Ecological Path to Peace Is Possible in Ukraine
Publisher: Foreign Policy Research Institutute
Author(s): Saleem Ali
Date: 2022
Topics: Conflict Prevention
Countries: Ukraine
Current Western policy has framed Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as an assault on “world order.” While the term has no international definition and is widely contested, at its core “world order” connotes a view where economically or militarily dominant nation-states police the planet. Putin and NATO are both captivated by a Cold War geopolitics of order that is no longer relevant to complex changes in environmental and social systems on our planet. We need to move from such a narrow view of World Order to a more naturalized vision of what I call “Earthly Order.”
The author defines this term “Earthly Order” (in the context of the eponymous new book from Oxford University Press) as governance that considers the constraints of planetary level natural processes when defining social, economic, and political systems. Thus, border delineation and enforcement of any flows of financial and human capital and ecological processes become intertwined in decision-making. Such an approach opens the way for developing what are called “superordinate goals” in psychological research which can be a highly effective mechanism for conflict resolution.
Instead of making this a hard fight between whether Ukraine’s border should be delineated along the old Ukrainian SFSR, or based on ethnic majoritarianism, we need to consider the underlying resource factors behind this invasion.