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Crimea, Global Rivalry, and the Vengeance of History

First published in 2015 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN® in the United States—a division of St. Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.

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10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Contents

Preface vii General Introduction: The Vengeance of History 1 1 Renewed Cold War? World War II? World War I? Or Nothing of the Kind? 17 2 Genesis of the Russia-Ukraine Conflict 29 3 Soviet Collapse and the Russia-Ukraine Conflict 43 4 Origins of the Russian Backlash 59 5 Uneven Polycentrism and the Global Crisis 81 6 A Cross-Historical Method 99 7 Why Major-Power War Is Still Possible, Though Not Inevitable! 127 8 Future Pessimistic Scenarios 149 9 Once, and If, the Dust Settles 169 Notes 199 Selected Bibliography 235 Index 239

Preface

Crimea, Global Rivalry, and the Vengeance of History picks up on my previous two Palgrave-Macmillan books, Averting Global War (2007) and NATO Expan- sion and US Strategy in Asia (2013). Averting Global War warned of a potential Georgia-Russia war in addition to the possibility of a Russia-Ukraine conflict. NATO Expansion and US Strategy in Asia had proposed the “internationalization” of Russian port of Sevastopol, plus the formation of a regional “peace and development community” for the Black Sea and Caucasus regions involving a system of joint NATO-EU- Russian security guarantees, with the deployment of international peacekeepers. These options were proposed as an alternative to a NATO enlargement to Georgia and Ukraine and in order to prevent the eventual partition of the Black Sea region into pro-NAT O and pro-Russian states. These proposals were made precisely in the hope that it might still be possible to avert the burgeoning Russian pan-nationalist threat to retake Crimea in opposition to both NATO and EU enlargement in the midst of Ukrainian bankruptcy and sociopolitical strife. Now, however, the Crimean crisis represents the return of history with a vengeance in that it impacts political-economic and financial relations between Russia, China, the European Union, and much of the world, in addition to interlinking directly and indirectly with a number of regional conflicts throughout the globe, including the “wider Middle East,” South and Central Asia, the eastern Mediterranean, and the Indo-Pacific. While the Crimean crisis represents the latest manifestation, but not the root cause of the decline of US-EU- Russian relations in the post–Cold War period, the annexation indicates the need for the United States and the European Union to begin to work toward a coherent global strategy toward Russia that includes consideration of China, India, Japan, and other rising powers and socio-political movements and that is designed to avert the potential for much wider regional conflicts—if not the real possibility of a major-power war. viii l Preface

Proposals for the internationalization of the Crimea and Black Sea region, among other options involving power sharing and joint sovereignty for island and resource disputes in the Indo-Pacific and elsewhere, would represent steps toward peace and reconciliation with both Russia and China and with all other states concerned—that is, once, and if, the dust begins to settle. I would like to thank Sara Doskow and Jeff LaSala for their support for my third Palgrave-Macmillan book project, plus Megan Bailey at Scribe for her assistance in finalizing the text. My AUP assistants, Anna Wiersma and Hannah Victoria, were of great help with the index. Andrei Grachev, William Hartung, Robert M. Hayden, Jan Kavan, and Nick Petro all provided useful information. And I thank my anonymous reviewer for his praise and positive suggestions! And finally, I thank my wife, Isabel, my daughters, Francesca and Celine, and Celine’s husband, Alan, for putting up with another book project, with more soon to follow! Hall Gardner (Paris, June 11, 2015) General Introduction

The Vengeance of History

n March 1997, I was invited to Warsaw to participate in the Committee on Atlantic Studies conference, “NATO and Peacekeeping,” sponsored by Ithe Polish prime ministry and the Ministry of Defense. As I did not see any Russian representatives present, and as at least two Ukrainians had been invited as observers, my suspicion was that the conference was already symbolic of the beginning of the end of efforts to sustain positive relations with Moscow. As I was preparing my discussion on NATO-Russian-European peacekeeping deployments in ex-Yugoslavia, a dark-haired, pale-faced man in a black suit came out of a back door with my first book, Surviving the Millennium, in his hands. He opened the book and pointed to a page in the last chapter in which I had outlined a number of pessimistic scenarios for the future including one in which “secessionist movements in a bankrupt Ukraine could demand Rus- sian (and/or Polish intervention).” It was a statement that had been preceded by the sentence, “Russian pan-nationalists may claim to protect the Russian ‘diaspora’ while concurrently seeking to secure access to the Crimea.”1 With piercing eyes, the man asked whether I was “trying to be provocative” and then abruptly pivoted 180 degrees and disappeared into the maze of offices. It was Kafkaesque. As depicted in that book, which was written during a period of triumphal optimism just five years after the demolition of the Berlin wall, that pessimistic scenario may actually have been too extreme, but only because the book had assumed that Kiev might attempt to retain its former Soviet nuclear arsenal as a “Gaullist” deterrent. (The book had argued against Kiev retaining its nuclear weapons, an option that had been supported by the neorealist John Mearsheimer, among others, at that time.) Written before NATO had begun its new eastward expansion as pushed by the US Congress since 1992, the book clearly pointed to the possibility that a crisis in a bankrupt Ukraine could lead 2 l Crimea, Global Rivalry, and the Vengeance of History

Russia to seize Crimea and that such a conflict might draw in not only Russia but potentially also Poland, if not other states as well. Surviving the Millennium consequently argued against enlarging NATO in such a way that could eventually provoke a backlash by Moscow while concurrently overextending American and NATO defense capabilities in both political and economic terms. As an enlarged NATO, which had initially been created as a collective defense and not a cooperative security, organization, would most likely be a more politically divided NATO, it could then become even less effective as a potential fighting force if Russia or another state did eventually pose a significant threat. In order to reduce the possibility of a Russian backlash—coupled with a weakening of NATO resolve due to an excess of additional members—the book proposed an alternative strategy. That proposal was for NATO to build up the Partnership for Peace initiative and extend security assurances to all eastern European states, in coordination with the then Western European Union and Russia, with NATO-Russian peacekeeping deployments in Bosnia as a stepping stone to an enlarged and neutral system of cooperative-collective security for the entire Euro-Atlantic region. This proposal was further developed in my next book, Dangerous Cross- roads (1997). Several months after its publication, Surviving the Millennium was criticized by Francis Fukuyama in his April 1995 Foreign Affairs book review.2 It was clear that the individual who proclaimed that the “end of history” was at hand and that liberal democracy (with all its mind-numbing imperfections) represented the apogee of social governance had misread the text. The book was not divided into two “disjointed” halves, as he asserted, and the title referred to surviving the dangers that Homo geopoliticus would soon face just after, and not before, the turn of the new millennium. But more important, he had misread the strategic rationale for my proposal to deploy international peacekeepers under a general UN or Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) mandate in eastern Germany and throughout eastern Europe in cooperation with NATO’s Partnership for Peace (PfP). The strategic concept was not only to obtain Russian confidence and “allay Russian fears,” as he put it (which was nonetheless crucial), but it was also to help build up, unify, and stabilize eastern Europe and all the region between Germany and Russia. Rather than intervening into eastern European hotspots after conflict began, as was the case for Bosnia at the time, the idea was to forge a militarily integrated system of regional defense under a general UN or OSCE mandate, backed by NATO, the Western European Union and Russia, so as to build a separate and neutral Euro-Atlantic command structure that could, in effect, counterbalance both European/German and Russian pressures and influence. Introduction l 3

As the expansion of NATO forces into eastern Germany after German unification could be seen as a potential threat by Moscow, US Secretary of State James Baker initially did not want to expand NATO’s military infrastructure into the eastern regions of a unified Germany. But this option was ruled out on legal grounds, as “NATO jurisdiction” would necessarily apply to all of a unified Germany. Instead, NATO unilaterally agreed (with no formal or written accord with Moscow) that no nuclear weaponry and no “foreign forces” would be deployed in eastern Germany. This agreement then set the stage for Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev to accept not only the membership of a unified Ger- many in NATO but also the unfulfilled verbal promise that NATO would not expand its membership any further.3 Once the Soviet Union collapsed, however, Washington began to overlook its “gentleman’s agreement” with Gorbachev, to the vexation of Russian pan- nationalists who claimed Gorbachev should have obtained written guarantees that NATO would not expand any further than eastern Germany (something it is dubious Washington would have accepted). Yet the real roots of the crisis stemmed from the failure to set the foundations for a new system of Euro- Atlantic security at the time that the Warsaw Pact disintegrated, working with Gorbachev and then with Yeltsin once the Soviet Union collapsed. In this proposal, a US, European, and Soviet/Russian agreement could have led to the stationing of “international” forces, over which Moscow would have had common oversight, as a means to build confidence and security in order to achieve the then shared goals of democratization and development for the entire Euro- Atlantic community. In effect, as Soviet forces withdrew from eastern Germany and the rest of eastern Europe, international peace-keeping forces should have moved in. The proposal was for international peace-keeping forces not to jump into strategically located “hot spots” after conflict had started but rather to fill the security “void” step by step after Soviet withdrawal by means of forging a strategically integrated regional system of defense for all eastern European states. In developing what would essentially be an independent or separate command structure, this approach would then help develop all of eastern Europe, in both defensive and economic terms, with joint US/NATO, European, and Russian security, diplomatic, and financial supports.4 Thus, instead of extending NATO’s integrated military command into eastern Europe, the latter states would have then received an extension of security guarantees similar to those extended to Saudi Arabia and Kuwait at that time, but in close coordination with the European governments and Russia. This approach would have required a simple majority vote in the House and Senate as opposed to the two-thirds majority vote in the Senate required for NATO membership. The eastern European states themselves (with assistance from the 4 l Crimea, Global Rivalry, and the Vengeance of History

United States, Europe, and Russia) would begin to build their own defense capabilities. If this approach had been implemented, NATO’s capabilities for potential intervention would have remained in the background and would not have been deployed nearer and nearer Russian borders, which in strategic terms, could also overexpose NATO military capabilities to possible Russian preemptive strikes. But NATO would still be able to influence the overall formation of the eastern European security architecture in cooperation with the Europeans and Russians. In effect, as to be argued in Chapter 9, this would have represented an approach closer to that suggested by Halford Mackinder in his book Demo- cratic Ideals and Reality, written in 1919, in that the idea was to build up eastern Europe as a separate or independent tier of states between NATO/Germany and Russia. In fact, three years before NATO began its expansion in the period 1997– 99, at least one system of cooperative-collective security had been implemented at the time: the 1994 Budapest Memorandum. That accord had convinced Belarus, Ukraine, and Kazakhstan to give up their nuclear arsenals left over from the Soviet era in exchange for security assurances that the United States, Russia, France, and the United Kingdom would safeguard their territorial integrity. Yet it is precisely the 1994 Budapest accord that is now seen as one of the major accords that Moscow has ostensibly violated by annexing Crimea in 2014 and that has accordingly been strongly criticized for its lack of effectiveness. In response, Moscow claims that the Budapest Accords do not apply as Crimean demands for secession were ostensibly driven by domestic political demands, with respect to the fear of Kiev’s purported repression of Russophones, in addition to the socioeconomic consequences of Ukrainian bankruptcy. Yet my point in writing Surviving the Millennium back in 1994 was precisely to prevent just such a crisis by finding ways that would actually give such cooperative-collective security as the Budapest Memorandum accords real teeth. Making such accords more effective could have been accomplished, at least in part, by deploying international peacekeepers chosen by the United States, Europe, and Russia on the ground and to deploy those forces within focal points of potential conflict, such as Crimea, at the same time that Moscow began to withdraw its forces leftover from the Warsaw Pact. This approach would have augmented the chances that any potential demands for border revisions would be managed through appropriate diplomatic and OSCE procedures—once strictly neutral and defensive forces were built up throughout eastern Europe over time. That some US/NATO elites were at least thinking in this direction is indicated by the statement of the former Supreme Allied Commander in Europe, General Jack Galvin. In June 1995, at the end of the Bosnian war, General Introduction l 5

Galvin stated in Berlin his opposition to the voices howling for NATO enlargement: “We won the Cold War, but we’re losing the peace after the Cold War. There is no doubt in my mind about it. We do not think about the Russians enough, about who they are and what they’re doing. We don’t think much about the way they think of us . . . We should consider folding NATO into a bigger organization, without losing what has made NATO effective—sustained political control over a collective military for decades. [We need] a whole new organization that brings the Russians on board.”5 The greatest irony is that the very founders of containment against the Soviet Union—former Cold Warriors Paul Nitze and George Kennan, among others—were all opposed to NATO enlargement. As these individuals pointed out at the time, the Clinton administration’s priority should have been the establishment of a nonthreatening system of security that would obtain full Russian cooperation and trust, particularly at a time when Russia posed no real threat to Europe as a whole. By engaging Moscow in the implementation of such a new, yet concrete, system of cooperative-collective security, such an option would have mitigated the chances of a Russian backlash. From the perspective of most critics of NATO enlargement, the chances that Russia would become revanchist were greater in reaction to NATO enlargement than if NATO was not to be enlarged. Given the fact that an enfeebled Moscow was definitely not a threat in the 1990s, Cold Warrior Paul Nitze, the advocate of the militarization of containment in 1950 National Security Directive NSC-68, argued that the NATO enlargement process should be put on hold.6 But he also argued that even if Russia did eventually become a threat, then it was also better that NATO not enlarge. From Nitze’s perspective, by not enlarging its integrated military command structure, the initial Cold War bloc of NATO states would be more unified in the background for potential military intervention under the doctrine “less is more.”7 This is true in that an expanded NATO would also be a politically divided NATO; it would be burdened with a number of consumers, instead of producers, of defense and security that would make decisive and unified action in conditions of war even more difficult to achieve, if military action did eventually prove necessary, and even more so under the threat of nuclear war. Yet, despite the warnings of these Cold Warriors with considerable experience in dealing with Moscow, the initial proposals of Russian leaders Mikhail Gorbachev and then Boris Yeltsin to establish a common European home and new Euro-Atlantic security architecture from Vancouver to Vladivostok were not fully backed by Washington in the aftermath of the 1990–95 war in Bosnia, and particularly once the Clinton administration began to focus its primary attention on NATO enlargement as the sole panacea for European security after 6 l Crimea, Global Rivalry, and the Vengeance of History

1995, with Congress beginning to push for NATO enlargement from 1992 on. At that time, Henry Kissinger, among others, criticized the PfP as the “Partner- ship for Postponement” (of NATO enlargement). In the midst of the Bosnian War, Senator Richard Lugar proclaimed, “NATO had to go out of area or out of business.” As NATO appeared to be “the only game in town,” in the jargon of the time, other possible paths toward a new system of European security were not taken. Although I continued to hope that Washington could eventually modify its policies, the possibility that some form of joint NATO-Russian cooperative- collective security accord could be implemented had essentially been ruled out by Assistant Secretary of State Richard Holbrooke. In his July 1995 letter to critics of NATO enlargement, Holbrooke stated that joint NATO-Russian guarantees were “historically discredited.”8 In his letter, Holbrooke did not say to which specific period of history he was referring, but he later stated that he had considered the 1990–95 Bosnian War to be the “greatest collective security failure of the West since the 1930s.”9 Holbrooke’s response to proposals for the United States to support joint NATO-Russian security guarantees accordingly appeared to represent a hidden reference to interwar analogies, which have often been used to discredit any joint NATO-Russia initiative among other policies involving some form of multilateral power sharing or system of joint sovereignty. (See Chapters 1, 4, 8, and 9.) It subsequently proved impossible to stop the juggernaut of NATO enlargement, given the strength of lobbying from the US military-industrial complex, as well as from Americans of eastern European descent who hoped that NATO could prevent their former homelands from ever again being overrun by Russia (if not by Germany). In addition, both neoconservatives and neoliberals hoped that NATO could help stabilize, and thus indirectly assist, the process of liberal democratization (by separating military-civilian powers) in eastern Europe but leaving the Europeans to enforce democratic reforms. While the potentially high costs of NATO enlargement were certainly debated, the Clinton administration downplayed the highest estimates of what it might cost if Moscow did, in fact, react.

Rise of Russian Revanche As to be argued, NATO enlargement—without meaningful Russian input, combined with NATO’s “exceptional” war “over” Kosovo in 1999—helped undermine the prospects of completing the transition of Soviet communism to Russian democracy. Instead of encouraging Russian steps toward a more democratic system of governance, as had been hoped for by Fukuyama’s “end of history” narrative itself, NATO enlargement has resulted in a Russian authoritarian backlash—which now risks the real possibility of a major-power war. Introduction l 7

As one of many triumphalist statements made at the end of the Cold War, Fukuyama’s “end of history” article in 1989 represented a pop-philosophical narrative that brandished the triumph of democracy (with its imperfections) over both communism and fascism. While Fukuyama’s work evidently cannot be blamed for the Russian backlash, his “end of history” argument nevertheless boasted of the victory of American democracy over both fascism and communism, and thus its promulgation tended, even if inadvertently, to humiliate the newly democratizing Soviet Union/Russia. In general, Russians saw themselves as having suffered under totalitarian communist repression and (mis)rule while also having fought Hitler’s National Socialism at a cost of tens of millions of lives. Having suffered the consequences of two totalitarianisms, most Russians believed fervently in democratic governance and human rights at least at the end of the Cold War. One can, of course, question as to why the United States should be concerned with “humiliating” the Russians given centuries of tsarist imperialism, followed by even more brutal Soviet repression. But Moscow under Gorbachev did give up its grip on power in eastern Europe unilaterally. From Moscow’s perspective, the Americans were not the primary cause for Hitler’s defeat, and the Soviet collapse was not due primarily to US containment policy during the Cold War. But what was perhaps even more humiliating was the fact that Moscow did not believe that Washington was truly willing to work either with the reforming Soviet regime or with the new, hopefully democratizing, Russian regime as a political equal—in terms of isothymia and mutual trust—concepts that Fukuyama developed in his own books.10 In his review of my book, Fukuyama did not appear to notice that I had used his own concepts of isothymia (the psychological demand to be recognized as an equal) and megalothymia (the demand to be recognized as superior) to help explain the dynamics of the US-Soviet relationship.11 I thus argued that the Cold War rivalry could, at least in part, be explained in terms of the psychological quest of Soviet elites for both geostrategic and military-technological “parity” (or isothymia) with the United States at the same time that each side feared the other might be still questing for “superiority” (or megalothymia). The same holds true now in the post–Cold War phase of the US-European-Russian relationship, but in a situation where Russia now sees itself as humiliated by an American quest for megalothymia. At the end of the Cold War, from the Russian perspective, US support for democratization was accompanied by neoconservative demands to seize “the unipolar moment” as articulated by Charles Krauthammer, among others, and followed by demands for NATO enlargement.12 This was true despite Fuku- yama’s own assertion that America did not “face a problem of an excess of megalothymia” and that liberal democracy could somehow check or restrain the domestic urge for global power and supremacy.13 8 l Crimea, Global Rivalry, and the Vengeance of History

