Imperialism for Thee, but Not for Me

Realism, idealism, and false realism in the Ukraine war.

The Ukraine war has been a disaster. That much is certain. But who caused it, and could it have been averted with better policy from us? And what would the costs of such a policy have been? There is a large school of foreign policy "realists" (exemplified by John Mearsheimer) who think that Russia was driven to this war by the inexorable encroachment of NATO towards the Russian borders. Thus we are at fault, just as much as Russia, which is actually dropping bombs on Ukraine and cutting a blood-soaked swath through its eastern and southern regions. The imperialism of Russia over its neighbors is perfectly understandable, realistic, and OK. By this argument, Russia has been crystal clear that offering Ukraine the distant prospect of NATO membership, as we did in 2008, was a declaration of war (by us!). Russia has tried to negotiate in good faith all through this time, and kept working for peace, even as it could see its interests eroded, and the necessity of war increasing. Till at last, it was forced by our policy to take over Crimea, and ultimately, in the face of increasing infiltration by Western interests in Ukraine, launch the full scale war we see today.

While this is one perspective on the level of grand strategy and traditional balance of power views, it leaves out one of the actors in the drama, and is a curious way to apportion blame for manifest evil. The actor it leaves out is Ukraine, which might want to have some say in its own destiny. And the evil is the way in which this realist school casually consigns countries to "spheres of influence", fated to be sat upon by their neighboring bullies. Perhaps world history is one long story of bullies fighting it out over riches and territory. But does it have to be? It does not, and therein lies the difference between war and peace, blame and praise.

Realists point to America's own empire, perhaps most explicitly outlined in the Monroe Doctrine. This statement by John Quincy Adams claimed the entire Western Hemisphere to be a special zone where European meddling was unwelcome, and defended by the nascent power of the United States. This was largely aspirational at the time, and European imperialist powers continued meddling in the hemisphere nevertheless, even invading the US itself in the war of 1812. And of course, the Monroe doctrine was not intended to set up a US empire at all, but was rather an anti-imperialist document, promoting the self-determination of the countries of South and Central America. We have since certainly done our share of meddling, taking several large portions of Mexico for our own territory, corrupting various Central American countries in commercial and anti-communist quasi-empires. But on the other hand, for the most part we have had friendly and peaceful relations, even (the shambolic Bay of Pigs invasion aside) keeping our hands off of Soviet-allied Cuba.

Evolution of the Russian empire, over the centuries. Whether the areas under Russian occupation ever wanted to be there, or now wish to stay there, remains a live question.

It is clear that our view of empire is not, currently, a traditional one. We have lots of friends, lots of allies, and lots of power, of soft and hard kinds. But we have not set up a barrier of involuntary client states against regional threats. NATO is emblematic as a voluntary alliance. It was and remains a collective (if US-dominated) alliance of countries trying to deter a third world war. Such a war was first contemplated to arise from the European antagonists who had just fought the two preceding wars - Germany, France, and the UK. But as they rebuilt their societies on both an economic and moral basis, it quickly became clear that the real threat was going to come from the new Soviet Empire, which had quickly swallowed up all of Eastern Europe. 

Each of these Eastern European countries had their dreams of freedom crushed in the wake of Germany's defeat, and each was correspondingly eager to leave the Soviet Empire when the cold war, at long last, came to an end. Vladimir Putin blames Mikhail Gorbachev for loosening the reins and thoughtlessly letting the empire crumble. The current Russian state celebrates its greatest holidays around the high water mark of another leader, more the Putin's taste- Joseph Stalin, when Russian power was at its (relative) peak. Putin's idea of power is expressed in his relation with Belarus- a thoroughly cowed and pliant frontier, from which Russian conveniently launched a large portion of its invasion of Ukraine. It is typical of this curdled and "realist" perspective that the wishes of the people involved count for nothing. Their aspirations and well-being are irrelevant, the imperial state and its power are what matter. 

As an aside, Michael Kimmage has recently written a book-length analysis of Ukraine. It is a quite balanced history of the whole run-up to the war, laying out the moves, thoughtless or not, taken by both sides. Here, one gets a sense that Putin was sensing weakness in the West, in the wake of our Iraqi and Afghan debacles. But where this book really shines is in its epilogue, which is a pean to the power of history itself.

