Charles W. King

The ongoing conflict in Eastern Ukraine has raised the question of how Europe and the United States should respond to Russian adventurism and aggression against its neighbors, particularly if the Russians make similar moves against nations with more established relationships or membership in NATO or the EU such as Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland. It is important to address these possibilities and develop strategies to deter or Russian aggression. Asking, “How do we counter Russian moves” neglects an important question that will further illuminate the current situation in Eastern Europe and help to formulate effective strategies. The question that needs to be asked is why do the Eastern provinces of Ukraine (and Crimea) possess so much affinity for Russia that they would actively support Russian land grabs rather than resist as their Ukrainian neighbors are doing?

The Russian people descend from the Kievan Rus whose cultural and political capital was Kiev, but Kiev was in the southern reaches of the lands populated by the Rus. In addition the Rus were driven north in the 1240s by invading Mongols and they did not return for almost 250 years (see Russian Territorial Anxiety in Context). When the Russian Empire reacquired Ukraine in the 1700s it was populated by new people. The Russian Empire began a policy of “Russification” in Ukraine that would not only mandate Russian as the official state language and promote Russian culture, but also import Russian peasants to colonize the region. For a short time in the 1920s the Soviet Union promoted national minorities but many of minority leaders were later purged, especially in Ukraine. In addition a famine caused millions of Ukrainians to perish in the 1920s, and rather than attempt to alleviate the famine the Soviet government under Stalin used it as a punishment for Ukrainian peasants who were resisting the collectivization of farmland. This was followed by another wave internal colonization of the Ukrainian breadbasket by Russian peasants, directed by the Soviet establishment.

It is these policies of Russification and internal colonization that made Nikita Khrushchev confident that giving Crimea to the Ukrainian SSR in 1954 would be a change in title only. They are also what made Crimea and Eastern Ukraine a permissible environment for Russia’s ‘Little Green Men’. Recognizing the history of Russian attempts to solidify its hold over Ukraine over the centuries can help to understand how its operations in Eastern Ukraine and Crimea were so effective and better asses where such operations might plausibly be attempted. The exclave of Kaliningrad will remain an area of concern for the US and Europe for this reason, as will the large populations of ethnic Russians in the Baltic States. It is also important to recognize that much of Eastern Europe is not a plausible target of these kinds of operations. Understanding that Russian adventurism in Ukraine is not simply an operation by Russian Special Forces, but the culmination of centuries of Russian policy will allow a more accurate assessment of Russian capabilities, and the creation of better strategies to counter Russian aggression in Eastern Europe.

Charles W. King

In recent decades historians have increasingly made a distinction between the events as they happened and what people at the time remember about these events, termed “Historical Memory”. As scholars have diversified from event and biography based narratives of history to social and cultural narratives, historical memory has become increasingly important in the academic history profession. This raises the question of whether or not policy-makers need to make such a consideration towards historical memory as well. It is tempting to shrug off historical memory and insist that policy can be made solely based upon the facts on the ground but this ignores two important realities; first, that policy and diplomacy is done by people, and second, that people make such decisions not based upon what may have actually happened (which they may not know) but upon their perception of what happened. Historical memory is a significant part of this perception.

While the effect of public opinion is most pronounced in democracies, authoritarian regimes are neither immune from nor unaware of its importance. The provide some of the clearest examples of its use in policy-making. The creation of the “Stab in the Back” narrative that helped propel Adolf Hitler and he Nazis to power in post-World War One Germany. More recently, both the Chinese Communist Party and Vladimir Putin have demonstrated skill at using their population’s historical memory, frequently as victims of fascism, to turn their population against foreign powers and in favor of strengthening the powers or influence of their respective governments. The propagandist nature of these manipulations makes them appear crude to outsiders, but they frequently ignore how deep things like the ‘Great Patriotic War’ and ‘Hundred Years of Humiliation’ are to national identities.

Just as policy-makers, appointed or elected, cannot ignore the political realities their own country, they cannot ignore the political realities of others. It would be a grievous error to suggest that the Holocaust be ignored when considering how Israel interacts with its neighbors, allies, and the Palestinians today. Israel’s perception of existential threat is a significant factor in things as wide ranging as the position of political parties on settlements to the emphasis on crew survivability in the design of I.D.F.  armored vehicles. Historical memory has a clear effect on the Israeli people and state, and policy makers cannot afford to be ignorant of how this affects Israeli policy.

After the U.S.S. Maine exploded in Havana Harbor in 1898 newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearts was alleged to have telegrammed a journalist in Havana, “You furnish the pictures and I’ll furnish the war.” That there is no evidence of such a telegram is not even beside the point but a demonstration of it. It did not matter if the Spanish had sunk the Maine and it only matters to a few historians that Hearst never said such a thing. it remains one his most famous attributions. This is because of the primacy of historical memory over historical fact. President McKinley could not stop the public call for war, Hearst is forever the man who fabricated a war to sell newspapers, and policy-makers need to recognize that memory and perception are frequently more important to making good decisions. Facts contrary to the dominant narrative while true are irrelevant, and hewing to them will not produce effective policy.

