In the area of war crimes, the German strategy of unrestricted submarine warfare, intended to starve Britain into surrender, was treated in Britain and America as a monstrous and obvious war crime. The Germans argued, not without reason, that it was a response to the British strategy of starving Germany into surrender through blockade of Germany’s maritime trade by the Royal Navy. The German submarine strategy was extremely stupid, because it eventually brought America into the war against Germany and thereby ensured Germany’s defeat. But stupidity, however extreme, is not a war crime.
The Germans also pointed out that the British tactic (wholly in keeping with the traditional laws of war by the way) of disguising British warships as unarmed merchantmen (the “Q ships”) and then sinking German submarines that tried to check on them made it necessary to torpedo all ships without warning. Once again, 112 years later, we can regret all the suffering involved, and honor the brave men who died on both sides, without taking a high moral stance one way or the other.
Today we can all agree that principal responsibility for the war in Ukraine lies with the Russian government, which invaded Ukraine. But will historians of the future attribute sole responsibility to Russia, and exonerate the U.S. and NATO member governments of all blame for trying to integrate Ukraine with the West, and thus threatening what both Russians and a long row of Western experts (including the present head of the CIA, William Burns) warned were seen in Moscow as vital Russian interests?
Concerning war crimes, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and the forced annexation of Ukrainian territory, are both clearly very serious crimes under international law, for which I hope that President Vladimir Putin will one day be brought to account. Russian soldiers have committed numerous crimes against Ukrainian civilians, for which the Ukrainian authorities are correct to put them on trial. The Russian high command has at the very least displayed indifference towards civilian casualties in its air campaign against Ukraine. However, we should be very careful not to portray these crimes as in some way culturally special to Russians, or as “genocide,” if only for the very obvious reason that Western forces have themselves repeatedly carried out similar actions. To use the “genocide” label in this way would put American and British commanders and air crews in World War II, Korea, Vietnam, and Syria on the same level as Hitler’s SS and the Rwandan Hutu militias, a morally and historically grotesque proposition.
The Amnesty International report criticizing both Russian and Ukrainian actions in the war was justly attacked, but for the wrong reason. The correct charges against it were legal illiteracy and practical naivety. The fact that a war is illegal does not make everything the aggressor does a war crime. Under the laws of war, it is not a crime for Ukrainian forces to establish positions in populated areas, otherwise they could not defend their country at all. But nor is it a crime for Russian forces to bombard those positions. All of this is stated quite clearly in international treaties and conventions on the laws of war. Above all, we should not let justified moral outrage become hypocritical moral hysteria—as during the First World War—because this can very easily become an obstacle to seeking a peace settlement that may be in the best interests of ourselves and the victims of the war.
The same goes for negotiations over territory. If today it seems lunatic almost beyond belief that millions of German, French, and British soldiers should have died in a war that began over whether Austrians or Serbs should rule Sarajevo, let us consider the contemporary example of Sevastopol, the Russian naval base in Crimea. The present line of the U.S. administration and most of the U.S. establishment is that negotiations for peace are purely a matter for the Ukrainian government. And the Ukrainian government has repeatedly declared that its aim is to drive Russia from all the territory it has occupied in Ukraine, including Crimea. Recent military advances by Ukraine mean that such complete Ukrainian victory now seems at least possible.
Thirty years ago, the overwhelming majority of Americans would have simply assumed that Crimea was part of Russia, as indeed it was until the Soviet government transferred it by decree to Ukraine in 1954. Before the Russian conquest of 1783, the peninsula was ruled by Tatars, before that by Byzantines, before that by Scythians, and before that, well, whoever it was, it was certainly not Ukrainians.
Every officially connected Russian with whom I have spoken, and most ordinary Russians, have said that to defend Crimea, Russia should in the last resort use nuclear weapons, as the United States would to defend Hawaii and Pearl Harbor. This would very likely begin a ladder of escalation that would lead to the destruction of America, Russia, and civilization itself in a nuclear war.
We should not need to wait 112 years for historians (if there are any) to tell us that this is not an outcome that would serve the interests of any country, including Ukraine, and that the risks involved colossally outweigh any conceivable benefits to the United States. By repelling Russia’s invasion, Ukraine, with Western help, has already won a great victory and secured its independence and freedom to try to join the West. For the Biden administration to go beyond this, and aim at total victory for Ukraine, looks like unwarranted hubris on the part of Washington. And we should also not need historians of the future, or the lessons of the First World War, to tell us that hubris invariably leads to nemesis.