How Are We to Understand the Russia-Ukraine War?by wjastore June 4, 2022Biden, Putin, and Zelensky. W.J. Astore and M. DavoutMy
esteemed colleague Davout and I have different ways of looking at the
Russia-Ukraine War. We thought it would be a worthwhile exercise to
share our differing perspectives here, allowing our readers to think
over the merits of our approaches and the validity of our conclusions.
Davout has framed the questions and made the initial response; I get the
last word, so to speak, for each question. Our mutual intent is not to
“win” a pseudo-debate but to pose questions and provide answers that
inform and stimulate. To that end, here we go.What caused the Russian invasion of Ukraine?Davout: Putin’s
desire to reestablish Russian hegemony over Eastern Europe and ensure
the stability of his autocratic regime has been the main driver of the
invasion. In 2005, Putin declared that the collapse of the Soviet Union
was “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century.” What was
catastrophic about it for Putin? The eastern flank of the former Soviet
Union, including Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Moldova, and Ukraine
shifted from being an appendage of an authoritarian Soviet regime to
being a collection of independent democracies or democracies-in-process.
Membership in the European Union and in NATO has either been achieved
(the Baltic states) or been pursued (Ukraine pursuing both, Moldova
pursuing European Union membership only). None of these countries (not
to mention the formerly occupied countries of Poland, Hungary, East
Germany, Czechoslovakia) singly or together have the capacity or will to
invade Russia or otherwise project military power across Russian
borders. The real threat to which Putin is responding is the example set
by the people of former Soviet territories opting for more democratic,
less corrupt regimes and societies. That example endangers his own hold
on power and pushes his own society toward historical irrelevance.
Astore:
Putin
was obviously the prime mover of the invasion. He chose the military
option, and he surely believed it would strengthen his authority over a
former Soviet republic that was tracking toward joining NATO.
When
we speak of causes, however, it’s often wise to take a broad view over a
breadth of time. When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, NATO’s
reason for being ended with it. Nevertheless, NATO persisted, expanding
to the very borders of Russia despite assurances to Russian leaders
that the alliance would not expand eastwards beyond a newly unified
Germany. Russian leaders, including Putin, had issued clear warnings
that NATO expansion into Ukraine would constitute a “red line,” the
crossing of which would likely lead to a military response. Putin’s
decision to invade, therefore, was eminently predictable, thus it was
also potentially preventable. The United States, which leads NATO, could
have sent a clear signal to Russia that Ukraine should and would remain
a neutral buffer state. The US chose not to do so.
One may
question the premise of Ukraine as a “more democratic, less corrupt
regime.” In Ukraine, corruption is endemic, exacerbated by extensive
U.S. meddling, as in the notorious coup of 2014 orchestrated in part by
Victoria Nuland, citing the support of then-Vice President Joe Biden.
And while it’s important to recognize Russian regional hegemonic
ambitions, one should never forget the global hegemonic ambitions of the
U.S. empire. In sum, the US has not been an innocent bystander here.
US proxy war or Ukrainian war of independence?
Davout:
A
proxy war is a conflict instigated by a state in which it does not
directly engage in hostilities. This war was a war of choice on the part
of Putin. It has had the unintended result of inspiring patriotic
resistance (even amongst Russian-speaking Ukrainians who were formerly
pro-Russian like the mayor of Odessa). In the lead up to the invasion,
the US and its NATO allies attempted to dissuade Putin from invading. In
the invasion’s aftermath, they have provided critical arms and support
to Ukraine and have sought economically to undermine Russia’s war-making
capacities. While current official US policy may be the crippling of
Russia’s capacity to engage in another such invasion in the near future,
the US did not instigate this war in pursuit of this aim. While US and
NATO armaments are a necessary factor in Ukraine’s continued defense
against the Russian invasion, it is Ukrainian solidarity and resolve and
Russian refusal to end its invasion that keep this war going.
Astore:
Clearly,
most Ukrainians believe they are fighting for their independence.
Ukraine has no desire to become a Putin puppet state. Nor, however, do
they wish to become a puppet state to the USA.
Lloyd Austin, the
US Secretary of Defense, spoke clearly that weakening Russia was a key
goal of this conflict. To that end, the US government, in a rare show
of bipartisan unity, provided $54 billion in largely military aid to a
Ukrainian military with a yearly budget of $6 billion. Such profligacy
is not an example of generosity driven by disinterested ideals.
Clearly, the US sees this war as the latest front in a new cold war, a
way to stress Russia to the breaking point. As President Biden openly
stated, that man (Putin) must go.
So, it’s worse than a proxy
war: it’s yet another US regime-change war. The stated goal is to
topple Putin and turn Russia into a divided and dysfunctional state,
much like it was in the 1990s when Western corporations and financial
institutions invaded Russia and exploited it in the name of capitalism
and reform.
Are there any legitimate parallels to draw between Putin and Hitler?
