Will Barack Obama join the long list who have made this mistake before?
Events in Ukraine begin to look very worrying. Having annexed the Crimea in a matter of weeks, Vladimir Putin’s Russia is poised to grab large swathes of territory east of the Ukrainian capital, Kiev. The West – the United States and its NATO allies – have made it clear that they would not go to war over this, but rather impose tougher sanctions. Putin will seize the assets of a significant number of western oil firms involved in joint ventures inside Russia in reply.
President Obama has also made it clear that if Putin & Co. move against any of the small Baltic states which are NATO members – Lithuania, Latvia or Estonia, all of which have sizeable Russian-speaking minorities – then a military solution would be on the cards. To act otherwise renders NATO utterly toothless.
None of this is new: Russia has long baffled friend and foe alike: at times the West’s strongest ally, at others its worst enemy. Similarly, its military and technological capabilities have at times led the world, at others it has looked weak, out-of-touch and utterly inept.
Which Russia is on stage now?
Like certain football teams, Russia always plays better at home than it does away. Send troops to far-off lands and they generally do not fare well. Russia’s Peter the Great invaded Estonia (part of Sweden at the time) in 1700 and was thrashed by Sweden’s Charles XII at the battle of Narva. But when Charles invaded Russia in 1708/09, not only did he encounter the typical Russian scorched earth tactics, but he also faced the Russian winter. His severely weakened army was, in turn slaughtered in 1709 at the battle of Poltava.
One hundred years later, Europe was gripped by the Napoleonic wars. Fighting in Europe against the French with allies like Austria, the Russians met defeat more often than victory, most famously at Austerlitz in 1805. But when Napoleon invaded Russia in 1812, the tables were again turned: the French faced the same tactics used against the Swedes a century earlier. Winter and the Cossacks saw to the rest on the infamous retreat from Moscow.
Reading accounts of this period, historians point to two key elements in the Russian psyche: an intense passion for Mother Russia and an almost equally fierce devotion to the Slavic people. These were to surface again in the run-up to World War One.
In June 1914, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, was assassinated in Sarajevo (then part of Serbia). Austria-Hungary had been itching for a pretext to bring Serbia to heel but Russia had declared it would back Serbia as a Slav nation. And that’s what happened when Austria-Hungary declared war and invaded Serbia in late July of that fateful year.
We could fast forward to the Soviet war in Afghanistan (1979-89) for another example of Russian ineptitude when ‘playing away’, but to do so would be to ignore World War Two, which many regard as Russia’s finest hour.
The Soviet Union – as Russia had become – allied at first with Hitler’s Germany but that ended on June 22nd, 1941, when Germany broke the pact and invaded. It was just two days shy of the anniversary of the Napoleonic invasion and Hitler’s armies would eventually suffer the same fate: scorched earth tactics, the terrifying Russian winter and defeat at Stalingrad.
But once again, Russia’s leaders – or leader, in this case – Josef Stalin – played to the twin threats of an attack on the Rodina – Mother Russia – and the pride of the Russian people, with their existence as Slavs under threat from barbarian invaders.
The ploy worked, just as it had done through history. Under conditions of incredible hardship, the Soviet Union mobilised its production lines to send out tens of thousands of tanks and aircraft. It also lost an estimated 22-28 million men and women in the war – contrast that with around 450,000 for Great Britain and 420,000 for the United States.
No coincidence, then, that Vladimir Putin is playing the same old tune: he tells us that the annexation of the Crimea was ‘to protect Russians’. There can be no doubt, as we consider the historical landscape, that he’s striking chords which run very, very deep inside Russian hearts. Against this background, it’s highly likely that the 95% in favour of secession recorded in the recent Crimean referendum is accurate. Putin is making similar noises about eastern Ukraine and we can expect similar figures when plebiscites are held shortly in at least two eastern Ukrainian cities.
So where does all of this leave President Obama?
In a very difficult spot, is the short answer. At the moment, his Russian counterpart looks to have all the cards; history tells us that the deck is stacked anyway in Putin’s favour.
But history also tells us of a third strand that runs through Russia’s psyche. This is fear of being cut off from the Baltic Sea to the west and the Black Sea to the south. Remember, its northern ports are generally frozen for at least half the year. In parallel with this runs a fear of isolation, of not being taken seriously. In other words, cut off from the world and regarded as a second-class nation. These anxieties drove Peter the Great in the early 1700s, Alexander I a century later and Nicholas II until his overthrow and execution in 1917. They certainly drove Josef Stalin and the Soviet Union.
Thus, Obama’s only real option is to embrace Russia as an ally. Awkward, difficult and distasteful as that may be, history shows us that there is no real alternative.