2024’s Triple Challenge: Why Ukraine’s fate is intertwined with that of the global rules-based order

All ‘expert analyses’ that the Ukraine war was veering towards a stalemate and Russia was actually looking to freeze the conflict in its current state should be junked immediately. For, Russia on the morning of December 29 launched one of its biggest missile and drone barrage against Ukrainian cities since the start of the war. According to reports, 158 missiles and drones were launched by Russia targeting cities like Kyiv, Lviv, Odesa and Kharkiv which resulted in at least 40 people being killed and 160 injured.

Russia then followed this up with another barrage on January 2, again targeting cities like Kyiv and Kharkiv, killing at least five people and injuring more than 100. Again civilian infrastructure such as residential buildings, malls and commercial showrooms were hit.

First, if Moscow was really interested in a ceasefire, it wouldn’t be targeting Ukrainian civilian infrastructure on this scale. Obviously, Russia still thinks that it can beat Ukraine into submission and is now ready to play the long game. The latter would mean periods of relative low activity where most of the fighting would be concentrated on the eastern and southern frontlines, followed by massive strikes on Ukrainians cities, even in the comparatively sheltered western parts of Ukraine.

Russia’s message is clear: it will strike wherever it wants, whenever it wants. In fact, it can be reasonably surmised that Russia is now using some very sophisticated tactics to achieve its goals against Ukraine. This entails a combination of physical, psychological, cyber and geopolitical domains. It is cunningly using ebbs in the frontline conflict to accumulate drones and missiles for larger strikes against Ukrainian cities.

Meanwhile, it is engaging in psychological manipulation by creating a false narrative that it actually wants a ceasefire, even as it engages in wide-ranging cyber attacks like the recent Kyivstar takedown by Russian hackers. Finally, it is strategically exploiting the Israel-Hamas war to keep the world’s attention on that conflict and create a sense of inevitability around the Ukraine war.

Therefore, it is my analysis that the Ukraine war is nowhere near its end. True, at the end of 2022, Russia was indeed on the backfoot due to a string of military successes by Ukraine. This was followed by the meat-grinder of a conflict in Bakhmut, which really led to the destruction of the Russian Wagner militia. Wagner boss Yevgeny Prigozhin’s failed mutiny and he himself “mysteriously” falling out of the sky to his death had created an impression that chaos was reigning in the Russian camps. But the expected big Ukrainian counteroffensive failed to materialise over the previous summer with Russia heavily mining its defensive lines and blowing up the Kakhovka Dam. These allowed the Russian forces breathing space and time to regroup.

Today, the situation has become more complicated. There’s little doubt that Russia, Iran and China are working in tandem or coordinating their moves to not just achieve their own individual objectives, but to also degrade the West-supported rules-based international order. Russia wants victory in Ukraine, which will only embolden its ambitions to recreate the old Russian order in eastern Europe. Iran, under sanctions and vulnerable to domestic popular upheavals as highlighted by the anti-hijab protests, wants to show it still matters in the Middle East and cannot be ignored. Therefore, it aids Russia with weapons in Ukraine, defends the Palestinian Hamas group against Israel’s attacks and uses its sympathetic militias, like the Houthis in Yemen and Hezbollah in Lebanon, to agitate the West. China, which is facing its own domestic political and economic problems, would like nothing better than to undermine the US by embroiling it in multiple theatres of conflict. It wants to degrade US credibility, position itself as the alternative and rewrite the international rules-based order.

Therefore, it provides Russia with diplomatic support and clandestine economic and trade help to evade Western sanctions, has already inked a long-term 25-year strategic pact with Iran and has its finger on the Taiwan trigger in East Asia. Hence, the US is confronted with three very different but interrelated challenges today. Unlike the bipolar Cold War, in today’s quasi-multipolar geopolitical setup the challengers can both act independently and coordinate their strategies. This creates a really complex conundrum for the global democratic order. And there is a sense that if any of the challengers succeed, the whole rules-based system will collapse.

This is precisely why Ukraine can’t lose, Iran needs to be effectively managed and China pushed back from its revisionist path. Therefore, any thought of getting Ukraine to concede, even partially, is dangerous for the whole world. Untold disruptions and chaos will follow, rolling back all the progress in international law since the Second World War. India, which is emerging as a key global player, needs to keep this in mind. In this context, it is welcome that foreign minister S Jaishankar this week had a phone conversation with his Ukrainian counterpart Dmytro Kuleba, discussing Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s Peace Formula and expressing the intention to further bilateral relations. That they spoke just days after Jaishankar’s visit to Russia is significant.

India can be an important interlocutor to help end the Ukraine war. But it needs to remember that any outcome where Ukraine is compromised is a blow against the international order. And such a blow will be bad for India because the new order will be scripted by China – a hegemonic power that has always seen India as a subordinate. Hence, 2024 is a crucial year where the fate of the international order will be written in Ukraine. All countries must keep that in mind.

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