Against wars, one could say that they make the victor stupid and the vanquished spiteful," wrote Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900). The German philosopher did not lack reasons to reflect on it. A contemporary of Chancellor Bismarck, Nietzsche lived through all the great Prussian victories – against Denmark, Austria or France itself in 1871 – but knew how to anticipate that winning a war is simpler than winning a lasting peace: that triumphant Germany would lose in the 20th century its two great war conflicts, originating in imperfect peaces.
The year 2023 has been the worst in terms of wars since the end of the Second World War: one in six inhabitants of the planet has been exposed to a conflict, according to Cidob. However, it is not the dead in the Sahel, Sudan, Burma or Ethiopia that "matter". The war has two major focuses (those that affect the pockets of Westerners): Ukraine and Gaza, two conflicts that shake the foundations of the world order established in 1946 and devalue the United Nations Organization. And they test the ability of the United States to rule the world, just now when its priority seemed to be the Asia-Pacific region.
Ukraine and Palestine are two classic scenarios, much from the old days, a stone in the shoe of the predictions that the world axis had shifted in this 21st century to Asia, where the emergence of China made Taiwan the focus of all the looks and fears.
Suddenly, overnight, Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, 2022, and the terrorist organization Hamas invaded Israel on October 7, 2023, knowing that the worst slaughter of Israeli civilians since the Holocaust would provoke a half-hearted military response.
How are the two conflicts presented in 2024? uncertain They are not symmetrical, but they share an advantage in the face of an end in a matter of months: the goals for declaring victory on the part of the president of Russia and the prime minister of Israel are sufficiently ambiguous that she - the victory - could declare- know today Vladimir Putin sets it on the “denazification, demilitarization and neutrality status” of Ukraine, while Benjamin Netanyahu aspires to destroy the military and governance capacity of Hamas in Gaza. In case of need, both could be satisfied today without appearing before their respective peoples as responsible for a failure...
The panorama of Ukraine is swinging towards the interests of Moscow in this 2024. "We need support, since, simply, we lack ammunition", President Volodymyr Zelensky noted this end of the year, in a dramatic tone that goes beyond . Time is playing against Ukraine, which is seeing how the support of the United States and the European Union is cooling.
The failure of Kyiv in the spring counter-offensive in the south, the absence of air hegemony and the difficulties to replace the casualties - this 2024 they would need to mobilize between 450,000 and 500,000 men, according to Zelenski -, as well as the delays in the economic aid of the States United and the European Union, enormously weaken Ukraine and lower its victory morale. In Europe, the Hungarian president obstructs the agreement to give Ukraine 50 billion euros between 2024 and 2027. Arguments to encourage negotiations... but to the downside.
Russia may be tempted to freeze the war and delay negotiations until the US elects a president. If it were Donald Trump - who boasts that he would "end the war in 24 hours" - bingo would be sung by the Kremlin. Everything points to an indefinite partition of Ukraine, in the manner of the Korean peninsula or Cyprus itself, two entangled conflicts. The "real" Ukraine could continue to negotiate with the EU, but never with NATO, a red line for Russia. A pro-European Ukraine affected demographically because it has 4.3 million citizens abroad, spread across the rest of Europe, many of whom may choose not to return given the economic situation.
Israel knows well how difficult it is to manage its military victories. It has not lost any of the nine that it has delivered since its foundation, in 1948 by mandate of the United Nations (today, its great critic). The most notorious, the Six Day War, brought him more territorial conquests than he could assume (Gaza, the Sinai Peninsula, the West Bank and the Golan Heights).
"As the Bible says, there is a time for peace and a time for war," says Prime Minister Netanyahu, whose fate seems sealed once the conflict is over. Something that has already been written other times about the Israeli prime minister with more years in power (16) and one of the most directly responsible for the Oslo peace process of 1993 derailing the two-state formula.
This time of war is a drain on Israel in economic terms (the 360,000 reservists have left their jobs and each day of war is approaching $200 million in cost) and in international reputation, something that seem to worry the Israeli Government as long as the US maintains its support (which borders on the condition of indestructible).
Speculating about the end of the war is very speculative. The United States is in a hurry and asks for "weeks, not months." For the Muslim world, in which Hamas has only two real and disparate supporters (Qatar and the theocracy of Iran), bombing Gaza in March, when Ramadan begins on the 11th, would be an affront that would force answers and ignite the populations (the fear of most Muslim rulers, almost all autocrats). At the moment, Israel flatly rejects deadlines and talks about a "long" war...
Winning peace requires a colossal international effort. No actors are guessed, neither main nor cast. President Joe Biden must strike a balance to unite the Democratic electorate and at the same time not poison the Israeli lobby. Palestine has two invalidated voices (Hamas in Gaza and President Mahmud Abbas in the West Bank). The temptation to agree a peace without major changes, a peace to drag on until the next war, will be great.
War in Gaza and Ukraine
