One of the more unsettling aspects of the Russian war on Ukraine is the extent to which Russian authorities, including President Putin, have referred to nuclear weapons. The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists has produced a timeline of such statements and there were several statements that I missed when they were made. References to nuclear weapons is gratuitous: no state forgets that another has nuclear weapons when a conflict occurs. The question is why the Russians are making sure that no one forgets that there are Russian nuclear weapons.
“US intelligence say Russia has a theory called “escalate to de-escalate” if it is in a conflict with Nato.
“This involves doing something dramatic – such as using a tactical weapon on the battlefield, or as a demonstration somewhere – or threatening to do so.
“The idea is to frighten the other side into backing down.
“The concern is that if Putin feels cornered and that his strategy in Ukraine is failing, he could use tactical nuclear weapons as a ‘game changer’, to break a stalemate or avoid defeat.
“But the situation would likely have to get worse in Ukraine – or back in Russia – for him to consider this.
“James Acton, a nuclear expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Pace in Washington DC, says: ‘I am legitimately worried that in that circumstance Putin might use a nuclear weapon, most likely on the ground in Ukraine to terrify everyone and get his way. We are not at that point yet.'”
“Dr Heather Williams, nuclear expert at Kings College London, says one problem is that it is unclear what ‘winning’ in Ukraine would look like for Putin – and thus what might drive Russia to use a nuclear weapon.”
This doctrine treats nuclear weapons almost like they are similar to conventional weapons. The exception rests in the eyes of the rest of the world–the Russians rely on shock and fear to accomplish their aims and are less interested in the actual damage done by a nuclear blast. I think that the Russians are completely mistaken in their projected reactions. It may be the case that conventional weapons can cause more damage than some tactical nuclear weapons, but that disregards the profound psychological and political reactions, not only on the part of the rest of the world but also within the Russian domestic population.
There is, however, another aspect to this strategy which troubles me a great deal. The Russians are making these nuclear threats in order to prevent substantial help to Ukraine from other powers. What is unknown is the level of help that would trigger the use of tactical nuclear weapons. This ambiguity has two effects. The first is to introduce a high level of restraint on the allies of any attacked state. This outcome could be the intended effect of the threat, depending on how risk adverse the allies are and how high the stakes to the allies actually are. But there are very few objectives that warrant the risk of a nuclear attack so the level of restraint is probably high. This condition gives the attacking state a veto over alliance cohesion and compensates for any disadvantage the attacking state may have in conventional power.
The second consequence of the ambiguity is is increases the risk of miscalculation. Does a tank tip the balance? A jet fighter? Even the leaders of the attacking power do not have a clear idea of what the tipping point may be. Introducing the prospect of a fuzzy “red line” only makes the situation more unstable.
A staunch supporter of Russian President Putin, Timofey Sergeytsev, has written extensively for RIA Novosti and one of his more recent pieces is bone-chilling. It has been difficult to determine what Russian objectives in Ukraine actually are and even more difficult to determine the political objectives of the sustained bombing of civilian centers. But Sergeytsev articulates objectives that are truly horrific and, if they represent the thinking of President Putin, causes me to reconsider my opposition to a more extensive NATO defense of Ukraine. Sergeytsev actually considers the annihilation of the state and nation of Ukraine to be appropriate objectives:
“The Nazis who took up arms should be destroyed to the maximum on the battlefield. No significant distinction should be made between APU and the so-called national battalions, as well as the territorial defense that joined these two types of military formations. All of them are equally involved in extreme cruelty against the civilian population, equally guilty of the genocide of the Russian people, do not comply with the laws and customs of war. War criminals and active Nazis should be exemplarily and exponentially punished. There must be a total lustration. Any organizations that have associated themselves with the practice of Nazism have been liquidated and banned. However, in addition to the top, a significant part of the masses, which are passive Nazis, accomplices of Nazism, are also guilty. They supported and indulged Nazi power. The just punishment of this part of the population is possible only as bearing the inevitable hardships of a just war against the Nazi system, carried out with the utmost care and discretion in relation to civilians. Further denazification of this mass of the population consists in re-education, which is achieved by ideological repression (suppression) of Nazi attitudes and strict censorship: not only in the political sphere, but also necessarily in the sphere of culture and education….
