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Toward Common Security: A New Paradigm for the Political Resolution of the Ukraine Crisis

The report argues that only a shift from exclusive and absolute security toward common and relative security can make a political settlement of the Ukraine crisis durable and acceptable to all parties.

着眼共同安全：政治解决乌克兰危机的新范式

Shanghai Institutes for International Studies · By Zhao Long, Feng Shuai, Xue Chen, Su Liuqiang, Li Hongmei, Tan Chenyi · 1 January 2015 · read the original in Chinese →

Toward Common Security: A New Paradigm for the Political Resolution of the Ukraine Crisis着眼共同安全：政治解决乌克兰危机的新范式

赵隆封帅薛晨苏刘强李红梅谈晨逸2025年8月15日，美国总统特朗普与俄罗斯总统普京在美国阿拉斯加举行会晤，围绕乌克兰危机的政治解决进行深入探讨。在乌克兰危机延宕超过3年之际，相关政治进程有望迈向关键转折点。

Zhao Long, Feng Shuai, Xue Chen, Su Liuqiang, Li Hongmei, Tan Chenyi. On August 15, 2025, U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin held a meeting in Alaska, in the United States, where they engaged in in-depth discussions on a political resolution to the Ukraine crisis. As the crisis has dragged on for more than three years, the related political process may be approaching a critical turning point.

作为冷战结束后欧洲大陆爆发的最大规模地缘政治和军事冲突，乌克兰危机不仅揭示了国家间战略矛盾的对抗升级，也暴露出现行地区安全秩序、安全治理体系的结构性问题，深刻影响着大国间的博弈态势，导致全球和地区政治安全秩序进入深度重构期。本研究报告围绕危机走势和外溢效应，利益攸关方的认知鸿沟和诉求差异，重建和平的关键分歧和制度困境开展评估，尝试提出着眼于共同安全新范式的中国视角。

As the largest geopolitical and military conflict to erupt on the European continent since the end of the Cold War, the Ukraine crisis has not only revealed the escalating confrontation of strategic contradictions among states, but has also exposed structural problems in the existing regional security order and security-governance system. It has profoundly affected the dynamics of great-power competition, pushing the global and regional political-security order into a period of deep reconstruction. This research report assesses the trajectory of the crisis and its spillover effects, the cognitive gaps and divergent demands among stakeholders, and the key differences and institutional predicaments involved in rebuilding peace, and seeks to put forward a Chinese perspective oriented toward a new paradigm of common security.

The report argues that, as the Trump administration in the United States has changed strategy and is now forcefully pressing for a ceasefire, the battlefield contest between Russia and Ukraine has shifted from “total war” to “limited war,” and from a quest for military decision to a struggle over negotiating leverage in which fighting is used to pressure talks. The multiple spillover effects of the protracted crisis continue to emerge. At present, the parties differ markedly in how they rank the goals of promoting a “frozen conflict” and ensuring a “lasting peace.” The collision of divergent security logics has produced structural contradictions; the realities on the battlefield have made any ceasefire mechanism fragile; international judicial remedies face institutional limitations; and the conceptual clash between visions of a “European security” architecture and a “Eurasian security” architecture means that Ukraine still faces many difficulties in rebuilding peace.

The report also holds that a political resolution of the Ukraine crisis cannot be separated from exploration of a “new paradigm of common security.” It is necessary to enrich the levels and pathways of the political process, advancing both a temporary ceasefire and a “package” negotiating plan; to find the greatest common denominator on whether various negotiation processes, including ceasefire talks and supervisory peacekeeping, security guarantees, and postwar arrangements, should proceed “in tandem” or “step by step”; to uphold principles on issues of sovereignty and territorial integrity while also exploring phased solutions by nonmilitary means; to innovate methods for ceasefire supervision and peacekeeping operations, and to open discussions on postwar arrangements and reconstruction at the appropriate time. It is also necessary to build two-way security guarantees that combine hard and soft elements, encouraging all parties to devise defense-oriented institutional arrangements that include both “security guarantees” and “security commitments,” and to draw on the core ideas of Asian security initiatives, Asian security models, and the Global Security Initiative, so as to renew thinking from “exclusive security” to “common security,” and to move institutional exploration from the pursuit of “absolute security” toward “relative security.”

Looking ahead, all parties need to change fixed habits of thinking in terms of “losers” and “winners,” abide by the purposes of the United Nations Charter, respect such important principles as state sovereignty and territorial integrity, the peaceful settlement of international disputes, and noninterference in internal affairs, redefine the meaning and scope of the “indivisibility of security,” balance the legitimacy of NATO’s continued existence against the spillover effects of its “open door” policy, and move beyond a zero-sum mentality to discuss a fair, lasting, binding agreement acceptable to all sides, ultimately rebuilding a balanced, effective, and sustainable European security framework on the basis of a consciousness of “security community.”