President Joko Widodo’s (Jokowi’s) recent peace mission to Kyiv and Moscow to encourage the cessation of hostilities between Ukraine and Russia has come as an unexpected, yet welcome, move.
However, the visit, which has been hailed by many as a great diplomatic move by Indonesia, has also drawn its share of skepticism and criticism, both from domestic and foreign commentators.
More than a week after the conclusion of President Jokowi’s peace mission, the situation in Ukraine has not changed for the better. There have been neither clear signs of Russia halting its attacks against Ukraine, nor do the prospects of peace between the two warring powers seem any closer. Some may say this is proof of the failure of Jokowi’s peace mission, but it will be wise to temper expectations of the visit in the first place. Achieving peace, or at the very least cessation of hostilities between Ukraine and Russia, while very important, is hard at this time. The current war situation in Ukraine is simply not ideal for enticing Russia and Ukraine to sit down at the negotiating table to discuss a peace plan.
Negotiating a peace settlement in a war is a lengthy process, with many challenges for the parties directly involved in the war or a neutral party acting as a mediator. One main obstacle is bringing the warring nations to the negotiating table. There are many factors that can influence warring nations, both the aggressor and the victim, in deciding to come together and negotiate an end to the conflict, chief among them is the level of bargaining leverage each nation holds over the other.
Bargaining leverage, in this case, can be understood as the ability of a warring nation, notably its leaders, to demand more favorable terms in the negotiation process. This leverage comes from the leaders’ ability to impose cost upon their opponent in the next battle should the negotiation fail, relative to the opponent’s ability to do the same to them. If a state cannot impose a significant cost upon its opponent in the next battle, then it must offer its opponent better terms than it would otherwise because the opponent is not deterred from fighting the next battle (Werner, 1998: 328). If this is the case, then leaders can opt to continue fighting and try to achieve more victories on the battlefield in order to gain more leverage over the opponent before they decide to enter negotiations.
The need to gain leverage to achieve a satisfactory negotiation outcome is particularly important for a nation’s leaders as they have to contend with domestic politics and public pressure that can potentially remove them from power. Each time a leader chooses to continue the war instead of settling it in a negotiation, the risk of removal from power by dissatisfied constituents increases. This is because war imposes hardships and suffering upon the population, and the longer it goes on, the more dissatisfied the population can become.
Source: Antara News