“Denazification can only be carried out by the winner, which implies (1) his absolute control over the denazification process and (2) the power to ensure such control. In this respect, a denazified country cannot be sovereign. The denazifying state – Russia – cannot proceed from a liberal approach with regard to denazification. The ideology of the denazifier cannot be disputed by the guilty party subjected to denazification. Russia’s recognition of the need to denazify Ukraine means the recognition of the impossibility of the Crimean scenario for Ukraine as a whole. However, this scenario was not possible in 2014 in the rebellious Donbass either. Only eight years of resistance to Nazi violence and terror led to internal cohesion and a conscious unambiguous mass refusal to maintain any unity and connection with Ukraine.
“The terms of denazification can in no way be less than one generation, which must be born, grow up and reach maturity under the conditions of denazification.
“Denazification will inevitably also be a de-Ukrainization – a rejection of the large-scale artificial inflation of the ethnic component of self-identification of the population of the territories of historical Little Russia and New Russia, begun by the Soviet authorities.”
Such language can justify anything and suggests that there are some elements in the Russian decision-making process that believe that the complete annihilation of Ukraine is justified.
If this is true, then NATO has to consider stronger measures to defend the Ukrainian population. I still would not entertain sending any troops into the conflict. But the situation is becoming as horrific as any humanitarian crisis that I have witnessed in my life. No state should be allowed to bomb a people with impunity. Perhaps it is time for NATO to supply Ukraine with planes that Ukrainian pilots can fly.
The Lancet has published a peer-reviewed article entitled “National responsibility for ecological breakdown: a fair-shares assessment of resource use, 1970–2017“. The study is highly innovative and uses a measure of resource consumption that uses “an equal fair-share basis, in keeping with the principle of ecological commons”. First, the study establishes a level of resource consumption that is sustainable over the long run (it calls that level a “sustainability corridor”–a wretched term):
“Industrial ecologists have proposed that a sustainable boundary for global resource use might be around 50 billion tonnes per year. Global resource use exceeded this level in 1997. This level is generally considered to be an upper-limit boundary; Bringezu proposes a target sustainability corridor of about 25–50 billion tonnes per year (Gt/a). Global resource use exceeded 25 Gt/a in 1970.”
The study then divides total global resource consumption by the population of each country.
These assumptions are highly contestable, starting with the assumption that everyone in the world shares the same definition of a desirable standard of living. Furthermore, the study ignores the political significance of territorial boundaries which has a powerful effect on how resources are determined to be “ours” or “theirs”. But the study is only interested in assessing what a “fair” consumption level might actually be assuming that everyone ought to have an equal claim to global resources. As such, the study offers a provocative way to think about resources consumption.
The study is certainly consistent with a globalist view of resource consumption: the rich consume much more than the poor.
“Nearly 2·5 trillion tonnes of materials were extracted and used globally from 1970–2017, with high-income and upper–middle-income countries using the vast majority of the resources. Of this, 1·1 trillion tonnes were in excess of the sustainable corridor. High-income countries (according to the World Bank classification) were collectively responsible for 74% of cumulative excess material use, and upper–middle-income countries were responsible for 25% of cumulative excess material use. Lower-middle-income countries and low-income countries were collectively responsible for less than 1%.”
The chart below shows how egregious the difference between rich and poor actually is (one has to look closely for the consumption of the low-income states in yellow–that value can be seen in the lower left-hand corner of the graph as a smidgen).
The conclusions of the study are stark:
“The fair-shares approach articulated here offers a novel method for quantifying national responsibility for ecological breakdown. High-income countries, which represent only 16% of the world population, are responsible for 74% of resource use in excess of fair shares and are therefore the primary drivers of global environmental degradation, representing a process of ecological colonisation.
