In Samuel Beckett’s play Endgame the main character Hamm asks Clov, his servant, “What’s happening?” and Clov replies: “Something is taking its course.” The phrase jolts both characters and the audience into a more active interpretation of the repetition, meaninglessness and futility portrayed by the play up to that point.
If we have reached the Ukraine war’s endgame we need help to interpret what has been happening and what is now taking its course. That task has been made far more difficult by the sharply competing stories framing the war. Too many of those who say it is about international law, territorial integrity, war crimes, freedom and democracy portray the necessary talk of territorial concessions and security guarantees to end it first as taboo, and now as betrayal.
That the war has reached a potential endgame unites many of its interpretative antagonists. Yet they still divide between maximalists and pragmatists on both sides. Maximalists pursue military victory and regime change with narratives of a relentless imperial Russia. Pragmatists focus on scale and power asymmetries, notice changing public attitudes and favour compromises to avoid dangerous victories.
The German sociologist Max Weber, in a 1919 lecture on Politics as a Vocation, distinguished between an ethic of moral conviction and an ethic of responsibility affecting political leaders. Moral conviction refers to core individual beliefs. Responsibility sees state violence as a means to preserve peace for the greater public good. It is the difference between a logic of sentiment and a logic of consequences.
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Three narratives about the war based on moral convictions say it is about international law and territorial integrity; war crimes and genocide; freedom and democracy. They were compellingly woven together during the Biden presidency by US and European advocates of a war to defeat Putin’s imperial Russia, change its regime and punish it for asserting its power against Ukraine.
[ Ukraine and Russia say talks on US peace plan to continue despite Kremlin impasseOpens in new window ]
The narratives placed taboos on those who explored pragmatic deals with the Russians through back channels, and encouraged hawkish biases amplified by social media outrage about appeasement, according to the Irish-American political geographer Gerard Toal.
Trump’s dramatic shift towards Putin – based on crude material interest in Ukraine’s resources and a potential geopolitical deal with Moscow – destroyed the taboo on talks. That blindsided and flummoxed these moral narrators in the US; in Europe their continuing adherents are equally nonplussed yet hold the European Union to the three narratives of moral conviction.
Why the push for peace in Ukraine is failing
They are undoubtedly close to the EU’s founding principles; yet they have little to contribute to the endgame’s messy compromises on territory, security and sovereignty – other than to provide cover while the EU makes its historic shift to strategic autonomy from an unreliable US. Their proclaimed universality is undermined by their numbness to Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza, making them part of western hypocrisy, seen from the global south. That allows Putin to present Russian imperialism spuriously as anti-colonial because it is anti-western.
Overall, the moral conviction maximalist narrative has lost its way and no longer guides actual political practice on Ukraine. The pragmatic, consequentialist narrative offers more insight on public attitudes in Ukraine and Europe. War-weary Ukrainians are anxious to end the fighting by territorial compromises and concessions on Crimea and Donbas; but they are determined to maintain the sovereignty their fight has established over the 80 per cent of Ukraine they control. Elsewhere in Europe, the same firm but finite support exists for Ukraine; it is willing to fund reconstruction, but not to put fighting boots on the ground.
“Ukraine must not lose the war, and Russia must not win it” sums up the better European pragmatic consequentialist approach. Ukraine has secured its sovereignty and path to the EU, Russia many of its war aims. Recognising Russia’s imperial actions and ambitions is a central theme, as Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskiy reminded his Irish hosts. But finding a deal to preserve Ukrainian, European – and Russian – sovereignties during this major geopolitical shift is difficult as both sides seek optimal negotiating positions.
[ Ukraine’s fate hangs in the balance as Zelenskiy receives warm welcome in DublinOpens in new window ]
Hard choices about territory, security, human and language rights, alliances, sanctions, resources, investment funds and intelligence sharing are required with the kind of responsible statecraft now rare among European leaders. It is salutary to be reminded by Denis Staunton that “a draft communique from the Istanbul talks on April 15th, 2022, offered a more robust security guarantee, including the imposition of a no-fly zone over Ukraine in the event of renewed Russian aggression. It did not involve sweeping territorial concessions on Ukraine’s part”, after the deaths of one million Russian and 400,000 Ukrainian soldiers.
Beckett’s play, first performed in 1957, is often seen as bleak and nihilistic. The something that is happening remains undefined when Hamm asks whether “We’re not beginning to ... to mean something?” Clov’s reply – “Ah that’s a good one!” – challenges Europeans leaders to make their statecraft more meaningful at this moment.