Yet democratic “checks and balances” (such as the 1973 War Powers Act), or what Fukuyama later called “vetocracy,” have so far done very little to limit the power and influence of the special interests that have built the American military-industrial complex at least since World War I, much as was forewarned by President Dwight D. Eisenhower.14 Nor has the American form of democracy blocked further overseas military expansionism, an imperial reality that is more in accord with the views of Alexander Hamilton than those of Thomas Jefferson or James Madison.15 In the post–Cold War epoch, American megalothymia has consequently stirred a counterreaction in Moscow, if not in Beijing and other countries as well. And Washington has not been able to establish a full sense of mutual understanding and trust with either Moscow or Beijing since the end of the Cold War. Cold Warrior Paul Nitze had argued that the American focus on NATO enlargement would distract both the Russians and the Americans from con- centrating on “the goal of lending political and economic support to the development of a democratic, market-oriented society in Russia.”16 In addition, as Alexander Solzhenitsyn observed, the Russians, at least initially, strove to emu- late democratic forms of government after having overthrown Soviet communism—at least up until the war “over” Kosovo in 1999 and the effort to bring post-Soviet states into NATO.17 In other words, the democratic-liberal goals that Fukuyama had hoped to achieve at the “end of history” would actually be thwarted, at least in Russia, by the US focus on NATO enlargement, coupled with the war “over” Kosovo. On a deeper, more theoretical level, Fukuyama’s ideological identification of NATO with an ostensibly Kantian “League of Democracies”18 in which such a League should look “more like NATO than the United Nations” remains problematic.19 Until NATO is redefined as being a pragmatic, nonideological war-prevention organization that is designed to mediate and keep peace among all countries, whether democratic or not, by seeking ways to implement truly effective systems of cooperative-collective security involving power-sharing and shared- sovereignty with nondemocratic states, NATO expansion, coupled with the potential formation of global “League of Democracies” will continue to cause friction with Russia, China, and other “nondemocratic” countries. And if it does not always practice what it preaches, NATO’s identification with liberal democracy will also tend to undermine its own legitimacy. First, if it were actually true that NATO was more legitimate than the UN, due to the ostensible legitimacy of its democratic credentials, then NATO’s absolute priority should have been to safeguard the fledgling Russian democracy as argued earlier. Second, at its roots in the Cold War, NATO membership included at least three nondemocratic regimes—Portugal, Greece, and Turkey (with Italy just coming out of fascism)—indicating that NATO’s initial mission Introduction l 9 was not that of proselytizing for an alliance of democratic countries only. Third, NATO’s general lack of transparency hardly makes it a role model for democratic practices, even if the majority of its members are considered democratic, while NATO’s inability to resolve Greek-Turkish disputes over Cyprus and other issues has indicated a lack of conflict-resolution skills.20 Fourth, there are a number of democratic countries in Europe—such as Austria, Sweden, and Finland—and throughout the world that are presently neutral but that may feel ideologically pressured to join NATO or else join a proposed worldwide League of Democracies, if the “democratic” versus authoritarian state rivalry continues to heat up globally—even if it might not be in the absolute national interests of those neutral states to do so. Fifth, a “democratic” NATO will have a hard time justifying alliances with nondemocratic countries as was the case for its mission in Libya in 2013, for example, in which NATO aligned with the Arab Gulf monarchies of Qatar and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Sixth, NATO will have real legitimacy problems if some of its present members transmogrify into authoritarian regimes: Hungary may not be the only country to move toward a nondemocratic path as a number of states could be impacted by the European financial crisis. A number of rightwing or leftwing parties that oppose “democratic liberalism,” seen as linked to austerity, could soon come to power; some may want to leave NATO altogether. And finally, the not-so- implicit assumption made by those who have been promulgating the expansion of NATO—which could soon be linked to Japan, Australia, New Zealand, India, and South Korea, among other countries—is that the leaderships of “nondemocracies” such as Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea, among others, are inherently intractable and incapable of compromise. And thus confrontation and military buildups are largely inevitable. In effect, an enlarged NATO that could possibly include Ukraine as a rump state could forge closer defense linkages to a “democratic security diamond” of Japan, India, Australia and the United States in the words of Shinzō Abe, prime minister of Japan, in the formation of a global “League of Democracies.” Such a highly ideological alliance would absorb funding and public resources and eventually trump the United Nations (as was the case for NATO’s “exceptional” intervention in Kosovo), in that it presumes that diplomatic compromise with authoritarian states is practically impossible. In Hegelian terms, this could lead to a countervailing alliance of authoritarian or absolutist states, once again assuming deep compromises between the United States, Europe, and Japan with Russia and China cannot soon be made. Such a “League of Democracies” (which may ironically include nondemocratic allies) exacerbates the real possibilities, not of perpetual peace, but of perpetual war. 10 l Crimea, Global Rivalry, and the Vengeance of History

Rise of Putin As to be discussed in more detail in Chapters 3 and 4, by 1999, NATO enlargement and war “over” Kosovo helped to spark a revanchist backlash in Russia, which, it is argued, was not necessarily “inevitable.” By 2008, in a tit for tat response to US support for Kosovar secession from Serbia, Moscow supported Abkhazian and South Ossetian secession from Georgia after the Georgia-Russia War, which parenthetically revealed to Moscow the need to revamp its military capacities while countering post–Cold War American and NATO military superiority. Russian pan-nationalism gained even greater momentum after Russian President Dmitri Medvedev’s June 2008 proposals for a new European security treaty were largely ignored by the United States and Europe.21 The deployment of US/NATO missile defenses, coupled with promises that Ukraine and Geor- gia could eventually join NATO, further antagonized Russian pan-nationalists. This led to the stealthy March 2014 annexation of Crimea and intervention in eastern Ukraine in an act of preclusive imperialism that was intended to take advantage of Ukrainian bankruptcy, obtaining new energy sources and industrial potential while likewise checking NATO enlargement and closer EU Asso- ciation accords. (See Chapter 4.) Fukuyama has claimed that, had an effective and trustworthy democratic administration come to power in Ukraine in 2005 under Viktor Yushchenko and cleaned up corruption, it would have cemented Kiev’s legitimacy in both western and eastern Ukraine, thus preventing the so-called pro-Russian Viktor Yanukovych from coming to power in 2010 and thereby engaging in democratic reforms before Putin was strong enough to intervene in Crimea and eastern Ukraine.22 This scenario was perhaps possible, but such legitimacy could only have been achieved if such a “democratic” administration had been willing to fully engage in deep compromise with eastern Ukrainians over issues involving Russian-language rights, the Russian Orthodox religion, and NATO membership. For a highly corrupt and bankrupt Ukraine to fully democratize, it needed to act as a “neutral” mediator between Russia and NATO with respect to defense issues and the Russian Black Sea Fleet in Crimea and also between Rus- sia and the European Union with respect to the EU Association accord. But such policies were not at all those of the 2005–10 Orange Revolution, nor do they appear be Kiev’s policies today. (See Chapters 4 and 9.) In the assumption that Kiev can eventually forge a viable and effective system of democracy, whether it will adopt unitary, federal, or confederal systems of governance, which will grant large degrees of autonomy to the Donbass region, now depends to a large degree on the results of the violent struggle for power in eastern Ukraine.23 And, as to be argued, this conflict, which was preceded by Introduction l 11

Moscow’s annexation of Crimea, is more reminiscent of the Russian civil war than of Hitler’s annexation of the Sudetenland. (See Chapters 1 and 2.)

The Question of a Major-Power War Writing in the transition period between Gorbachev’s essentially unilateral decision to withdraw Soviet supports for the Warsaw Pact and the more destabilizing Soviet collapse in August 1991, Fukuyama had convinced himself that there was little possibility of major-power conflict, at least among so-called posthis- torical states in the future. He argued that although “terrorism and wars of national liberation will continue to be an important item on the international agenda,” that “large-scale conflict must involve large states still caught in the grip of history, and they are what appear to be passing from the scene.”24 It is with respect to the question of whether or not major-pow er war was still possible in the post–Cold War nuclear age that Fukuyama misconstrued my concept of “double containment.” I did not argue (“somewhat implausibly” as Fukuyama asserted in his book review) that “the possibility of global conflict has become even greater since the end of the Cold War because the collapse of the Soviet Union has ended the ‘double containment’ by America of its allies, particularly Germany and Japan.”25 What I did argue—and Fukuyama did not appear to recognize that I had clearly redefined the then current concept of “double containment”—was that the possibility of a major-power war had become even greater since the end of the Cold War due to the fact that the collapse of the Soviet Union had ended the tacit Russian role in the US-Soviet “double containment” of a then divided Ger- many/Europe, Japan, and China as well as much of developing world, including the rimland/shatterbelt of the “wider Middle East.”26 In other words, Soviet disaggregation had led to a breakdown of a col- laborative Russian role in “containing” or “restraining” the military rise, and political-economic expansion, of many new powers and burgeoning sociopolitical movements. In the aftermath of the Soviet collapse, Washington has accordingly sought to “mono-contain” a unified Germany and an expanding European Union by means of enlarging NATO—in a geostrategic and political-economic context that has increasingly risked conflict with Russia—while potentially overextending American/NATO political will and economic resources to sustain that mono-containment. The collapse of the US-Soviet “double containment” can furthermore be seen in the fact that Japan has been threatening to become more independent of its alliance with the United States as it builds up its own military capacities, in potential confrontation with North Korea, China, and/or Russia. For its part, Beijing, which not so ironically began to strengthen its power capabilities just 12 l Crimea, Global Rivalry, and the Vengeance of History after the Soviet collapse, has continued to play on US, Russian, European, and Japanese political-economic rivalries to build up its power capacities, in potential armed conflict with Vietnam, Philippines, Taiwan, India, and Japan as well as with the United States throughout the Indo-Pacific region. Here, it should be emphasized that the 2014 US-EU-Russian dispute over Ukraine plays into the hands of China, and also India, perhaps more than any other major or regional powers, as all the major powers will strive to draw China, if not India, to their side. It is also not entirely surprising that India in particular would accelerate its nuclear-weapons program in the post–Cold War period, testing its nuclear weapons in 1998, in part due to the collapse of its major arms supplier, the Soviet Union. India was then countered by Pakistan’s own nuclear deterrent that has been secretly assisted by China and North Korea, among other states. Concurrently, a number of rival pan-Islamist movements (among other antistate movements) have begun to compete for power. Many of these movements had previously been repressed by secular pan-Arab states, such as Egypt, Iraq, and Syria, which had, in turn, been strongly backed by Moscow prior to the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan. Only a few individuals had predicted the Soviet retraction from eastern Europe and that such retraction would indirectly cause a horrific conflict in the former Yugoslavia, even if the latter did not belong to the Warsaw Pact.27 And even fewer observers foresaw that the collapse of the Warsaw Pact could in turn lead to a Soviet collapse. Here, few understood how Soviet controls over eastern Germany represented the keystone that not only helped glue the Warsaw Pact together but also helped hold together an overextended Soviet Union. And once the Soviet Union did begin to disaggregate without reaching broad security and political-economic accords with the United States, NATO, and Europe, the possibility of wider regional wars, if not a major-power war, became increasingly thinkable. And once Pandora’s box had been opened, the often-abused analogy to the pre–World War I period appeared to lose its relevance and the reference to “Weimar Russia” and the pre–World War II period began to impact international-relations (IR) theory. Soviet collapse had raised fears of Russian fascism and revanchism that would undermine the possibility that any form of cooperative-collective security arrangement (such as the 1994 Budapest Memo- randum) could ever be sustained with Russian cooperation in the long term. These concerns led Washington to expand NATO. Traditional realists, from Thucydides to Edmund Burke to Hans Morgen- thau, have all warned that a major power’s efforts to assert global hegemony (megalothymia) often results in the rise of a counteralliance. This can be seen in the Peloponnesian War between Athens and Sparta or in the Punic Wars Introduction l 13 between Rome and Carthage. Each of these long-term wars involved a series of conflicts that generally culminated in a revanchist backlash.28 In modern history, the formation of counteralliances can be seen in Hitler’s Axis powers of Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, and Japan, or in imperial Germany’s alliance with Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire during World War I, or in Napo- leon’s continental alliance, which was ironically forged in the year 1806 when Hegel had proclaimed that history had ostensibly come to an “end.” As Edmund Burke put it 1793, “Among precautions against ambition, it may not be amiss to take one precaution against our own.”29 Burke feared that British efforts to monopolize global commerce and to make all states economically dependent on England would “sooner or later” produce “a combination against us which may end in our ruin.” This was true even if London had promised that “it would never abuse its power.”30 Here, Washington has somewhat similarly promised that NATO enlargement would not threaten or isolate Mos- cow, but the United States and Europe have now begun to implement sanctions that seek to check Russian economic capabilities and trade, if not also seeking “regime change” and the destabilization or breakup of the Russian Federation as is now claimed by President Putin after his seizure of Crimea.

The Question of a Counteralliance US efforts to expand NATO military infrastructure, while engaging in the “rebalancing” of Asia, likewise appear to be causing a backlash in China, which Russia has been attempting to court since the Gorbachev era. In addition to Russian efforts since March 2014 to expand its influence into eastern Ukraine through the formation of a Russian version of the US Monroe Doctrine in the Black Sea region, Moscow appears to be tightening its defense and political- economic ties to the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) and to China while reaching out to a still politically divided India, Brazil, and South Africa, among other countries. Russia has also hoped to forge a Eurasian Union with Belarus and Kazakhstan, as well as Armenia, in January 2015, plus Kyr- gyzstan (if ratified by May 2015), while likewise looking for opportunities to thwart US alliances and political-economic ties in Eurasia and overseas, if possible. Both Russia’s Eurasian Union and China’s Silk Road Economic Belt appear to represent a means to counter the US-sponsored Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) and the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade zones. US observers have generally argued that Russia’s Eurasian Union and China’s Silk Road Economic Belt are at odds with one another. In addition, it has been argued that Russia and China do not see eye-to-eye on the issues of Moscow’s ostensible support for secessionism, for example, which is opposed in principle 14 l Crimea, Global Rivalry, and the Vengeance of History by the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, for example. (See Chapter 8.) Yet these views tend to underestimate the ability of Moscow and Beijing to eventually find ways to better coordinate policy in seeking the vast markets of Eurasia.31 Since at least 2005, Russian and China have, for example, engaged in tighter defense cooperation involving major military maneuvers and both have stated their joint opposition to US missile defense systems presently being deployed in Europe, the wider Middle East, and the Indo-Pacific.32 Concurrently, while Russia has increasingly looked to a rising China as a counterweight to the United States, NATO, and the US-Japanese alliance, Bei- jing has begun to break out of the Cold War “double containment.” China is not so ironically the major country to benefit from US-EU-Russian tensions, which will do nothing to help ameliorate US-Japanese-Chinese disputes. A rising Beijing will definitely take advantage of Russia, as well as the United States and Europe, to strengthen its own position. Eventually, it could seek to transform Moscow into a junior partner, particularly since a weak ruble makes Rus- sian energy and advanced weaponry cheaper and as US and European sanctions make Moscow even more willing to accept Chinese finance and investment, which could result in Chinese control of energy and resources inside Russia. Assuming China is not confronted with significant internal strife and secessionist movements, Beijing is rapidly becoming the world’s most influential financial and economic power by 2020–30 while expanding its efforts to implement its own version of the US Monroe Doctrine in the Indo-Pacific through its String of Pearls strategy. And, given the fact that Japan never settled its disputes with China, Russia, or the two Koreas since the end of World War II, that China has not renounced the use of force against Taiwan, and that North and South Korea remain at odds, a latent state of war continues to exist in the Indo-Pacific. And as China has begun to flex its muscles, so too has Japan. (See Chapters 7–9.) US support for multiparty democracy in China in the spring of 1989 had furthermore helped cause a backlash that led to the Communist Party crackdown on the prodemocracy movement in Tiananmen Square and throughout the country at roughly the same time that Fukuyama published his “end of history” argument. More recently, some Chinese nationalist elites presently see American “soft power” as a form of cooptation that is ultimately intended to undermine the Chinese Communist Party; some hardliners go so far as to consider American pressures in support of democratization of the Communist regime as an act of war. In response, the current Chinese government of Xi Jin- ping has begun its own campaign in developing a concept of fuxing, which can be interpreted as rejuvenation, if not restoration, of great power status. There is consequently a real danger that disputes between rival powers and their allies, whether in the Indo-Pacific, the “wider Middle East,” or the Black Introduction l 15

Sea, among other regions, will soon intensify and widen to incorporate new concerns in an expanding “insecurity-security dialectic” in which the actions, values, and interests of one state interact with the interpretations and misinter- pretations of those actions, values, and interests by third states, impacting both domestic and international policies and decision making and exacerbating the possibility of conflict.33 In effect, the crisis will remain unabated unless the root causes of major-power disputes are effectively addressed in concrete accords and then “transformed” into mutually cooperative interaction over the long term, involving, for example, effective multilateral systems of cooperative-collective security, the implementation of regional peace and development communities, and the general practices of power-sharing and of confederal or shared sovereignty. As to be argued, to prevent a very dangerous arms race, if not a major-power war, this will necessitate a new and more innovative response to the Russian annexation of Crimea that seeks to eventually bring Moscow into a larger Euro-Atlantic confederation at the same time that a new, concerted approach involving differing “contact groups” seeks to resolve disputes between Japan, Taiwan, and China, among others. On the one hand, American liberal democracy has done nothing to set checks and balances on American and NATO megalothymia; history has not “ended” in either idea or reality. On the other hand, nothing appears to be preventing Russia and China from engaging in a new military buildup coupled with efforts to carve out new spheres of influence and security so as to counter the military-technological superiority of the United States and its allies, in addition to looking for ways to check the potentially destabilizing democratic ethos. As specific areas throughout Eurasia, the Indo-Pacific, and the “wider Middle East” risk dragging both major and regional powers into wider regional conflicts, let us hope that US and European leaders can make the right diplomatic choices, so that the vengeance of history does not once again draw us into the whirlwind of yet another global war.