Further Reading

Tim O'Brien, The Things They Carried, (Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 1990).

Art Spiegelman, Maus: A Survivor's Tale, (New York, NY: Pantheon Books, 1991).

Margaret MacMillan, Dangerous Games: The Uses and Abuses of History. (New York, NY: The Modern Library, 2010).

Mark Mazower, Dark Continent: Europe's Twentieth Century, (New York, NY: Vintage Books, 1998).

Zheng Wang, Never Forget National Humiliation: Historical Memory in Chinese Politics and Foreign Relations, (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 1983).

Georg G. Iggers, Historiography in the Twentieth Century: From Scientific Objectivity to the Postmodern Challenge, (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1997)

Jerry Lembcke, The Spitting Image: Myth, Memory, and the Legacy of Vietnam, (New York, NY: New York University Press, 2000).

Charles W. King

The 1240's were a landmark decade in Russian history. Victories at the Battle of the Neva and the Battle of the Ice turned back invasions by the Swedish and the Teutonic Knights. The year 1240 ended with more than a dozen cities of the Kievan Rus being sacked by invading Mongols, including the capitol, Kiev. This marked the beginning of hundreds of years of tribute and vassalage to the Mongols.

After Ivan III “threw off the tartar yoke” in 1480 the territorial incursions did not cease. The Ottomans burned parts of Moscow in 1571. The 1600’s were a time of internal conflict between the Rus princes and continued invasions from the north, west, and east. It was not until the 1700’s under Peter the Great that a single Russian state formed, and Catherine the Great that Russia began to exercise control over its neighbors instead of the other way around. This stability did not last long. When Napoleon invaded Russia in 1812 he had yet to be defeated by any European power. In the 1850's Russia lost the Crimean War to an alliance of the British, French, and Ottomans, ceding territory and right to base naval forces in the Black Sea.

The twentieth century treated the Russian state no better. The tumult of the First World War precipitated two revolutions. Foreign powers intervened in the civil war that followed in the favor of the anti-Bolshevik White Army. Hitler’s Germany invaded in June 1941. Neither the end of the Second World War nor shared ideology would put a stop to the territorial incursions; the U.S.S.R. and the P.R.C. fought an undeclared border war in 1969.

Russian history begins with the loss of its cultural and economic capitol, hundreds of years of foreign domination, and after establishing control over its own sovereignty the encroachments never stopped. It is unsurprising that to this day the Russian state and people exhibit an anxiety bordering on paranoia for their territorial integrity. Combine this with the fact that when the Russian state has successfully turned back invaders it has been by trading territory for time and the territorial ambitions of the Russian Tsars, Soviet leaders, and Vladimir Putin are comprehensible, although not condonable. Even when Russia exerted control over its near abroad, the region was always a source of tension and concern in ways that other great powers did not experience.

Since the fall of the Soviet Union, Russia’s neighbors are increasingly looking west. Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Poland, and Romania are members of NATO and the European Union. Finland and Sweden are EU members and cooperate extensively with NATO on defense. Ukraine and Georgia have both looked to the EU and the US in recent years for trade and security. From the Russian perspective this expansion fits with hundreds of years of precedent of dangerous encroachment on Russian territory and security and must confronted. That this is not necessarily the intent of the EU, US, or NATO is irrelevant. A sphere of influence is historically important to the Russian state. What may appear to Western observers like unchecked aggression or exploitative meddling is to Russian policy-makers the crucial reinforcement of necessary regional order and defensive credibility. By recognizing this, the US and its European allies can better formulate strategies to deal with unacceptable acts of aggression as well as more insidious actions on the part of the Russian state.

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Further Reading

Jane Burbank, and Frederick Cooper, Empires in World History: Power and the Politics of Difference, (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010).

Lorenz M. Luthi, The Sino-Soviet Split: Cold War in the Communist World, (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press: 2008).

Charles W. King

As the Trump Administration considers its approach to the Obama Administration’s nuclear deal with Iran it is important to consider the historical context and strategic principles at play. While at times both the U.S. and U.S.S.R. developed smaller tactical nuclear weapons with the expressed purpose of use in a ‘limited nuclear exchange’ the plausibility that a nuclear war could be limited to military targets was disputed. Since the Soviet Union tested their first nuclear weapon in 1949 the defining principle of nuclear strategy has been deterrence. Throughout numerous technological advancements the U.S., its N.A.T.O. allies, the U.S.S.R., the Warsaw Pact, the People’s Republic of China, the Republic of India, and the Islamic Republic of Pakistan have relied on the deterrent value of nuclear weapons as a cornerstone of their defense policies.

While deterrence has largely been an effective policy, it has not deterred all acts of aggression or territorial ambitions. Multiple American administrations proved unwilling to use nuclear weapons over the Korean War, the Soviet Invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, the Vietnam War, and the Soviet Intervention in Afghanistan in 1979. That both the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. went to great lengths to limit direct conflict between their armed forces demonstrates the continued importance of deterrence to both superpowers’ strategic thought. For 70 years the United States and its rivals have demonstrated to the world the value of a nuclear deterrent for preserving territorial sovereignty.