“Furthermore, the majority of the ecological pressure from excess consumption in rich nations is outsourced to poorer nations. According to a recent analysis, more than 50% of excess consumption in rich nations is net appropriated from poorer nations in the Global South.
“This appropriation not only causes ecological damage in poorer nations, but depletes them of the material resources that they could otherwise use to provide for human needs and expand their sovereign industrial capacity.
“Our results show that high-income nations need to urgently scale down aggregate resource use to sustainable levels. On average, resource use needs to decline by at least 70% to reach the sustainable range. Such reductions will require strong legislation on both domestic extraction and material footprints. The European Parliament recently took steps in this direction by calling on the European Commission to adopt binding targets to reduce resource footprints by 2030 and bring them within planetary boundaries by 2050.
Share of responsibility for excess resource use by region, 1970–2017
Gasoline prices in the US have increased dramatically over the last few months. The chart below reflects the price of crude oil stored in Cushing Oklahoma as recorded by the US Energy Information Administration.
The chart indicates that the current price of oil in the US is not at its highest level in recent years (and, corrected for inflation, is significantly lower than it was during the oil embargoes of 1973 and 1979). It also shows that the higher price is likely more noticeable because of the very low prices in early 2020. Nonetheless, the high price today has become a political problem for many in the US.
There have been a variety of explanations for the price increase. Some blame oil shortages caused by the sanctions against the sale of Russian oil. Others point to environmental regulations in the US, particularly with respect to building pipelines (the XL pipeline is often mentioned even though that oil was never meant for US domestic consumption). But the Dallas Fed did a survey of 132 executives from oil and gas producers in the US and came to a different conclusion, as indicated by the graph below:
The evidence seems conclusive: the oil and gas executives say that they are under pressure from investors to restrain production in order to satisfy their investors. In other words, the high prices are not due to “market” forces of supply and demand but are rather the result of a deliberate strategy to restrain production in order to induce higher prices. I am not surprised by this result and the message needs to be publicized more broadly. The New York Times suggests that this strategy is possible:
“At the urging of environmental groups, Democrats are going on the offensive on gas prices — hitting energy companies with a populist message that puts the party squarely at odds with Republicans and the oil industry.
“To do otherwise would be ‘dangerous and political malpractice,’ Geoff Garin, a Democratic pollster, argued in a memo published on Thursday.
“In a survey, Garin found that 60 percent of voters viewed ‘price gouging and excessive price increases by oil companies to increase their profits’ as major reasons that gas prices have risen to a national average of $4.29 per gallon.
“’They’re jacking up prices, and people see that,’ said Pete Maysmith, a senior vice president for campaigns at the League of Conservation Voters, which co-sponsored the poll.”
Professor John Mearsheimer is one of the most distinguished scholars of international relations in the United States. He is also a very consistent political realist, a body of thought which emphasizes the priority of interests over values in the conduct of foreign policy. I will confess that there are parts of political realism which inform my own analysis of world affairs even though, on the whole, my world view is mostly idealist. For example, Professor Mearsheimer wrote, along with Professor Stephen Walt, a book entitled The Israel Lobby which critiqued the ability of the state of Israel to influence American foreign policy to the detriment of US interests.
Mearsheimer sparked a great deal of controversy when he delivered a lecture in 2015 which sharply criticized the US and NATO for the expansion of NATO into former Warsaw Pact countries because he argued that the resultant Russian insecurity from those actions led Russia to annex Crimea and parts of eastern Ukraine. That lecture can be seen in the video below (it is one hour and 15 minutes long, but very worthwhile).
Mearsheimer’s argument has been revived by the recent Russian invasion of Ukraine, igniting an even greater controversy. Indeed, Mearsheimer’s argument has been reproduced by the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs as a defense of Russian actions. The crux of the argument is that, after the dissolution of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), Russia was promised that NATO would not expand to the east. At a press briefing on 25 February 2022, the Russian spokesperson point out:
Maria Zakharova: At first, NATO member states denied the very fact that the West had made promises not to expand NATO to the east. However, when the officials who took part in those events and negotiations started publishing their memoirs, they could no longer deny facts or claim that nothing had happened. Instead, they started saying that even if there had been some verbal promises, there were no official written documents. This collective amnesia is astonishing. However, the article published by Spiegel magazine, a German media outlet by the way, showed that this position is also at odds with reality.