Chapter 1

Renewed Cold War? World War II? World War I? Or Nothing of the Kind?

n highly mediatized, if not provocative, declarations, Zbigniew Brzez- inski,1 Hillary Clinton,2 John McCain,3 and Russian opposition leader I(and former world chess champion) Garry Kasparov,4 among others, have contended that the actions of Russian president Vladimir Putin in annexing Crimea possess significant similarities with Hitler’s efforts to “protect” the Ger- man diaspora by annexing the Sudetenland in the interwar period after imperial German disaggregation. In this perspective, Putin has opted to engage in a new kind of “hybrid” warfare that appears reminiscent of Nazi German strategy. (See Chapters 7 and 8.) These political leaders have generally been careful to emphasize that Presi- dent Putin does not share Hitler’s goals of taking over all of Europe, nor does he intend to engage a “final” or “total” “solution” in accord with Nazi ideology. At the same time, these leaders emphasize the fact that Putin’s authoritarian policies have restricted freedom of speech and peaceful protest and have severely limited criticism of highly corrupt Russian governmental practices, while creating a climate of hostility, corruption, and fear.5 And more sophisticated analysis has emphasized that Putin’s leadership possesses elements that are closer to Mussolini’s form of fascism and muscle-flexing media propaganda than that of Hitler.6 Propaganda, of course, is used by all sides. On the one hand, Moscow’s strong anti-US propaganda has not been helpful in allaying suspicions. On the other, US-Russian relations have plummeted due to Washington’s sanctions policy toward Russia and its tendency to demonize Putin with regard to the Ukrainian crisis or the downing of the Malaysian passenger flight 17, among other issues, while sanctions on Russia risk harming Europe more than the United States.7 Most crucially, Moscow’s support for the Russophone diaspora in Ukraine has raised questions as to whether other ethnic Russian diasporas left outside 18 l Crimea, Global Rivalry, and the Vengeance of History the Russian Federation after the Soviet collapse in Transnistria, the Baltic states, northern Kazakhstan, or elsewhere might either choose to join the Russian Fed- eration (as has been the case for South Ossetians and Abkhazians) or else be forced to join with Russia at some point. And much as Hitler had appealed to pan-Germanism, other Slavic peoples—in Bulgaria, Slovakia, and Serbia, for example—could join a pan-Russian movement, even if Putin appears to be reacting to circumstances, and taking major risks, but without a planned time- table for expansion (at least at this writing). The rise of pan-Russian ideology has raised the question whether elements of an alienated pro-Russian diaspora could potentially serve as a “fifth column” in other areas of Europe. This fifth column is in reference to General Franco’s supporters inside Madrid during the Spanish Civil War, who Franco’s generals hoped would help them take over the city. In many ways, that latter war represented a testing ground for the Nazi and Italian militaries prior to World War II. While the majority of the Russophone diaspora generally tends to identify with Russian culture and language, and not necessarily with Putin’s politics, alienated factions or individuals could nevertheless engage in militant actions as a fifth column against European and American interests if tensions between Russia, the United States, and Europe intensify. Russophone social protest did take place over the removal of the Bronze Sol- dier war memorial just prior to the April–September 2007 Estonian “cyberwar.” While it is has not been proved that the Russian government itself was directly involved, alienated ethnic Russian youth, possibly linked to the pro-Kremlin protofascist Nashi youth movement, appeared to be the instigators of those cyberattacks.8 For its part, Moscow has been concerned with groups in Ukraine that it calls “fascist,” who seek to bring all of Ukraine under the control of Kiev in a more centralized system of government despite the pluri-ethnic and pluri-cultural nature of the country and who are accused of repressing Russophone interests and values.9 On the other side are those Kiev calls pro-Russian “terrorists,” who seek to either “federalize” the region, create “autonomous” areas, or else attempt to secede altogether (as in Donbass).10 By March 2015, war in eastern Ukraine has resulted in over 6,000 deaths, 250,000 exiled, and 500,000 internal refugees,11 plus the assassinations and “suicides” of pro-separatist leaders, if not also the assassination of Russian opposition leader Boris Nemstov, who publicly opposed Russian intervention in Ukraine. Moscow bases its claims against fascist influence in the Ukrainian government on the fact that former president Yushchenko had called for official recognition of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) led by Stepan Bandera. The UPA had been backed by the Nazis and was known for its crimes against Soviet citizens during World War II; Bandera had been condemned during Renewed Cold War? WWII? WWI? Or Nothing of the Kind? l 19 the Nuremberg war crimes trials and by the European Parliament in 2010.12 By contrast, President Yanukovych then cancelled the law awarding the medal of Hero of Ukraine to Nazi collaborators and publicly renounced the interpretation of Holodomor as genocide against Ukrainians.13 Yet by calling the Ukrainian leadership “Banderovites,” “fascists,” and “war criminals” and by comparing Putin to Hitler, Washington, Moscow, and Kiev all check the possibilities of constructive dialogue.

The Hitler Analogy This, of course, is not the first time the Hitler analogy has been used and abused in differing historical contexts. Hitler and the Munich analogy (among other “lessons” of the 1930s) had been abused by Anthony Eden with regard to Egyp- tian president Nasser and the 1956 Suez crisis; President Truman with regard to the North Korean invasion of South Korea; and Lyndon Johnson with regard to North Vietnam. Even President Kennedy initially had Munich in mind at the beginning of the Cuban missile crisis before he fortunately shifted analogies to World War I, after having read Barbara Tuchman’s The Guns of August.14 Yet, while it is true that the manipulation of the Hitler analogy often discred- its the views of the individual making that argument (what has been dubbed “Godwin’s law”15), the question nevertheless remains: Why does the Russian annexation of Crimea appear to raise real fears of a deeper crisis ahead? Is it because of propaganda? Or is there some substance to those claims? As analogies, no matter how carefully framed, can be manipulated for polemical and propaganda purposes, their use and abuse for rhetorical purposes remains suspect. Former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s reference to the Sudetenland analogy appears, for example, intended to distinguish herself from the policies of President Obama and to make her look tough on Russia if she is chosen to run for president by the Democrats in 2016.16 Here, it is most likely that future Republican presidential candidates will be highly critical of Obama’s failed “reset” policy with Russia, for which Hillary Clinton herself was largely responsible.17 Previous Republican presidential candidates John McCain and Mitt Romney, advised by a number of neoconservatives, had run their campaigns with a strong anti-Russian message as a centerpiece of their foreign-policy perspectives in the hope to attract voters. And, given the generally negative attitude toward Russia after Moscow’s annexation of Crimea, an anti-Russian foreign-policy stance will most likely attract votes in the 2016 US presidential election. It thus appears dubious that either the Republicans or the Democrats will be able to adopt a more positive policy stance toward Russia (at least publicly) and offer ways to either cooperate or coexist with Moscow although that option—or 20 l Crimea, Global Rivalry, and the Vengeance of History even a neoisolationist stance given the apparently deepening nature of financial crisis and debt crisis—should not entirely be ruled out. In the effort to formulate an in-between stance between a resurgence of neoconservatism and a return to isolationism, the question remains whether Washington can adopt a new strategy toward Moscow that may involve some tough rhetoric but that nevertheless shows a real willingness to engage with the Russians so as to find reason- able geopolitical and political-economic compromises that eventually meet the interests of both sides. (See Chapter 9.) For his part, President Putin has also used the stereotyped analogy to World War II in comparing the United States and Europeans to the Nazis. Putin has argued that Hitler “set out to destroy Russia and push us back beyond the Urals. Everyone should remember how it ended.”18 He contends that the United States is seeking not only to engage in regime change but also to break up the Russian Federation, just as it did to the Soviet Union. For Putin, expanding American military power represents the basic issue, not Russian actions. The real problem is the expansion of US and NATO military capabilities around the world, plus the fact that US defense spending is higher than the combined budgets of all the major powers. In response to Hillary Clinton’s assertion that Russian actions in eastern Europe resemble what Hitler was doing in the 1930s, President Putin responded (I am ignoring his derogatory comments about women), “Speaking of US policy, it’s clear that the United States is pursuing the most aggressive and toughest policy to defend their own interests–at least, this is how the American leaders see it—and they do it persistently. There are basically no Russian troops abroad while US troops are everywhere. There are US military bases everywhere around the world and they are always involved in the fates of other countries even though they are thousands of kilometers away from US borders. So it is ironic that our US partners accuse us of breaching some of these rules.”19 Then, when asked to justify the Russian defense buildup, Putin responded:

The defence budget of the United States . . . is larger than the combined military budgets of every country in the world . . . So who’s pursuing an aggressive policy? As for our [defence] budget, it has hardly grown in terms of percent of GDP, barely by one-tenth of a percent. But we want to rearm our army and navy based on modern, advanced technology, by reducing quantity and improving quality. We have a relevant rearmament program, and it was not adopted yesterday or in response to the Ukrainian crisis. It has been our policy, which we will continue to implement.20

While it seems that Hillary Clinton may be using or abusing the Hitler analogy as a means to gain voter support, this does not mean the situation in the Renewed Cold War? WWII? WWI? Or Nothing of the Kind? l 21 aftermath of the Russian annexation of Crimea is not potentially dangerous for eastern Europe or for the world at large. At the same time, however, even the mere mention of the Sudetenland analogy as a rhetorical device by Clinton, or by other influential American politicians, tends to heighten mutual imprecations and suspicions between Washington and Moscow and invites counter- propaganda. What is interpreted as anti-Putin demonization and ad hominem rhetoric does not make for wise policy much as Machiavelli had pointed out almost exactly five centuries ago in The Prince.

The Ongoing Debate over Historical Analogy The Russian annexation of Crimea in February–Mar ch 2014 by the use of surreptitious force, plus the ongoing conflict in eastern Ukraine, has accordingly resurrected the debate whether or not Russia and the world are once again entering a new period that is reminiscent of the Cold War.21 Many see Russian military intervention in Crimea and Ukraine as reminiscent of Soviet military steps to repress the 1956 Hungarian insurrection or the 1968 Czechoslovak protest. In this view, much as was the case for the Baltic states during the Cold War, the United States and Europe should not recognize Crimea as a Russian territory under international law. By contrast, critics argue that US backing for Ukraine to join NATO risks a Cuban Missile Crisis in reverse and urge Wash- ington to engage in restraint. Other observers argue that the Russian intervention into Crimea and Ukraine is reminiscent of an even more dangerous phase of world history comparable to period before World War I.22 Others see these developments as a new version of the “Twenty Years” crisis before World War II.23 In this view, the “Weimar Rus- sia” analogy came back into mode, which was generally current in the 1990s. Others have argued that World War IV is already upon us, initiated by the September 11, 2001, attacks that provided the rationale for the Bush administration’s retaliatory Global War on Terror (GWOT).24 In this view, the Cold War, which represented a quasi-global war fought through surrogates mainly in peripheral regions, represented World War III. But will the present post– September 11, 2001, global war against the abstraction of “terror”—which, in reality, represents wars of strategic choice and not existential necessity25— necessarily degenerate further into a direct major-power conflict, in effect merg- ing GWOT with geopolitical rivalry with Russia, China, and other states? During the Cold War, US-Soviet rivalry was often compared to pre–World War I Anglo-German antagonism.26 This was generally true even if President Carter, for example, had already compared the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan to Hitler’s anschluss despite the fact that his own administration had worked to provoke that intervention, making the Soviet intervention more likely, as 22 l Crimea, Global Rivalry, and the Vengeance of History admitted by Zbigniew Brzezinski.27 Yet it was Henry Kissinger’s views that tended to predominate throughout the Cold War: “The danger we now face is more a conflagration on the model of World War I than World War II.”28 In the aftermath of the Soviet collapse in 1991, however, the pre–World War I period no longer appeared as relevant. The question was then posed whether the new Russian Federation, having lost its previous international status as a “superpower,” possessed characteristics that could be compared to Weimar Germany as a collapsed empire. A differing twist on the pre–World War I analogy looks to Asia, with the argument that it is a rising China, and not a declining Russia, that plays the role of imperial Germany.29 In this view, Asia’s future could be much like Europe’s past.30 It is argued that a “high level of economic integration does not necessarily prevent the growth of strategic rivalry and, ultimately, conflict.”31 One scholar argues that China is even “tougher” than imperial Germany.32 There are those, however, who argue that China is acting more like imperial Japan of the 1930s despite the fact that China is not engaging in colonization, as Japan did in Manchuria in 1931 (although some see Han Chinese as “colonizing” Tibet in a form of lebensraum). In this view, China wants revenge against Japan, at least since the 1894–95 Sino-Japanese War, for engaging in more than a century of humiliation and conquest and against European colonial powers and the United States in general, at least since the Opium Wars, in which China had been vanquished by a hypocritical Great Britain. In this view, “China seems about as confident of the future as Japan once was in the 1930s. It is as eager to teach Japan a lesson as Japan once did China.”33 Still another analogy is to the period before the Crimean War, in which tsarist Russia continued its expansion toward the Caucasus in conflict with both the Ottoman Empire and Persia. What Nicolas I achieved in the 1829 Treaty of Adrianople, which had concluded Russian victory in the Russo-Turkish and Russo-Persian wars may be something similar to what Putin is seeking to obtain today. By 1856, Ottoman reaction to tsarist expansion sparked the Crimean War, which as Karl Marx pointed out at the time (and actually encouraged) could have become a global war like that of the French Revolutionary Wars in 1792, but only if Britain, France, Prussia, and Austria had fully aligned against Russia. The questions remain: Are we entering period like that before World War I? Or more akin to that before World War II? Could it prove to be a mix of the two? Or could we be at the roots of a neo–Crimean war with a very different systemic context and major and regional power relationships? Or will such a conflict eventually turn out to be nothing at all comparable to these historical analogies? Could civil wars break out in the Russian Federation and/or China, for example, leading the latter to break up and disaggregate as global tensions Renewed Cold War? WWII? WWI? Or Nothing of the Kind? l 23 mount, much as took place after World War I? Or could forces for peace unexpectedly be given birth across the planet, much as appeared to be the case at the end of the Cold War just prior to the Soviet collapse? If the latter path is still possible, what policies will help achieve global peace, or at least prevent a major- power war, if local and regional conflicts cannot be either prevented or quelled?

Annexations as Causes of Major-Power Wars Historical analogies to the Seven Years’ War, the Crimean War, the French Revolutionary Wars, World War I, World War II, and to the Cold War, among others, do possess some relevance to the contemporary crisis, but each historical analogy needs to be compared and contrasted and fully placed and analyzed in its structural and systemic context in order to bring out its full relevance or irrelevance. The methodological problem is that each analogy implies a very different understanding and interpretation of the contemporary situation and can thus lead to very different policy prescriptions. (See Chapter 5.) In examining a number of conflicts since the mid-eighteenth century, we see that a number of annexations do lay in the background of major-pow er wars, even if they may not have represented the immediate cause of such wars. The Prussian annexation of Silesia during the 1740–48 War of Austrian Succession was the root cause of the diplomatic revolution of 1756 that led former Brit- ish ally Austria to align with France against Great Britain and Prussia in part of the effort to regain Silesia from Prussia (which then became a British ally). This conflict took place in the midst of a series of ongoing global wars between France and Great Britain in North America and the Indian subcontinent. Brit- ish defeat of France during the 1756–63 Seven Years’ War then permitted Great Britain to annex most of France’s overseas colonies. French revanche then led it to support the American Revolution against Great Britain. That war, combined with grotesque mismanagement of the budget, in effect bankrupted France and set the stage for the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. In the relatively peaceful aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars, the 1853–56 Crimean War was to a large degree sparked by the Russian seizure of Moldavia and Wallachia. Later, once Prussia sought to unify Germany in rivalry with Austria, the Prussian annexation of Alsace-Lorraine from France in 1871 and the Austro-Hungarian annexation of Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1908 represented two of the key background causes of World War I, as Great Britain tightened its ties to Franco-Russian alliance, hence “encircling” the Austro-German alliance. The Nazi German remilitarization of the Rhineland, the annexation of the Sudetenland in 1936, and the joint German-So viet September 1939 attack on Poland were then the more immediate causes of World War II from the French and British perspectives. The latter dual intervention took place when 24 l Crimea, Global Rivalry, and the Vengeance of History

Nazi Germany began to act in collaboration with the Soviet Union through the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact and after Moscow had signed the Molotov-Tōgō accord, which put an end to the undeclared Russo-Japanese hostilities in the Far East. This prevented a two-front war and permitted the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany to align, at least temporarily for two years, despite their ostensible ideological differences. (One can argue that both regimes represented a differing form of “socialism in one country.”) From the US perspective, one of the major causes of the Cold War were the Soviet efforts to extend control over much of eastern Europe with East Germany becoming their imperial keystone, in which the Soviets had begun a step-by-step penetration of that region before, during, and after World War II. For its part, Moscow saw itself as establishing a glacis to deter a future German attack, as took place in both World War I and II.

Annexations and Regional Conflicts Many annexations in history have augmented geopolitical tensions or even caused regional wars but not a major-pow er war. Russian Foreign Minister Ser- gey Lavrov has argued that contemporary Crimea represents a region as strategically important to Russia as the Falklands/Malvinas Islands are for the United Kingdom, after London went to war in April 1982 precisely in order to prevent their attempted annexation by the Argentine junta. The political-military situation between London and Buenos Aires continues to seethe beneath the surface in part due to considerable resources in the vicinity of the Falklands/Malvinas and the Antarctic. The Russian annexation of Crimea can also be compared and contrasted with the US effort to split Panama from Colombia and to control the Panama Canal Zone in 1903. The latter took place in the aftermath of the US annexation of Hawaii in 1898, when the United States also obtained control of Puerto Rico, islands in the Spanish West Indies, Guam, and the Philippines from Spain in the 1898 Treaty of Paris while also occupying Cuba in the aftermath of the 1898 Spanish-American War. American steps to annex the Philippines in 1898–1902 resulted in US military intervention and resistance. One can also argue that the United States has continued to lease the US naval base at Guantanamo Bay from Cuba in much the same way that Russia had leased Sevastopol naval base from Ukraine, at least from the end of the Cold War until the Russian annexation. In the case of Panama, by 1903, the United States provided clandestine support for a revolution in Panama so as to break off the isthmus from Colombian control, after Bogotá had refused a significant US aid package. This appears to parallel the contemporary crisis in which Moscow offered a significant aid Renewed Cold War? WWII? WWI? Or Nothing of the Kind? l 25 package to Ukraine but Kiev refused in November 2013. Moscow then stealthily seized Crimea after Kiev refused Moscow’s offer! In the US case, Washington then controlled the Panama Canal per the 1978 Torrijos-Carter Treaties until January 1, 2000. In the meantime, in December 1989, prior to the transfer of the control of the Canal to Panama a decade later, George Bush Sr. intervened to safeguard the Panama Canal, restore democracy, check drug trafficking by President Manuel Noriega, and ostensibly to protect the Americans living there but without the annexation of the whole country. At that time, the US Operation Just Cause was denounced as illegal by the Organization of American States (OAS), plus the Soviet Union and China in addition to other countries in the UN Security Council.34 Nevertheless, Wash- ington ignored international criticism in its determination to ensure its hegemony over Panama, prior to handing over the Canal to Panamanian control in 2000 after a period of joint US-Panamanian control from 1979 to 1999. The US action in Panama in 1989 represented the first post–Cold War unilateral act of regime change, using both discriminate and indiscriminate force, without a Soviet counterthreat.35 This is true even if Moscow did threaten a tit for tat intervention in the Baltic states in an effort to prevent their secession from the Soviet Union. Another historical analogy, which appears comparable to the tactical nature of the Russian military intervention in Crimea (although less surreptitious), was India’s 36-hour annexation of Goa in Operation Vijay in 1961. As Portugal had occupied Goa for 451 years, the Indian action was praised by anticolonial- ists at the time. Moscow then vetoed a draft UN resolution that was intended to denounce the annexation, which revealed Soviet support for India and the “nonaligned movement.” A corresponding analogy is the Communist Chinese annexation of Tibet in 1951 and Hainan Island in 1950 (with Beijing also absorbing Xinjiang province in 1949) in the midst of civil war but also in the effort to check US support of Tibetan independence and Taiwan against Communist Chinese expansion. The Chinese annexation of Hainan Island could be seen as the first stepping- stone toward longer-term Chinese pressures to regain Taiwan. Yet another possible example for comparison and contrast is Israel’s annexation in 1948 of East Jerusalem and the occupation of the West Bank, Gaza, and the Golan Heights in 1967 and of southern Lebanon in 1982. These actions have remained at the heart of Israeli-Palestinian- Arab-Turkish-Syrian-Iranian conflict ever since, even after Israel unilaterally withdrew from Lebanon in 2000 and from Gaza in 2005. In the period 1967–73, the Arab-Israeli dispute almost drew the United States (supporting Israel) and the Soviet Union (supporting Egypt) into a nuclear confrontation. These territorial questions have continued to spark anti-Israeli attacks by differing Palestinian groups, plus Hezbollah 26 l Crimea, Global Rivalry, and the Vengeance of History backed by Iran, often followed by Israeli retaliation in Lebanon, the West Bank, and Gaza, and in Syria itself during the Syrian Civil War starting in 2013. Turkey’s seizure of eastern Cyprus in 1974 in battling fellow NATO member Greece represents yet another analogy to the annexation of Crimea.36 In addition to the UN’s (and NATO’s) inability to resolve the Greek-Turkish dispute, the failure to address the Cyprus conflict has prevented the European Union from bringing Turkey into EU membership while likewise checking closer NATO-EU security and defense relations. The fact that Greek Cypriots (with Russian backing) rejected the April 2004 UN plan of Kofi Annan to unify the island and then join the European Union, but without the Turkish side, has exacerbated Turkish-EU tensions. It has also helped Moscow play the two sides of the island against each other while sustaining Russian influence in Turkish Cyprus. Unless the Cyprus dispute is eventually resolved, political-economic tensions could escalate in the eastern Mediterranean given rival Greek and Turkish claims to energy and resources, plus those of Israel, Lebanon, Syria, and Egypt as well as Cyprus, Greece, the European Union, and Russia, not to overlook those of the Palestinians. The attempted Iraqi annexation of Kuwait (1990) provoked US-led UN intervention that forced Saddam Hussein to retreat, but the United States opted for an essentially unilateral intervention in order to finally overthrow the Iraqi regime. Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein had been encouraged by Washington to go to war with Iran in 1980 in the belief that the Iranian revolution had devastated the Iranian military and the Iranian people’s will to fight, leading to a devastating conflict that killed at least a million people over a decade, in which chemical weaponry was used and which led to fears that Iraq was attempting to acquire nuclear weaponry for the next round of conflict. Unable to pay his massive war debts, and unable to obtain financial backing from the United States or even to convince the other Arab Gulf states to increase the price of oil to help pay those debts (given the fact that Iraq had fought for the Sunni Arab cause against Shi’a Iran), Hussein then attempted to annex Kuwait to force up the price of oil. But he did not expect US-led military intervention under a UN mandate in 1991. The United States then intervened in Iraq again in 2003, followed by a decade-long occupation. In 2014, despite promises to withdraw, the United States once again engaged forces against the Islamic State’s occupation of predominantly Sunni regions of Iraq and Syria.

