A year ago I published “Dry Thoughts in a Time of War,” shortly after the commencement of the War in Ukraine. On the anniversary of the start of this conflagration, I went back and re-read my assumptions at the time. Overall, I think I was pretty accurate - but I did think it would be over by now. And I think I missed a key aspect of this conflict that is chilling: the parallels with World War I.
Contemporary historians who don’t want to work very hard place the start of World War I on June 28, 1914, the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand in Sarajevo. But the reality of that war and the ensuing conflagrations that terminated with the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, is that it was started long before. Through the late 19th Century, Europe evolved into tribes - one side, the “Central Powers,” namely Germany, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Ottoman Empire and other smaller states. The other tribe the “Entente Powers” led by England, France and Russia. All of these nations were undergoing rapid industrialization with huge demographic shifts. Their populations were young, affluence was rising, but expansion both physical and economic was on the rise. And there was a profound level of distrust. All of them were tied in various ways by mutual defense treaties and there was a profound lack of visionary statesmanship that might have prevented it all. When it was all over - Round 1 in 1919 and Round 2 in 1945, Europe was shattered and has never returned to it’s former prominence on the world stage.
The build up to where we are today in Ukraine has essentially been going on since “history ended,” according to Francis Fukuyama, with the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, with some story-lines going back to the end of World War II and the Bretton Woods Accord. It is a story of missed opportunities.
Let’s focus on the biggest missed opportunity that is the most proximate reason for where we are now - dealing with Russia after the collapse of the Soviet Union. [Perhaps the biggest missed opportunity was during the Kerensky’s provisional government in 1917 when British Intelligence offered up an interception of Lenin who the Germans were inserting secretly back into Russia. Kerensky demurred saying that they were going to be a democracy and he could handle Lenin…another story for another time!] There has always been a lurking desire in Russian hearts to be part of Greater Europe going back to Peter the Great in the early 1700’s. The fall of the Wall in Berlin, the collapse of the Soviet Union, the re-emergence of a unified Germany - all of these were opportunities had there been prudent politicians and diplomats - to have fed that desire and potentially have a less bellicose, more western Russia emerge from the ashes of their communist hell. The other thing lurking in Russian hearts thanks to the French, the Germans, and countless other entities through the years that have invaded Russia, is paranoia. After 1991, instead of offering aid and economic assistance in rebuilding, a la Marshall Plan, we offered unbridled crony capitalism. Every company, speculator, investor from San Francisco to Brussels jetted in to get deals with a corrupt series of oligarchs and take advantage of Russia’s tremendous wealth of natural resources.
In 1994, the “Budapest Memoranda” were inked. This was a collection of three treaties dealing largely with the disposition of nuclear weapons in states of the former Soviet Union, including Ukraine. Belarus, Kazakhstan and Ukraine agreed to return the Soviet nuclear weapons that were stationed on their soil in exchange for a commitment that neighboring countries would not harm the security of the other. The Russians and Ukrainians went a step further in 1997, signing the “Russian-Ukrainian Friendship Treaty that guaranteed “border integrity” and “mutual cooperation.” Russia, England and the United States were signatories to the Budapest Memoranda, with China and France endorsing the concept. All of this was under the umbrella of nuclear non-proliferation.
Outside of this, Russia was falling into disarray. A constitutional crisis in 1993 led to the dissolution of the Soviet form of government and the instillation of a stronger presidency with some limited parliamentary control under the leadership of Boris Yeltsin. But Russian GDP was falling, the country was falling into disarray and after several attempts at reform, in 1999 Yeltsin resigned and was succeeded by Vladimir Putin…the central Darth Vader figure in this whole tragedy (although it should be pointed out that Putin is far more popular in Russia than our shadow of a President is in this country.)
Interesting side note on Mr. Putin…Spiridon Putin, his paternal grandfather, was on the personal staff of both Lenin AND Stalin. He was their cook. Lived with them and no doubt shared some pretty interesting tidbits with young Vlad. There is little doubt that Putin has visions of trying to return Mother Russia to the territorial greatness of the Soviet Union, but I suspect he is also smart and shrewd enough to understand his economic and demographic limitations.
Now, while all of this was going on inside the Russian Federation, what were we in the west up to? Expanding NATO. Some of it was understandable - nations like Poland, Lithuania and Estonia that spent 60+ years under the communist boot were desperate for reassurances that it would not happen again. But the Russians had made it very clear that this was something they vehemently disfavored. I submit this was a missed opportunity. In my “king for a day” moment here, I would have granted full economic integration with Western Europe and the US, but not military protection. Clear diplomatic signals of good faith could have been sent to both sides without militarizing the Russian border.
