armed forces from the conflict in Vietnam, having the way for the subsequent reunification of Vietnam. 

The question arises: Why did US ground forces not cross the border into North Vietnam and directly engage the Vietnamese armed forces in the north of the country in military conflict? 

It is arguable that a sober strategic calculation underlay this reticence. Recall that by the 1960s, the strategic discord between the Soviet Union and China had reached a stage that provided an opening for the US to try to drive a wedge between these two countries. 

Had the US ground forces crossed into Northern Vietnam, it is likely that the strategic discord between the Soviet Union and China would have declined, leading to their joint military intervention on behalf of the communist forces in Vietnam. This would have resulted in a broader strategic setback for the US While defeat in Vietnam would have been largely confined to Vietnam, the re-emergence of strategic concord between the Soviet Union and China would have had international implications that were adverse for the US. Let's see how.

The concrete situation at the time suggested that in the Vietnamese struggle for reunification, the US could not win in Vietnam without either crossing the border into Northern Vietnam or using nuclear weapons. Either option would have triggered military intervention by both the Soviet Union and China, as noted earlier. Thus, losing in Vietnam, though a temporary setback, preserved the strategic discord between the Soviet Union and China, which the US later exploited through its wedge strategy in the 1970s. 

The negative fallout of the loss for the US in Vietnam remained localised. By then, communist forces had been largely defeated across Southeast Asia—especially the genocidal liquidation of the Communist Party of Indonesia, the defeat of the Communist Party of Malaya, and the localisation of the communist revolt in the Philippines.

Consequently, the momentum of communist victories in Southeast Asia was limited. Therefore, not only was it strategically sensible for the US to avoid crossing into North Vietnam or using nuclear weapons (to prevent the re-emergence of Soviet-Chinese unity), but the ripple effects of defeat in Vietnam were also unlikely to destabilise the capitalist system in the rest of Southeast Asia. 

The strategic thinking behind the US willingness to eventually accept defeat in Vietnam reflected an accurate assessment of the global array of strategic power at that time. Additionally, domestic social and political instability in the US, driven by the forced domestic mobilisation of youth for the war, further constrained the strategic options for the US. 

In this light, let us turn now to the contemporary conflict in Ukraine and its context in terms of international political economy. We have previously argued that the US cannot simultaneously strategically contend with both China and Russia. 

Thus, the US strategic posture involves disengaging from Europe by making concessions to Russia. However, sustaining the appearance of undiminished US hegemony would require Russia to offer face-saving concessions during this disengagement, such as the partial 30-day ceasefire. On the part of the US, the communication of this climbdown has involved Trump’s contradictory claims of being a “peacemaker” in Ukraine while escalating conflicts elsewhere (such as West Asia). 

The decisive factor in determining the endgame in the conflict in Ukraine is not US resolve or Trump’s deal-making abilities but the material impossibility of the US confronting both China and Russia simultaneously. The Trump Administration wants strategic resources to be concentrated against China, the US’s peer rival, and this necessarily means partial disengagement in Europe. 

European efforts to build an independent military infrastructure separate from the US are materially unfeasible. Without closer ties to the US, Russia, or China, European powers cannot construct a relevant military-industrial base. These unrealistic ongoing efforts instead manufacture consent for partial US disengagement from Europe to focus on China, whereby the exercise of European “agency” could allow them to communicate this material infeasibility in ways that hopefully cause the least possible challenges to the attenuated state of strategic autonomy of European countries. 

However, this partial US disengagement may require excessive concessions to Russia. To try to prevent this, the US seeks to reintegrate Russia into the ambit of metropolitan capital to reduce its strategic concord with China. But this is unlikely to succeed, at least in the medium term. Unless US strategic power sufficiently declines to an extent that Russia feels confident enough that US dual containment of China and Russia is henceforth entirely off the table.

Russia’s acceptance of a partial ceasefire (limited to energy infrastructure) rather than a full 30-day ceasefire confirms this dynamic. Russian forces hold the upper hand in Ukraine, and it is materially impossible to change this. Russia’s partial ceasefire allows the Trump administration to claim progress while saving face. However, Russia will likely insist on conditions unacceptable to Ukraine’s neo-fascist elites: no NATO membership for Ukraine (that will negate Ukraine’s status as a client state of U.S) and the full incorporation of Zaporizhia, Kherson, Lugansk, and Donetsk into the Russian Federation. Accepting these terms, due to US “persuasion” or the momentum of the Russian offensive, could result in the political collapse of the Zelensky administration and its replacement by a government that is willing to see the writing on the wall. 

Ukraine’s tragedy lies in its (capitalist and proto-capitalist) ruling class’s disarticulation between pro-Russian and pro-US factions and the political demobilisation of the working people. This has resulted in the undermining of its strategic autonomy. The contrast with the current foreign policy of Vietnam could not be more striking.

The writer is Professor, Department of Economics, Satyawati College, University of Delhi. The views are personal.