Reaction to the Russian Annexation of Crimea Although each of the previously discussed annexations took place in differing geohistorical circumstances, none of these annexations have, at least so far, caused a major-power war, even if regional tensions have been exacerbated to Renewed Cold War? WWII? WWI? Or Nothing of the Kind? l 27 varying degrees in each case.37 The question remains whether Moscow’s annexation of Crimea will continue to exacerbate global tensions or whether mitigat- ing circumstances could arise that could eventually ameliorate those tensions. Some annexations appear to be ignored or shoved to the side over time for social or political considerations despite their illegality and despite severe violations of human rights. By contrast, differing states and sociopolitical movements could interpret other annexations as steps toward even greater “aggression.” Much depends on the relative geostrategic positioning and political-economic importance of the territory that has been annexed combined with how other significant actors perceive and then react to that annexation. Much also depends on the nature of the constellation of powers and the systemic geohistorical context that emerges during and in the aftermath of the annexation. As to be discussed, the question whether the United States, Europe, Japan, and possibly India (which can presently be considered a “pivotal” state as to be explained) are forming a new “encircling” alliance in response to the Crimean crisis and whether Russia and China can sustain a positive relationship raises deeper theoretical questions whether it is possible to compare and contrast the emerging post–Cold War geostrategic and political-economic constellations of powers with previous geostrategic and political-economic constellations in history. If so, which epochs appear to be the most salient? Which represent the best historical analogy to the present? But if there are no significant similarities and comparable characteristics between now and then, then how different is the present from the past? Are the differences significant enough to prevent the contemporary crisis from breaking out into a major-power war, particularly if the United States and the Europeans are already engaged in a global war against “terrorism”? The answer to these questions is crucial if the United States and Europe are to forge a contemporary peace-oriented global strategy toward Russia and China, among other states, while likewise finding a way toward peace in the “wider Middle East.” Unless global tensions can soon be reduced or ameliorated, the danger is that essentially insular US-European-Japanese rivalries with continental Russia and China could polarize the contemporary polycentric system of states, much as was the case in both the pre–World War I and the pre– World War II constellations of powers but in a very different systemic context than that of the so-called bipolar Cold War. On a systemic level, Crimea, Global Rivalry, and the Vengeance of History thus argues that the contemporary international system can best be compared to both the pre–World War I system, with the United States playing the role of Great Britain, and to the pre–World War II or interwar system, with the Russian federation seen as a hybrid of a collapsed Weimar Germany and an expanding Leninist/Stalinist Russia. This book consequently takes the position 28 l Crimea, Global Rivalry, and the Vengeance of History that Russian intervention in Ukraine (at least at the time of this writing) represents an action that is much closer to that of Leninist support for pro- Bolshevik forces in Ukraine after tsarist Russian imperial collapse—and prior to the Polish-Soviet partition of Ukraine—than it does to Hitler’s march into the Sudetenland after his forced “democratic” takeover of the Weimar Republic. In this perspective, Putin’s efforts to annex Crimea and to support Russophone movements in eastern Ukraine and to build a new Russian empire or “Eur- asian Union” can best be compared and contrasted to the Russian Revolution, when Lenin and Trotsky sought to weld the tsarist empire back together under Moscow’s totalitarian controls, than with Hitler’s form of national socialism and aggressive militarism. This does not, however, rule out comparisons and contrasts between now and Tsar Nicolas I before the Crimean War. In effect, contemporary Russian actions can be considered as a form of reactive or preclusive imperialism against NATO and EU enlargement, and not an “aggressive” or “offensive” act of expansion. It is in this global context that Crimea, Global Rivalry, and the Vengeance of History critically analyzes the pros and cons of differing historical analogies that have been used in reference to the February–March 2014 Russian annexation of Crimea. These include the events that led to the Crimean War, World War I, World War II, and the so-called Cold War, which nevertheless came close to breaking out into a major-power “hot war” on a number of occasions. The book accordingly raises the question whether or not the Russian annexation of Crimea in March 2014 could lead to wider regional conflicts, if not a major-power war. While Moscow’s annexation of Crimea appears to justify a reactivation of a hardline containment policy against Russia and appears to reconfirm the views of those who believed that NATO should have been expanded, and should now be expanded, as soon as possible, all the way to Ukraine and Georgia in the Caucasus, if not to Sweden and Finland in the Baltic region, the question remains whether the United States and its allies actually have the political will and interests, financial resources, and both conventional and nuclear capabilities (including ground forces) to actually defend Ukraine with NATO’s Article V capabilities and thereby risk confrontation with Moscow? Or can a more diplomatic resolution eventually be found that would not, at a minimum, result in a major arms race? The last chapter then seeks to reappraise alternative policies that had been proposed before World War I (the neo-Jaurès strategy) and before World War II (the eastern Locarno) that were intended, but failed, to prevent the outbreak of a major-power war in Europe. The last chapter also looks at the relevance of the Cold War Cuban Missile Crisis. The point is to examine where previous proposals might possess some relevance as possible guidelines to prevent a major- power war in today’s differing geostrategic and political-economic context. Chapter 2

Genesis of the Russia-Ukraine Conflict

t was initially hoped that the dispute between Kiev and Moscow in the aftermath of the Soviet collapse represented a peaceful “civilized divorce” Ibetween two equal sovereign states over the division of financial assets, resources, territory, as well as nuclear and conventional weaponry. At that time, in the period from 1991 to 1994, Washington and Moscow had largely worked in tandem to pressure Ukraine, along with Belarus and Kazakhstan, to give up their nuclear-weapons capability left over from the Cold War. Yet Russian- Ukrainian disputes have since aggravated, so that by 2013–14, the dispute between Moscow and Kiev has transmogrified into a very uncivilized divorce. The two then broke apart violently after the pro-European Euromaidan movement came to power in Kiev in November 2013 and once the kleptocratic Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych was pressured to flee the country on February 21, 2014.1 Moscow’s decision to surreptitiously seize and annex Crimea in February– March 2014 can be described as an act of reactive or preclusive imperialism. This is true given Moscow’s fears that the new Euromaidan government in Kiev would soon demand the eviction of the Russian Black Sea Fleet at Sev- astopol once it consolidated power, with backing from NATO and the Euro- pean Union.2 It is true that Moscow did possess previous contingency plans for moving the Russian Black Sea Fleet closer to Novorossiysk, its major port and energy transit route on the Black Sea. Yet moving the Russian fleet would not necessarily prevent Ukraine and NATO from potentially utilizing the geostra- tegically located naval facilities in Sevastopol against Russian interests, while excluding Russians from easy access to Crimea. Having previously sought to neutralize Ukraine, and sustain control over the Black Sea Fleet at Sevastopol (Russia’s only warm-water naval base), in part as a means to protect the major energy-transit port of Novorossiysk, Putin believed he had to act. 30 l Crimea, Global Rivalry, and the Vengeance of History

The Significance of Sevastopol and the Black Sea From a historical perspective, fear of losing control over Sevastopol evokes Rus- sian memories of the British, French, and Ottoman siege of Sevastopol in 1854– 55 during the Crimean War, for example, not to overlook imperial German intervention in that region at the time of the March 1918 Brest-Litovsk Treaty. Imperial German defeat in November 1918 was then followed by French military intervention in Crimea and Odessa in mid-December 1918 as part of the US, British, and French allied intervention in the Russian Revolution—that is, until the Red Army retook Crimea in 1920. In terms of more recent history, the Nazi German, Italian Fascist, and Romanian attack on the region in 1941–42 as part of Operation Barbarossa remains a heavy weight on the Russian mind-set. By contrast, contemporary western Ukrainians generally fear historical Rus- sian claims to Ukraine. While Russians see Kiev as the “mother of all Russian cities,” Ukrainians regard themselves as bringing culture and religion to the Russians in the north but who then returned the favor by ransacking Kiev in 1147. The two sides also dispute the nature of the so-called merger of Rus- sia and Ukraine in 1654 when the Cossack Hetmanate sought an alliance with Muscovy against the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth at the Council of Pereyaslav. Historians continue to argue whether it was a personal union between two heads of state or a truly social and political merger.3 This “merger” was an indirect consequence of the Thirty Years’ War, which had not so inadvertently resparked the Polish-Ukrainian conflict (the 1648 Ukrainian uprising) and which ultimately permitted Russia to establish hegemony over Ukraine following the 1654 Pereyaslav Agreement. Russia was then able to seize much of Belarus, as well as eastern Ukraine (Smolensk and Kiev) following the 1654–67 Thirteen Years’ War at the 1667 Truce of Andrusovo between the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and Russia. This accord permitted Moscow to obtain Kiev (in a conditional accord intended to last only two years). While both sides agreed to cooperate against the Ottoman Empire, Poland saw Russia as gaining regional hegemony. Later, Swedish efforts to liberate Ukraine, and then to march on an expanding Russia, failed disastrously in the 1709 Battle of Poltava when Russia forced the return of Augustus II to the throne of Poland and Denmark. With the defeat of Sweden in the Great Northern War (1700–1721), Russia, then in alliance with Poland, occupied Mecklenburg (the neighbor of Hanover) and made a decisive step to the Baltic, opening the door to Europe by 1721. Western Ukrainians likewise suspected Russian motives since the Russo- Turkish (and Polish) War of 1768–74 when Catherine II brought the “Novo- rossiya” regions of southern Ukraine into the Russian Empire as well as sections of the northern Caucasus and Crimea. This annexation took place as part of Genesis of the Russia-Ukraine Conflict l 31 the first Austrian-Prussian- Russian partitions of Poland in 1772 but concurrently put an end to the slave trade and raids by the Crimean Khanate and Nogai Horde. The latter two sociopolitical groupings (remnants of Mongol and Turkish invasions) had been able to take advantage of ongoing conflict between Lithuania and Muscovy from the mid-fifteenth century until the late eighteenth century. Crimea was then formally annexed by Russia in 1783 after having obtained nominal independence and once Russia had obtained the rights for Russian merchant ships to sail in the Black Sea and through the Dardanelles. By 1793, at the beginning of the French Revolutionary Wars, most of Ukraine was brought into the tsarist empire after the Second Partition of Poland. Here, parenthetically, it should be noted that Russia was aligned with Prussia in the Fourth Coalition in 1806 at the time Napoleon crushed Prussia at the battle of Jena and history ostensibly “ended” according to Hegel. The Treaty of Tilsit in 1807 led to the formation of the Confederation of the Rhine under Napoleonic control and the newly fashioned Kingdom of Westphalia. Napo- leon’s victory then put the territories along the lower Rhine, west of the Elbe river, and what was then part of the former Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, under the nepotistic control of Napoleon’s brother, Jérôme Bonaparte. Perhaps even more ironically, 1806 was also the year in which Napoleon issued the November 21 Berlin Decree in the effort to implement the Continental System that was intended to control the trade of all European countries, block British trade, and weaken the British economy. At this point, Russia switched sides, taking most of the Duchy of Warsaw, plus parts of Polish Prussia, and allied with France against Great Britain, partly in the hope to partition the Ottoman Empire so as to obtain Constantinople, in its dreams of being the Third Rome. This also gave Russia the opportunity to seize Finland. Yet the Treaty of Tilsit proved to be an uneasy truce as Napoleon’s Continental System began to alienate Russia, as did Napoleon’s claims to the North German coast and disputes over the Duchy of Warsaw, as well as over Sweden and the Ottoman Empire. While Russia would gain East Galicia in the 1809 Treaty of Schönbrunn after Napoleon’s defeat of Austria, the rest of Galicia would remain in the Austro- Hungarian Empire, becoming a major focal point of dispute during World War I between Austria and Russia. Russia began to withdraw from the Continental System in 1810, and despite Napoleon’s efforts to achieve a reconciliation in 1811 and early 1812, Napoleon turned against Russia in June 1812, only to confront Russian winter and resistance after an initial pyrrhic victory at Borodino and against Moscow, once the Russians evacuated the city. At this point, the Sixth Coalition came together, more or less haphazardly, leading to Napoleon’s defeat in 1814–15. In the aftermath of its humiliating defeat by Napoleon at Jena in 1806, Prussia’s efforts to reform its government and society did not lead Berlin toward 32 l Crimea, Global Rivalry, and the Vengeance of History the ideals of democratic-liberalism, as implied by Fukuyama’s “end of history” argument in 1989, but instead, Berlin choose a revanchist path of liberalization and militarization that was intended to sustain the Hohenzollern monarchy in power and limit parliamentary rule and that eventually resulted in Prussian- forced German unification, the Franco-Prussian War, and then World War I. (See General Introduction.)

Crimean War The roots of the Crimean War can be found in the series of Russian victories over the Ottoman Empire and Persia since the late eighteenth century. The Russo-Turkish War of 1828–29 is particularly relevant as it was sparked by Russian support for the Greek War of Independence in which Russia intervened on the side of France and Britain against the Ottomans in the Octo- ber 1827 Battle of Navarino. In retaliation, the Ottoman Sultan then closed the Dardanelles to Russian ships in addition to revoking the 1826 Akkerman Convention, which in essence, had attempted to implement a system of joint Russian-Ottoman sovereignty over Moldova and Wallachia. Concurrently, war between Persia and Russia broke out, resulting in Persian defeat. In the Febru- ary 1828 Treaty of Turkmenchay, Russia obtained rights to the Caspian Sea and absorbed the Khanates of Erivan and Nakhichevan, which are essentially contemporary Armenia and Azerbaijan, causing a bitter reaction in Persia.4 In the Crimean War, the British, French, and Ottomans engaged in the siege of Sevastopol in 1854–55. This was after Louis Napoleon sought the right to protect French Catholics in 1850 within the Ottoman-controlled Holy Lands—in rivalry with the Russian-backed Orthodox—and seized control of the Holy Places in 1852, humiliating Tsar Nicolas. The Russian seizure of Moldova and Wallachia (which were largely autonomous but under Turkish suzerainty since the 1829 Treaty of Adrianople that had concluded the 1828 Russo-Turkish War) caused a chain reaction after Russia crossed the Danube in which Austria, and then Prussia, mobilized at least partially to protect the German Confederation. Both France and Britain opposed further Russian expansionism. Lack of enforcement of the 1853 Vienna Note then led to conflict once Turkey declared war in October 1853, in the belief that it would obtain British backing, even if Russia was about to withdraw its forces. France and Britain resolved to capture Sevastopol in order to control the Black Sea and to “dam” Russian expansion. The war almost went global, as there was conflict on multiple fronts: the Danubian Principalities, the Baltic Sea, the White Sea, and the Pacific Ocean, in addition to Crimea, the Sea of Azov, and the Black Sea, while France also threatened to support Polish independence. The war ended with Genesis of the Russia-Ukraine Conflict l 33 an Ottoman defeat at Kars, which Russia returned to Turkey in exchange for Sevastopol, Balaklava, and other cities of Crimea.5 With the end of the Crimean war, the March 30, 1856, Treaty of Paris neutralized and demilitarized the Black Sea: Russia and the Ottoman Empire were not allowed military fleets, forts, and arsenals on the Black Sea coast, opening it up for free trade. The Black Sea straits were subsequently closed for military vessels of all nations, and Russia and Turkey were only allowed a limited number of light military ships for patrolling purposes. The Treaty of Paris also established the European powers—and not Russia—as the protectors of the Romanian provinces of Wallachia and Moldavia. Likewise, Bessarabia was transferred from Russia to Turkey and then incorporated into Molda- via, forging a buffer between Russia and the Ottoman Empire. The Danube became freely navigable under the European Danube Commission. France— not Russia—was granted the right to protect the Ottoman-controlled Holy Lands. In addition, the Ottoman Empire became a member of the Concert of Europe. The April 16, 1856, Declaration of Paris accordingly resulted in general acceptance of the principle of freedom of the seas and the establishment of the first formal laws in the field of naval warfare.6 The analogy to the Crimean War consequently appears to possess some relevance to today’s crisis. In addition to somewhat parallel geostrategic and political-economic interests in the Black Sea region (oil and gas today, grain in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries), contemporary Russian influence in the secessionist state of Transnistria appears to parallel the Moldova question of the pre–Crimean War period, while Ottoman membership in the Concert of Europe then lies in the background of contemporary Turkish demands to join the European Union now. The nineteenth-century Russian and French demands for a protectorate over the Holy Lands similarly appear to parallel calls for peacekeeping forces under a general UN mandate along the demarcation, or Green, line in Palestine as a step toward possible reconciliation between Israel and the Palestinians.

