Simon Rorschach examines how the Abu Dhabi negotiations have become a struggle over Russia’s place in Europe, American hegemony, and the future of the multipolar world order.
The negotiations in Abu Dhabi revealed a simple truth about the war in Ukraine: the conflict cannot be settled without addressing the political order that produced it. Diplomats spoke of progress, yet the guns continued to fire. Russia and Ukraine agreed in principle to a major prisoner exchange, but the central questions of territory and security remained unresolved. This was no surprise. For decades, the West treated European security as a system in which Washington made the important decisions, Brussels supplied the moral language, and Moscow was expected to accept the result. That arrangement is approaching its historical limits. The war in Ukraine has become a struggle over whether Europe will remain the western outpost of American power or become part of a wider continental order in which several great powers possess legitimate interests.