"Countries invariably conceive their foreign policies in reaction to earlier conflicts. They are led by their sense of who was wrong and who was right, of what the core problem was and what the solution to that problem was, fighting the last war until it is no longer the last war. The preoccupation with the past can be the path to wisdom, of learning from history, or it can leave countries trapped in their interpretations of the past. To investigate the origins of an ongoing war, then, is not just to chart the present moment. It is to peer, however uncertainly, into the future."

Kimmage recounts how Germany turned historical analysis on its head after World War 1 to claim that others had started it, and others were responsible for Germany's defeat, thus setting the table for a second round. Similarly, it is Putin's potted analysis of the cold war and its appalling aftermath for Russia that forms the motivation for his current war. Just like realism, this theory of the power of historical narrative serves to explain motivations and actions, and by understanding absolve the actors, to some degree, of culpabilty, making the current conflict seem inevitable. In this case, the West was doltishly uninformed and sleepwalked into an unnecessary war. 

But history is not a given. It is, in places like Russia, a product of the propaganda organs, not the science organs. It is narrated with a grievence and a point in mind, and can be, in the right hands, tailored to lead to practically anything the leader wishes to happen. The idea that we should be beholden to the historical analysis of another country or its leader, and thus be on the hook for appeasing their "legitimate" demands, feelings, etc. is absurd. However much such understanding helps us analyze what other actors have in mind, it should not bind our analysis of the same history, or of the broader functioning of the international system.

Returning to the realist perspective, it recognizes the lowest common denominator in an anarchic environment- raw power. It is the mafia approach to foreign relations. Well, we have an answer to that, which is a modern perspective, modeled in a modern state that has and uses overwhelming policing power against aggressors. It is enlightenment values that have suffused Europe, providing the peace seen on the continent among the members of NATO and the EU. We have gotten so used to living amidst civilized values that a Russian invasion of Ukraine seemed unthinkable, despite a long train of preliminary invasions, explicit policy statements from Russia, and propaganda preparation. Europe should have used its power to immediately push Russia back out of Ukraine. That would have been the ideal scenario to safeguard the values that Ukraine was aspiring to, and that the West embodies.

So, what about nuclear weapons and World War 3? Russia has been rattling its nuclear saber, resorting to any threat it can to keep Ukraine weak and friendless. Needless to say, it would not be wise of Russia to use nuclear bombs in Ukraine. Whatever grievances / justification Russia has for its invasion, even internally, would collapse immediately. I think everyone recognizes that nuclear weapons exist for mutual and existential deterrence, notionally protecting Russia (in this case) from invasion by other countries. Fine. Helping Ukraine rid itself of a cruel bully, restoring its independent and original borders, is, conversely, fully justified and is the kind of aim that lends itself to a limited war. At very least at this point, we should provide Ukraine with the wherewithal for air superiority over its own territory.

Russia exemplifies old thinking from the anarchic world order. It (and China as well) want to drag the world back into that world, recreating the glory days of Stalin's empire. Or even Catherine the Great's. It is in the power of the West, as a growing collective of democratic and prosperous countries, to deny these aims, rather than appeasing them. And the expeditious and effective use of police power in Ukraine would yield dividends into the future, strengthening the collective power of the West to foster the freedom and self-determination of other nations. Could this protective concept allow movement the other way? Sure- Hungary, for instance, might want to join the Russian orbit and leave the EU. And good riddence! They would be welcome to do so. These alignments should not be determined by war, (nor, hopefully propaganda and corruption), but by national sentiment and interest.

The primitive mafia mindset is also one that afflicts certain precincts of US politics, notably the Republican presidential candidate, who can't see beyond "strength" and machismo, and seems more likely to support Putin than NATO or Ukraine. It is another case of cavalier disregard not only of decades of collective work by the West to sustain a civilized international order, but of elementary concepts of justice and self-determination. Maintaining a just peace takes steadfastness, work and sacrifice. If we do nothing, then sure, the bullies will win and the world will go right back to one where bullies have only other bullies to be afraid of. If last week's Memorial day means anything, however, it is that collective sacrifice over the long arc of US history has always served, at least in principle, more freedom and less tyranny- for others, not just ourselves.

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