World War I and the Breakup of Tsarist Russia Between 1878 and 1907, Great Britain gradually stepped away from its efforts to “dam the Russian current” and began to consider a rapprochement with tsarist Russia (by 1894), in large part due to the realization that it could not take on the Dual Alliance of France and Russia. The 1878 Treaty of Berlin, which had overturned the Treaty of San Stefano, sustained the containment of Russia but likewise set Russia and Austria (increasingly backed by imperial Ger- many) against each other, so that Austria annexed Bosnia-Her zegovina in 1908. In the period 1903–14, London eventually aligned with France in 1904 and 34 l Crimea, Global Rivalry, and the Vengeance of History then in 1907 with Russia (which was backed by France since the period 1892– 94). As France helped mediate the Anglo-Russian rapprochement, this had the impact of “encircling” imperial Germany and raising fears of Austro-Hungarian disaggregation, if not the splintering of Alsace-Lorraine away from imperial German controls. Berlin exploded into a largely unexpected two-front war in August 1914, a full 43 years after the loss of Alsace-Lorraine and a month after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne.7

Roots of the Russian Revolution While the Crimean War helped spark the tsarist reforms that would lead to the “freeing” of the serfs (but with heavy debts) and thus eventually providing fuel for the Russian Revolution, and while the Russian defeat in the 1904–5 Russo- Japanese War helped spark the 1905 Russian Revolution, plus a number of secessionist movements inside the tsarist empire, the defeat of Russian forces by imperial Germany in World War I then split those cracks wide open. The tsarist empire soon began to break apart after Lenin obtained secret imperial Ger- man support for his antiwar stance. During the Russian Revolution, in which Berlin was seen as backing Ukrainian independence versus the Russians, deep sociopolitical schisms among Ukrainian elites led to a series of successive governments due to their disputes with both the Polish and Soviet governments. These included the Central Council, the Hetmanate, the Directory in Dnieper Ukraine, and the Western Ukrainian People’s Republic in Galicia (Halychyna). Although not a formally recognized government, there was also the peasant- based Makhno anarchist movement (1918–21), which fought against both White and Red forces. There was also the pro-Bolshevik People’s Republic in Kharkiv. In March 1917, the Central Council (Tsentral ʹna Rada) was created in Kiev. In April 1917, the Ukrainian elites called for the “federalization” of the Russian state with Ukraine as one of its autonomous units. This question of Ukrainian autonomy divided the coalition that led the Russian provisional government. On July 2, 1917, the first coalition of Prince Georgy Lvov collapsed; the second coalition was led by Alexander Kerensky. Nevertheless, greater autonomy for Ukraine was granted by the provisional Russian government in July.8 In its Third Universal (November 20, 1917), Ukrainian President Vinichenko and the Central Council then proclaimed the creation of an autonomous Ukrainian People’s Republic (UPR) or Ukrainian National Republic (UNR). This entity was to be joined by federal ties in the formation of a wider democratic union with Russia.9 But this autonomy was not Genesis of the Russia-Ukraine Conflict l 35 recognized by the Bolsheviks. As suspicions mounted, Lenin issued an ultimatum. On December 17, 1917, Lenin accused the Ukrainian Rada of interfering with the autonomous rights of the Don and Kuban Provinces. Among other demands, such as that Ukraine repress the Constitutional Democrats, for example, Lenin urged the Ukrainian Rada to “promise to put an end to the attempts to crush the armies of the Soviet and of the Red Guard in the Ukraine”; otherwise, the “Soviet of the People’s Commissaries will consider the Rada in a state of war.”10 A socially and politically divided Ukraine was accordingly dragged into the civil war between White and Bolshevik forces. War with the Bolsheviks led anti-Soviet Ukrainian elites to argue that the total breakup of the tsarist empire represented a more realistic goal than its democratization and federalization; the only alternatives for Ukraine appeared to be a choice between Charybdis and Scylla: “independent statehood or national annihilation.”11 In January 1918, Kiev declared full independence from Russia and signed the peace treaty between the Central Powers and Ukraine on February 9, 1918.12 This anti- Russian viewpoint has continued to play a strong role in western Ukrainian efforts to achieve independence from Moscow and to oppose accords leading to closer Russian-Ukrainian political-economic cooperation. During the Russian Revolution, Ukraine divided into essentially three prime centers of power, plus the anarchist Makhno movement. First, there was the UPR—also known as the UNR—with its leadership in Kiev established on November 20, 1917. The UPR/UNR was initially recognized by the central powers of Germany, Hungary, Bulgaria, and Turkey but was then overthrown by Berlin after the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk that established political tutelage over Kiev on April 30, 1918. The UPR/UNR was then restored in November 1918 under a social-democratic directorate after imperial German defeat. The second major political grouping was the Western Ukrainian People’s Republic (ZUNR). The third movement was the eastern Ukrainian People’s Republic of Sovi- ets—or what became the Congress of Soviets—Lenin’ s vanguard in Ukraine. This group set up its leadership in Kharkiv on December 25, 1917, after split- ting with the December 17, 1917, Kiev People’s Congress. Pro-Bolshevik, it opposed the Ukrainian People’s Republic and the ZUNR and helped expel the UPR/UNR directorate forces from Kiev in January 1919. Prior to their ultimate defeat by the Red Army, the Ukrainian nationalists and other anti-Bolsheviks did attempt to link the two separate nationalist movements, the ZUNR and UPR/UNR, into a single national movement under the January 22, 1919, Act of Unity.13 But this attempt at Ukrainian national unity failed as the UPR/UNR lost its mass support and much of the country fell into chaos: the Bolshevik and 36 l Crimea, Global Rivalry, and the Vengeance of History

White forces, plus General Denikin, Ukrainian nationalist forces, and the anarchist Makhno movement all engaged against one another, shifting alliances and engaging in backstabbing. As the Bolsheviks were the best organized militarily, technically, and economically, most of Ukraine was then absorbed into the Soviet Union as the “Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic” in March 1919, with the third Soviet Ukrainian government established by December 1919. This was after the previous two Bolshevik military interventions in early 1918 and the first six months of 1919 had failed. Lenin had opposed the brutality of the second intervention under Georgy Pyatakov, which was possibly backed by Stalin without Lenin’s knowledge. In the third intervention in the autumn of 1919, instead of oppressing Ukrainian nationalists and peasant rebellions (the biggest was that of Makhno) as did Pyatakov, Lenin argued for a more “federalist” approach. And by December 1919, he called for the use of the Ukrainian language in all Soviet institutions and for a rapprochement with Ukrainian peasant villages. By March 1920, the Ukrainian Bolshevik party admitted the Borothists, who were the only Ukrai- nian socialist party with a mass peasant following. Once the Ukrainian Direc- tory abandoned its socialist goals, the Borothists then joined the Bolsheviks in the hope to achieve a more decentralized socialism that recognized Ukrainian nationalism. This split the Ukrainian opposition and opened the door to Bol- shevik victory. While the Russian Bolsheviks may have crushed the idea of an independent Ukrainian state, the Ukrainian nation was nevertheless provided with a cultural base.14 During this time, the allied intervention of the United States, France, and Great Britain, plus Japan, was intended to check further German expansion and to prevent Berlin from obtaining supplies and key ports, in addition to protecting the stranded Czech Legion. The intervention evidently failed to check the rise of the Bolsheviks in support of the White Army and other anti-Bolshevik movements, while it was feared that Japanese forces could remain in Siberia. The United States, France, and Britain withdrew in 1920; the Japanese left unilaterally in 1922 after clashes with the Bolsheviks and after occupying the Maritime Provinces up to Chita, Lake Baikal, and Buryatia.

Ukrainian Conflict with Poland In addition to its conflict with pro-Bolshevik movements, divided Ukrainian nationalists also fought against Poland in 1918–19 for control of Lviv, Galicia, Volhynia, and surrounding regions. The March 3, 1918, Treaty of Brest-Litovsk had augmented the struggle for Finnish, Estonian, Latvian, Belarusian, Lithu- anian, and Ukrainian independence against tsarist Russia, but the treaty did Genesis of the Russia-Ukraine Conflict l 37 not mention the question of independence for Poland, which had been previously partitioned three times by Prussia and Austria as well as by Russia in the late eighteenth century. Joint opposition to Polish independence subsequently helped forge a tacit accord between the Bolsheviks and imperial Germany, setting the stage for the later 1922–23 Rapallo Pact between the Soviet Union and Weimar Germany. In pursuing its irredentist claims, Poland entered into conflict not only with the Soviets (and Lithuania) but also with the Western Ukrainian Peo- ple’s Republic over the control of eastern Galicia in 1918–19 after the Austro- Hungarian collapse. Defeated by Poland, the UPR/UNR gave up control over eastern Galicia in the April 1920 Treaty of Warsaw and received, in exchange, Polish military assistance against the Bolsheviks. This treaty was seen as an act of treason by western Ukrainians (ZUNR), who in retaliation, broke off their alliance with the UPR/UNR.15 The Bolsheviks eventually “defeated” the joint Polish-Ukrainian forces, but only after launching a major attack into Poland itself in an action supported by Lenin as a means to spread the revolution by bayonets into Poland, if not ultimately into Germany. The intervention was, however, opposed by Trotsky, who saw the attack as a manifestation of great Russian chauvinism after the Bolsheviks had successfully repelled Polish forces from Kiev. The March 18, 1921, Soviet- Polish Treaty of Riga then resulted in a partition of Ukraine and Polish recognition of the central, eastern, and southern areas of Ukrainian territory as part of Soviet Ukraine. The latter region initially permitted some elements of autonomy under Lenin, who handed the Donbass region to Ukraine, but not under Sta- lin. The Treaty of Riga likewise resulted in Bolshevik recognition of Polish control over western and eastern Galicia and the region of Volhynia of Ukraine. By 1923, Poland absorbed eastern Galicia, but Warsaw also reneged on its promises of autonomy for the region to the great dismay of Ukrainian nationalists who had initially opposed assimilation into the Polish state. The regions of Ukraine under Bolshevik control then became the second largest republic in the Soviet Union. While the 1920 treaty between Soviet Ukraine and the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR) established an economic and military union, Ukraine was still defined as a “sovereign” independent republic with the right to maintain diplomatic relations with third states after the 1919 constitution had been passed by the Soviet Ukrai- nian government in Kharkiv. At that time, the Soviet annexation of eastern Ukrainian territories included parts of the Voronezh and Kursk Provinces, the Don Host Oblast, Kuban, and the Stavropol Province. These territories were at that time heavily populated with ethnic Ukrainians prior to the Holodomor (famine-democide) of 1932–33. 38 l Crimea, Global Rivalry, and the Vengeance of History

Territorial Disputes: Poland and Lithuania 1920 While Soviet efforts to rebuild the tsarist empire by force under Lenin and then by Stalin can be compared and contrasted with contemporary Russian efforts to rebuild a Eurasian Union and intervene in Crimea, the interwar period in Ukraine and eastern Europe, as well as western Europe (Spain), was characterized by much greater violence over a wider space than in eastern Europe and the Russian “near abroad” today. With the exception of the former Yugoslavia, conflict zones have generally shifted to the Caucasus, the Black Sea region, and the “wider Middle East.” In this sense, what has thus far been a regional Russian revanche has been taking place in very different geohistorical circumstances than the global Nazi German revanche. Yet, in the interwar period, Hitler was not the only leader who sought to change territorial boundaries illegally by force. A close historical analogy to the March 2014 Russian seizure of Crimea is, in fact, the Polish annexation of what was once called the Republic of Central Lithuania just two years after World War I, in seeking to reforge the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. In Octo- ber 1920, in the aftermath of the Soviet-Polish War, Polish General Lucjan Żeligowski, who was secretly backed by Polish Chief of State Józef Piłsudski, staged a coup to seize the Vilna region, which was also claimed by Lithuania. General Żeligowski soon established the Polish-controlled Republic of Central Lithuania. Against the stated policy of the League of Nations, Warsaw’s illegal actions were nevertheless backed by France, which hoped to support Poland as a means to counterbalance the influence of both Weimar Germany and the Soviet Union, in an intervention that helped undermine the legitimacy of the League. On February 20, 1922, a plebiscite called for the Vilna region’s incorporation into Poland; the results of the plebiscite were then backed by the League of Nations but rejected by Lithuania.

Poland, Nazi Germany, and Czechoslovakia In the interwar period, Poland possessed its own irredentist claims but did not possess sufficient military capabilities to fulfil all of those claims, as would prove the case for Hitler’s Germany. On nearly the same day that Nazi Germany annexed the Sudetenland, Warsaw annexed the Czech section of Ciesyn in October 1938 in the aftermath of the Munich accord of late September. This action initially led to accusations of Nazi and Polish complicity in establishing a joint Polish-So viet condominium over Czechoslovakia. In effect revers- ing Woodrow Wilson’s principle of national self-determination, Hitler seized the Sudetenland on the basis of political and economic persecution of ethnic Genesis of the Russia-Ukraine Conflict l 39

Germans, even if the non-Nazi Sudeten Germans sought greater autonomy and even if Sudeten Nazis themselves did not necessarily desire annexation by Hit- ler’s Germany.16 In this perspective, Hitler first played with Polish claims, permitting Poland to annex Czechoslovak territory, before turning toward Moscow to divide Poland itself in 1939.

Russia: Aggressive or Defensive Expansionism? The historical debate whether Russian and Soviet actions can be considered defensive and preclusive (as “defensive expansionism”) or offensive and “aggressive” has led to often bitter disputes among scholars. It has been observed that of 38 campaigns waged by tsarist Russia since 1700, as many as 36 were depicted by Russian military leaders themselves as “offensive.”17 The messian- ism of Danilevsky and Dostoyevsky’s pan-Slav praise for Russian victories in Central Asia and its expansion toward the Far East in the nineteenth century provide ample evidence of the aggressive, chauvinistic attitude of Mother Rus- sia toward non-European peoples. Here, Russian attitudes were formed by their experience under the Mongol yoke for over 250 years (1219–1478), which had 18 devastated protodemocratic elements in Kievan Rusʹ and which had had the impact of retarding Russian socio-political-legal developments, in part by iso- lating it from Byzantium and the Middle East. Once Muscovy was able to overthrow the Mongol yoke, Russian expansion in Central Asia and the Far East could be considered “aggressive.” In addition, it sought to forcefully consolidate autonomous Russian regions, such as Republic of Novgorod, which had escaped the Mongol yoke but nevertheless had to pay tribute. Concurrently, the expansion of Muscovy was nonetheless aimed at countering the expansion of the Ottoman Empire and China, as well as Great Britain and later Japan. In this perspective, the Russian expulsion of the Tatars and other Muslims from Eurasia can be seen as paralleling the expulsion of Muslims and Jews by the Spanish Reconquista in 1492. Russian actions can also be compared and contrasted with American Manifest Destiny and the US efforts to repress and sequester indigenous North American peoples in reservations. At the same time, one can hardly refute the fact that the major military campaigns taken by tsarist Russia during the Swedish, Napoleonic, and Crimean Wars and by the Soviet Union against Nazi Germany were largely defensive in character, even if Russia did switch alliances at some point in every one of these major-power conflicts in an effort to consolidate territorial gains or rebuild its military capabilities. One exception to the generally defensive character of Russian wars with other major powers was the suicidal Russian campaign against East Prussia in August 1914 at the beginning of World War I, in which 40 l Crimea, Global Rivalry, and the Vengeance of History

St. Petersburg was encouraged by France and Great Britain—which had both opposed a possible Austro-German-Russian rapprochement—to counter imperial Germany in a two-front war.19

Relevance A number of points appear relevant. In a long-term view, Peter the Great’s decisive step to the Baltic, which had opened Russia’s door to Europe by 1721, then initiated a long cycle of geopolitical struggle to remove Russia from the Baltic littoral (as well as from central and eastern Europe) in the Napoleonic Wars, the Crimean War, World War I, and World War II, as well as during the Cold War. At the same time, Russia frequently shifted alliances either before or during all these conflicts. As Napoleon planned to attack Britain in 1804–5, London had been able to convince Russia to side with it against France in the War of the Third Coalition—that is, until the 1807 Treaty of Tilsit, when Tsar Alexander I forged a separate peace with Napoleon. This was before Russia and France turned against each other in 1812–14, leading to a disastrous defeat for Napoleon, due to Russian resistance and the Russian winter. With respect to the period before the Crimean war, what Nicolas I achieved in the 1828 Treaty of Turkmenchay with Persia and 1829 Treaty of Adrianople with the Ottoman Empire appears to be what Putin hopes to obtain today but which eventually led to the Crimean War. This period also helps explain why Moscow has tried to be on the best possible terms with Iran in contemporary circumstances after Russia had seized Armenia and Azerbaijan, which once “belonged” to Persia in the early nineteenth century. In the years just before World War I, Russia unexpectedly aligned with its historical British nemesis in 1907 against Austria-Hungary and imperial Ger- many despite the Anglo-Russian antagonism that manifested itself during the Crimean War and which was then fought as the “Great Game” throughout the late nineteenth century. And Russia had previously aligned with France in 1892–94 (despite the Crimean War); it thus allied with two of its former historical enemies, plus Serbia, before World War I—instead of with imperial Germany—even though both Paris and London feared that the two monarchies might eventually align due to ideological and dynastic considerations. In the interwar period, one can see that the sociopolitical division of Ukrai- nian movements between Kiev (Ukrainian nationalist) and Kharkiv (pro- Bolshevik) during the Russian Revolution (prior to the Soviet-Polish partition) has appeared to be replaying itself in differing geostrategic circumstances since the February–March 2014 Russian intervention in Crimea.20 Later, Stalin unexpectedly aligned with the capitalist United States and Great Britain in Genesis of the Russia-Ukraine Conflict l 41

1941 against Nazi Germany, after establishing relations with Washington in 1933 (with Harpo Marx as a cultural emissary!), but only after Hitler attacked Moscow in Operation Barbarossa in 1941 after the collapse of 1939 Molotov- Ribbentrop “nonaggression” Pact. In the contemporary context, President Putin’s intervention in Crimea and his purported support for Russophone movements in eastern Ukraine consequently appears to follow a strategy somewhat similar to that of Lenin during the Russian Civil War, particularly given Russian appeals to “federalism” (a lesson learned by Lenin after previous Bolshevik support for centralization) but in entirely different geopolitical circumstances and with differing tactics. Given the interwar history, it is not inconceivable that Putin may have hoped to partition Ukraine with Poland as claimed by Polish Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski (see Chapter 1). Moreover, one can argue that a potential NATO and/or EU alliance with Ukraine would be regarded by Moscow as a parallel to the Febru- ary 1918 peace treaty between the Central Powers and Ukraine.

