By now the parallels between current Russian and pre-war German expansionism are so obvious as to invite satire. Those parallels are indeed stark and sobering. It is hard not to recall the ineffectual diplomacy that preceded the First and Second World Wars; when Hollande and Merkel flew to Minsk, many people heard the echo of Munich.
It is always tempting but nevertheless fraught with intellectual danger to reason by historical analogy. Yet, because such analogies are an apparent constant of political debate, we must at least pick them well. The World Wars are not the right source of comparative basis for current Russian actions. Our analogies really must be drawn from the nuclear age. The arrival of nuclear weapons permanently transformed the calculus of great power confrontations. Russia is a nuclear power. Thus, our fight against them must begin from the assumption that the worst-case consequence is not a bitter and brutal war of many years with extensive loss of life, but the end of everything.
In that regard, it is timely to return to George F. Kennan’s 1957 Reith Lectures. Kennan, the American diplomat who was then a professor at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, gave a series of six lectures on the logic of confrontation in the atomic age. Of these, perhaps the most interesting is the fourth, on the military logic. (Thanks to the BBC, the transcript and audio are both readily available.) Even at this early stage of the Cold War, Kennan was striving to find an approach to nuclear strategy that was both humane and practical. That struggle led him to reject graduated deterrence and tactical atomic weapons, and conclude that the only plausible option was to keep nukes out of any war.
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In coming to this conclusion, Kennan made two realizations of considerable contemporary relevance. The first is that it is essential for the continental European powers to defend themselves, without the assistance of nuclear-armed states. The second is that this is best done by the formation of militias designed to provide resistance to a Soviet occupying force, since the prospect of stopping their divisions at a rigidly defended border is remote.
The need for Europe to hold its own in defense spending has been a basic contention of American diplomacy for decades. Most recently, there were bold promises of redress at NATO’s 2014 Wales summit, but limited action since.
The suggestion that this spending be concentrated on raising the costs of Russian occupation, rather than on making conquest impossible, is more controversial. Yet it is certainly the case that we are a long way from achieving the aim of preventing invasion altogether – Ukraine’s fighting power could double or triple and it would still be insufficient to stop a full-scale Russian attack. The Baltic States may rely (we hope) on NATO’s Article 5 guarantee, but even that is only the promise of counterattack, at least until NATO divisions are positioned on the borders.
In the nuclear age, strategic reasoning rests on elegant chains of assumptions; planners must estimate first, second and third order consequences. That is because the possible implications are so great that the whole thing must be mapped out before the crisis point arrives. It is frequently a morbid exercise. Yet it is surely necessary, and it is surely wise in doing so to return to the outpouring of strategic thought from the 1950s, which retains more relevance than repeated study of the errors of 1913 and the 1930s. The lectures of George Kennan, typical of the man’s approachable intellect and pragmatism, are an excellent starting point.
Tom Wein is the Head of Programmes at the Centre for Applied Intelligence in London. He tweets @tom_wein and his writing is collected here.
Correction: An earlier version of this article referred to George Kennan as the head of the Institute for Advanced Study. He did not occupy that position, but was a professor at the institute at the time. The text has been amended.
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Scott Naumann 
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Mark T 
What is occurring along Russia’s borders will result in neither another Cuban Missile Crisis nor another Munich for any of several reasons.
First, this country and the EU nation’s (militarily weak as they are) made a major error in political judgment by “arrogantly” pushing NATO into Russia’s sphere of influence, and Putin is merely restoring Russian domination over its bordering countries. And, the US, regardless of its government’s tough talk will simply accept that reality. We are not going to go to nuclear war over Russian expansion back into a bordering geographical area they dominated for centuries. And, neither the US nor any other NATO country, even if combined, has the conventional strength or willingness to engage in costly conflict over the Ukraine or even over the Baltic States.
Second, both Cuban Missile Crisis and Munich resulted from perceived threats to the sphere of influence of the responding nations. And what were the real results of both those confrontations? At Munich the Europeans allowed the Germans to take control of areas populated by their nationals — so to speak; while as a result of the Cuban Missile Crisis the US (albeit secretly) agreed to remove it’s Jupiter Missiles from Turkey. Missiles whose placement had triggered the Soviet move into America’s sphere of influence. Given the technology of the early 1960’s the US had (technologically) entered into and threatened Russia’s sphere of influence by foolishly placing those missiles along Russia’s border. Historically the US has striven to save face on this politically necessary retreat by asserting it had intended to withdraw those Jupiter Missiles anyway.
From a Foreign Policy perspective, the political truth is that a nation or alliance that enters into another’s sphere of influence will eventually be faced with the decision to withdraw or fight. The wise move is (normally) to withdraw — according to the dictates of geography.
That is what awaits the US along the Russian border — and in the South China Sea. We simply do not have any strategically vital interests at stake in either region and lack both the necessary force levels and logistical capabilities to sustain a combat effort in either location — so far from the continentsl US.