Declassified archival documents showed that following the February 2, 1990, talks in Washington, Vice Chancellor and Foreign Minister of the Federal Republic of Germany Hans-Dietrich Genscher and United States Secretary of State James Baker said that they “were in full agreement that there is no intention to extend the NATO area of defence and security towards the East. This holds true not only for GDR, which we have no intention of simply incorporating, but that holds true for all the other Eastern countries.” During 2+4 talks involving the German Democratic Republic, the Federal Republic of Germany, France, the USSR, Great Britain, and the United States, the representative of the Federal Republic of Germany, Jürgen Chrobog, said: “We had made it clear during the 2+4 negotiations that we would not extend NATO beyond the Elbe. We could not therefore offer membership of NATO to Poland and the others.” Let me remind you that this meeting took place in Bonn, on March 6, 1991. Since then, NATO has accepted 14 countries as its new members.
NATO contests this interpretation and it would be bootless to try to parse out the large volume of statements made at the time of a great transformation in world politics–no one really knew what the future would bring. What is undeniable is that the eastern European countries who had been part of the Soviet bloc for so many years feared that Russia remained a serious threat to their territorial integrity and sovereignty. Patrick Rhamey points out the more powerful dynamic underlying the expansion of Western influence in eastern Europe:
“Mearsheimer’s arguments deprive Ukrainians of any agency. He consistently ignores, both in the Ukraine talk and his recent interview with the New Yorker, the possibility that Ukrainians might choose democracy and seek membership in the EU on their own volition (in this, he echoes Kremlin talking points). He draws a false equivalence between a liberal, wealthy economic bloc on the one hand and an authoritarian petrol state on the other. For Mearsheimer, both sides are motivated exclusively – or at least ultimately – by power politics. ‘Freedom’ and ‘Prosperity’ are rhetorical weapons in a contest between great powers. The aspirations of the majority of Ukrainians don’t factor into this analysis.
“Instead of focusing on ‘the West,’ Mearsheimer should consider the distinct possibility that Russia’s long history of attempted dominance over Ukraine helped drive many Ukrainians toward the EU. The Euromaidan protests that toppled Viktor Yanukovych, after all, were sparked by his decision – under pressure from Putin – to walk away from negotiations. Putin’s explicit use of irredentist language, seizure of Crimea, and role in the Ukrainian civil war have clearly shifted public opinion on the question of NATO membership; a majority now favor joining the alliance.
David Remnick, in an interview with Stephen Kotkin in the New Yorker, amplifies the point in a balance of power framework:
We’ve been hearing voices both past and present saying that the reason for what has happened is, as George Kennan put it, the strategic blunder of the eastward expansion of NATO. The great-power realist-school historian John Mearsheimer insists that a great deal of the blame for what we’re witnessing must go to the United States. I thought we’d begin with your analysis of that argument.
I have only the greatest respect for George Kennan. John Mearsheimer is a giant of a scholar. But I respectfully disagree. The problem with their argument is that it assumes that, had nato not expanded, Russia wouldn’t be the same or very likely close to what it is today. What we have today in Russia is not some kind of surprise. It’s not some kind of deviation from a historical pattern. Way before nato existed—in the nineteenth century—Russia looked like this: it had an autocrat. It had repression. It had militarism. It had suspicion of foreigners and the West. This is a Russia that we know, and it’s not a Russia that arrived yesterday or in the nineteen-nineties. It’s not a response to the actions of the West. There are internal processes in Russia that account for where we are today.