Chapter 3

Soviet Collapse and the Russia-Ukraine Conflict

Khrushchev and Crimea he roots of the Ukraine crisis since February–Mar ch 2014 more directly stem from the 1954 decision of Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev to Thand over Crimea to Ukraine. Khrushchev’s decision was based on the argument that both Ukraine and Crimea were agricultural areas. But more important, Khrushchev, who hoped to build upon Lenin’s earlier rapprochement with Ukrainian nationalists, had ostensibly hoped to make amends for the brutal treatment of the Ukrainians by Stalin during the Soviet collectivization of agriculture. The latter resulted in the horrific period of famine-democide, the Holodomor, not to overlook the repression of Ukrainian nationalists during the Russian Revolution itself in which Khrushchev himself participated.1 But it is still unclear as to how much of the famine, in which estimates range widely from 2.4 to 12 million people killed, represented a deliberate plot intended to “Russify”—if not exterminate—Ukrainian nationalists and how much was a consequence of ideologically based Soviet collectivization efforts and a totally failed agro-industrial policy. Khrushchev ostensibly returned Crimea as a “goodwill gesture” to Ukraine on February 19, 1954, marking the three-hundredth anniversary of Ukraine’s so-called merger with tsarist Russia in 1654 (which had nothing to do with Crimea, which came into Russian control 130 years later). In addition, the transfer of Crimea, which was 75 percent Rus- sian at the time, after the depopulation of Crimean Tatars and others, would help ensure Russian influence in the affairs of Ukraine, much as Moscow had also sought to Russify the newly annexed Baltic states. When Khrushchev was still the Communist party leader in Ukraine, he reportedly had suggested to Stalin as early as 1944 that transferring Crimea to Ukraine would help Moscow obtain support from Ukrainian elites. The 44 l Crimea, Global Rivalry, and the Vengeance of History

1954 decision consequently represented a means for Khrushchev to gain support from Ukrainian political leaders for his own domestic political struggle to remove then Soviet Prime Minister Georgy Malenkov from power. As Khrush- chev’s own role in repressing western Ukraine during the Russian Civil War— particularly the newly annexed regions of Volhynia and Galicia, in which armed clashes were still occurring in the early 1950s—was implicitly being critiqued by Deputy Premier and Minister of Internal Affairs Lavrentiy Beria, Khrush- chev needed the political backing of the Ukrainian leadership.2 For geostrategic, political-economic, historical, legal, ethnic, and cultural reasons, Russian pan-nationalists never fully accepted Khrushchev’s decision, even if Khrushchev did clear the decision through the Supreme Soviet in accord with the 1936 Soviet Constitution (contrary to some reports in 2014). Russian pan-nationalist, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, decried the transfer as the “arbitrary capriciousness of a satrap.”3 Yet the decision was generally not considered that problematic as long as Ukraine remained integrated in the Soviet Union and as long as the port of Sevastopol remained under Moscow’s jurisdiction so as to base the Russian Black Sea Fleet and to protect the Sea of Azov and the port of Novorossiysk. In the process of the Soviet breakup, however, the US government and Ukrainian nationalists began to argue for Ukrainian independence, including the liberation of Sevastopol from Russian control. While Washington claimed that it would let Ukrainians decide for themselves whether or not to become independent in 1991, it is clear that members of the US government and the fourth estate, the media, pushed for independence, at least after President George Bush’s so-called Chicken Kiev speech on August 1, 1991. In this speech, Bush was seen by pro-Ukrainian critics as kowtowing to Moscow over the question of Ukrainian independence, by arguing against “suicidal nationalism” that was seen as despotic and not democratic.4 President Bush did, however, begin to shift his position in favor of Ukrainian independence between October–November 1991 after the August 20–21, 1991, coup attempt by Brezhnev-era sympathizers, the so-called Gang of 8. Few in the West had heeded Gorbachev’s warning that as soon as German unification was announced, “a Soviet Marshall would take his place.” As the “two-plus- four” talks over German unification proceeded as scheduled, Gorbachev’s statement was interpreted as a scare tactic intended to gain concessions on other issues. The delayed-reaction August 1991 putsch took place on the day on which Gorbachev’s New Union Treaty was to be signed and at the time when the Ukrainians (among other Soviet republics) were balking on joining any form of union with Moscow. The New Union Treaty had been opposed by Russian pan- nationalists and pro-Western ex-Soviet states alike, including Ukraine. Russian putschists also opposed the START I accords, as well as the “Two-plus-Four” accords with Germany. They feared that a unified Federal Germany would Soviet Collapse and the Russia-Ukraine Conflict l 45 represent a step toward NATO enlargement into eastern Europe. Some Soviet hardliners opposed German unification altogether; others proposed instead a confederal Germany, in which West Germany and East Germany would be political equals (even if the latter could hardly sustain itself as a state).5 Bonn and Gorbachev had secretly discussed the issue of Kaliningrad, an issue that would anger Soviet hardliners if exposed to the public. The hardline opposition also wanted to repress Gorbachev’s domestic reforms of glasnost and perestroika. In September 1991, Boris Yeltsin stated that Russian actions against the putsch were intended “to save Russia, to save this country, to save democracy, and the whole world from a Cold War, or a hot war for that matter.”6 At that time, Kiev was also preparing for the December 1991 referendum on the issue of independence. Perceived US backing for Ukrainian independence concurrently had the impact of giving political advantage to Boris Yeltsin over Mikhail Gorbachev, to the chagrin of the latter.7 Not so ironically, Gorbachev’s New Union Treaty resembled proposals for the federalization of the Russian state with Ukraine as one of its autonomous units that were initially proffered by Ukrainian President Vinichenko and accepted by the Russian provisional government back in July 1917—prior to Lenin’s coup d’etat. As Moscow began to relinquish control over the Warsaw Pact, Gorbachev set out to secure the Russian eastern flank by demarcating Russian and Chi- nese territory beginning in 1986, concurrent with the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan. The reaction to Gorbachev’s efforts to reconcile with China led the United States to urge a buildup of Japanese military capabilities (urging Japan to become an “unsinkable” aircraft carrier) so as to tie up Soviet defenses in the Far East, thus attempting to prevent a full-fledged Sino-Soviet reconciliation, as the Soviet Union would be forced to keep troops and tanks in the Far East.8 Concurrently, Washington refused to seek out a political settlement with Gorbachev in Afghanistan. This major error permitted the Taliban to come to power, aligned with Al-Qaeda and other pan-Islamist revanchist groups, who were then seen by President Reagan as “freedom fighters,” even if they were opposed to the more secular social values of the pro-Soviet Najibullah dictatorship.

Soviet Collapse Much like the collapse of the imperial German, Austro-Hungarian, and Otto- man empires in the period after World War I, the Soviet collapse has resulted in the creation of both Russian and non-Russian ethnic diasporas and has opened up the latent irredentist claims of emerging states or political factions, while directly impacting eastern Europe, the Balkans, the Caucasus, and Central Asia, if not more indirectly much of the world. 46 l Crimea, Global Rivalry, and the Vengeance of History

More than 25 million Russians were left in 14 non-Russian countries; more than 18 million citizens of 14 other countries were left outside their respective homes; and more than 17 million people were left without their own statehood. This created the potential for either Russian or non-Russian initiated conflict within post-Soviet space.9 At present, some 17 percent of Ukraine’s population (more than 8 million people) is of ethnic Russian background. In terms of population size, Ukraine has the largest Russian diaspora in the world, although ethnic Russians constitute a greater share of the population in Latvia (27 percent) and Estonia (26 percent), and only 5 percent in Lithuania. Yet the ethnic Russian diasporas in these latter three states possess very different sociopolitical orientations toward Europe and Russia. After Gorbachev’s resignation in December 1991, Boris Yeltsin engaged in radical liberal reforms (called “shock therapy”) that caused a sociopolitical backlash at the same time that Moscow pressured Ukraine to accept a bilateral economic-cooperation agreement under the threat of blockading exports of Russian industrial products to Ukraine. In January 1992, the Russian parliament began to question the “legality” of the transfer of Crimea from Russia to Ukraine under Khrushchev, in potential violation of the December 1991 Minsk Agreement and nonrespect for borders.10 Prior to the late October 1991 refusal of the secessionist republics to join the new political union, Boris Yeltsin threatened that borders might need to be revised in Russia’s favor—if Ukraine and other states did opt to eventually leave the Soviet Union. Also in late 1991, the possibility of nuclear conflict was seriously discussed in the corridors of the Russian parliament.11 In November, the Soviet ministries of Defense and Internal Affairs issued a joint statement warning Azerbaijan, Georgia, Moldova, and Ukraine against the nationalization of military property and the takeover of military installations and weaponry.12 The December 1991 formation of the Commonwealth of Independent States was largely seen as intended to press former Soviet republics into accepting Russia “as the first among equals.” Russian military commanders opposed any effort to divide integrated nuclear, conventional, and naval forces. The December 1991 Minsk Statement on Strategic Forces was, however, then believed to have resolved those concerns with the agreement to “pursue a coordinated policy in the area of international security, disarmament and arms control.”13 By May 5, 1992, the Ukrainian constitution was initially adopted together with a Crimean Declaration of Independence, but the parliament then amended the new constitution on May 13, 1992, one week later to affirm that Crimea “was a constituent part of the Ukrainian republic,” thus contradicting calls for “independence.”14 Kiev then negotiated with Crimea to grant it maxi- mum autonomy. Other Russian-Ukrainian disputes included Russian claims to southeast Ukraine; prices of oil and raw materials; disclosure and sharing of Soviet Collapse and the Russia-Ukraine Conflict l 47

Soviet assets; Russian nationalization of gold reserves; the formation of separate currencies and issues involving foreign debt repayment; “dual key,” nuclear- weapons power-sharing arrangements; responsibility for the Chernobyl nuclear power-plant disaster; plus Ukraine’s determination to build a costly 200,000- to 450,000-man army, navy, air force and national guard, while the former Soviet army was to be cut in half. Nuclear codes were still under Russian control, but it was feared that Kiev could eventually change them. One of Kiev’s biggest blunders was its initial claim to the entire Black Sea Fleet. Even though this claim was eventually reduced to 30 percent, and Mos- cow and Kiev agreed to a joint command for three years, the claim strengthened the hands of Russian nationalists against Boris Yeltsin, who had been more willing to make concessions to Kiev. Yet Moscow was not about to give up control over the entire fleet, in which some elements were to be placed in a joint Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) command structure. It was furthermore poor timing on the Ukrainian part as these demands came at a time when Crimea was seeking independence and when Kiev was likewise demanding that military personnel take loyalty oaths, thus dividing military personnel, a demand that caused ethnic and political-economic tensions in part due to the fact that Russian soldiers were paid relatively more than Ukrainians. In addition, Kiev appeared to backtrack on giving up its nuclear arsenal several times during 1992. Not only that, but Kiev appeared to be linking nuclear disarmament to security guarantees—given Russian threats to Crimea—plus demanding financing and compensation at the same time as Presidents Bush and Yeltsin were to sign START II. The latter also required the signing of START I by Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Ukraine. Kiev thus appeared to be engaging in nuclear blackmail at a time when many hoped to rid the world of nuclear weaponry altogether, as if Kiev could actually deter Russia’s superior first- and second-strike nuclear capacities. US Secretary of State James Baker opposed granting Ukraine security guarantees, bluntly telling President Kravchuk that “Ukraine’s best security guarantee was to act like a sovereign state and become quickly immersed in international organizations and treaties.”15 In terms of foreign policy, Ukraine (along with Germany) recognized Croa- tian and Slovenian independence against Russian interests in backing a Serb- dominated Yugoslavia but only after Serbia took Vukovar and cut off western Croatia. Moscow would nevertheless recognize the new republics despite Rus- sian pan-nationalist opposition. Washington had also initially opposed recognition, largely in fear that the war would spread to Bosnia-Herzegovina and Macedonia. For its part, despite the 1990 German-Soviet “Treaty of Good Neighborliness, Partnership and Cooperation” which at least implied German support for Soviet interests, Germany suddenly pushed for an early recognition of the self-determination of the Baltic states, Ukraine, Slovenia, Croatia, 48 l Crimea, Global Rivalry, and the Vengeance of History and Bosnia. While Washington waited until Yeltsin himself recognized the Baltic republics, Bonn/Berlin appeared to be pressing for Soviet and Yugoslav breakup, largely contrary to the more cautious US and French/European policies at that time. By 1992, Boris Yeltsin expressed an interest in joining NATO, while the US Congress began to push for NATO enlargement. At that time, Moscow proposed entering NATO along the lines of French membership. In such a way, Moscow could maintain its independent nuclear deterrent under a separate command, while cooperating with NATO in other areas. The Yeltsin administration also proposed that NATO and Russia establish a system of joint NATO-Russia security for all of eastern Europe. NATO instead offered Russia membership in what was then called the North Atlantic Partnership Council (later called the Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council) plus membership in the Partnership for Peace by 1994, which Moscow accepted.16 In the process of the Russia-Ukraine divorce, the ostensibly pro-Russian leader, Leonid Kuchma, announced in February 1992 Kiev’s intention to seek a NATO Membership Action Plan (MAP). Then, by May 1992, Kuchma stated Ukraine’s hopes for “eventual NATO membership” at the same time that Moscow began to forge the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO). Ukraine thus initiated its quest for NATO membership due, to a large extent, to Russian pressures, but NATO did not welcome either Russia or Ukraine into full membership. Instead, just as it began the process of expansion into central Europe, NATO would offer both a special partnership by 1997, in effect, seeking to balance one against the other, but appearing to give priority to Russia. By mid-May 1992, Ukrainian armed forces, followed by those of Russia, began to claim control over the strategic nuclear forces located on their respective territories and thus put an end to the possibility of a joint command under a collective CIS aegis. Russia then sought to sign security pacts with Armenia, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. Ukraine, Azerbaijan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, and Georgia, however, refused to sign. In December 1992, Russian foreign minister Andrei Kozyrev forewarned of a Russian backlash if Russian reforms failed. Economists were then predicting a supply-side depression due to high debts, depletion of gold reserves, and a 50 percent drop in oil exports in 1990–91.17 In March 1993, Yeltsin warned “that the western world . . . did not understand the reality of revanchism.”18 In the same month, a Ukrainian official reacted and stated that Russia’s attitudes toward its neighbors could “now be compared to Germany in 1939”19 and warned that the consequences of a policy of “appeasement” would be as dangerous now as they were then. These words were spoken when Russia had declared itself the successor to the Soviet Union, obtaining the right to the Soviet seat in the UN Security Soviet Collapse and the Russia-Ukraine Conflict l 49

Council. Moscow also attempted to obtain a special authority to police disputes in the former Soviet Union. At this time, Ukraine and Moldova were already complaining of Russian efforts to use its economic leverage (cheap oil, gas, and other raw materials, nationalization of gold reserves, plus a large domestic market) as a means to pressure these states into political-economic cooperation with Moscow and to block Ukraine from seeking close foreign and defense ties with both Poland and Hungary, who were not yet members of NATO. After having engaging in “shock therapy” in 1992, in September 1993, Yelt- sin was then confronted with a constitutional crisis in which his authority to dissolve the Russian parliament was challenged and he was threatened with impeachment and violent protest. At this time of political instability, the structure and doctrine of the 1994 US nuclear-posture review was raising concerns in Moscow that the United States was seeking nuclear superiority. This resulted in threats that Moscow would not ratify START II, nor abide by the Conven- tional Force Agreement of 1990, nor by the 1988 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) accord that eliminated intermediate-range nuclear weaponry. In addition, Washington was beginning to consider the expansion of NATO without any strong Russian oversight over those deployments or over legal accords that would limit both nuclear- and conventional-force deployments as proposed by Yeltsin. A more conciliatory American response could have helped Yeltsin strengthen his difficult position against Russian hardliners. At this time, neoconservatives in the Pentagon foresaw the possibility of a Resurgent Emergent Global Threat (REGT) in which Russia could align with China and India, among other states, by the turn of the millennium. Even more provocatively, the infamous (and largely self-fulfilling) February 1992 neoconservative draft of Defense Planning Guidance (DPG) that was leaked to the New York Times, suggested that even US allies such as Germany and Japan, in addition to democratic India, could ultimately become military “threats” and, in effect, would need to be contained under American hegemony.20 However, a second, May 1992 draft proposed a “democratic partnership” with Russia and toned down the language of the first draft. Interestingly, the first draft did not initially advocate the expansion of NATO. Instead, it advocated the extension of security assurances to eastern European states similar to those the United States had promised Saudi Arabia and Kuwait.

Origins of Russian Revanche Although there was no formal Versailles-like treaty that ended the Cold War and that forced Russia to accept war reparations or admit “war guilt,” Russian pan-nationalists nevertheless developed a Russian equivalent of the Nazi Ger- man Dolchstoßlegende of a “stab in the back” based on American trickery and 50 l Crimea, Global Rivalry, and the Vengeance of History conspiracy that colluded (with some evidence) with the profiteering, corruption, and incompetence of Russian liberals and democrats during the Gorbachev and Yeltsin periods. Both the August 19, 1991, coup attempt by ex-Bre zhnev hardliners against Gorbachev and the 1993 coup against Yeltsin can accordingly be compared and contrasted not only with Weimar German Kapp Putsch but also with the Kornilov Putsch in tsarist Russia before the Bolshevik victory. Russian commenters warned that the “victors in the Cold War” should be “generous in their victory” and “avoid the tragic consequences of the treatment meted out to Germany by the winners of WWI.”21 At this point, Yeltsin had to make concessions to the newly politicized Russian army and the hard-line siloviki—who, in effect, had forged a “state within a state,” much like that formed in both imperial Germany and Weimar Germany—to remain in power. This political formation then resulted in policies reminiscent of “politics of the diagonal,”22 which continued to press the imperial German and Weimar governments toward harder and more militant domestic and foreign policy positions. In response to hard-line pressures, Yeltsin had to promise to expand Moscow’s droit de regard over Soviet spheres of influence. Yeltsin thus linked Russian troop withdrawal from Estonia and Latvia with the protection of Russophone minority rights in both countries. Yeltsin also threatened Georgian sovereignty in 1992 with support for pro-Russian separatists, while sending Russian forces to the Transnistrian republic that year. And, by February 1993, Yeltsin asked for special rights to guarantee peace and stability in the region of the former Soviet Union.23 Here, the United States could have proposed the deployment of NATO PfP peacekeepers, under a general Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) mandate, as discussed in the General Introduction, with Russian backing. At this time, Moscow also decided to rescind its no first use of nuclear weapons pledge from the Soviet era in order to counter the NATO nuclear doctrine. NATO had continued to oppose the adoption of a no first use of nuclear weaponry even if Russia had significantly reduced its conventional- and nuclear- force capabilities. As NATO wanted to keep all options open, so too did Russia, which also claimed the right to protect the Russian diasporas abroad. Concurrently, the general state of alienation within Russia that was caused to a large degree by the loss of its great-power status permitted the pan-nationalist ideology of both leftwing National Bolshevik and rightwing pan-Slav and Ultranationalist varieties to gain greater popular acceptance throughout Russia, particularly in the Russian border regions and among Russophones in the new diaspora. Leaders such as Vladimir Zhirinovsky, Alexandr Dugin, and Gennady Zyuganov all threatened force to expand Russian hegemony into eastern Europe and elsewhere. These revanchist movements have tended to merge “reds” and “browns” together and thus can be contrasted with their National Socialist Soviet Collapse and the Russia-Ukraine Conflict l 51 and Communist counterparts in Weimar Germany who violently opposed one another. As compared to the interwar period, revanchists on the Left and Right in Russia did not, at least initially, appear to have the same level of domestic support in part because the political-economic crisis confronting the ex–So viet Union did not appear to grow as deep as was the case for Weimar hyperinflation during the Great Depression. Nevertheless, a “national patriot” movement, plus the ex-Communist Party, continued to pressure the Yeltsin government by threatening either a coup or some form of political change by “constitutional” means, which almost took place in September 1993.

The Question of Leftover Nuclear Weaponry At this time, Washington and Moscow saw it in their mutual interests to pressure Belarus, Kazakhstan, and particularly a reluctant Ukraine to give up their nuclear weaponry left over from the Soviet Union. The United States offered financial incentives for Ukraine to give up its nuclear-weapons capability while Russia threatened preemptive conventional strikes. In effect, the new US-European-Russian equilibrium rested on a neutral, nonnuclear Ukraine. Kiev could threaten nuclear blackmail if it retained its nuclear capacity. In fear that Ukraine would eventually evict the Black Sea Fleet, the Russian parliament voted in July 1993 that Sevastopol was part of Russia. In response, US officials and the media actually put pressure on Moscow for it to hand Sevastopol over to Ukrainian control. The US Ambassador to Kiev, Roman Popadiuk, issued a statement—without waiting for US State Department approval—asserting “that the United States recognizes, and I am paraphras- ing, Sevastopol as an integral part of Ukraine, Crimea is an integral part of Ukraine.”24 This external intervention initially upset the Yeltsin administration (and pan-nationalists such as Solzhenitsyn) and augmented Russian concerns that the United States was backing Ukrainian independence.25 As time went by, the dispute at least appeared to be resolved with the framing of the 1994 Budapest Accords and with the May 1997 signing of the “Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation between Russia and Ukraine,” even if the accords were not as strong as Kiev had hoped. At the same time, major political figures in Moscow such as Andrei Kosyrev were warning that “the only policy with any chance of success is one that recognizes the equal rights and mutual benefit of partnership for both Russia and the West, as well as the status and significance of Russia as a world power. Russian foreign policy inevitably has to be of an independent and assertive nature. If Russian democrats fail to achieve it, they will be swept away by a wave of aggressive nationalism, which is now exploiting 52 l Crimea, Global Rivalry, and the Vengeance of History the need for national and state self-assertion.” 26 In effect, if Russia was not granted parity, pan-nationalism would soon resurge. The May 1997 accord between Russia and Ukraine took place once Yeltsin regained his position as Russian president after having obtained the backing of the third presidential candidate, General Alexandre Lebed, against the Com- munist Party leader, Gennady Zyuganov, in the 1996 presidential elections and who had almost won the elections. But the Ukrainian dispute was evidently not resolved.