And the map above needs to be amended to add Finland and Sweden to the dark red. Let me be clear - I am not apologizing for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, but I am saying we made it nearly inevitable.
Of all of the neighboring states, the one nearest to the Russian heart has always been Ukraine. The Black Sea fleet is ported in Crimea - which they annexed in 2014 under Obama. Ukraine is rich in natural resources…especially agricultural. It is said that the rich black earth of eastern Ukraine is so fertile that you can put a stick in it and it will grow. Hitler had trainloads of the stuff brought back to Germany during the occupation of 1943-44. There is a long history of what is Ukraine or isn’t - the Poles have laid claim to parts of it, the Romanians have said parts are theirs…the port cities along the Black Sea were all built during the reign of Catherine the Great and the eastern portion of the country is largely ethnic Russian.
As near and dear as Ukraine is to the heart of Russian ambition, it is perhaps nearer and dearer to American politicians engaged in money laundering or other schemes. Every day we are learning more about the former Soviet biological warfare facilities that the US took over after the fall - with the implicit understanding they would be dismantled - that were/are still being operated under US control. We know about Burisma - the Bidens, the Kerries, the Pelosis - it’s the great salt lick of corruption and money laundering for kids of American politicians. And to protect those (ahem!) “investments” we have been interfering in that country for a long, long time. The most glaring being the Euromaidan Revolution of 2014 where we helped unseat the government of Russia leaning Yanukovych and install Yatsenyuk who immediately signed cooperation agreements with the EU.
Maybe that was the Archduke Ferdinand moment. Because from there, the unrest began in the Donbass - a civil war that has been going ever since. And one that ultimately became the proximate cause of the Russian invasion of that area - to protect ethnic Russians…well, also secure major coal reserves, agriculturally rich land etc etc. But here the United States is in the middle of all of it thanks to an utter lack of diplomacy and statesmanship.
Mark Twain is alleged to have said that “history may not repeat itself, but it rhymes.” It is my nightly prayer that the rhyme on this one will not end up in a full scale commitment of NATO troops to a war with Russia. A cornered Russia that now has China as an ally and supplier would feel they have no choice but to deploy tactical nuclear weapons and from there we climb up the escalation chain. I don’t know if we will get there, but with every new commitment of lucre and weaponry to the corrupt regime in Kiev, the odds are increased.
Barring that, how does it end? There aren’t very many scenarios that are good for either side but there are a few data points that may point the way to a finish. Exhaustion is the first one. Highly technical war machinery costs billions of dollars and takes years to manufacture. Both sides are burning through their inventories, but we are at a distinct disadvantage. Two weeks ago, the Norwegian Minister of Defense stated that they would be hard pressed to provide any more military aid to Ukraine because they had to “have something to defend themselves.” There is exhaustion in the American people too - after twenty years of fruitless wars capped off by the embarrassing pull out from Afghanistan, there is a general sense out here in the provinces that maybe we should heed the words of our first President and “avoid foreign entanglements.” Maybe it’s time we bring the boys back home and rebuild ourselves.
The second reality point is the Russian tactics. I see the way this has played out differently from the regular illuminati. I don’t think the initial invasion was botched. What if it was a hard drive feint towards Kiev with the hope that the Ukrainians would negotiate? Then when that didn’t happen, Russians went back to fighting wars the way they always have - grounding out inch by bloody inch. In Eisenhower’s tremendous history “Crusade in Europe,” he references his first meeting with Marshall Zhukov - the Soviet Supreme Commander. They were swapping soldierly notes about fighting the Germans and Ike asked Zhukov how he handled the German mine-fields because they had often slowed the American advance. “Simple,” Zhukov said, “ we send the soldiers marching through them - that way we don’t lose any tanks.” You get the point…large casualties are not worrisome to them. Like Grant’s calculus in dealing with the Army of Northern Virginia - if you are losing 10-1 you are winning - you have plenty more in the reserves than they do.
In my opinion, this thing is going to end the way it should never have started. The ethnic Russian parts of Eastern Ukraine will become Russian client states, no longer part of Ukraine. The Ukrainians will be allowed to keep Odessa so they are not a complete rump state. They will be allowed to join the European Union (what’s left of that) and they will agree to never join NATO. But I stress - the tribes are aligned just like they were for the guns of August, 1914. We are snails on the edge of a straight razor that is being held by a very shaky hand.