Francesco Mancini, Vice Dean (Executive Education) and Associate Professor in Practice at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy has an extensive background in the prevention and settlement of armed conflict. He was a senior director at the International Peace Institute in New York, a think tank that works very closely with the United Nations and its member states. He has been working in and around conflict, peacekeeping, conflict resolution and negotiation for close to 20 years. In that light, we've asked him to share his views on the current military conflict in Ukraine.
Francesco Mancini: And sometimes I feel that, looking at conflict, It's hard to see something new, but I would say that this conflict in Ukraine is a different level of conflict.
David Austin: Can you expand on that more? What things really strike you as something that's different and difficult compared to what you've seen over the past 20 years?
Francesco Mancini: Yes, obviously, one of the key factors is that this is a conflict that happened in the heart of Europe, involves one of the major powers in the world and has reverberations that are global. In the past 20 years, we actually experienced many conflicts. I mean, obviously the Iraq war and Afghanistan were very much in the news, but there was conflict in Syria, there were conflicts in Libya. There was conflict in Africa, in Western and East Africa in Yemen, you name it right?
None of these conflicts has raised the same level of worry around the world as the conflict in Ukraine. And I think it's because it has brought back images of sort of a traditional war, one that we haven't seen in Europe since the end of World War II. It has created a huge flow of refugees and a huge human disaster.
And it deeply involves the major powers of our times. So that's why everybody is focusing on it.
David Austin: And now it's been dragging on for almost two months. What do you see as a possible end?
Francesco Mancini: It's very hard. And I would say even probably a bit foolish to make predictions about these things. So, on one hand, you can say that, we might know what the end game should be, what we would like to see at the end, but the challenge is to get there. And I think we should think about solutions in steps, not as a one goal.
The most urgent aspect is obviously the humanitarian aspect. To limit human suffering on the ground as much as possible. And so, to me, that's why these negotiations are still important. Even if they're not producing a peace agreement. Focusing on humanitarian corridors, ceasefires and everything that can be done, even if it is very hard to achieve on the ground in the long-term.
I think the challenge is politically. How do you identify that kind of end game on one hand, respect international law and give back to Ukraine its sovereignty but on the other hand, also taking into consideration Russia's security concerns, and I think that is the real challenge here.
David Austin: And you mentioned negotiations and the urgency for humanitarian needs to be considered first, but so far that hasn't happened. The attempts at humanitarian corridors have not been honoured. There's been so many civilians targeted and there have not been any attempts at a ceasefire that have gone very far. So how is this going to improve at all? Or is it just going to have to have a military solution and a clear military victor?
Francesco Mancini: So, I would say that first of all, again, for people who have been observing conflict in the past this is not a new challenge. But it's not a reason for not attempting negotiation. If you think about Syria and other countries that have raised quite a bit of attention in the past. In Syria there was constant negotiation in Geneva between the parties.
But very often the ceasefire, they were agreed to in Geneva, will actually never be implemented on the ground because there are obviously challenges on the ground. Some are even just logistical challenges. In some cases, there is no real willingness from the other side to implement the ceasefires or respect some agreements related to humanitarian relief.
Again, no reason for not continuing to do that. And I think that at the margin, some of these things are actually happening. But not to the scale that we will want. You mentioned the victor piece. I think this is the real political challenge here, because I think we are all sitting here where we would like to see sovereignty and order, it will be restored and the integrity of the Ukrainian state.
But I think we're also politically very concerned of what Putin would do with his back against the wall. If you imagine some kind of a victor from the Ukrainian side, and so, there are some political issues which are related to the security concerns of Russia and how those can be addressed respecting obviously the sovereignty and the decisions of other countries.
I think that is the key challenge. And as of now, I don't think we can still envision what that actual compromise and solution would be. And in fact, a lot of experts say that the most likely scenario for now, is some sort of fighting continuing, probably focusing more in the east of Ukraine as we're seeing these days. Maybe some escalations of violence, but overall, some kind of low intensity violence continuing there. And I think this is also important to remember that the invasion of Ukraine didn't start two months ago, but actually started in 2014. So, this conflict has been going on for a very, very long time.
Ukraine was already a country at war. And these escalations have obviously made things worse then, and more complicated. But you could imagine the kind of scenario you're going down the road in which there is more low intensity conflict lingering for quite a bit of time.
David Austin: If that is in fact what happens as one scenario, the high-level high intensity conflict. Many people have suggested that this is just a sign that the international system does not work. That the UN which is supposedly set up to prevent situations like this and has Russia as a permanent member of the security council. People are asking, what is the point of the international system? What's your opinion about that and how do you see the international system coping with this?