The Process of NATO Enlargement Initially, the Clinton administration did not want to restrict the deployments of NATO troops on the territory of new members, as unilateral restrictions on force capabilities, it was argued, would give these states the impression they were second-class members. (This argument could, however, be countered by the fact that NATO member France, for example, was outside NATO’s integrated command and had no NATO forces on its territory.) Accordingly, in an effort to meet Russian concerns and to show that NATO did not represent a potential threat to Russia, NATO would eventually rule by December 1996 that no foreign forces or nuclear weapons would be deployed on the territories of the new members.27 This represented a unilateral measure and thus could be reversed, if deemed necessary, in new circumstances. Yet it is precisely these unilateral promises that have increasingly come under question even before the Russian annexation of Crimea, in response to Russian tactical nuclear-weapons deployments. As discussed in the General Introduction, the option of joint NATO- Russian security accords was ruled out by Assistant Secretary of State Richard Holbrooke in mid-1995, who argued that such joint guarantees were “historically discredited.”28 This statement appeared to represent an unstated reference to the interwar analogy, given the fact that Holbrooke saw the Bosnian War as “greatest collective security failure of the West since the 1930s.”29 In addition to ruling out joint NATO-Russian security guarantees, Holbrooke also ruled out the extension of security guarantees by what was then the Western European Union (WEU). Holbrooke opposed Western European Union membership for eastern European states as an alternative to NATO enlargement, in that it was seen as failing to satisfy the central European state desire “for full integration into western structures which include the United States” and for failing “to ensure the continuing vitality and relevance of the Alliance itself.” NATO, in Holbrooke’s views, “must participate in, and indeed help drive, this important historical process.” And perhaps most crucially, the deeper problem was that “the close link between the respective Article V commitments of the WEU and Soviet Collapse and the Russia-Ukraine Conflict l 53

NATO means that any nation that joins the WEU as a full member has a de facto ‘back door’ security guarantee from NATO as well but without the direct and formal agreement of the United States.” This could create a disconnect that could prevent full, effective action when necessary, hence members of the WEU must also be members of NATO. This issue remains of concern as NATO could be dragged into a quarrel that impacts an EU member, such as Finland, Sweden, or others, which are not NATO members. In addition to eastern European fears based on the interwar analogy, Poland and east European states likewise feared a “Yalta 2.” This was a reference to fears that Washington would grant Moscow a sphere of influence and security over eastern Europe, particularly over Poland, much as it did at the Yalta Conference in 1945. At that time, Stalin refused to return territories taken from Poland in 1939 (in dividing eastern Europe between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union in accord with the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact) that were still in dispute since tsarist disaggregation. Stalin had likewise promised free elections, but this would prove a false promise. This is not to say that Holbrooke was entirely insensitive to Russian concerns. Holbrooke did argue that European security did not rest solely on NATO alone and that Washington needed to upgrade and enlarge a number of organizations. In his letter, Holbrooke goes onto reassure Ambassador Davies that Washington was taking a broad approach to the question, involving the Euro- pean Union, OSCE, and the Partnership for Peace, as well as NATO, in that each organization possessed different strengths and capabilities for addressing the array of security challenges confronting the United States and the world. He likewise stated that NATO recognizes that Russia, as “a major continental power,” has “legitimate interests in European security and should therefore play a constructive role in any new structure.”30 Hence he argued that NATO enlargement was to be gradual and transparent and not intended to threaten or isolate Moscow “but to work with it.” In addition, NATO enlargement was intended to foster Russian security by “creating a zone of stability along its western borders.” Despite strong Russian opposition to NATO enlargement, Holbrooke believed that the United States and NATO “will succeed by adher- ing to this course over time.”31 From Holbrooke’s statements, one can see the roots of the present crisis developing from the US focus on central European states (which were primarily Germany’s concern at the time) and not on Russia and eastern Europe as a whole. Second, the interests of central European states (at least in appearance) tended to supersede the US-European-Russian strategic relationship, as Russian interests were considered secondary. Holbrooke’s argument also pointed to the view that the European Union should be subordinate to NATO (hence “double-contained”) and thus the 54 l Crimea, Global Rivalry, and the Vengeance of History

Europeans should not possess separate defense capabilities unless they were fully aligned with NATO. Here, there was a not entirely exaggerated fear that Germany could seek an independent nuclear capacity if it felt abandoned by US, UK, and French nuclear guarantees and if there were no significant nuclear arms reductions. It is true, as Holbrooke also argued, that central European states did not want to be “buffers” or “beneficiaries” of security but participants in creating that security, but participants in what? Why couldn’t eastern European states be participants in building up independent regional systems of security and development with US, EU, and Russian backing? By joining NATO, most eastern European states essentially became beneficiaries, as consumers and not as significant contributors, of security. And finally, how could Holbrooke expect Russian compliance at the end of a process that did not include Moscow from the very beginning? A deeper irony is the fact that Holbrooke appeared to be rejecting a cooperative-security model for all of Europe when the United States had just begun to be involved in implementing such a model in ex-Yugoslavia but in the aftermath of the war. The United Nations and European Union may have failed to prevent the war, but the goal of cooperative security did not necessarily fail after the war. It was time to start afresh. Ironically, a potential, even if imper- fect, model for cooperative-collective security for all of eastern Europe would soon be implemented in ex-Yugoslavia through Contact Group diplomacy followed by joint deployments of US, Russian, and Europeans forces (plus UN preventive-war forces in Macedonia) in key positions throughout ex-Yugoslavia, with the Dayton Accords of November–December 1995 and deployment of Implementation Force (IFOR) peace keepers. In effect, just as Holbrooke was rejecting joint NATO-EU-Russian security arrangements and setting the stage for NATO enlargement, that very model—despite its evident flaws—would be implemented in Bosnia. But the possibility of a joint NATO-Russia approach to the ongoing conflict over Kosovo was then rejected in the summer–fall of 1998 (when war planning began), a few months before NATO opted for unilateral intervention in February 1999 without a UN mandate. (See Chapter 4.) As it turned out, the NATO enlargement process was not at all “gradual” as Holbrooke expected, but it brought in most eastern European states between 1997 and 2004. Not only that, it would remain open, thus leading to permanent friction with Moscow. Even though Moscow was brought into the NATO-Russia Permanent Joint Council (PJC) in 1997 (just before Ukraine was brought into the NATO-Ukraine Commission to counterbalance Russia) and even though Moscow was later brought into the NATO-Russia Council in May 2002, where it met more directly with NATO members than in the PJC, the whole process could not truly be considered “transparent.” More to the point, Moscow was not given an effective decision-making role inside NATO. Instead, it received a largely inconsequential “voice, but not a veto.” Soviet Collapse and the Russia-Ukraine Conflict l 55

War “over” Kosovo Moscow was already not fully on board with the US approach to the 1990–95 war in Bosnia, even before NATO intervened in Kosovo in March 1999. And even though Moscow was engaged in IFOR peacekeeping in Bosnia, the Rus- sian military did not feel as if they were being treated as true “equals.” This was also true despite the fact that Moscow had been offered membership in the Group of 7 (G7) advanced industrial countries in an effort to draw Mos- cow toward a more concerted “global governance,” when some compared the state of the Russian political economy to “South Africa plus nuclear weapons.” And then, the February 1998–June 1999 war “over” Kosovo further exacerbated US-Russian tensions, particularly once NATO began its high-altitude bombing campaign from March 24 to June 11, 1999, just two weeks after Poland, the Czech Republic, and Hungary entered NATO. The first mission of Hungary was to inspect Russian truck shipments to Serbia. In addition, prior to becoming NATO members, both Bulgaria and Romania opened their bases and airspace to NATO; at the end of the Kosovo war, both briefly closed their air space to Russia. The US Senate also passed the National Missile Defense Act in March 1999 in a step that led the United States to unilaterally drop out of the ABM treaty in 2002, while concurrently NATO appeared to be promising membership to Ukraine and Georgia. NATO’s war “over” Kosovo—dubbed an “exceptional humanitarian intervention” after the fact—represented a major factor causing the backlash in Rus- sia led by ex-KGB official Vladimir Putin. Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) “terrorist” attacks on the Serbian military and police had helped provoke Bel- grade into engaging in a brutal campaign of “ethnic cleansing” and violence that accelerated after the war began.32 Drawn into supporting the violent KLA, which was initially seen by Washington as a terrorist organization, instead of fully backing the nonviolent approach of Kosovar leader Ibrahim Rugova, the United States and NATO then engaged in the war “over” Kosovo from March 24, 1999, to June 11, 1999, against the Serbian regime of Slobodan Milošević. It was then relatively easy for Putin to build a national-security consensus behind the scenes against NATO enlargement, particularly once NATO formally incorporated former Soviet-bloc states—Poland, the Czech Republic, and Hungary—on March 12, 1999, and then went to war against Russia’s Serb ally over Kosovo just two weeks later after the failure of the Rambouillet summit, which as Henry Kissinger put it, was not a negotiation but an ultimatum.33 Yet US policy was to make no concessions to Milošević. This was not only to isolate Milošević but also to cut Russia off from the Balkans for the first time since 1830 when St. Petersburg supported Serbian “autonomy” within the Ottoman 56 l Crimea, Global Rivalry, and the Vengeance of History

Empire. In effect, the United States was able to roll back Russia, doing what Britain and France in the nineteenth century, and Germany in the twentieth, could not accomplish, while concurrently seeking closer ties with Turkey and the wealthy Arab Gulf states in support of Bosnian Muslims. NATO actions (including the not so “accidental” bombing of the Chinese embassy in Bel- grade) likewise served to strengthen ties between China, India, and Russia as each of these states opposed the international recognition of Kosovo independence, as had Spain, Slovakia, Romania, Cyprus, and Greece.34 American neoconservative Charles Krauthammer wrote at the time, after noting the significant costs of the wars of Bosnia and Kosovo and the heavy strains that those wars placed on American defense and military personnel,

But there is another cost, more subtle and far heavier. Russia has just moved from the democratically committed, if erratic, Boris Yeltsin to the “dictatorship of the law” promised by the new president, former KGB agent Vladimir Putin. What does that have to do with Kosovo? “Without Kosovo, Putin would not be Russian president today,” says Dimitri Simes, the Russia expert and president of the Nixon Center. Kosovo created in Russia what Simes calls a “national security consensus:” the demand for a strong leader to do what it takes to restore Russia’s standing and status. And it made confrontation with the United States a badge of honor. . . . One of Putin’s first promises is to rebuild Russia’s military-industrial complex. We are now saddled with him for four years, probably longer, much longer.35

Moscow saw several ramifications of the US war “over” Kosovo that helped cause an elite backlash and enrage the Russian public against the United States and NATO: (1) The US/NATO intervention showed that it was possible to intervene without a UN mandate; (2) NATO was not necessarily a “defensive” alliance as it claimed during the Cold War, as it could act unilaterally and “out of area”; (3) the United States and NATO were willing to intervene in traditional Russian spheres of influence, such as Serbia and the Balkans, thus humiliating Russia in front of its allies;36 and (4) in addition to the use of military force, it was possible for the United States to use tactics of “democracy engineering” to overthrow pro-Russian autocrats, such as Milošević, who was not overthrown because of the war but because he failed to win the Serbian elections after the United States had engaged in “democracy engineering,” which even Fukuyama saw as a violation of Serbian sovereignty.37 One could further argue that the use of terrorist tactics by the KLA to provoke Serbia into “ethnic cleansing” represented a way to draw the United States and NATO into action on the basis of “humanitarian intervention.” These tactics would be similar to the tactics later used by Al-Qaeda on a larger scale, Soviet Collapse and the Russia-Ukraine Conflict l 57 in the effort to purposely draw the United States into oppressive military action so as to build up popular Muslim support for the pan-Islamist cause, while spreading conflict throughout the “wider Middle East.” Yet the true roots of the unilateral NATO intervention in Kosovo lie in the US failure to either resolve the dispute diplomatically and/or implement a joint NATO-Russian approach to the conflict. In the summer of 1998, then US ambassador to NATO, Alexander Vershbow, argued for a joint NATO-Russia approach to the Kosovo conflict that would involve a joint NATO-Russian interpositionary force involving 30,000 to 60,000 troops.38 The Vershbow proposal languished until the American midterm elections, so that it was largely ignored. This led Richard Holbrooke to blame Congress for not supporting the deployment of NATO peacekeepers, even if the executive branch did not push the proposal and, in effect, refused to work diplomatically with Moscow to resolve the crisis.39 By late February 1999, instead of working out a diplomatic compromise at Rambouillet as previously indicated, the Clinton administration opted for NATO high-altitude bombing to reduce American deaths, the “zero death syndrome.” NATO furthermore initiated the bombing campaign just as Rus- sian Prime Minister Primakov was flying to the United States to discuss other possible options, in effect snubbing Moscow. Primakov’s plane turned around in midflight despite US promises of financial assistance to Russia. Primakov’s refusal to meet with the Americans then helped him obtain greater popular backing, while sparking a Russian backlash.40 Had a joint NATO-Russia approach been implemented in the ongoing crisis in Kosovo, which in many ways, represented an issue that was left hanging from the Bosnian war, it could have possibly brought Moscow into closer collaboration with Washington over Kosovo and the Balkans in general. But even when Russian diplomacy in pressuring Milošević helped lead to the deployment of NATO, Russian, and Allied peacekeepers, Moscow did not obtain a significant role in the KFOR peacekeeping effort as a political equal to the United States in protecting its own zone. An approach to Serbia and Kosovo that had more closely involved Moscow could have possibly checked the rise of Vladimir Putin to power.

Chapter 4

Origins of the Russian Backlash

Putin’s Revanche nce Boris Yeltsin stepped down in 1999, a virtually unknown Vladi- mir Putin, who had been director of the “new” Russian secret ser- Ovice, the Federal Security Service (FSB), took the helm, with strong backing from many Russian oligarchs, who were made billionaires during Yelt- sin’s nomenklatura (loans for shares) privatization process and who had fooled themselves into believing they could control Putin. (One could argue that this was also the case for Hitler, but Hitler was perhaps more reluctantly accepted into the Weimar government than Putin was into the Russian government.) Putin would, however, soon turn against some of those oligarchs—Vladimir Gusinsky, Boris Berezovsky, and Mikhail Khodorkovsky—who had initially supported him but who then opposed his politics once he came to power. At the same time, Putin would make deals with other oligarchs. Just after the war “over” Kosovo, Putin was able to rationalize his intervention in Chechnya from October 1999 to May 2000 (picking up from Yeltsin’s initial intervention) based on US intervention in Bosnia and then Kosovo in a tit for tat trade-off. Then, ironically, despite his general opposition to NATO enlargement, President Putin opted to seek favor with the United States by proclaiming his support for the United States in the “global war on terror” after the September 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Here, NATO intervention in Afghanistan was seen as serving Russian interests in blocking the anti-Russian Taliban from coming to power, even though Moscow generally opposed, and tried to limit, US influence in Russian soft underbelly. At that time, Russia also agreed to join the NATO-Russia Council (after Yeltsin had previously joined the G7) in May 2002. These steps helped mitigate fears that an authoritarian Russia might turn against US and European interests. This is true despite Putin’s opposition to NATO’s “exceptional” intervention in Kosovo, plus the expansion of NATO military infrastructure closer 60 l Crimea, Global Rivalry, and the Vengeance of History to Russian borders, such as the “deal of the century” involving the 2002 sale of nuclear-capable (if modified) F-16s to Poland, plus 2002 demands for the deployment of missile defenses prior to the second wave of NATO enlargement in 2004. Accordingly, from 2002 to April 2009, Putin could even more easily use (or abuse) the US “War on Terror” and the support for NATO peacekeeping forces in Afghanistan—which suited Russian interests—in order to justify his counterinsurgency suppression of Chechen Islamist movements. The latter were seen by Moscow as being financed by the Arab Gulf States that were allies of the United States. As Putin saw himself taking a tough stance against Islamist “terrorism,” which helped strengthen his domestic power, he did not appreciate US and European criticism of severe Russian human rights violations. Putin also gained greater global influence by opposing the essentially unilateral US intervention in Iraq in 2003, along with France and Germany. From 2004 to 2010, Putin augmented his efforts to oppose the Orange Revolution in Ukraine when the ostensibly pro-Russian Yanukovych lost the second round of elections that were forced by protestors who Putin publicly accused of being backed by the CIA. Putin began to see the Ukrainian Orange Revolution as a means for the United States and Europe to undercut Russian influence in Ukraine and elsewhere through “democracy engineering.” In addition to gaining domestic strength due to the national security consensus caused by NATO’s war “over” Kosovo, Putin’s rise to power and popularity was also due to the fact that the Russian economy appeared to be boosted by the general rise in energy prices, at least by 2003, when Russian living conditions improved substantially (at least for the top 20 percent) with a growth rate of some 7 percent per year. The Russian GDP had dropped by more than 40 percent from 1990 to 1999, while trade relations between Russia and eastern European states were largely decoupled, reminiscent of “Weimar on the Volga.”1 Under the presidency of Mr. Putin, however, the value of Russia’s stock market increased from $60 billion to more than $1 trillion from December 1999 to the end of 2007. Russia was then able to repay its loans to the G7 and International Monetary Fund (IMF) by 2006. At least initially, Putin appeared to erase the Weimar analogy from memory. In an effort to rebuild a Russian empire and fulfill his mission of putting the Soviet Humpty Dumpty together again, Putin also needed to confront the fact that Communist ideology and values had generally lost their legitimacy and had yet to be replaced by ideological alternatives. Here, in addition to proposing the concept of “sovereign democracy,” which had developed in part as a means to counter US-sponsored “democracy engineering,” Putin’s ideologues began to propagate Russian Orthodoxy—combined with a resurrection of the so-called positive sides of Stalinism—in order to fill the spiritual vacuum. One of the Origins of the Russian Backlash l 61 concrete means to rebuild Russian patriotism has been the government-backed formation of “patriotic-nationalist” youth groups, such as Nashi (Ours) and Walking Together as a means to oppose “depravity.” In such a way, Putin has hoped to achieve a “spiritual” revival of Russian culture and “morals.” These groups could be depicted as a want to be mix of the Soviet Young Pioneers and the Hitler Youth (derogatively referred to as “Putin-jugend” in reference to Hitlerjugend). While both the latter groups engaged in protests against critics of President Putin (including then US ambassador to Russia, Michael McFaul, who was seen as publicly supporting anti-Putin protests)2 and were accused of fostering a “cult of personality,” members of Nashi may have been responsible for the first Russian-Estonian cyberwar. At that time, young people born between 1976 and 1991 appeared to support the values and aspirations of Putin, and between 70 and 80 percent appeared to support a Stalinist revival and effort to restore “a hyper-sovereign Russia that remains outside the Euro-Atlantic community and (that) resists or rejects international legal norms.”3 Putin has also been accused of acting outside both domestic and international laws while ignoring, if not encouraging, “unofficial” factions and groups that have engaged in corrupt extralegal “mafia”-style activities. This issue came to head with the United States with the passing of the Magnitsky Act in 2013 after the death in prison of an American lawyer, Sergei Magnitsky, who was investigating charges of extensive government corruption.4 At least until 2008, Putin’s own brand of neoliberal authoritarianism and his battle with rival “oligarchs” appeared to dampen more extreme pan-nationalist demands, as he appeared to represent the lesser of evils. Putin thus appeared to represent a more “moderate” form of authoritarian leader as compared to some pan-nationalists, despite being a product of the former KGB who was aligned with the newly politicized Russian army and the hard-line siloviki, while still catering to “reformist” elements represented by Dmitri Medvedev.5 In the aftermath of the US recognition of Kosovar independence in April 2008, Putin opted for another tit-for- tat operation. The defeat of Georgia in the Georgia-Russia War, which was most likely provoked by Georgia (although both Russia and Georgia seemed prepared for a clash), led Moscow to recognize South Ossetia, and more important in geostrategic terms, Abkhazia, which is along the Black Sea shore, in an effort to “sap and mine” Georgia.6 Here it should be noted that Putin’s policy toward the Caucasus and Black Sea regions, and his support for ethnic Russians abroad, has largely remained in continuity with the more “democratic” Yeltsin but going one step farther. Putin’s effort to establish a Russian version of the US Monroe Doctrine for the Black Sea region and the Caucasus to counter NATO and the European Union in the region would then become even more evident following the annexation of Crimea. 62 l Crimea, Global Rivalry, and the Vengeance of History

