Ukraine’s neutrality is best for Hungary’s peace & security

 

By Magyar Békekör

On its Facebook page, the Hungarian Community for Peace asked its readers to answer the question: What better guarantees Hungary’s security: turning Ukraine into a buffer zone or Ukraine’s neutrality?

The issue is raised by the peace negotiations, since the Russian side wants neutrality, while the Western side wants Ukraine to become a buffer zone between the West and the East. Almost 30,000 people addressed the question, and many answered it.

In the “Let’s talk to achieve results” debate, the Peace Community expressed the following opinion:

Dear Readers!

We are glad that many people answered the question of the Hungarian Peace Community: What do you think guarantees Hungary’s security better, turning Ukraine into a buffer zone or Ukraine’s neutrality?

The question is not a theoretical one, but one posed by life. The Russians want a neutral Ukraine, but the West wants to create a buffer zone between NATO and Russia, keeping Ukraine in its sphere of influence.

Some people answered our question by saying that Ukraine’s NATO membership would be best for Hungary’s security. They ignored the fact that one of the main reasons for the conflict in Ukraine was precisely the fact that NATO wanted to include Ukraine in its ranks. 

The Russian military intervention was precisely triggered by NATO’s rejection of Moscow’s number one security demand, according to which NATO cannot expand to the East and Ukraine cannot be a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Therefore, those who continue to push for Ukraine’s NATO membership would perpetuate a conflict that even NATO’s leading power wants to end. (Trump took Ukraine’s NATO membership off the agenda a year ago.)

Some readers would see the declaration of Ukraine as a buffer zone as the key to our country’s security, because, as they wrote, the Russians must be stopped from occupying Europe. Declaring Ukraine a conflict zone would mean the perpetuation of the confrontation, instead of the mutual security resulting from the compromise. It would not serve the peace or the security of Hungary, because it would be a kind of time bomb in the body of Europe, in our immediate neighborhood. As soon as this bomb explodes and NATO comes face to face with Russia, we could say goodbye to the peace and security of our country. It is part of the picture that the Russians have created conflict zones in the parts of the Donbass bordering Ukraine with the aim of indicating that they do not wish to move further into the areas of Ukraine outside the Donbass. But this does not mean that they have given up on their threefold goal regarding Ukraine: de-Nazification, demilitarization, and declaring Ukraine neutral.

To our question, the vast majority of our readers answered that the peace and security of our country would be best served by Ukraine’s neutrality. 

We agree with them. After all, Ukraine’s neutrality would mean that it would cease to be a source of tension in our neighborhood, and it would have to live in peace and on good terms with both the East and the West. Ukraine’s neutrality must be guaranteed by international law. And such a law depends on a comprehensive East-West compromise. 

Compromise can be reached on the basis of the indivisibility and reciprocity of security, with the unconditional recognition of the equal right to security. The piles were knocked down a long time ago, but NATO did not stick to it. Instead, it expanded to the East, engulfing the former socialist countries and targeting the former Soviet republics as well. That is, NATO violated the principle of the indivisibility of security and strengthened NATO’s security at the expense of Russia’s security. It did this despite the fact that on November 21, 1990, the principle of the indivisibility of security was declared at the summit meeting in Paris of the 34 member states of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) under the title Paris Charter for a New Europe. According to the unanimously adopted document, “security is indivisible and the security of each participating state is inextricably linked with that of all others”. 

And in November 1999, at the OSCE summit in Istanbul, the principle of indivisibility was expanded by stating that states “cannot strengthen their own security at the expense of the security of other states”. If NATO were to stick to the principles it has adopted, it would have to renounce Ukraine and acknowledge that Ukraine is a “no man’s land”. But Ukraine’s neutral status is closely related to the creation of a comprehensive European, Eurasian security system. In such a new European-Eurasian security system, NATO would no longer be able to dictate the terms, but would have to compromise with Russia, China, India and others on peaceful coexistence. In such a system, Ukraine would be demilitarized on the German model after World War II, and it would receive an internationally recognized non-aligned, neutral status. 

He should live on good terms with both the East and the West. We’re not even close today! NATO is trying to tie the mere ceasefire to the condition of sending troops to Ukraine, and it does not even want to hear about demilitarization. NATO is aware of the ripple effect that Ukraine’s neutrality would have on it. Ukrainian demilitarization and neutrality therefore still depend on military coercion.