I've created an app with the goal to: Crowdsource creation of Ukraine/Russia peace agreement.<p><a href="https://peaceagreement.org/" rel="nofollow">https://peaceagreement.org/</a><p>How did it come about? - I'm worried about the rapidly escalatory nature of Ukraine/Russia conflict. Western countries are taking many measures to stop the war, but all measures seem to be alike - they all escalate and deepen the divide between the nuclear armed military powers. Meanwhile, innocent people in Ukraine are suffering now, innocent people in Russia are going to suffer soon due to sanctions and I cannot see how adding more suffering to the World is good and is bringing us closer to peace. I wondered if an unconventional approach to trying to resolve the conflict could be of any benefit...<p>You can see a mock example of a peace agreement here:<p><a href="https://peaceagreement.org/perfect-emblematic-fulfilling-clever-world" rel="nofollow">https://peaceagreement.org/perfect-emblematic-fulfilling-cle...</a><p>I've committed $1000 to the best reasoned peace agreement anyone comes up with. If you have geopolitical understanding of the situation and can construct an objective and convincing agreement, please create a new one by pressing "Create new agreement button" in the landing page. The app has just been launched and not many agreement proposals have been submitted yet, so the competition for $1000 is not fierce currently.
I appreciate your concern, but why would anyone take this seriously? In particular, why would crowdsourcing a foreign policy agreement be a good idea? Would you crowdsource the plan for your open heart surgery? Because this affects a lot more lives than that.
I love the idea and love your implementation.<p>However, from the perspective of Ukraine, Russia cannot be trusted. This is due broken security assurances made less than 30 years ago [1]. Actually, If I were to speculate, I am not sure any other country in the world will trust Russia or any other 'big state' on 'security assurances' after this conflict.<p>[1] - <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budapest_Memorandum_on_Security_Assurances" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budapest_Memorandum_on_Securit...</a>
<a href="https://twitter.com/thingskatedid/status/1498803126765191173" rel="nofollow">https://twitter.com/thingskatedid/status/1498803126765191173</a><p>> hello i'm from the tech industry. today i'm going to explain how to solve all problems with whatever it is you do! based on my experience of writing software! which means i'm qualified to solve any problem in any field. i have checked this with zero people
Public opinion is the last thing on the mind of the leadership. If they cared what we thought, there wouldn't be a war in the first place.<p>Nice idea though.
I'm not sure what a peace treaty would even look like, except essentially Ukraine surrendering to Putin's demands.<p>It is not as if Russia and Ukraine were two bitter enemies, locked in a death-match.<p>Ukraine is extremely close to Russia historically, culturally, etc, but they chose democracy, and were moving more and more toward a western style open and free society.<p>It seems that was too much for the Putin regime in Russia. Ukraine must now be brought back into the fold, and never again be allowed to stray.<p>Honestly, the relationship seems to be more like an abusive marriage than two independent states.<p>Is a peace treaty even really possible, or meaningful, with that underlying grievance? Perhaps only if Ukraine promises never to stray ever again, and to always be there when Putin demands it, etc. Or if Putin is brought to his knees with sanctions or other means.
The most interesting aspect to this project, to me, is that if you try as hard as you can to come up with something, I am almost certain that there's no way an agreement can be even remotely reached given the known positions of Ukraine and Russia... I would be incredibly happy if someone actually proposed something that could be acceptable to both parties... failing to do so is like admitting that war was the only way (not saying was is justified, just that given the known positions of both parties, that if one of them was willing to sacrifice themselves by entering a war with the other party - and we knew Russia was willing - and even then, no agreement could be reached, that we couldn't have expected any other outcome).
I really appreciate the initiative but I dislike the form: should be way simpler. This may justify the low participation on such a relevant issue.<p>Each informal proposal could have maximum of 10(?) items/lines to be easy to reason about. Russians/Ukranians/Other people could vote, results would be percentual. (e.g.: 56% of Russian voters, 32% Ukranians and 65% other voters agree with this proposal).<p>I believe, the real negotiators would take a look as source of ideas, the media has been fundamental in this war.<p>Simplistically, as an outsider, I would propose:<p>1. Immediate cease fire.<p>2. Crimea and separatist territories get independence and are free to join Russia.<p>3. Ukraine joins EU.<p>4. Ukraine stays neutral and out of NATO.
The problem is much deeper than Ukraine vs Russia.
It is a proxy war. And if you see a war then start looking for money.
When you realized how big those money, then the only solution might be:<p>Put in octagon may be 50-100 maximum people, those who ruling the world and leave them there to fight as gladiators until only one left. If you can find a way how to corner them in octagon, I will commit much more than $1000... but time will pass and there would be another "leaders" who will want exclusive world power, so it is circle of live... unfortunately
Sidenote, but that's a really nice system you've got there. I'd consider making it available as a debate platform for any topic, or release it as an open source project. Nice work!
While the idea is a noble one, this is not going to be a viable option.<p>Let's look at the opening negotiating positions. Russia wants the effective end of Ukraine as a sovereign state. Ukraine... doesn't. Well, so much for finding compromise there.<p>The goal of war is to make the situation such that one side realizes it can't achieve its political aims. Here again, both sides have reasons to be hopeful. From Russia's perspective, an operation that wins successful control of much of the country would hopefully make Ukraine realize that its existence as a sovereign state is already de facto impossible, so it might as well commit to that in a peace treaty. But Ukraine can point out that the war has not been going well for Russia, and the longer the war drags on, the less likely Russia will be able to reach that culminating point. Wars can simmer on for decades without concluding if things stalemate--the Korean War is 70 years long without a peace treaty and still ticking.<p>If your concern is that nuclear weapons would be involved, then this initiative is even more useless. There is no geopolitical reason for Russia to be firing nukes (and NATO isn't going to militarily intervene in large part to avoid giving anybody a reason to fire nukes), so if those start coming, <i>Russia is already not acting with concern for geopolitics</i>, so the foremost geopolitical expert is utterly <i>useless</i> here.
To create a new agreement you can go to:<p><a href="https://peaceagreement.org/new" rel="nofollow">https://peaceagreement.org/new</a>
A word of advice (offtopic, sorry): your text loses credibility because you repeat the link <a href="https://peaceagreement.org/" rel="nofollow">https://peaceagreement.org/</a> 4 times. It comes across as spammy and gets in the way of your story. You should have that link once at the top of your thread. (The other link is ok, since it's pointing to a different page.)<p>You can edit your text above, or I can edit it for you and fix the formatting to fit HN conventions a bit better (I'm an admin here.) If you want me to do that, let me know.
Have you considered implementing the peace agreement as an NFT?<p>The blockchain can revolutionize peace or even armistice talks, allowing for traceability of signatures, terms and military positions.