The Russian invasion of Ukraine presents us with a situation that seems both unprecedented and eerily familiar. But what is the right analogy from past events, and what can we learn from them?
One proposed recently is 1962--the Cuban Missile Crisis. We are certainly being forced to think about the consequences of nuclear war again, and the US and Russia are in tense opposition. But there are many differences. This is not a direct confrontation of the US and Russia (or the Soviet Union) except perhaps in Putin's mind. The initial dangers are in Europe, and European countries are deeply involved. If nukes are unleashed, a full out thermonuclear exchange between Russia and the US is not the first likely outcome. We don't know--and I've seen no informed speculation--what the responses might be to various scenarios in Europe, such as chemical, biological or finally a nuclear weapon. The danger ultimately is there, but at worst it is several steps away. Otherwise there would be nothing else anybody would be reporting on. Maybe.
From President Biden's point of view, it must seem very different from 1962. President Kennedy had to deal with a hawkish military leadership that was dangerously quick to invite nuclear war. That does not appear to be the case now. Because it was a direct confrontation with the Soviets, European governments were consulted and kept more or less informed, but they were not at the decision-making table. President Biden is working a coalition, because it is important that Europe be involved. They are the edge of the sword, and the battlefield.
Most importantly, the nation of Ukraine will ultimately make its own decisions. If there was any doubt of that before, there is none now. This is not something for the US, or even NATO countries, to decide on their own. They must however now be deeply engaged in deciding specific responses to specific situations according to what Russia does, especially outside Ukraine, but also within it.
Another difference: In the USSR in 1962, Premier Khrushchev also had to deal with military hotheads, as well as the Politburo and the Central Committee. If our simplistic reporting is accurate, Putin is a one man show, with no other obvious forces to either push him or restrain him. It's hard to believe that's really the case, but that seems to be the unanimous view expressed in US media. It's a little more believable after Trump, when no opposition within his party could effectively restrain him. Now we have a number of Republican governors who operate as crazed autocrats with the connivance of their toady legislatures.
Because there was no actual warfare in those tense days in October 1962, President Kennedy was free to consider concessions that might give Khrushchev something, because he was preferable to Soviet hotheads around him. This time there is a brutal shooting war happening, and Putin is increasingly isolated in the world, not only because of opposition to the invasion, but to the ongoing and increasing cruelty of his conduct of the war. Nobody is interested in saving Putin's leadership; just saving the world from nuclear war, and saving Ukraine from more devastation and death. The longer that goes on, the more likely some further international action within Ukraine will be needed.
So it's not 1962. Is it 1939? That seems a little closer. A dictator invades an eastern European country, where borders and national identities are often in turmoil. In 1938 Hitler's Germany attacked Czechoslovakia, and demanded its borderland, claiming it was really part of Germany. It also happened to be of great strategic importance, but Hitler claimed it would be his only territorial demand. That much sounds familiar. In that case, the West appeased him. In short order, Czechoslovakia ceased to be a country, and in 1939, Hitler invaded Poland. The Second World War, the largest and most destructive war in the known history of the world began.
This time it is Russia invading Ukraine, claiming parts of it, or maybe all of it, belongs to Russia. Because Ukraine does not have official western allies--i.e. is not a member of NATO--the western nations are not bound to become involved. But they remember 1939, so they are loudly and meaningfully opposing this invasion, and drawing firm lines for the future. Though Putin may have had illusions of a Nazi-style blitzkreig, the Russian army seems capable only of blundering brutality and primitive siege.
And let's admit it--all this has uncomfortable echoes of the late 1960s and 1970s in southeast Asia, as well as the US in Baghdad and Iraq in this century. Putin is a war criminal, but some fingers should be shaking as they point.
So really there is no analogy to now. There is no lesson of the past that absolutely pertains. This moment has so many new features (what does Thomas Friedman call it? Wired World War I?), and yet is steeped in some of the oldest conflicts, especially in that part of the world that has seen so much violence and suffering, that no one yet knows what it is or where it is going.
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