The war in Ukraine has seemingly devolved into a vicious stalemate. Ukrainian counter-attacks have pushed Russia back, but a definitive ejection of Russia from all its territorial gains at this point doesn’t seem likely. Commentary has settled on two choices for resolving the crisis: a diplomatic resolution that requires Ukraine to sacrifice territory; or a larger Ukrainian offensive to push Russia back to its pre-2014 borders, supported by more aid and materiel from NATO countries, which in practice really means the U.S. Each choice is fraught with difficulty and danger.
This predicament of only bad and worse choices is one endemic to foreign policy, as military violence always exacts the price of “exorbitant risk,” as Henry Kissinger put it, of unforeseen and costly consequences. In the case of the Russo-Ukrainian war, that risk includes the possibility of Russia using tactical nuclear weapons, and triggering a wider nuclear engagement that could escalate into an apocalypse.
On the other hand, allowing Russia to keep territories acquired by force creates the moral hazard of endangering global supplies of energy, and encouraging Russia and other aggressive irredentist and revanchist powers like China and Iran to make the same wager that the West does not have morale or even resources to punish their aggression.
The difficult solution for avoiding such dilemmas is to anticipate and forcefully deter an enemy’s ambitions, and all the means he has for realizing them, before they become kinetic. Yet the West for a century has done a poor job at such long-range planning and instituting preemptive policies. Too often we have been like Demosthenes’ Athenians in the early 4th century B.C., who failed to preempt King Phillip II of Macedon’s advance against the southern Greek politically free city-states. Demosthenes chastised the Athenians, saying they “carry on the war with Phillip, exactly as a barbarian boxes . . . when struck, [he] always clutches the place; hit him on the other side and there go his hands. He neither knows nor cares how to parry a blow or how to watch his adversary.”
In other words, how to anticipate the enemy’s next move and preempt it with significant action if necessary. Even worse is our habit of doing nothing other than to bluster or impose mild or token sanctions against an aggressor. In order to avoid the politically risky bad choice of timely military action, we make the worse choice of non-lethal responses like diplomatic engagement or economic sanctions, the political, geopolitical, and material costs of which unfold over time, and so can be postponed for a while.
This dangerous short-term thinking, as Tocqueville wrote nearly 90 years ago, characterizes democracies: “It is this clear perception of the future, founded upon judgment and experience, that is frequently wanting in democracies.” Present suffering will weigh more in the balance than the much worse future sufferings that follow inaction. As history confirms, consensual, participatory governments with regularly schedule elections are prone to this unwillingness to take preemptive action.
The Ukrainian crisis illustrates this timeless truth. As early as 2008, Putin began his plan to take by force control of Russia’s “near abroad,” the border territories lost when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. He started with South Ossetia in Georgia, which, after international “peace talks,” he turned into a Russian satellite. In 2014, he seized Crimea and parts of eastern Ukraine. Sanctions were imposed, along with school-marmish rhetoric from Barack Obama and his Secretary of State John Kerry, who said, “You just don’t in the 21st century behave in 19th century fashion by invading another country on completely trumped-up pretext.”
Actually, history tells us that despite the idealism of our “rules-based international order,” such aggression is the eternal modus operandi of interstate conflict, and failing to act leads to appeasement. Even historical illiterates like John Kerry recognize the most famous example of such appeasement. Addressing House Democrats in 2013 over Syria strongman Bashar al-Assad’s use of chemical weapons against civilians––crossing Obama’s earlier “red line”––Kerry said this was our country’s “Munich moment.”
But like many people using this analogy, he failed to recognize that Neville Chamberlain’s disastrous diplomacy in September 1938 was the culmination of the serial appeasement of Germany for the previous two decades, moments of escalating aggression and violations not just of the Versailles settlement, but also of much-celebrated multination agreements like the Kellogg-Briand Pact (1928) and the Locarno Treaties of 1925, both of which were signed by the future Axis aggressors.
Consider the following timeline of aggression in the years before Munich, the warnings ignored by the victors of the First World War. But this record is prefaced by one of the lost opportunities in the early Thirties to confront Hitler and slow his momentum.
In July of 1934, Nazi agents assassinated Austrian Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss as the first move in what would be the Anschluss of Austria four years later. In 1935 the Third Reich’s interference in another nation’s government alarmed its neighbor Benito Mussolini, and moved him to join England and France in the Stresa Front, an agreement that pledged the three members would resist any attempts to redraw the borders of nations in Europe––the last phrase added by Mussolini, who already was planning his invasion of Ethiopia.