I would even go further. I would say that nato expansion has put us in a better place to deal with this historical pattern in Russia that we’re seeing again today. Where would we be now if Poland or the Baltic states were not in nato? They would be in the same limbo, in the same world that Ukraine is in. In fact, Poland’s membership in nato stiffened nato’s spine. Unlike some of the other nato countries, Poland has contested Russia many times over. In fact, you can argue that Russia broke its teeth twice on Poland: first in the nineteenth century, leading up to the twentieth century, and again at the end of the Soviet Union, with Solidarity. So George Kennan was an unbelievably important scholar and practitioner—the greatest Russia expert who ever lived—but I just don’t think blaming the West is the right analysis for where we are.
There are other considerations to take into account as we assess the accuracy of Mearsheimer’s analysis. Realists make the assumption that analyzing interests is the only way to understand not only the actions of states but also human nature. Hans Morgenthau, a pre-eminent political realist in the US right after World War II, was unequivocal on this matter: “Political realism believes that politics, like society in general, is governed by objective laws that have their roots in human nature”. Thus, political realists easily believe that Thucydides‘ observation of how the Athenians regarded their interests in the Peloponnesian War remains true in 2022: “The strong do as they will, and the weak suffer what they must”.
In this respect, political realists miss out on an awful lot of what has happened between 431 BCE and 2022, most notably the liberation of the individual in the Enlightenment. Nick Burns, writing for the New Statesmen, summarizes the significance of this crucially important change:
“The world, in a word, is a much more complicated place than the realists project in their simple formulas of a rational computation of interest. So often accused of pessimism, Mearsheimer is, in a strange way, too optimistic in believing that Americans (or for that matter Ukrainians or Russians) should simply make decisions according to a clinical, dispassionate evaluation of their interests. Regardless of whether it is desirable, such an evaluation is impossible in practice. A full understanding of the war in Ukraine, its causes and its consequences must pay attention to the emotions of the participants – Putin’s ambition, the West’s outrage, Ukraine’s hope – in their human aspects too, and not merely as strategic calculation.”
Mearsheimer is in some respect correct: NATO underestimated how threatening its eastern expansion was viewed by Russia. But Russia also miscalculated how powerful the idea of personal freedom became in the countries it once dominated by force. Ultimately, and sadly, one side will be proven correct–the side that wins. Right now, I put my money on the Ukrainians.
The Russian invasion of Ukraine has encountered stiff resistance from the Ukrainian military and from Ukrainian citizens mobilized to confront the invaders. From all accounts, the resistance has been more formidable than what most observers, the Russians included, had expected. Defenders usually have an advantage over invaders since they know the terrain very well and can fire from fortified defensive positions. Moreover, invading forces always run the risk of extended supply lines that prove to be inadequate. There are reports of many Russian tanks running out of fuel and the logistical difficulties of re-supplying advanced positions are considerable for the Russian military. Nonetheless, not many analysts believe that Ukrainian forces can withstand a concerted Russian push over an extended period of time.
But the successes of the Ukrainian defenses thus far are important, and it is worth recounting the significance of the Belgian resistance to the German invasion of their country in August 1914. Belgium was a neutral country at the time and Great Britain had vouchsafed that neutrality in the Treaty of London in 1839. As Europe began to contemplate the possibility of a large war in which Germany would attempt to expand its 1871 borders, many Europeans thought that the Treaty of London would deny Germany the ability to attack France through Belgium and instead focused on building up defenses along the French-German border.
The Germans, however, decided upon a different track. The German military, led by Field Marshal Alfred von Schlieffen, knew that Germany could not win a simultaneous two-front war against both France and Russia (which were bound by a military alliance). But von Schlieffen believed that Germany could win a sequential two-front war if Germany could defeat France in the six weeks it would take Russia to mobilize to open the eastern front. Germany could not defeat France if it pushed through the French-German border. But attacking France through undefended Belgium could be done easily (it was believed) and German troops could defeat France and then move back to the eastern front against Russia within the 6 week window. At least, that was the intent of what was called the Schlieffen Plan.