Davout:
Yes,
though the parallels with Hitler are not the same parallels so often
drawn to delegitimize non-interventionists as appeasers. Historian John
Lukacs’s various histories of Hitler’s strategizing in that crucial
period after the invasion of France to the start of the Battle of
Britain paint a picture of Hitler less as the hubristic dictator
irrationally striving for world conquest than as a canny but flawed
geopolitical strategist, driven by geopolitical grievance and with a
large capacity to hate those who opposed him. Lukacs argues that Hitler
was prepared to cut a deal with Great Britain on terms that would allow
Germany to exercise hegemonic powers on the continent. It was
Churchill’s longstanding aversion to Hitler and Hitlerism and his
ability to maintain British popular support for the war that blocked
Hitler’s strategy to cut a deal. Once his overture was blocked by
Churchill, Hitler underestimated British morale in the Battle of
Britain. Then, in an effort to circumvent Britain’s resistance, Hitler
gambled that he could cripple Stalin’s war making capacity and knock him
out of the war and thereby present England with a fait accompli of
German hegemony on the continent. The picture of Hitler Lukacs draws can
plausibly be applied to Putin—a grievance-driven leader attempting to
restore a lost geopolitical sphere of influence, who has miscalculated
the resolve of democratic leaders and peoples and has doubled down on
violence.
Astore:
In a word, no.
Whenever
American leaders want to justify military action and high spending on
weaponry, they turn to Hitler and World War II. The claim is made that
we must stop the “new” Hitler. We must not be appeasers. Saddam
Hussein was allegedly the new Hitler in 2003; his WMD was supposed to be
a mushroom cloud on our horizon. But there was no WMD and eliminating
Saddam by invasion tipped Iraq into a disastrous civil war from which
that country has yet to recover.
Putin isn’t the new Hitler, and
his invasion of Ukraine doesn’t represent the kind of existential
threat the Third Reich presented to democracies in 1938-39.
Hitler
had the finest military machine of his day backed by the economic
powerhouse that was Germany in the late 1930s. Putin’s military machine
is mediocre at best, and Russia’s economy is smaller than that of
California. Putin doesn’t appear to be seeking a huge empire or world
domination, as Hitler was. And while Hitler may have temporarily played
nice with Britain, that didn’t prevent the Nazis from hatching plans to
invade and loot Britain and to massacre its Jews as well.
Of
course, Putin was wrong to have invaded Ukraine, but George W. Bush was
wrong to have invaded Iraq in 2003. Both these leaders have essentially
nothing in common with Hitler, who was sui generis–a tyrannical
dictator driven by genocidal fantasies of world dominance by a “master
race.”
To what extent is US democracy hurt or
helped by the Biden Administration’s policy of military support for
Ukrainian resistance?
Davout:
Seeing
his country in hostile competition with western democracies, Putin has
deployed various forms of soft power and hard power to undermine
confidence in, and injure the working of, democratic regimes. Hackers
and internet influencers employed by the Russian state have intervened
in the elections of established democracies either to foster social
distrust or to promote candidates (e.g., Trump) and policies (e.g.,
Brexit) that weaken adversary countries. Military interventions are
carried out on Russia’s border to maintain regimes favorable to Putin
(as was the case when a popular uprising against fraudulent elections in
Belarus was put down with the help of Russian soldiers). Meanwhile, as
was documented by the Panama and Pandora Papers, the huge amounts of
money pilfered from the Russian people by oligarchs moves through the
banking, legal, and commercial institutions of democratic countries
(including South Dakota!) with corrupting effect on people and officials
alike. To be sure, the US has corruption problems of its own. And US
military support of Ukraine will have the unfortunate result of
strengthening the position of defense contractors and their lobbyists,
Pentagon brass, and congressional hawks. However, it would be worst for
US democracy if Russian ambitions to occupy or dismember Ukraine
succeed. This would undermine European democracies whose continued
survival and flourishing provide democratic reformers in the US with
critically important role models and partners.
Astore:
US democracy hasn’t been hurt or helped by this war because the US is a democracy in name only.
In
reality, the US is an oligarchy in which the rich and powerful rule at
the expense of the many. The unofficial fourth branch of government is
the US National Security State, a leviathan of enormous power. Its
biggest component is what President Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1961 termed
the military-industrial complex (to which he added Congress as well).
This MICC is profiting greatly from this war, not only in the $54
billion in aid provided to Ukraine, but also in the ever-rising Pentagon
budget for FY 2023, which will exceed $813 billion, a gargantuan sum
justified in part by the Russia-Ukraine War.
The new cold war
with Russia, and increasingly with China as well, is strengthening the
state of permanent war in America. As James Madison warned, permanent
warfare serves autocracy while insidiously destroying democracy. As
militarism becomes more deeply entrenched in the US government, and as
that same government continues to send more destructive weaponry to
Ukraine such as artillery and missile systems, options for de-escalation
narrow even as chances for a nightmarish escalation to nuclear war,
whether by design or accident, increase.
What would truly
strengthen democracy in America, assuming it could somehow be
reanimated, is if the USA pressed ahead with all its strength to broker a
peace treaty between Russia and Ukraine. Ukraine is getting wrecked by
this war, and our aggressive actions, mainly in providing more and more
lethal weaponry together with onerous sanctions, are guaranteed to shred
more bodies and aggravate economic dislocation both here and in Europe.