Yet England damaged the Front’s cohesion when in June 1935 she unilaterally negotiated with Germany the Anglo-German Naval Agreement, which recognized Germany’s build-up of its Navy despite Hitler’s withdrawal from the Versailles Treaty, and “sanctioned Germany’s right thereafter to rearm,” as Germany’s head of the navy put it.
Indeed, Chamberlain’s worthless agreement with Hitler, which Chamberlain triumphantly waved on his return to England, referred to the Anglo-German Naval treaty as “symbolic of the desire of our two peoples never to go to war with one another again. We are resolved that the method of consultation shall be the method adopted to deal with any other question that may concern our two countries.” As for Hitler, he assured a worried Foreign Minister Ribbentrop, “Oh, don’t take it so seriously. That piece of paper is of no further significance whatsoever.”
No doubt emboldened by England’s concessions, Mussolini in October 1935 abandoned the Stresa Front and commenced his invasion of Ethiopia. Rather than taking action to prevent this brutal conquest, France and England left the response up to the League of Nations, which imposed feeble sanctions and indulged in harsh rhetoric against Mussolini, angering Il Duce and convincing him that both nations were weak and useless as allies.
Hitler drew the same lesson from “diplomatic engagement” and the reliance on a feckless League of Nations in the face of aggression. In March, 1936 he remilitarized the Rhineland with a mere 36,000 troops and police in the face of France’s 500,000 troops, most on or near the Maginot Line. Hitler’s move posed a grave threat to France’s national security, given Germany’s earlier use of the Rhineland as the launch-pad for five German invasions of France over the previous 135 years. Yet again, the Allies responded to Hitler’s aggression with nothing but diplomatic bluster.
Indeed, two years later during a meeting with Austrian Chancellor Kurt Schuschnigg, in which Hitler browbeat him into accepting the Anschluss, he made his contempt for England and France clear. When Schuschnigg replied, “We are not alone in the world,” Hitler contemptuously rejected this feeble claim by dismissing Schuschnigg’s obvious reference to England and France: “England will not lift a finger for Austria,” he scoffed. “And France? Well, two years ago when we marched into the Rhineland with a handful of battalions––at that moment I risked a great deal. If France had marched then we would have been forced to withdraw . . . but for France it is now too late.” The next month, Austria had been absorbed into the Third Reich, and two years later France lay prostrate under Nazi occupation.
What this sequence of events demonstrates is that appeasement beget appeasement, as one aggressor is encouraged by the appeasement of another. As we have seen, this same dynamic prefaced the current war in Ukraine. Even when Vladimir Putin began moving his 300,000-strong invasion force to Ukraine’s eastern border in March and April of 2021, nearly a year before the war started, the U.S. and NATO did nothing even though Putin had made his intentions clear. And no doubt Putin was further encouraged by the Biden Administration’s disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan that April, which cost the lives of thirteen soldiers and billions in weapons, leaving the terrorist Taliban once more in control of the country.
The failure to act preemptively with a credible threat of force paved the way for the Munich debacle in September 1938. This culmination of weak morale and lack of martial confidence lit the fuse of the most destructive war in history. As Churchill wrote in his 1948 The Gathering Storm, the first volume of his history of the war, “the malice of the wicked was reinforced by the weakness of the virtuous,” who failed to see that “the counsels of prudence and restraint may become the prime agents of mortal danger,” and “the middle course adopted from a desire for safety and a quiet life may be found to lead direct to the bull’s-eye of danger.”
Yet here we are, repeating that old folly in Ukraine, and facing two worse choices because we lacked the will to make the bad one, and instead preferred the delusion of “safety and a quiet life” over our national security––all because in our chronocentric arrogance we ignore the lessons of history.
Secretary of State John Kerry, who said, “You just don’t in the 21st century behave in 19th century fashion by invading another country on completely trumped-up pretext.”
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Thats exactly what the West did in IRAQ , now they feel justified in being critical of Russia
Iraqi friends say Sadaam DID have weapons of destruction as they saw them being moved to Syria in columns of vehicles either disguised as ambulances or actual ambulances. No doubt Assad has been able either to destroy or hide them.
I know for a fact they had WMD’s
Thanks Bruce, good article.