“On August 4th, 1914, the German army began crossing the border into Belgium. The Belgians, understandably unwilling to allow such a thing to occur without offering firm protest, chose to stand and fight. Bridges were indeed destroyed. Roads were blocked. Barricades were put up — and, while the nation’s small and ill-equipped army could not hope to defeat the German invaders, it did manage to slow them down to such an extent that the carefully drafted timetables of the planned invasion had to be rewritten from scratch, and the British Expeditionary Force was able to arrive in time to further delay the attempted conquest of Belgium and passage into France. In an abstract sense, the First Battle of the Marne was won in the fields outside of Liège.”
There were many consequences of the Belgian resistance. First, it delayed the German invasion of France by 18 days, throwing off the delicate timetable of the Schlieffen Plan. That led the German general at the time (von Schlieffen had died), Helmuth von Moltke to try to save some time by attacking Paris from the east (where France had formidable fortifications) instead from the west (where France had virtually no defenses at all). Second, it gave the British time to mobilize its forces to defend France and to send them in time for the first great battle of World War I, the Battle of the Marne. Third, the Belgian resistance infuriated von Moltke, leading the Germans to commit unbelievable atrocities (such as the burning of the great Library of Louvain) in a vain attempt to frighten the Belgians into surrendering. Those atrocities only led to a stiffening of Belgian resistance and contributed to near universal condemnation of the Germans as barbarians, as suggested by the US Army poster below.
These consequences also seem to be occurring now. It has been remarkable how the invasion and the Ukrainian resistance has changed the policies of some countries, most notably Germany. The Germans have now dropped their policy of not sending lethal weaponry into conflict zones and has increased its defense spending to levels inconceivable a week ago.
“Germany, Europe’s biggest economy that had long been the key obstacle to more decisive action against Russia, dramatically changed course this weekend as Chancellor Olaf Scholz announced a vast increase in the country’s defense spending and green-lighted arms deliveries to Ukraine.
“The moves marked a seismic shift for a country that has been allergic to involvement in international conflict since World War II’s end. It came amid a range of other decisive European Union moves — on a day when 100,000 people turned out in Berlin to protest the invasion.”
If the Russian invasion had succeeded in three days, such changes would not have occurred and Europe would have written Ukraine off as a lost cause. But the resistance has made clear that a Russian victory is not inevitable and has encouraged and inspired the rest of the world to join in the Ukrainian resistance.
However, one lesson from the Belgian resistance is that a frustrated invader might resort to actions with little or no military purpose in an effort to intimidate those who resist. Let us hope that Russian President Putin does not succumb to this temptation.
I am now 0 for 3 in predictions. I never thought Trump would win the election in 2016 nor did I think that Britain would pass Brexit. And now Russian President Putin has massively invaded Ukraine with the apparent intent of changing the government and replacing Ukrainian President Zelensky with a Russian puppet. I thought that by now those who run governments would have understood that overthrowing a government is easy, but occupying a nation is impossible. The US should have learned this lesson when it permitted Vietnamese President Diem to be murdered in 1963 or when it overthrew the Taliban in Afghanistan in 2001 or when it overthrew the government of Iraq in 2003 or when it allowed Kaddafi to be murdered in Libya in 2011. The Russians should have learned his lesson when it overthrew the Afghanistan government in 1979 or when it repressed governments in East Germany in 1953 or Hungary in 1956 or Czechoslovakia in 1968. It appears as if governments are incapable of learning bad lessons when they get drunk on illusions of military power.
There is an argument that Putin has lost his marbles after 22 years in power. I reject these types of arguments. “Crazy” is an impossible analytic framework and very rarely explains much. So I assume that Putin was rational when he decided to invade Ukraine. But he obviously thought the exercise would work. But I cannot fathom why he thinks that installing a puppet regime in Ukraine will serve Russian interests. Such a government would never have the support of the Ukrainian people and thus will be difficult to govern. And a weak government will not be able to reconstruct the damage done to Ukraine which means that Russia will have to shoulder that burden, as Putin has probably learned from the annexation of Crimea. According to the Brookings Institute:
“Trying to create a success story, Moscow has poured in more than $10 billion in direct subsidies as well as funding major construction and infrastructure projects, such as the highway and railroad bridges that now cross the Kerch Strait to link Crimea directly to Russia. On the other hand, small business has suffered, particularly with the decline in tourism, which once accounted for about one quarter of Crimea’s economy. Crimea also remains subject to a variety of Western economic and other sanctions. It is probably fair to say that the reality of the economic situation today falls short of what many in Crimea expected, or hoped for, with Russia’s annexation.”
