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Back in 1997, when Canada still had a more or less independent foreign policy, the Canadian government celebrated the signing of the Ottawa Treaty banning the use of anti-personnel landmines. At the time, it was heralded as an extraordinary achievement of Canadian diplomacy, and was a source of great national pride. One might imagine, therefore, that Canadians today would be concerned with potential breaches of a treaty that was once considered the crown jewel of our country’s foreign policy. But it appears not.

This week, the Biden administration announced that it would give anti-personnel landmines to Ukraine. Ukraine, unlike the United States (and also Russia), is a signatory to the Ottawa Treaty, and thus would be in serious breach of its international obligations were it ever to use the weapons provided.

This is something that should surely be of concern to the Canadian media and the Trudeau government. Yet although the news was the leading headline in much of the international press, topping, for instance, the BBC website, it has scarcely been noticed here. Google searches indicate no article on the topic published by the CBC, and no statements on the matter by Canadian ministers or officials. It would appear that what was once our pride and joy no longer interests anybody.

The decision to give landmines was not the only escalation of the war in Ukraine to be announced this week by the US. Another was the granting of permission to Ukraine to use American (and also British) long-range missiles against targets inside Russia. Almost immediately, Ukraine carried out a couple of strikes with American supplied ATACMS missiles and British-supplied Storm Shadows on targets in Russia’s Bryansk and Kursk provinces.

In response, Russia has now fired what President Vladimir Putin said was an experimental hypersonic medium-range ballistic missile with multiple warheads at a Ukrainian industrial facility in the city of Dnipro. Such missiles travel so fast—three kilomtres per second—that it is almost impossible to intercept them. They can also carry nuclear warheads, and their use can be seen therefore as a warning to the West and Ukraine not to escalate further.

Ukrainian media claim that it took less than five minutes for the Russian ballistic missile to fly 790 kilometres and hit Yuzhmash plant in the city of Dnipro.

By doing this, the Kremlin is demonstrating what a nuclear strike against anywhere in Europe could look like. It is… pic.twitter.com/g4kdPtNy4C

— Leonid Ragozin (@leonidragozin) November 21, 2024

All this raises questions about the West’s policy of incremental escalation in Ukraine, specifically what goals it is meant to achieve, whether those goals are actually achievable, and whether the cost of pursuing those goals may be so high as to render them unwise. At present, it is very hard to discern what the goals are. Defeating Russia militarily is now considered almost impossible by all but the most hardline pro-Ukrainians. Instead, it appears that the US and its Western allies are trying merely to slow down the rate of Russian advances and to increase the costs of the war to Russia in the hope that somehow or other this will compel the Russian government to moderate its demands against Ukraine and accept a compromise peace.

What that compromise peace would consist of, and exactly how one would go about negotiating it, remains, however, a mystery. Furthermore, it’s not obvious that the policy of incremental escalation will even induce a more compromising mindset in Russia’s rulers rather than further strengthen their conviction that the war must be pursued until the point of final victory (whatever that means). In short, continued escalation along the lines of this past week may merely increase the risks involved in the war while not serving any useful role in ending it.

Had Kamala Harris won the US presidential election earlier this month, it is likely that this policy would have continued under her leadership. The return of Donald Trump to the White House in January offers instead at least a glimmer of hope that America may change its policy from one of repeated but rather aimless escalation to one of de-escalation or even war termination.

Trump himself is known to be keen to see the war come to an end and to be less sympathetic to the Ukrainian cause than Joe Biden. Much, though, depends on those around the president-elect. In his first term in office, Trump surrounded himself with officials who did their best to undermine some of his foreign policy initiatives. For instance, Trump’s decision to withdraw US troops from Syria led to the resignation of some officials and to others deliberately misleading the president about the number of troops remaining in that country.

It remains to be seen if this scenario will repeat itself with regards to Ukraine, but the signs so far suggest that Trump 2.0 team will be rather more in line with its leader than was the case between 2016 and 2020. Incoming officials such as Vice President-elect J.D. Vance, Secretary of State nominee Marco Rubio, and Secretary of Defense nominee Pete Hegseth can be viewed as foreign policy hawks, but their hawkishness is largely directed at China and Iran, not at Russia. On November 6, for instance, Rubio said that: “I think the Ukrainians have been incredibly brave and strong in standing up to Russia. But at the end of the day, what we are funding here is a stalemate war, and it needs to be brought to a conclusion, or that country is going to be set back 100 years.”

It is likely, therefore, that the Trump administration will seek to start negotiations to end the war. Trump and his team also seem willing to countenance a settlement that leaves a substantial portion of Ukrainian territory in Ukrainian hands and thus falls far short of a Ukrainian victory. What is not clear, though, is whether they are willing to offer Russia something that it will accept (which goes beyond territory and includes Ukrainian neutrality), and whether they are willing to twist the arm of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to force him to agree to whatever is being proposed, by for instance threatening to withdraw all aid if he refuses.

On the one hand, Trump strikes one as the kind of person who in principle might be quite willing to pursue the latter course of action. On the other hand, stories emerging from the US about what those around him might propose as a peace plan suggests that they do not fully grasp what is necessary to bring Russia onside. There have, for instance, been reports that people close to Trump are proposing a 20-year freeze on NATO membership for Ukraine. But this falls far short of what Russia is demanding, and is unlikely to be accepted.

It could be, therefore, that the Trump presidency will begin with a push for peace that will soon fail, after which everything will revert to what it was before. That said, if the Democratic Party had retained power, it’s improbable that we would be talking about a push for peace at all. Some chance is better than none, and for that at least we should be grateful.

Original article: canadiandimension.com