It was a nice history lesson but glossed over the reality on the ground. Despite what you hear from pro-war western media, Ukraine along with its citizenry is getting ground to pieces. The “Ukraine fatigue” has set in and support and funding are dwindling. At the same time Russia is just starting its winter offensive.
This is an epic humanitarian crisis that should/could have been avoided. Anyone still supporting this conflict and not screaming for peace at the top of their lungs is culpable. Ukraine never had a chance in this war and everyone with an ounce of common sense knew it. Shame on you who supported it.
No…shame on you, fascism appeaser.
If you care to look at a georaphical map and a cultural map, you will discover that 90% of Ukraine is peace. War is on the border between russian-speaking Donbass and Ukrainian-speaking Ukraine.
Poland is now talking of bringing the western part of Ukraine, which was Polish for centuries until Staling stole it after WW-2, back to Poland. If you think Ukraine is a homogeneous nation, you know n
othing.
Unfortunately narcissisism is the prevailing ideology of the west. The unwillingness to face reality will be our undoing. Thanks for the great article.
That is really a lot of BS, you need to do some investigation before you post, or better get, not post anything.
Please detail the BS (errors), with references.
You don’t think Putin the thug is s narcissist?
I suspect that when and if the truth ever comes out Vlad will be seen as the White Hat in this situation. He is the only leader that can even speak coherently about European history or the current situation. Zelensky is an actor, he was inspired to enter politics by Justine Trudeau, if that doesn’t make him highly suspicious, what does?
How on earth can anyone justify the Russian invasion of a neighboring country, on the absurd excuse of wanting to change it’s government? Nothing to do with Russia , just as logical on that logic for a neighbouring country to invade Russia to change their government, or even a non-neighbouring country. What right does Russia think it has to bomb another one to bits. Putin is 21st version of Hitler, both examples of satanic evil. And some religious nuts in Russia have said it is a Holy war, explanation, please.
For years, Putin told us that putting NATO and its arms on his border was a red-line.
Biden wanted war, so he promoted the idea that Ukraine should be allowed into NATO.
This war was entirely avoidable.
Our “leaders” wanted and needed another crisis, while also giving them another chance to launder our tax money through that corrupt country.
You are missing the difference between a justification and an explanation. Russia found the prospect of a Ukrainian/American military alliance so threatening they went to war to stop it.
Just another one of Putin’s useful idiots
Vlad is short for Vladislav. A Vladimir would go by Vova or Volodya (pretty sure the second is Putin’s childhood nickname).
But yes, Putin, especially compared to American leaders, can actually talk and make sense.
It was insane for the CIA and Soros to overthrow the legitimately elected President of Ukraine and replace him with a CIA puppet. It was insane not to listen to Putin’s repeated warnings. It was insane to shove NATO to Russia’s border. This war is the fault of bankers and CIA, not Putin.
So it is perfectly alright for Putin to be up close to another country, then invade it. Plus he said their forces were being withdrawn and no intention to invade. Utter liar, servant of the devil.
Fascist apologist
What I find especially funny about this comment is that genuine fascist apologetics is rampant. Ukraine’s nationalist heroes really did fight with the Nazis, really did massacre Poles and Jews. And it’s trivial to find western news articles saying the Ukrainians soldier with the SS badge on his uniform is probably just an electrician.
Ukraine is not being ground to pieces. Russia’s invasion was stopped, was confined to the south and southeastern portions of Ukraine, and is being pushed back (e.g., the recapture of Kherson). While enduring Russian missile and drone attacks, Ukraine is fully in control of over 80 % of its sovereign territory.
Let’s keep in mind some points. Putin, without justification, invaded Ukraine. He was encouraged by the weakness of the Biden Administration, just as Putin was encouraged to seize Crimea when Obama was President and was weak. If we believe in national borders (and we do), then Putin is entirely at fault.
Russia for centuries has wanted to control Ukraine. Russia has lousy agricultural soil and no warm water ports, whereas Ukraine has good agricultural soil and warm water ports. Ukrainians, however, want their own country and have awful memories of when Stalin caused millions of Ukrainians to die due to a famine in Ukraine caused by Stalin’s seizing all the Ukrainian grain for foreign currency to pay for industrialization. When the old Soviet Union broke up, the Ukrainians held a referendum in 1991 to decide whether to be an independent country or to join the Russian Federation. The Ukrainians voted over 90% for an independent country. The Ukrainians voted into office Velenskyy, a Jew whose platform has been to clean up the corruption and to curb the influence of the oligarchs.
