I have a theory — which President Biden is doing his best to disprove — that the older one is the less likely one is to assume that any dispute between Russia and Ukraine is something the rest of us ought to be forcibly sticking our noses into.
To me, with my background in visits to the USSR before the fall of the wall and possibly even more relevantly, of study (in a high alcove of the CU Library) of the expansion of the Russian empire in the nineteenth century, this looks much more like a complicated civil war than any straightforward clash of east-west worldviews. On some levels a bit England-Scotlandy.
Perhaps Biden is old enough to have some version of those never-updated 1930s goggles on.
Yet during the Cold War everyone seemed happy to agree the neutrality of Austria, a nation that arguably was more naturally aligned westwards. Why not repeat the trick?
As opposed to say, repeating Khrushchev's Cuban gambit.
And why not accede to Putin's most basic demand — never to offer Ukraine membership of the competing club. Does NATO really want to assume that level of premium risk anyway?
There are, I suppose, some strategic considerations given the present state of global geopolitics. John Lewis Gaddis, a recognised authority on such matters, has a handful of historical strategic moments for us to usefully ponder here.
For example, he flags up the relatively advanced age of Pericles on the eve of the Peloponnesian War as a key factor in his apparent intransigence — or stubbornness.
The Athenian leader took a number of steps which alarmed the Spartans, who made their revocation a key condition for avoiding war.
Right to the end the Spartans tried to continue the jaw jaw, but in the end Pericles refused to even receive their emissaries. Gaddis sees this as the end product of the flexible younger Pericles — a fox — maturing into a hedgehog incapable of relenting.
"Pericles at first steered with flows — a strategy of persuasion. When not all were persuaded, though, he began steering against flows — a strategy of confrontation." (On Grand Strategy.)
In 431 the Spartans invaded and two years later Pericles was dead of plague, leaving his fellow Athenians to the ignominy of defeat.
Gaddis draws parallels between the uncompromising Megarian Decree issued by Pericles with the US response to the invasion of South Korea on June 25, 1950. Truman understood this as a formal test of American resolve, one which dismantled the existing walls separating vital from peripheral interests.
"The heat of emotions requires only an instant to melt abstractions drawn from years of cool reflection. Decades devoid of reflection may follow." (On Grand Strategy)
And Korea was undoubtedly on the path to Vietnam.
Biden's own line in the sand appears to have been strong enough to provoke the Bear, but surely not strong enough to make any difference to the fate of Ukraine should Putin press ahead.
As Boris suggests...
3 comments:
They have a complicated relationship. Stalin starved how many millions of Ukrainians in the 30s? And how many millions of Ukrainians were happy to join forces with the Nazis? Very, very complicated.
NATO aren't going to send forces into Ukraine to help and nor should they. They will probably hope that any conflict is drawn out, bloody and costly. No doubt they'll supply the weapons to help that happen. But ultimately, is NATO even the main issue? https://twitter.com/samagreene/status/1491837537949736975
But the West is right to react strongly. We've been operating a policy of appeasement for a decade or more. Putin has deployed biological and radioactive weapons in the UK and had dissidents shot in other European cities. He's clearly trying to rebuild the Soviet Union 2.0. He's been meddling in western democratic processes. He's been taking chunks of Georgia and Crimea.
There's little point negotiating with him. The West needs to lead force the narrative. Europe needs to supply energy from elsewhere, permanently. It'll be all the worse if we fail to confront the issue.
I'd agree that a test of resolve is long overdue, but this may not be the right test.
Biden soon, and Putin not long after will be gone and this is a combustive part of the geopolitical situation that we are all going to have to live with.
Putin surely cannot imagine a dash to Kiev would be slam dunk for CCCP V2.0?
Putin could be around another decade, don’t you think? Anyway, we hope that he steps back from this abyss. But if there is no consequence to bombing and invading a major European country, then what do we stand for. We can choose who we mix with, and we should have chosen to disconnect from Russia some time ago. Putin’s regime is more akin to a mob than a government. One could also argue that we’ve been at war with Russia for quite a few years already. It’s a very low level affair, but it’s there.
Im particularly pissed than my household energy bill has doubled and that my plans to visit Chernobyl this year are probably off. But there are folk out there with bigger problems.
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