Ukraine under a puppet government will constitute a serious economic drain on Russian resources and the Russian people can ill afford to see money spent on improving the welfare of others. According to Business Insider: “Despite Russia’s size and wealth in raw materials, its economy is more on par with Brazil than with nations like Germany, France, and the UK, according to the latest nominal GDP data from the World Bank. According to the World Bank, Russia’s economy is smaller than Italy’s and South Korea’s, two nations with less than half of Russia’s population.”
The sad thing is that the Ukrainian people will continue to suffer quickly while the Russian people will suffer slowly. But military intervention by any state to repel the Russian invasion will vastly amplify the suffering of far too many innocents, so we are only left with tragic choices.
The lesson of this post is that no one should pay any attention to my predictions. As atonement for my sins, here is some beautiful music for a winter’s day.
It appears as if Russian forces intend to invade Ukraine, presumably to change the government to one that will be more submissive to Russian interests. The evidence suggests that the Ukrainian forces will be severely outgunned. Nonetheless, the Ukrainian military and civilian population seem prepared to resist the invasion to whatever extent is possible. But even if the government is changed, I would predict that resistance will devolve to a long-term civil/guerilla war. The media attention will focus on the casualties suffered by the combatants. We should, however, keep in mind that in almost every war in the 20th and 21st centuries the largest number of casualties will occur within the civilian population. But the civilians suffer and die in silence and darkness.
I had the good fortune to work with some of the most devoted and brilliant colleagues at Mount Holyoke College in a course entitled “War: What is it good for?”. The course title was inspired by the song “War” which was most successfully sung by Edwin Starr with the background singers in the bands The Originals and The_Undisputed_Truth. Songfacts provides the context of the song:
“Motown hitmakers Norman Whitfield and Barrett Strong wrote this song. Starr began his career recording for Ric-Tic Records, a Detroit label that was a rival to Motown. In 1968, Motown bought Ric-Tic, which gave Starr access to their writers and producers.
“This is a protest song about the Vietnam War, although it makes a broader statement of the need for harmony in our everyday lives. ‘War’ was one of the first Motown songs to make a political statement. The label had always been focused on making hit songs, but around this time Motown artists like The Temptations and Marvin Gaye started releasing songs with social commentary, many of which were written by Whitfield.
“The Temptations were the first to record this; it was included on their 1970 album Psychedelic Shack. Motown had no intention of releasing it as a single, but many in the protest movement, especially college students, made it clear that the song would be a big hit if it was. Motown head Berry Gordy had other plans for The Temptations and didn’t want them associated with such a controversial song, so he had Starr record it and his version was released as a single. Starr didn’t have as big a fan base to offend.”
The song was an important part of my personal experience in the anti-war movement in the late 1960s and early 1970s. And my colleagues, who represented disciplines in the humanities and the social sciences, thought that it would be important to include the song in the course. To that end, I created this video, using the song as the essential backdrop to the photographs.
The educational purpose of the music video was to disabuse students from thinking about war with no reference to its horrors. It is deliberately disturbing. It is graphic. It portrays extraordinary violence and profound suffering. Emotions we should keep in mind if a large war develops in Ukraine.
Russian President Putin delivered a speech today in which he recognized two parts of Ukraine as independent states–the “Luhansk People’s Republic” and “Donetsk People’s Republic”. These are two regions in Ukraine in which Russian-speaking separatists have sought to break away from Ukraine–with Russian support–since 2014. He has apparently ordered Russian troops into these regions as a “peacekeeping” force. The policy is similar to the one adopted by Russia in 2008 when Russian troops invaded Georgia and recognized two parts of Georgia as independent states: South Ossetia and Abkhazia. The international community has thus far refused to recognize either Abkhazia or South Ossetia as legitimate independent state. Nonetheless, Russia has created military bases in the two regions and has waged low-level conflict to slowly enlarge the borders of the two rump states.