So the Kremlin is faultless for allowing the Maiden coup to succeed? For falling for the obvious deceptions of the Minsk negotiations? Poor fellows, the world just happens to them without any agency.
Mr Thornton,
you mention that Germany invaded France five times in 135 years.
Can you please tell us how many times France invaded Germany in those 135 years?
Or maybe we should look at the last 250 years?
Oh so that makes it Ok then does it?
It is about TU QUOQUE.
So, lets turn your argument around.
If Germany invading France is bad, shouldnt be France invading Germany also bad?
Rather Vladimir Putin be better and more fittingly categorized as a sociopath or a psychopath, the fact remains that he’s the one with the supreme power in the mighty nation of Russia and he is very dangerous.
But maybe Russia is not as mighty as we were led to believe. Their soldiers are badly equipped, even with the basic equipment, much of their arms are of poor quality , personnel badly led, many applying the surrender . Have to get armaments from sickos like Iran and North Korea.
The brave and Ukrainian people are foiling Putin’s scheme to violently and murderously conquer their nation. Furthermore, on the news program American First the former adviser to President Trump, Sebastian Gorka, during an interview he spoke about Putin’s using the Russian military to invade Ukraine. Dr. Gorka explained that invasion this what happens when there is a “weak feckless senile old man in the White House.”
Of course, he was speaking of Joe Biden.
Dr. Gorka doesn’t want any American soldier sent to Ukraine but be does believe that “We need to help the self- determinists of Ukraine as a strong people with military supplies”. Furthermore, he also said, “We need to supply them with information gathered from the different US intelligence agencies.”
One terrible reality is the Joe Biden, in spite of all his talk about aiding the people of Ukraine will in the end come to nothing. This is because Biden is “all talk” and “empty words”.
It should be remembered that Vladimir Putin using the Russian military to invade and destroy Ukraine didn’t happen when President Trump was in the White House he kept Putin under control. If Donald Trump would still of President this Putin disaster in Ukraine would not have occurred. Now with Joe Biden masquerading as a genuine US President Putin has become totally out of control, irrational and very dangerous.
For Biden, read OBAMA, a Russian plant. Born in Kenya, taken by his mother to Indonesia, till circa 12 yrs old, where he got his Muslim training, then to an outback part of America, Honolulu, then to Chicago , lodged to a Communist husband and wife. He should never have qualified as President material as NOT an American. Hence Obama being pro Iran, anti Israel, anti Jew, and anti Britain, his father in Kenya fought against British Empire rule.
Obama’s father was a Mau Mau member. To be a member you had to murder someone. Obama was proud of his Dad’s Mau Mau membership. That says it all.
I don’t think that’s a correct interpretation. Trump was content with a stalemate and I doubt the Kremlin perceived him as threatening, more likely they had hopes of negotiating a settlement. The people who comprise the Biden administration (the man himself is an old and senile puppet) decided to settle the fight in the east by force.
With the strong and intelligent President Trump, Vladimir Putin had the Russian military attack no other country. Then came weak and feeble -minded Joe Biden and Putin became a war starter using the Russian military to invade another nation.
For Biden, read OBAMA, and the vice Presiden,. who is going to take over when Biden goes, and who will be vice President then ?. Obama asked for an office in the White House
And Joe Biden told t he world on January 16th 2022, that ‘a minor incursion’ should be handled differently. A ‘go-ahead, but don’t indulge’. Since then, the US has rejected all talks of peace. Now, who wants war and who wants peace? Who said they would ‘bring NordStream gas pipes to a halt, and stopped the EastMed gaspipes? With a fried like the current Democratic led US, you don’t need enemies.
About Russia and Ukraine, this current situation is obviously very serious.
Putin is very willing to have the Russian military murder many people of Ukraine to conquer that nation the more Ukrainians who are killed the greater will be the resentment and hate for the Russians invaders and the more resistance the Putin’s invaders will have.
If Putin does conquer, have to kill even more people and destroy the entire infrastructure of Ukraine.
Therefore, if Putin “wins” this war he stated it would be an empty victory for him because he will lose the respect of all the leader of the different countries of the world and by all the people in those countries will detest him.