There are also a number of recent events that provide important examples of how the U.S., its allies, Russia, and China treat nuclear powers differently. Since the Russian occupation of Crimea in 2014 a number of people, including Senator Tom Cotton (R-Arkansas), have stated their belief that if Ukraine had not given up their nuclear weapons then Russia would not have invaded Crimea or Donbass. The U.S. and P.R.C. both attempt to reign in North Korea’s nuclear ambitions through sanctions, aid, and negotiations. The U.S. invaded Iraq in 2003 to prevent it from developing weapons of mass destruction. China is acting increasingly aggressive towards its neighbors in the South China Sea. The contrasting treatment of North Korea and Iraq by the U.S. and North Korea and other neighbors in the South China Sea by the P.R.C. demonstrate the deterrent value of nuclear weapons.

In light of the demonstrated historical and continuing deterrent value of nuclear weapons it must be recognized that Iran might seek nuclear weapons for their strategic value. Soviet, British, and Commonwealth forces invaded Iran in 1941, and the Soviets attempted to retain northern Iran after World War Two. The C.I.A. facilitated the 1953 overthrow of the elected Prime Minister of Iran, Mohammad Mossadegh. In 1980 the Carter administration launched an attempt to rescue Americans held hostage in Iran using American Special Forces troops. Given this history of international violations of Iranian sovereignty it cannot be a surprise that nuclear weapons would hold an immense strategic value for the Islamic Republic. Recognizing this and formulating a strategy that addresses Iran’s perceived need for a strategic deterrent may be the difference between a successful non-proliferation strategy towards Iran and a futile one.

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Further Reading

Ronald E. Powaski, March to Armageddon: The United States and the Nuclear Arms Race, 1939 to the Present, (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1987).

Stephen Kinze, All the Shah's Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror, (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2003).

Charles W. King

Events in recent years including North Korea’s nuclear development and Shinzo Abe’s push for reform of the Japanese Constitution  have prompted some to re-examine the nature of the United States’ bi-lateral relationships and alliances is Asia. The nature of America’s relationships in Asia varies; bases in South Korea and Japan, extensive military relations and arms sales to Taiwan and the Philippines, more limited military-to-military relations with India, Singapore, and Malaysia. It is easier to establish these relationships but they can be more fragile, as the recent decline in U.S.-Philippine relations demonstrates.

It is important to understand why bi-lateral relationships exist and how the U.S. can benefit from the strategic flexibility they offer. The re-militarization of West Germany and Japan after World War 2 established the nature of American relations in Europe and Asia. The Korean War required the re-militarization of Japan as base for American and allied operations, but the war was on the Korean Peninsula. The People’s Liberation Army’s “volunteers” were not the same kind of threat to Japan that the Soviet Army was to West Germany, France, and the Low Countries in 1950. The nature of the Korean War required expedient bi-lateral relations with Japan and South Korea to conduct a war in Korea, not the deterrent value of a large multi-lateral alliance.

Bi-lateral relationships have been the norm in Asia for centuries. From the 16th through the 20th centuries European powers used diplomacy, trade, and military force to establish bi-lateral relationships in Asia, to the exclusion of other colonial powers. The Portuguese, Dutch, English, and French all used bi-lateral trading and colonial relationships to extract resources from Asia. In the wake of the Boxer Rebellion the Western powers carved up bi-lateral spheres of influence in China as well. Earlier the tribute system established a structure of Chinese hegemony, client states, and trade between Imperial China, Korea, Japan, and their neighbors. In this era tribute to and trade with regional hegemons like China, and to a lesser extent Japan, was extensive. Relations and trade between tributary states in Asia was limited. Part of the reason for this was geography; Chinese tributary states had few other neighbors and none with the might or wealth of China. For hundreds of years the geography, balance of military power, and trade patterns of Asia made bi-lateral relationships within hegemons’ spheres of influence the dominant form of diplomatic relations.

It is not surprising that bi-lateral relationships remain the norm for the United States in Asia. Bi-lateral relations in the orbit of regional hegemony have been the norm in Asia through the Imperial, Colonial, and Cold War periods. While it will be important to rally multi-lateral support to confront certain issues—North Korean nuclear development, claims in South China Sea—the United States must recognize that there are historical factors that make bi-lateral relationships the norm in Asia. These trade relationships and alliances can be fickle, but they can also be turned to the United States’ advantage through a willingness to be flexible and examine each relationship strategically.

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Further Reading:

David Kang, East Asia Before the West: Five Centuries of Trade and Tribute (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 2012).

Kenneth Pomeranz, The Great Divergence: China, Europe, and the Making of the Modern World Economy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000).

Japan Examined: Perspectives on Modern Japanese History, ed. Harry Wray and Hillary Conroy, (Honolulu, HI: University of Hawaii Press, 1983).

John W. Dower, Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II, (New York, NY: W. W. Norton & Co., 2000).

Thomas J. Christensen, Worse than a Monolith: Alliance Politics and Problems of Coercive Diplomacy in Asia, (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press: 2011).