We will have to see if Russia does send in additional troops to Luhansk and Donetsk. Right now, the Russian move does not change the status quo. Ukraine and Russian forces have been fighting each other since 2014 and about 14,000 have died in the conflict. So, technically, an invasion has yet to occur. But the territory occupied by the separatists does not include the whole of the provinces of Luhansk and Donetsk, as indicated by the map below.
So the question for the US and Europe is how to respond to this Russian action. We already know that President Biden has flatly ruled out sending any NATO forces into Ukraine, so the issue is how many and what type of sanctions will be imposed on Russia for sending additional troops into an area already controlled by Russia. US Secretary of State Blinken issued the following statement after the Russian move:
“We strongly condemn President Putin’s decision to recognize the so-called “Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics” as “independent.” As we said when the Duma first made its request: this decision represents a complete rejection of Russia’s commitments under the Minsk agreements, directly contradicts Russia’s claimed commitment to diplomacy, and is a clear attack on Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.
“States have an obligation not to recognize a new ‘state’ created through the threat or use of force, as well as an obligation not to disrupt another state’s borders. Russia’s decision is yet another example of President Putin’s flagrant disrespect for international law and norms.
“President Biden will sign an Executive Order that will prohibit all new investment, trade, and financing by U.S. persons to, from, or in the so-called ‘Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics’ regions of Ukraine. We will continue to coordinate with Ukraine and our Allies and partners to take appropriate steps in response to this unprovoked and unacceptable action by Russia. The E.O. is designed to prevent Russia from profiting off of this blatant violation of international law. It is not directed at the people of Ukraine or the Ukrainian government and will allow humanitarian and other related activity to continue in these regions.
“Our support for Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity as well as for the government and people of Ukraine is unwavering. We stand with our Ukrainian partners in strongly condemning President Putin’s announcement.”
We will have to see how Russia reacts to these sanctions. They do not pose any substantial threat to Russia or its leadership. But the next step for Russia is to hold an election or a referendum in the break-away regions in order to create a patina of legitimacy for the new “states”. The international community will likely ignore the results of such elections and then the most difficult question is how fiercely the Ukrainians will fight to regain their territory. If the Ukrainian challenge is manageable, then Russia will probably hold fast. But if the Ukrainians pose serious challenges to Russian military control, then escalation is the next step for the Russians and for NATO. We will have to see how this situation evolves. But Putin’s domestic position is much weaker than it was in 2014. The Economist describes the scene surrounding Putin’s speech:
“Earlier, Mr Putin had staged a bizarre televised spectacle to clear the way for recognition of the republics. The move to broadcast an extended meeting of Russia’s national security council was unprecedented. The exchanges with the council members were just as extraordinary. From his position in a white chair, Mr Putin called on his minions, one by one, to speak their minds. He helped those having difficulty making them up. ‘Speak plainly,’ he scolded the foreign intelligence chief, Sergei Naryshkin, who at one point appeared to misstep. ‘You would support it—or you do support it?’ Mr Putin stressed that he had not consulted with his aides beforehand and there was only one decision-maker in the country.
“The pained faces of some in the room suggested that not everyone was happy with the direction of travel. Yet they unanimously hewed to what, one must assume, they knew the president wanted to hear—a line that would at best void a seven-year-old set of agreements aimed at producing peace in the Donbas region, and at worst set off a spiral of sanctions and war. Ten of the speakers urged Mr Putin to recognise the breakaway republics immediately. Only three suggested giving diplomacy a final chance. Full recognition would suggest territorial claims on areas currently controlled by Kyiv, since the breakaways claim the whole of the Donbas—and that in turn could prefigure a big new military intervention.”
Calm and quiet persistence are necessary to prevent further escalation. NATO and President Biden should make clear that the Russian move is utterly unacceptable but should avoid incendiary rhetoric and brash moves.
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