Daily Times

Even Nato Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg has accepted that the Russia-Ukraine is so deadlocked that it is likely to linger for years. That implies three very important things. One, everybody miscalculated very badly. Russia was wrong to believe that it would take Kyiv in a few days. Ukraine was wrong to expect active help from Nato. And the Americans and Europeans were wrong to think that their sanctions would break Russia very quickly. Two, pretty much everybody is now in unchartered territory. There’s no telling how deeply Moscow and Beijing are now going to cooperate. Already Russia has become China’s number-one oil supplier and Chinese credit lines have become Russia’s financial lifeline.

Europe has been unable to find an alternate gas supply and the Union is actively considering going back to coal; something unthinkable only a few days ago. Runaway inflation caused by the commodity super-cycle, for which the war is largely responsible, has confounded the American Federal Reserve’s monetary policy just when it was raising rates. Now it must engineer a recession, because of the high prices, to control things. And countries like Pakistan, which have nothing to do with the war whatsoever, have been pushed to the limit. If this war lasts another year, a number of them might witness violent regime changes just because of the inflation.

And three, the time has come to debate the future of Nato because it’s clearly no longer just a North Atlantic matter but one that is impacting every corner of the globe. It’s very clear that Moscow will never allow the alliance to expand right into its backyard. And everybody has also realised that the world, America included, cannot deal with the tremors caused by this war for too long. But it has already reached the point where neither side can afford to blink first.

That’s why the only solution is to bring all the principal players of this conflict halfway enough for all of them to blink at once and end this needless war that has pretty much stood the world order on its head. But who’s going to do it? *