Ukraine and the lessons of history
‘This was an unprovoked act of aggression against an independent country and represents a serious threat to world peace and an unprecedented development in the history of post-war [Russian] expansion.”
These were the words of Douglas Hurd in the Commons in January 1980 following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. More than 40 years later, Boris Johnson offered an equally grave assessment of Russia’s incursion into Ukraine ostensibly on a “peace-keeping” mission to the two breakaway enclaves of Donetsk and Luhansk.
For weeks, Vladimir Putin has denied any bellicose intentions, despite the presence of almost 150,000 troops on Ukraine’s border. Western warnings that he planned to invade were dismissed in Moscow and even in Ukraine itself, where the order for Russian forces to move in seems to have come as a shock.
Mr Putin has staged a whole set of fraudulent activities to justify his actions, claiming that he had been left with no option after being pressed by the Duma and his security council to recognise the independence of the two separatist Ukrainian pro-russian statelets. Similar antics could be observed in 1980, when Moscow justified its invasion by alleging prior foreign intervention.
Russian military leaders at the time predicted a swift victory to reinforce a pro-soviet regime that had taken power in Kabul. Ten years later, the Soviets withdrew, having lost thousands of men and tons of ordnance in a protracted guerilla campaign against Afghan mujahideen armed and financed by the West. It was a proxy Cold War confrontation that arguably led to the collapse of the Soviet Union. Mr Putin is risking something equally calamitous by ignoring the lessons of history.
This is not like Russia’s occupation of parts of Georgia or even Crimea but something with much more serious geopolitical implications given Ukraine’s position. A similar set of responses to those deployed in 1980 have been dusted down, including financial and sporting sanctions. Britain and other Western countries immediately froze out five Russian banks and targeted the wealth of three of Mr Putin’s closest allies.
The Champions League football final due to take place in St Petersburg in May looks certain to be shifted. In 1980, the Americans boycotted the Olympic Games in Moscow, though many other teams – including one from the UK – competed.
For Mr Putin to get the message that his actions are unacceptable, the sanctions must hurt and yet there are already doubts over their effectiveness. Sergey Lavrov, Russia’s foreign minister, dismissed them as something Russia is used to, and he has a point. Germany suspended the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline project, which has yet to open, but the country continues to import energy from Russia. The fact is so many European countries rely on Russian gas for a substantial proportion of their energy that they cannot cut off the links entirely. Equally, however, Russia needs the revenues to prop up its ailing economy.
In the Commons, Boris Johnson asked whether Mr Putin understood that what he is doing would be a disaster for Russia, making it poorer and a “pariah state”. But for that to be true, the West needs to act in concert to ensure their response really does damage the Russian leader, his oligarch backers and the apparatus of the state.
Are the sanctions so far announced anything like enough? Some measures are being held back but might it not be better to introduce the full panoply now? For instance, why not target Russia’s central bank for sanctions? Furthermore, does the West understand Putin’s end game? Does he want to annex the two pro-russian enclaves or incorporate all of Ukraine into the Russian Federation? His recent musings about Russia’s historic boundaries suggest a level of revanchism that poses a threat to other Eastern European countries that were once part of the Soviet Union.
The most benign outcome is that Mr Putin will go no further. But this episode has demonstrated the need for a rethink of Western strategy towards not just Russia but China, which threatens the sovereignty of Taiwan and will be watching this crisis closely. In the Commons, Theresa May, the former prime minister, said democracy is under threat from resurgent authoritarianism. She is right.