Francesco Mancini: Yes. Listen, I think this is actually a major challenge for the UN and more generally speaking for our sort of global system. After all, the UN has been set up to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war. However, it has limits and I think this is a perfect example over where these limits stand. And the limit stands particularly when one of the permanent members of the security council. So, one of those five countries that have a veto power are actually involved in the conflict.
That's the challenge. I would still have a sort of more positive outlook in terms of the UN reaction because given these limitations, I think the UN reacted with a very strong condemnation to the general assembly. Now obviously resolutions in the general assemblies don't really have teeth, because they're non-binding right. There's no real enforcement. So, I obviously agree that it is hard to implement whatever is decided in the general assembly. But with that said, when you have a solution that condemned this invasion supported by 141 countries out of 193. To me it is a very strong sign and, you know, only just a bunch of countries actually voted against it, many others just abstained.
So I think, the signal, to the global governance systems are quite clear, are quite strong. Also, the sanction system that has been put in place, possibly one of the strongest sanctions systems ever devised, has collected quite a bit of support. There obviously are challenges of what are the rules of the sanction system and how you decide to do certain things. So, the system is not perfect at the global level but I would also not agree with those who think that this is a sign of the demise of the United Nations. I would even argue that, for the big powers to have a veto, it's a bit of a guarantee that they will not leave.
I don’t want to go back in history too much, but there was a precursor of the United Nations, which was the League of Nations. And the lLeague of Nations was a body that was very much based on consensus. Basically, every country had a vote and, as history teaches us, you know what happened when war began? All the countries that started to invade other countries just simply left the League of Nations, Germany left in 1933, Japan also in 1933, Italy in 1937. That was the end of the league, basically. Right? So, what we actually want in a system is that actually countries still stay engaged. Obviously, some countries will fight for their own national interest. But I think it's important that the organisation is still there and, and manages to keep these conversations going.
David Austin: In light of that, I wanted to go back to something you said earlier, that politically there does need to be a solution that restores sovereignty to Ukraine, but also recognises Russia's legitimate security concerns, that seems to be where the UN would play a part.
But then, we see things like Finland and other Scandinavian countries that were not aligned now wanting to join NATO. Are they making things worse for themselves? Is that outcome becoming less possible because of this conflict?
Francesco Mancini: I didn't say that these are legitimate or not legitimate security concerns. In our field, we have something that we call a threat perception. Which is actually something that dictates very much how countries react to security concerns. And threat perceptions, change depending on where you sit and also depend on when you sit.
So, threat perception changes over time and over space. And that’s something that really shapes a country's reaction to security issues. And I think, for example, one of the reasons a lot of Asian countries condemned this invasion is because the scenario of a country starting to invade other countries is not something that anybody wants to see, right?
So, threat perception is very important. There is obviously a threat perception of a certain kind in Russia, but we also have to recognize that there is threat perception coming from countries sitting very close to Russia. And so obviously they are reacting to that threat perception thinking about what their alternatives are. And we have to remember that the NATO enlargement of the nineties was also NATO enlargement due to the fact that a lot of Eastern European countries really wanted to join NATO. They really wanted, after decades of being occupied and being part of the Soviet empire, they wanted to have a, sort of a different option.
And we can discuss how wise it could have been from the Western point of view. But I go back to my key point, or the threat perception east European countries have their own threat perception, right. So, they have their own concerns. And that's one of the reasons why some countries want, for example, going toward NATO and maybe they might feel that neutrality is not a guarantee any longer.
David Austin: And could you describe just what other impacts this war has had more generally at the global level?
Francesco Mancini: Yes, absolutely. I think that you have all these geopolitical issues that we were discussing. And I think there is obviously this broader conversation happening right now about the sort of global security architecture. At the Boao Forum for Asia, Chinese president Xi Jinping has talked about the idea of the principle of indivisible security, which is something that we're seeing coming out of Russia and China these days.
It's actually a very interesting concept because indivisible security is actually a very European concept that came out of the 1970s. It was actually included in the Helsinki Final Act in 1975, which basically sets sort of ground rules for the interaction between two blocks. And in that particular case NATO on the Western Alliance and the Warsaw pact, which was the Soviet Union and its satellite states.
So, when you call for a principle like indivisible security, you obviously have in mind a very sort of block defined world in which you have two sides, satellite states around these two sides, and none of them should make any move because any move would create the security concern on the other side.
And actually, we call this a security dilemma because when you try to protect yourself, you might create a threat on the other side, but , the idea of the world divided in blocks, I think is a very outdated view of the world.