We don’t have any strategically vital interests in the South China Sea? You know, that body of water that $5.3 trillion in trade passes through annually, in a world where the U.S. economy depends on free access to and trade across the global commons?
This whole idea that there is nothing at stake in Ukraine or the Baltics is absurd. The reason why states seek regional hegemony and “spheres of influence” is so that they can then seek a larger role outside their own regions. When Russia achieves regional hegemony, it will seek to dominate Europe; whether this is by military power (quite unlikely) or by using its political proxies and economic leverage to push the U.S. out of Europe (quite likely), the outcome is the same and it most certainly reflects a vital U.S. interest.
And for god’s sake, can we stop pushing this expansionist NATO propaganda piece? NATO didn’t conquer or annex former Warsaw Pact states, they joined of their own free will because they wanted to be sovereign states and knew that it was the only way they could. Before them, the only way the whole of Central and Western Europe could remain free was by collective security balancing, which is why NATO was created in the first place.
It matters not one iota to the US how much trade goes into and out of China or Japan through the South China Sea. It’s around 8000 miles from the US and not our concern and not worth a war — we will loose.
NATO was unnecessarily and incorrectly aggressive in pushing itself into Russia’s Sphere of Influence. Those States should never have allowed to join NATO, thus blame lies with the US and NATO for accepting them.
Just because the US has moved out of its sphere of influence in overt attempts to dominate the world doesn’t mean other nations are going to be as aggressive as the US. Further, their sphere of influence is on their borders. The US is thousands of miles away and needs to cease its de facto imperialism and stay home and fix our rotting economy and collapsing standard of living. What goes on between Russia and their formerly ruled, and soon to be ruled again areas, is not our business and not worth a war we will loose.
Hasn’t this country strategically failed enough times in the past 70 years? Enough of the Chickenhawk Cheney Newcom beating of the war drums.
Our economy is hardly rotting and if you think things aren’t far better now than they were 70 years ago, apparently that long forgotten time before we made mistakes as a nation, you need to open a window and get some fresh air.Our economy is globalised – it doesn’t matter if something is happening next door or 8000 miles away. If it affects global trade, it is going to have an effect on the economy.
Bottom line, if we don’t want to be the underwriters of a global capitalist market that greatly favors us, someone else will take the lead and create a system that favors them.
sounds very similar to Kaplan’s book, The Revenge of Geography…
history never repeats, but she rhymes. She now rhymes both with 1930-ies and the Cold War. There is no contradiction between the two. The rhyme with the 1930-ies is a combination of a rise of aggressive, revanchist fascist power in the east with seemingly intractable economic crisis that elites of the day cannot or will not cope with. Where the rhyme breaks, is that the fascism has not (yet?) arisen in the West. As long as the West remains united and reasonably democratic, there is hope. The rhyme with cold war are nukes. Here the lessons of cold war are clear, conventional strength and unquestioned determination to fight back stops conventional warfare. The greatest threat is not first strike, but conventional warfare that one of the nuclear armed combatants begins to lose. To prevent the latter, NATO has to dump men and armor that it has left over into eastern frontier states and bare its teeth. Then NATO needs to rearm. The real danger with Russia now is the internal dynamic of the regime, which will propel it towards war. This war has to be blocked. Not blocking it in the name of peace is what makes nuclear exchange more likely.
I’ve been making the 30s to now comparison on my web site for over a year now. I argue that the similarities are due to their both being a plan devised to sucker first Hitler, now Putin into a war neither could win. See the full arguement on http://www.fritzthecat.net Read the Dark Side
Vladimir Putin and Sergei Lavrov calling all who oppose them fascists is pure satire. They should look in the mirror for if their system by which they control Russia could not be considered fascist then what is it?
Quite a few political theorists seven decades ago considered Hitlerism and Stalinism to be two sides of the same coin. The pot shouldn’t be calling the kettle black.
As for Ukraine Poroshenkos crowd should get better about coming up with their own propaganda (yes, the learning curve is steep, but perhaps they could get some pointers the Israelis and Palestinians) by which I mean explaining to the world why the borders of Ukraine don’t match up with the current Ukrainian ethnic population… like Ukrainians were the majority in Donetsk and Luhansk in the 1920’s but then Stalin’s people ‘organized’ a multiyear famine in Ukraine in the 1930’s and killed a few million of them and then replaced them with Russians moved from other areas farther north. Shit Crimea was the same way until all the Tatars, Bulgarians, and Greeks were deported to Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan in 1946. Most of them are still stuck in Tashkent and only a slim minority were able to begin returning to Crimea in the mid-80s.
Speaking of the Cuban Missile Crisis weren’t the missiles in Cuba in part a retaliation for US missiles scattered around Turkey in places like Sinop just 155 miles due south of the Bleak Sea Fleet’s home at Sebastopol, Crimea ASSR?
Most Americans never knew about or overlooked those missiles and how they temporarily knocked the balance of power out of whack.