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US, China and the Russo-Ukraine War: The Conditions for Generating a Mutually Perceived Hurting Stalemate and Consequent Ceasefire In Moscow and Kyiv

  • Benedict E. DeDominicis (Dept. of International Studies, The Catholic Univ. of Korea)
  • Received : 2023.10.07
  • Accepted : 2023.11.05
  • Published : 2023.12.31
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Abstract

A prerequisite for a lasting ceasefire is the emergence of a prevailing view in Moscow and Kyiv that the fighting has reached a hurting stalemate. In sum, they both lose more through continuing warfare than by a ceasefire. This study applies social identity dynamics of nationalism to this escalatory conflict. It generates findings that imply that China as a third-party great power intervening mediator can potentially play a pivotal role. Shifting the respective prevailing views in Moscow and Kyiv of their interaction from a zero-sum foundation requires proffering powerful economic and political third-party incentives. Effective inducement would facilitate national defense, development and prestige for Moscow as well as Kyiv. China arguably has the underutilized potential power capabilities necessary to alter the respective prevailing views of strategic relationships among the great powers within Moscow, Brussels and Washington. A prerequisite for success in striving effectively towards this strategic goal is cooperation with the Beijing despite skepticism from Washington. This study utilizes a process tracing methodological approach. It highlights that the foundations of the Russo-Ukraine war lie in the institutionalization within Euro-Atlantic integration of the Cold War assumption that the USSR was an imperialist revisionist actor. Russia is the USSR's successor state. Moscow's prevailing view is that Russian national self-determination was unjustly circumscribed in the multinational Soviet totalitarian Communist system. The Euro-Atlantic community is perceived as a neocolonial imperial threat by allying with post-1991 Ukrainian nationalism at Russia's expense. The study finds that acknowledging Eurasian regional multipolarity is necessary, if not sufficient, to coopt Beijing into a global political stabilization strategy. It functionally aims to promote international balancing to lessen potentials for horizontal as well as vertical escalation of the Russo-Ukrainian conflict.

Keywords

Acknowledgement

The author would like to thank the anonymous peer reviewers as well as the journal editors for their thoughtful critiques and comments. The author would also like to thank the Virtual Open Research Laboratory program in the Russian, East European, and Eurasian Center at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign for digital access to library resources. Any errors and omissions are solely the responsibility of the author.

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