A brutal urban war is raging in the Donbass, negotiations between Russia and Ukraine are at “zero level” and NATO countries are reportedly discussing for the first time the delivery of heavy weapons from modern Western production, Leopard 2 tanks via Spain. In any case, peace seems a long way off. But now there is a new, interesting proposal.
A new proposal that is now circulating in Berlin has something compelling about it: offering Russian President Vladimir Putin “real” referendums in the Donbass that are internationally controlled. In this way to reach a truce. And then to come to peace in negotiations on Ukraine.
The proposal came from the renowned American military historian and government adviser Edward Luttwak, who first circulated it via Twitter and then via an interview. Luttwak, a strategist with Romanian roots who is valued in the foreign policy community, points to a historical role model that is encouraging. Because reaching peace through referendums has actually worked before.
At the end of the First World War, the borders in Germany, Denmark, Poland, Hungary and Belgium were redrawn after referendums, which were not always peaceful, but mostly worked in the end. In any case, the examples to which Luttwak refers teach which conditions are important. The devil is, now as then, in the details.
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What interest should Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy have in referendums in the Donbass, in the region around Donetsk and Luhansk? According to Luttwak, Putin could sell having snatched this part of the Donbass from Ukrainian “captivity” (according to his interpretation) as a “success”. And Zelenskyj could refer to the principle of democracy, according to which people could choose the country in which they want to live.
Certainly: in these hours and days such a proposal seems far away, because neither Zelenskyj nor Putin have an interest in a ceasefire. Not because Putin wants more than annexing eastern Ukraine. And Zelenskyy not, because that would weaken his negotiating position.
But: The idea of an individual has already made it into big politics – with the Germany-Turkey refugee deal of 2016, which goes back to Gerald Knaus and his “European Stability Offensive” and as a controversial “Merkel Plan” in the history books will stand.
What does the story that Luttwak refers to teach us?
The principle of peacefully redrawing borders after wars between states via referendums worked, for example between Germany and Denmark after the First World War. A large majority of Schleswigers in the north wanted to belong to Denmark, those in the south to Germany. The consequences are still there today.
Robert Habeck, the Federal Minister of Economics, proudly points out that his four sons are more Danish than German. And the South Schleswig Voters’ Association has even been represented in the German Bundestag since the last election. In parliament, its MP Stefan Seidler represents the interests of the Danish minority in Schleswig.
The principle of drawing national borders according to the interests of the people living in the border area also worked in Saarland. In 1935, Germany’s smallest area state decided against France and to belong to Germany with 90 percent approval.
After the First World War, Hungary lost more than 60 percent of its national territory to the surrounding countries, including “German West Hungary”, which is now called Burgenland and belongs to Austria. But the city of Odenburg went to Hungary in a referendum, although it was intended to be the capital of Burgenland. Along with eight surrounding communities, although – how strange – the majority of them voted for Austria.
It was also quite strange in Austria itself. There, in 1919, the government in Vienna first voted for the affiliation of “German Austria” with Germany, and – after the Versailles Treaty had forbidden a unification of Germany and Austria – then again in regional referendums for Salzburg and Tyrol. At that time, this unification failed mainly because of France, which saw its security interests endangered by a Greater German Empire. After declaring the Versailles Treaty null and void in 1937, Hitler forcibly annexed Austria to Germany in 1938.
The case of Upper Silesia at that time also has a lesson for today. Although the Upper Silesians voted about 60:40 to remain in Germany in 1921, this region was divided. The victorious Allied powers ceded the industrial east with its then valuable coal mines to Poland, while the poorer, agrarian west went to Germany.
In Putin’s head: the logic and arbitrariness of an autocrat
The conceivable lesson: In referendums, the rules of the game must be set – and then also observed. The case of East Prussia had established a German revisionism that began as early as the Weimar Republic, experienced its deadly manifestation through Hitler and basically only ended after the Second World War at the beginning of the 1990s with the Two Plus Four Treaty.
Back to the Luttwak: The Ukrainian ambassador Andrij Melnyk shared his thoughts, which were also disseminated in a “Welt” interview, with his 133,516 followers on Twitter. Melnyk was drawn to the American military historian’s war guilt thesis. “Germany caused this war,” claims Luttwak, a friend of the escalation.
If Chancellor Olaf Scholz had announced to Putin immediately before the war that Germany would stop Nord Stream 2 in the event of an attack and deliver weapons to Ukraine, “Putin would very likely not have attacked them”.
It will probably never be known whether Putin would have actually let himself be impressed.
