On February 12, President Trump revealed he had talked to Putin about a peace deal in Ukraine, and Defense Secretary Hegseth gave a speech about what a peace settlement would not entail (NATO membership, US protection, return of occupied territories).
This left Ukrainians reeling with feelings of betrayal and being steamrolled, while European leaders looked shellshocked at finding themselves sidelined. I thought the right moment had arrived to finally write a long-planned article, on inclusive, people-centered peace-making, with my co-author Wolfgang Sporrer.
The next morning, I woke up to the inconceivable news that Wolfgang had died in his (and my) hometown, Vienna. The cause of his death, three days earlier on February 10, has not been publicized. He had been posting pictures from his latest assignment in the Middle East just days ago, along with his usual pithy comments on matters of war and peace.
In Europe, where the canceling of experts arguing for a negotiated peace between Russia and Ukraine has been far more ruthless than in the US, only a few brave souls have been sticking out their neck. Wolfgang was easily the most knowledgeable among them, having sat in on the consultations under the Minsk accords after 2015 and implemented the OSCE’s monitoring along the pre-2022 frontline in Ukraine, and later teaching conflict management, negotiation and mediation at the Hertie School, Germany’s premiere foreign policy school. He was also optimistic and constructive to a fault, convinced that peace was always possible if one approached it with a seasoned negotiator’s toolkit and attitude. His last article was titled “No War is Inevitable”.
Wolfgang first contacted me in summer 2022 on Twitter, as it was. Later, I realized there were curious parallels in our lives. We are not just both from Vienna, but our homes are just blocks from each other in the city’s 7th district. We had both studied law at Vienna University and Belgium’s University of Louvain-la-Neuve and then international relations in the US. Wolfgang served as the head of the human dimension unit in the OSCE special monitoring mission in Ukraine, and later at the EU delegation in Moscow.
In both places, I might have run into him when I dropped by to raise awareness about the human rights and peace issues I had found in my work with activists in remote regions. But I never did. I would have remembered a fellow Austrian, larger than life, with a twinkle in his eyes and an unending supply of shrewd anecdotes and thoughtful observations about the business of making peace, told in his old-school, gregarious Viennese accent.
What brought us together were the lessons we had learned from communities affected by armed conflict, he as a senior OSCE diplomat, I while working with grassroots women activists. Wolfgang took peace seriously, as an essential objective that should inform our grand strategies, as the fundamental condition for a good life and as a hands-on, skilled practice.
Wolfgang loved his craft. He stood out for always looking at peace from the point of view of average people: how they are affected by armed conflict, how their lives are in danger, and how we can restore their safety and security. He began and ended every conversation about war with ordinary people.
When asked about his ideas for ending the war in Ukraine, he declined to offer a peace plan and instead focused on process. He looked at it as a mediator: how do you get the parties to agree to sit at the same table? That would already be a first successful step. He kept reminding people that Ukraine and Russia were talking every day, at the Istanbul hub of the Black Sea Grain Deal. Wolfgang was a glass-half-full kind of guy, spotting openings and opportunity where others see only violent deadlock.
Last year, he proposed we write an article together, about inclusive, people-centered peace-making. We both thought this approach was curiously missing from discussions about ending the war in Ukraine, despite being recognized by many governments, the UN and academics as the gold standard for making peace: not only is inclusive peace-making better at ending armed conflict, with settlements that last longer and lower relapse rates.
It also produces a better peace, one in which countries rebuild faster, communities thrive more and enjoy greater safety and reconciliation. Examples of the sturdy settlements this approach produces include Northern Ireland in 1998 and Colombia in 2016.
How does inclusive peace-making (or inclusive diplomacy) achieve all this? By placing the human security, well-being and rights of people living in conflict-affected territories at the center of war-ending diplomacy. Peace has to deliver for the people who suffered from war. We achieve this by bringing these people right into the peace process, to the negotiation table. There, their concerns can be heard, put on the agenda and addressed, and they can envision creative solutions to intractable problems.
As a result, communities emerging from war will not be plagued by typical post-conflict dysfunction, deprivation and injustice that translate into friction and a renewed conflict. Ordinary people at the table and bread-and-butter issues on the agenda make the atmosphere calmer and more constructive overall.
Because men will be at any negotiating table by default, inclusive diplomacy means including women: comparative data from 40 conflicts shows that when women were part of peace processes, there was a far higher likelihood that an agreement will be reached, that agreement was more likely to be implemented and it was 35 percent more likely to last at least 15 years. These numbers are so remarkable that anyone serious about making peace cannot afford to ignore them.
While Western governments seem to have forgotten all about inclusive diplomacy and people-centered peace-making, countries from the Global South did not. A range of governments brokered prisoner exchanges. Last summer, Qatar prepared to mediate a partial ceasefire to halt attacks on energy infrastructure in both Ukraine and Russia, to protect civilians during the upcoming winter, though the attempt collapsed when Ukraine launched its incursion into Russia’s Kursk region. When China and Brazil invited others from the Global South to endorse their peace plan in September last year, it was updated to reference “inclusive diplomacy”.
Last month, Oleksyi Arestovych, one-time advisor of Zelensky and now one of his harshest critics, talked on one of his wildly popular YouTube streams about how any ceasefire or peace agreement would need to address everyday problems caused by war, occupation and displacement: regulate free movement of people, goods and services between territories occupied by Russia and those controlled by Ukraine, the mutual recognition of vital records and diplomas earned by young people on either side, protect the rights and interests of those forced to leave property behind and those buying such abandoned homes.
Government, he said, sounding like the aspiring presidential candidate he is, has to exist for the people, not the other way around.
I never got to write that article about inclusive, people-centered peace-making with Wolfgang. In this current moment, with Europe’s ruling elites aghast at the specter of peace and Ukrainians feeling betrayed and abandoned, he would have looked for openings to do things right, to build a good peace. He was fearless, brilliant and original, kind and supportive, and one of the most persuasive proponents of peace and diplomacy in Europe. Rest in peace, Wolfgang.
