Francis P. Sempa
Four scholars at The Center for Strategic and International Studies CSIS), writing in Foreign Affairs, invoke George Kennan and the words of President John F. Kennedy in advocating a new policy of “containment” of Russian “expansionist tendencies,” and for waging another “long twilight struggle” against Moscow. Not satisfied with defeating the Soviet Union in the Cold War and doubling the size of the North Atlantic Alliance, these scholars want to continue and increase aid to Ukraine and to provide infrastructure investments, intelligence, arms, and training to military forces in Georgia, Armenia, and Moldova. George Kennan and John F. Kennedy would be appalled at the misuse of their Cold War legacies.
The CSIS scholars--Max Bergmann, Michael Kimmage, Jeffrey Mankoff, and Maria Snegovaya--rest their proposals on questionable premises. First, they contend that Russia is “the principal threat to the international order.” No, China, is. The Soviet Union that George Kennan said needed containing and that President Kennedy envisioned waging a lengthy struggle against was significantly militarily stronger in relative terms than today’s Russia, and unlike today’s Russia was motivated by a revolutionary ideology that sought to spread communism throughout much of the world. Russia’s expansionist tendencies, of course, have historical roots dating back to the times of the Czars, but those imperial ambitions paled in comparison to Soviet imperial designs. More importantly, Russian relative military power today, as demonstrated in their difficulty in achieving even limited aims in Ukraine, is a shell of its former Soviet self during the Cold War when the threat of Soviet forces overrunning Western Europe was real. It is China, not Russia, that today poses a threat of hegemony on the Eurasian land mass and its littoral seas.
Next, the CSIS scholars make the dubious claims that “Europe’s security hinges on the fate of Ukraine” and that “Ukraine’s defense is crucial for European stability and for preventing the spread of Russian power globally.” One searches in vain for American policymakers who previously identified Ukraine as a vital interest of the United States. We won the Cold War without first liberating Ukraine. Indeed, during the First and Second World Wars, Ukraine was one of the passageways for Germany’s invasions of Russia and the Soviet Union, who were our allies in those conflicts. Approximately four million Ukrainians fought for Russia during the Great War, while nearly three-hundred thousand Ukrainians fought with Austro-Hungarian armies against Russia.
Under the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, German and Austrian troops occupied Ukraine, though the treaty subsequently expired after Germany’s defeat. Ukrainians also fought on both sides during World War II. There is a reason that Timothy Snyder calls this region the “bloodlands.”
There was no sense among American statesmen at the end of the Second World War that Ukrainian independence was desirable, let alone feasible. There was also no sense that Europe’s security depended on an independent Ukraine. In fact, in 1951, the same George Kennan invoked by the CSIS scholars wrote that American policymakers needed to recognize that “Ukraine is economically as much a part of Russia as Pennsylvania is a part of the United States.” And it was that same George Kennan who presciently warned in 1997 that NATO’s expansion closer to Russia’s borders “would be the most fateful error of American policy in the entire post-cold-war era.” One can only surmise what Kennan would say about the CSIS scholars’ advocacy of the United States and its European allies arming and training Armenians, Moldovans, and Georgians against Russia.
As for President Kennedy who coined the term “long twilight struggle” to describe our Cold War conflict with the Soviet Union, he also said, as Jeffrey Sachs has pointed out, that the United States must not “see conflict [with the Soviet Union] as inevitable [or] accommodation as impossible, and communication as nothing more than an exchange of threats.” He accommodated the Soviet Union to resolve the Cuban Missile Crisis by effectively (and secretly) trading the removal of U.S. Jupiter missiles from Turkey for the removal of Soviet missiles from Cuba and promised not to invade Cuba. Kennedy, Sachs writes, unlike the four CSIS scholars (and the Biden administration), understood that our opponents and adversaries also have legitimate security concerns.
The CSIS scholars notably do not describe or define in concrete terms the global threat posed by Russia, and they don’t explain why Russia is the “principal threat to the international order.” Do they believe Russia has the intention and capability to dominate the Eurasian land mass? They don’t say. Do they believe that the Russian navy threatens U.S. command of the seas? There is no mention of that. Do they explain what Russia’s “geopolitical agenda” is? No, they do not. They simply assume that Putin’s aims are the same as Stalin’s and his Soviet successors were during the Cold War. And it is based on that very questionable assumption that the CSIS scholars suggest that we poke the Russian bear a little more.
No comments:
Post a Comment