And it's also a world view that not all countries in the world may accept particularly small countries, which might not see themselves as simply a kind of satellite or some kind of block. But actually, countries have full agency on making decisions — they might make wrong decisions — right? But yet we're not talking about right and wrong. We're again, talking about, full agency of countries in their own internal security matters. So, I think you see, there's a huge debate now that's opening up and obviously it doesn't have easy solutions.
There are obviously economic impacts. I think you can read a lot about sanctions. Obviously, as I said, there's a very strong sanction regime. So, I think that has a big implication. Some of these have also built on current economic trends that are not very positive, like inflation or energy costs, food costs, and some things like that.
So definitely there are these implications as well. Obviously, there are supply chain concerns. I would say there is also an issue of accountability. And I'm particularly referring to atrocities committed in war, but once again, atrocity in wars is nothing new. Today we have technology that allows us to see these things in a much clearer way. But as you can imagine, right now, obviously there are rising voices of keeping Russia, for example, accountable for certain crimes and atrocities that are committed in Ukraine. How these will work into that kind of peace that we were discussing before, it's a huge question.
But there is an issue of accountability because there is the law of going to war, but there is also the law of what you do in war. So, it's not a free-for-all. And so, this issue of accountability, I think, is also very important, particularly when it comes to a big power. And I think that's also something that has an impact on the overall conversation around peace and conflict resolution.
David Austin: I know that some other nations have been trying to assist as far as documenting atrocities and, referring things to the international criminal court. Is that correct? And, other efforts, but is that enough? Will that lead to some accountability or are you worried that it might fall through and not happen?
Francesco Mancini: Well, I am obviously very concerned that these will never go through. And , it's incredibly complex. It's not straightforward as you can imagine. So obviously the international criminal court is investigating possible war crimes in Ukraine. But that is no guarantee that that would really go anywhere because international criminal law has its own limit.
First of all, it's limited to certain specific crimes like genocide crimes against humanity, war crimes, and crime of aggression. Also, it's affected by the countries that sign up to the court because both Russia and Ukraine actually signed the statute but they did not ratify it. So, a bit of a complicated issue also from the legal point of view, but I think primarily is a political problem.
And the political problem is that everything we learn about conflict is that in the long-term, if you want a sustainable peace, you also need to address the issue of responsibility. Many countries have done that, countries from Cambodia to Argentina, just to mention two, in the long-term you need to address these issues and these, I think it's a huge challenge in this particular conflict.
David Austin: Can I bring the conversation to Asia in a and ask you to kind of describe what reaction to this war in Asia and Asia nations.
Francesco Mancini: Yes, absolutely. First of all, I think one mistake would be to think that somehow Southeast Asia is far from Ukraine and so shouldn't really interest us here in this part of the world. Well, in reality, it does have an impact. And I think what I was saying before about threat perception is also very important here particularly in a part of the world, in which there is a history of interference and countries stepping into the borders of other countries.
And I think this history also has led to having the Southeast Asian countries supporting in a large number, the general assembly resolution that condemned Russia invasion. Eight out of ten ASEAN states supported the resolution and two were actually sponsors promoting. One is Singapore and the other is Cambodia, which may actually surprise you. But Cambodia also has history, right? That has an impact on this decision. The two countries that abstained were Vietnam and Laos. I think there are some obvious relationships also with Russia particularly in terms of strategic partnership back to Vietnam being one of the three comprising strategic partners of Russia, with India and China. And has a heavy dependence on Russian weaponry. So, now, that might be one of the reasons. Interestingly enough Myanmar has supported the resolution, however the current ambassador in the UN is not representing the military government.
David Austin: Right, right.
Francesco Mancini: That Myanmar actually, the military government has supported Russia, but not in this particular case in the UN.
But with that said obviously, particularly for countries like Singapore, but you know, many others in the region such a violation of international law is a huge red flag. And the principle of international law is fundamental and has to be respected in this case. And I think that's what has driven the Singapore position. Singapore is not pro-Ukraine or anti-Russia, or anything it is pro-principle of international law. And so, this is an absolutely existential threat such a violation.
Obviously other impacts , economic impacts. I mentioned before all this is going to make things more complicated when it comes to inflation, for example increasing food prices and an oil spike.
Sanctions, I think there are limited disruption in this part of the world, there is not such a dependence on the Russian economy in this part of the world. Maybe there is a question on the sort of secondary impact in China, for example, if indirectly you're dealing with a country that is violating the sanction.