All the people of the Ukraine will despise him for being responsible for the deaths of their family members and friends and taking their beauteous nation and making a total ruin out of it.
It’s amazing that someone as intelligent Putin can also be so very blind to this obvious reality.
Putin has already lost all respect; next, he will lose his position power and end up imprisoned or being dead
That prison or death awaits for Putin because he did make it for himself by his ordering all that horrendous bloody murderous violence by his wanting to invade and conquer Ukraine.
You need to stop smoking that funny stuff, my communist friend. Try reading the Beano or Dandy because whatever your source of information is it must be another children’s comic. Do you think the hundreds of hours of footage coming out of Ukraine is false. It shows civilian bodies in the streets murdered by Russian soldiers. Women raped. It shows the wilful bombing of civilian targets designed to destroy the will of the people. It shows the power stations, and water supplies being targeted to destroy the infrastructure. Are you totally blind you ignorant idiot? Wake up.
I think you are off your meds, incoherence babbling..
Ukraine (and the west) is not trying to win the war. If they were they’d be bombing Kremlin, Moscow…. They are not bombing anywhere in Russia. What does that say?
It says that suicide is not an option !!! Russia is the No.1 Nuclear Superpower. Estimates are that they have 1,000 more nukes than the U.S. and they said they would use them. Can’t believe anyone would advocate for attacking Russian soil.
The author failed to mention the fact that the United States got rid of the pro-Russian Ukraine government in 2014 and installed a pro-western government at a cost of five billion dollars.
The purpose of NATO was what again?
And how much of a current threat does the Warsaw Pact pose?
So now we are confronted with “two choices for resolving the crisis: a diplomatic resolution that requires Ukraine to sacrifice territory; or a larger Ukrainian offensive to push Russia back to its pre-2014 borders, supported by more aid and materiel from NATO countries, which in practice really means the U.S. Each choice is fraught with difficulty and danger.”
While we ponder what to do now, Russia continues to turn Ukraine into a wasteland.
Missing from this article is any suggestion for what to do now.
If it’s so bad here, take the next plane to Moscow and kiss Putin’s satanic ring
I think the west should put themselves in putins shoes. Imagine if California broke off of the u.s. and joined a Chinese Russian alliance. Would we just let that happen? Put in said he would talk with Zelensky if he agrees not to join NATO. Zelensky has nothing to lose by accepting since NATO is too scared of war with Russia to accept him anyway. Zelensky should make Russia an offer in which in return for a peace treaty and return of territories seized by Russia including Crimea he will write into the Ukranian constitution that he will not join NATO
Zelensky and Poroshenko actually DID sign agreements of settling the long-time problems in Donbass, worsened by the language laws. 15% of Ukraines population speak Russian.
The agreement signed was making Ukraine a federate state, giving Donbass independant economy, holding referendums and withdrawing Russian forces and nationalist (to be polite), Ukrainian militias. Zelensky initiated one with Russia, signed October 2019. Ukraine has not kept a single of the agreements, not even a single of the statements.
Putin offered talks at least 3 times this year, last time a week ago, Ukraine and the USA has rejected them all. In 2014 the UN told that Ukrainian militias killed 20.000 Donbass civilians and hundreds of thousand fled. Not into Ukraine, but into Russia.
An analyst who thinks NATO should enter in a war between 2 non-NATO countries, should do a little reading. Thinking is clearly not a key-performance. His statements on Crimea, shows clearly that he knows absolutely nothing of Crimeas history.
You have Chamberlain’s Munich agreement all wrong. Here me out as
I quote from the book “Fighter Pilot” by Wing Commander Paul Richey D.F.C.
who was a fighter pilot in France in 1939.
“Fortunately for the RAF, England and world, Mr. Chamberlain managed to
stave off war for a year. That vital year gave the RAF time to re-equip the
regular fighter squadrons with Hurricanes and Spitfires, armed with eight
rapid-firing machine-guns and capable of a top speed of 350 mph”.
This is on page 2, first paragraph. BTW, this book is from the BATTLE OF
BRITAIN series by Pan Books.
The book was first published in 1941 by B. T. Batsford Ltd. The edition I
quote from was (extensively revised) published in 1969 by Pan Books Ltd.
33 Tothill Street, London, S.W.1.
Copyrighted Paul Richey, 1969
Paul Richey dedicated the book
“For MY COMRADES killed in action in the Battle of France”.