But I still feel that the sanction impact is not so huge in this part of the world. And it is primarily an issue of, as I said, of international law and obviously some economic impact.
David Austin: You said to you, you cannot predict, and no one would want to predict, but definitely seems like this could go on much longer. Are there any players that have any kind of influence that could make a difference?
Francesco Mancini: I do agree with you that the current situation is something that unfortunately would probably continue for a while and obviously it's hard to predict in terms of level of violence. But it is kind of a safe assumption to assume that the current kind of a scenario of fighting in the east of the country will continue and maybe having days where violence escalates, but overall have a more lower intensity conflict.
All the scenarios that I've been reading about a sort of regime change, both in Ukraine and in Russia, I think they are complete outliers, and I don't see that to be really likely.
Who can do something? Well, we have seen different attempts, right. Coming from many different directions, including Israel, for example, or maybe Turkey. Very interestingly, I think China would have potentially an interesting role to play as a mediator. Maybe not the role that they would want to play. But in terms of peace as a global public good, I can see a country like China that could contribute to that, and could help to bridge that gap.
Because obviously Western countries are not positioned in this case very well, as they've been heavily sided with Ukraine. But you can also think in the past there's also been, kind of a multilateral setting with multiple mediators, not just one, where everybody plays kind of a slightly guarantor role.
So, you could also think of such a configuration in which you have a group of Western countries, maybe countries that don't have such a vested role. Maybe they're not NATO members, but they can still play a facilitation role. And you know China but again, as of today, nobody has been really able to edge there, but primarily because I think the political stars are not aligned.
Again, no excuse for not doing negotiation. But again, it's quite normal to have both war on the ground and talk. Most wars have these happening at the same time. So, it's still worth continuing and the scenarios on the ground will shape the conversation on the table as well. So, there is an interaction between these two.
It's still a bit early to identify a clear way out of what we might think of what these sort of partner solutions could be for us. It will still take many steps before we get there.
David Austin: Before we go, I just, I can't let you go without asking about the information war that's going on and the misinformation and the way that all this is playing out on social media. And how it's affecting the political reality of what's going on?
Francesco Mancini: So this is obviously a big part of the war conversation. And let me say, first of all, that propaganda is not something new in war. Countries fight over information, have fought over information, the control of information, and during any war countries try to shape the narrative of that war. What is very new here is that we have new tools to do that, which are new tools that reach us straight into our living room. So, there's basically no gap between what's happened and what you see. This is obviously new and it creates whole new dynamics that are obviously very, very hard to control.
Countries are trying to shape the narratives with real news as well as fake ones. I think that our organisation, they're doing a lot of work to try to help us to understand what is real, what is not. Unfortunately, some of these technologies are getting so good that it is getting harder and harder. Some are blatantly false and it's quite easy to find out, but it also requires a bit of a proactive role from our side as an audience. And so, I think that the main challenge here is that we need to educate us as recipient of information to do that little extra step to check because in some cases, the checking is very easy and you can immediately find out that, for example, some of the footages, some of the images are coming from completely unrelated issues, the source of the news, for example, just to check. Where is it coming from? Overall, I think that the main principle is, don't just buy whatever gets into your phone. But do that little extra mile, do a little bit of extra work to check.
David Austin: Okay. Well, thank you very much for your insight. I wish there was something more optimistic to end on, but I, it doesn't seem that way. We'll just have to wait and see and hope that like you said that people still work towards a peaceful resolution, even if it seems perhaps impossible or the challenges are too great.
Francesco Mancini: I agree with you. It's obviously very hard to be positive on such a topic or optimistic, however, in any situation like this one, particularly when there is physical violence involved there is always a light and I think we have seen the way that Ukrainian people have reacted to this situation.
We also have seen many Russian people or how they reacted against this. We've seen an international community. Let's say it's a global community of people together on the refugee issue. As well as kind of making points on international law.
So it's not all dark here. There are people who are working very hard to find a solution to that. What obviously is dark is the suffering of the people on the ground which is always the first concern when you're trying to address a conflict. Your primary concern is to minimise human suffering. To find political solutions that can hold, that would save lives and make the lives of people targeted by violence less miserable and less and less dangerous.
So, that's my kind of optimistic angle if I can. We're not going to give up. That there are people working on peace, there are people working on solutions that might eventually bring peace back. But it is a very, very dark road to walk on until better days. But again I will leave that option open. I wouldn't be completely, completely pessimistic.
David Austin: Very good. Well, thank you very much. And on that, I think we'll leave it there. Thanks so much for joining us.
Francesco Mancini: Thank you, David It’s been a pleasure. Thank you very much.