Moscow’s Threats against NATO Enlargement It was in 2008 that Moscow began to more clearly threaten a number of possible preclusive actions in response to the proposed enlargement of NATO’s integrated military command into the Black Sea and Caucasus regions. These threats were coupled with the deployment of US missile defense or radar systems in Poland, the Czech Republic, and Turkey, after the Bush administration decision in 2002 to unilaterally withdraw from the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty so as to go forward with the deployment of missile defense systems in Europe, Asia, and the “wider Middle East.” In effect, NATO’s promise that Ukraine and Georgia could eventually join NATO through the “open door” policy at the April 2008 Bucharest summit began to upset NATO-Russian relations. At the Bucharest summit, President Putin openly challenged Ukraine’s territorial integrity rhetorically, suggesting that Ukraine was “an artificial creation” and that “the Crimea was simply given to Ukraine by a decision of the Polit- buro of the Soviet Communist Party Central Committee.” Putin furthermore claimed “that 90 percent of inhabitants of the Crimea are Russian, 17 out of 45 million Ukrainian citizens are Russian, and that Ukraine gained enormous amounts of its territory from the east and south at the expense of Russia.” Putin then added, “if we add in the NATO question and other problems, the very existence of the State could find itself under threat.”7 For Putin, NATO enlargement to Ukraine represented an existential threat. Also, just before the Georgia-Russia War, in June 24, 2008, the new Ukrai- nian leadership of Viktor Yushchenko stated that it would refuse to renew the lease of the Russian Black Sea Fleet and that the fleet must withdraw from Sevastopol by May 29, 2017. While the two sides attempted to negotiate, it was during Putin’s August 9 Vladikavkaz speech, just after the outbreak of the August 2008 Georgia-Russia War, in which Moscow recognized South Ossetia and Abkhazia, in a tit for tat to counter US recognition of Kosovo in February 2008, that Putin questioned the borders and the worthiness of political leadership in neighboring countries.8 By April 2010, however, the dispute over the Black Sea Fleet once again appeared to be “resolved.” On April 21, 2010, Ukrainian President Viktor Yan- ukovych and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, almost immediately after Yanukovych’s election, signed an agreement to prolong the Russian fleet’s basing rights in Ukraine beyond the 2017 expiration date by another 25 years, with a further five-year extension option to 2047. In effect, the deal was a trade-off to sustain Ukrainian financial solvency in exchange for Russian military predominance (despite Kiev’s “nonbloc” status). Kiev then stated that its nonaligned status did not permit it to accept membership in either NATO or the Collective Origins of the Russian Backlash l 63

Security Treaty Organization (CSTO). But this “nonbloc” status had not been clearly defined or defended. Critics charged that Ukraine’s nonaligned status should not permit the “illegal” stationing of foreign forces on its territory. The April 2010 deal with Moscow had permitted the stationing of Russian naval and air forces, including the Black Sea Fleet.9 But the Kharkiv accords still limited Russian military deployments. After the annexation, there are no agreed limits on Russian military deployments. In February–March 2014, Putin did take action, much as he had forewarned at the 2008 NATO Bucharest summit, by stealthily introducing Russian forces into Crimea and eastern Ukraine. This was done under the pretext of protecting Russophone Ukrainians from “fascists” sent by Kiev during the Euromaidan protests. These protests then resulted in what can effectively be considered a coup d’etat against the kleptocratic Yanukovych government that had been strongly supported by the Russophone population in eastern Ukraine.10 The subsequent battle within eastern Ukraine since the Russian annexation of Crimea in March 2014—a stealthy action that took place almost exactly sixty years after Khrushchev had handed the region over to Ukrainian jurisdiction— has been depicted in crude propagandistic terms as a replay of the battle over Ukraine that took place between the Soviets and Nazi Germany during World War II, when it is more like the struggle for Ukraine that took place during the Russian Civil War. On one side, there are those who seek to bring all of Ukraine under the control of Kiev in a more centralized system of government despite the pluri-ethnic and pluri-cultural nature of the country. On the other side, there are those who seek to either “federalize” the region, create “autonomous” areas, or else secede altogether (as in Donbass).11 Kiev has argued that both “decentralists” and “secessionists” will weaken Ukrainian national unity and open the door for Russian influence and permit Moscow to seize indirect or even direct control of eastern Ukraine. In Kiev’s view, the pro-Russian elements do not act independently from Moscow. At the same time, Kiev’s heavy-handed policies do not appear carefully designed to coopt Ukrainian Russophones away from Putin’s grasp. (See Chapter 9.)

Political Economic Factors of the Ukrainian Crisis One of the major background causes of the Russia-Ukraine crisis since Novem- ber 2013 is that the European Union did not take steps to incorporate Rus- sia into a EU association agreement alongside Ukraine so as to have prevented a Russian backlash against the EU partnership accords. Since 2008–9, the European Union, under the initiative of Poland and Sweden, established its Eastern Partnership initiative, which has sought to bring former Soviet bloc 64 l Crimea, Global Rivalry, and the Vengeance of History states—Belarus, Georgia, Moldova, Armenia, and Azerbaijan, in addition to Ukraine—into association accords. These accords have been seen as potentially diverting the economies of these countries away from Russian political-economic interests and twisting the political-economic allegiance of Ukraine and other former Soviet Republics toward Europe, in seeking to break Gazprom’s energy monopoly, for example. Moscow has also feared that EU goods could enter Ukraine, or other former Soviet-bloc countries, free of import duties, and then be reexported to Russia, thus competing with Russian domestic goods. European and American transnational companies could also edge out Ukrainian firms linked to Russia, particularly in military-industrial and high-tech areas, generally located in eastern Ukraine. (This appears to be a flashback to the Cold War past when it was feared by Moscow that the 1947–48 US Marshall Plan would draw eastern European states away from Soviet influence, particularly since Moscow was not included in the funding.) From March 2012 until February 2014, even the ostensibly pro-Russian President Yanukovych appeared to be looking to forge an Association Accord and Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Agreement with the European Union. But here, despite Kiev’s hopes to enter such an accord, it was largely the Euro- pean Union that had stalled on closer Ukrainian ties by protesting against the “stark deterioration” of democracy and human rights. These concerns included the jailing of Yulia Tymoshenko in 2011 and the former Interior Minister, Yuriy Lutsenko, among many others by 2012. Brussels had insisted that Ukraine needed to engage in “electoral, judiciary and constitutional reforms.” In the meantime, the European Union had also promised to open economic talks with Russia, promises that were not fulfilled. Throughout 2013, President Yanukovych worked to pass through pro- EU reforms in the Rada (parliament), which eventually freed Lutsenko, who became one of the leaders of the Euromaidan protests, but did not free Tymosh- enko. In the meantime, Moscow sought to subvert closer EU economic ties to Ukraine by imposing trade blockages in August 2013; this led to a significant drop in Ukrainian industrial production and exports. Moscow warned Kiev that it would lose a strategic partner and that the Russia-led Eurasian Customs Union, which also included Belarus and Kazakhstan, might take “protective measures.” At that time, more than 60 percent of Ukrainian exports (steel, chemicals, and grain) went to Russia, Belarus, and Kazakhstan. Ukrainian business has hoped to open markets in the European Union, Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), and elsewhere, including China. At that time, then Prime Minister Mykola Azarov told Moscow that a ten- year grace period after the signing of the Association Agreement with the Euro- pean Union would give Ukraine and Russia the chance to adjust to the new Origins of the Russian Backlash l 65 reality, according to the principles of the World Trade Organization (WTO), of which both Kiev and Moscow are now members. But Azarov also said that “after signing the Association Agreement with the EU, Ukraine will create a free trade zone with the EU—this also has to be inevitably accepted as a reality.”12

Euromaidan Protests As late as September 2013, it had looked like the Ukrainian parliament, the Rada, would pass the reforms necessary to enter the Association Agreement with the European Union. This fact augmented Russian concerns, as the Euro- pean Union and Russia had not yet forged their own political-economic accord. Then, by November 2013, a desperate Yanukovych was in search of between $20 billion to $35 billion in loans and aid from all possible sources: the Euro- pean Union, Russia, the United States, the IMF, and China. The Euromaidan protests began on November 21 when the Rada failed to pass a resolution to permit Yulia Tymoshenko from receiving medical treatment abroad (a key EU demand) and when President Yanukovych suspended preparations to join the EU Association Accord initiated in March 2012.13 The Ukrainian Cabinet of Ministers also suspended an accord with the Euro- pean Atomic Energy Community. Prime Minister Mykola Azarov had claimed that the decision against the EU Association Accord was taken in order to “ensure the national security of Ukraine,” most likely in reference to Moscow’s threats. On the one hand, the European Union at that time was only offering 610 million euros ($475 million) in loans and was demanding major changes in Ukrainian regulations and laws. On the other, Moscow stated that it would give Kiev a $15 billion bailout by buying bonds; Moscow also promised to cut the price of gas by one-third without demands for deep structural reforms. At the same time, there had been a significant drop in Ukrainian trade with Russia and the CIS states at least since August 2013, in part due to Russian pressures and blackmail. In addition, Kiev claimed that the conditions of the promised IMF loans were too harsh, resulting in extreme budget cuts and a 40 percent increase in gas prices. In response, the Euromaidan movement demanded the government to restart talks with the IMF so as not to turn toward Russia; the IMF stated that Kiev could lift gas prices gradually, while ostensibly helping the poor with subsidies. Despite the breakdown of the EU-Ukraine Accord, Kiev made a deal to import EU gas through Slovak pipelines, potentially meeting Ukraine’s entire import needs. This questions the view that Yanukovych was totally subservient to Moscow and Gazprom.14 Yanukovych also went to China in the midst of the Euromaidan protests in a not entirely failed effort to attract trade and investment.15 (Ukraine’s defense sales and close political-economic ties with China 66 l Crimea, Global Rivalry, and the Vengeance of History raise the possibility of a future China-Ukraine alliance, increasingly linked to the European Union, if not indirectly to NATO. See Chapter 8.) At the end of January 2014, with the Euromaidan protests growing in inten- sity due in large part to the media exposure of the extreme corruption on the part of the government, President Yanukovych fired his prime minister, Mykola Azarov, and appeared willing to include opposition figures in a new government, including a new prime minister. But these offers were rejected by the opposition. Instead of cracking down on protesters on Maidan square as threatened, Yanukovych then invited the three factions of the opposition for negotiations in mid-February, with the participation of EU foreign ministers from France, Germany, and Poland. At that time, former Ukrainian interior minister and then Euromaidan activ- ist, Yuriy Lutsenko, called for an eastern Maidan.16 This raised Russian concerns that the population in eastern Ukraine would oppose Russian influence (not to overlook the corruption of the Yanukovych government seen as backed by Mos- cow). Concurrently, the Russians and the Europeans did agree to put together a group of experts in a three-way trade commission between Ukraine, the Euro- pean Union, and Russia in order to belatedly discuss the agreements that had been offered by the European Union to Kiev.17 Given evident sociopolitical tensions between Ukrainians and Moscow, the fundamental political-economic problem had been to find ways to coordinate tariffs and converge norms and regulations between the Russian-led Eurasian Customs Union (ECU) and the European Union.18 European Commissioner Štefan Füle had already suggested that the issue ultimately boiled down to a difference in tariff levels.19 In many ways, the ECU had, in fact, been designed to adopt many EU standards for the purpose of making a convergence of the regulatory framework between the European Union and Russia eventually possible, for the betterment of investment and trade opportunities for both Russian and European companies. One possibility had been the creation of a three-way trade and financial commission between Ukraine, the European Union, and Russia that could help resolve trade and financial issues and begin to harmonize norms and regulations between the three sides.20 Such a trilateral forum would interrelate the requirements of the ECU, EU free-trade agreements, and gas transit through Ukraine. It should furthermore not be impossible to envision links between the euro and the ruble.21 Yanukovych did want to sign accords with the European Union but not until the European Union could reach an accord with Russia so as not to sacrifice Ukrainian-Russian trade and to escape Russian pressures and threats, which may have included a threat to seize Crimea. In effect, if the European Union had begun to negotiate an accord with Russia first and then with Ukraine later, in consideration of IMF demands as well as WTO rules and regulations, then Origins of the Russian Backlash l 67 the present crisis might not have grown to such disastrous proportions. In other words, an EU-Russia- Ukraine agreement for economic cooperation needed to be signed in parallel with the EU-Ukraine Association Agreement.22 Yet efforts to talk to the Russians at that time were undermined by rumors that Yanukovych had secretly agreed with Putin for Ukraine to join the ECU at a later date. While EU spokespersons emphasized the alleged illegality of the 2010 Russian-Ukrainian deal over the Black Sea Fleet, press reports also alleged that there was a secret agreement to bolster Russia’s Black Sea Fleet in Sevastopol.23 These latter rumors were denied by the Ukrainian government, which stated that any accords with Moscow would still need to be signed by the Rada, the Ukrainian parliament. Concurrently, alleged conversations between US officials leaked by Moscow indicated that Washington would attempt to undermine any Ukrainian or EU-Ukraine deal that might include Moscow and exclude American interests.24

EU-Ukraine Relations Post-Yanukovych Just prior to being forced to flee Kiev by February 21, 2014, Yanukovych bro- kered a deal with EU representatives. Kiev was then expected to hold presidential elections in December (with Yanukovych still remaining as the Ukrainian president) and form a national unity government that would revert to the 2004 constitution and that would have removed some of the president’s powers. The deal was signed by EU Representatives, Radosław Sikorski, Frank-Walter Stein- meier and Laurent Fabius, but it was not signed by the Russian representative Vladimir Lukin.25 On the one hand, EU leaders appeared to believe that they could arrange a deal with Kiev that excluded Moscow’s interests, despite the fact that the Russian society and economy are tightly interwoven with Ukrai- nian society, for better or worse. On the other, hardline Ukrainian nationalists wanted to force the kleptocratic Yanukovych out by the use of force if necessary and counter Russian influence. The first act of the Ukrainian parliament, on February 23, the day after Yanukovych escaped the country, was to revoke the legal status of Russian as a national language under the creed, “One Nation, One Language, One People.” This action was intended to check Ukrainian access to Russian news media that had been regarded as disseminating Moscow’s propaganda. The language ban was not initially put into force but nevertheless undermined trust between Russophone eastern Ukrainians and Kiev.26 For its part, the European Union rapidly signed the political chapters of an Association Agreement with the interim Ukrainian government in addition to implementing sanctions on Russia, which included suspending discussions on visas and on a New (EU-Russia) Agreement, refusing Russian participation in the G8 Summit in Sochi, while likewise imposing the first travel bans and 68 l Crimea, Global Rivalry, and the Vengeance of History asset freezes against Russian and pro-Russian Ukrainian officials. The European Union then waited until after Petro Poroshenko, the former foreign minister, was elected president to sign new accords with Kiev. The EU political accord promised to enhance security and defense cooperation with Ukraine and to establish a joint decision-making body to facilitate the process of reforms. The final Association Accord would impact issues ranging from judicial reform, energy issues, consumer rights, and environmental protection to economic integration with the European Union. On the positive side, the political aspects of a EU Association Accord could help disband a number of extreme nationalist Ukrainian movements. The question, however, remained as to what extent these EU accords might impact pro-Russian Ukrainian interests. At the same time, an EU-Ukrainian free trade zone is not expected to be completed until January 2016, which potentially keeps the door open to an economic deal that includes Moscow and the Eurasian Union.

Debt Crisis The deeper reality is that the looming Ukrainian debt crisis appears much too big for either the European Union or Russia to handle alone, given the fact that Ukraine’s total external debt has been close to $140 billion.27 In early 2014, the European Union offered Ukraine financial assistance worth $15 billion over the next two years in the form of loans, grants, investments, and trade concessions. The United States has promised $1 billion in loan guarantees, and the World Bank had promised to back infrastructure and social security projects worth $3 billion.28 By March, the interim government in Kiev obtained $18 billion from the IMF, causing controversy in the US Congress due to US sponsorship of IMF policies.29 China has promised at least $15 billion in low interest loans. $10 billion was pledged by other sources. It had been predicted that by the summer of 2014, Ukraine might need as much as $60 billion to pay for public services, to repay a part of its IMF debt, and to service various private loans and other interest payments. By late November 2014, it was then claimed that $12 to $15 billion more was needed, as the economy was expected to contract by 7 percent and a sovereign debt default was looming. In part due to the costs of sociopolitical instability since November 2013, Ukraine’s debt-to- GNP ratio, which has more than doubled since 2013, is likely to reach 90 percent in 2015. This amount is generally not considered sustainable.30 The problem is that no country wants to throw taxpayer’s money into a bottomless pit: Ukraine needs to put an end to corruption; it needs deep structural reforms, wider trade options, and development finance and assistance from as many states as possible. One estimate is that some $30 to $50 billion in western European and US funding has already disappeared. There is no guarantee that Origins of the Russian Backlash l 69 the present government (whose leaders were part of the previous government) is less corrupt than its predecessor. And in the battle between rival oligarchs inside Ukraine, President Poroshenko is not necessarily the most powerful.

Sanctions on Russia By December 2014, the European Union set a number of asset freezes and visa bans on individuals and companies. It suspended preferential economic- development loans to Russia from the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and placed a ban on trading bonds and equity with some of Rus- sia’s biggest state-controlled banks, three Russian energy companies, and three Russian defense companies. The European Union likewise placed a ban on loans to five major Russian state-owned banks; on dual-use exports (civilian goods that can be used as or to produce weaponry); and on certain energy equipment and technology and energy-related services to assist Russia’s energy projects in the Arctic, deep-water exploration, and shale oil. Perhaps most significantly, while declaring a two-way arms embargo, the question of French Mistral-class amphibious warship sales to Russia has remained hanging in suspension. In addition, the value of the Russian stock market (or Russian Trading Sys- tem) fell about 40 percent since mid-July . These financial sanctions significantly reduce the availability of capital in Russia, raising its interest rates; halting investment projects, including the South Stream pipeline; as well as suspending a number of joint ventures with Exxon, Statoil, Shell, and ENI. Western sanctions account for roughly one-third of the estimated $130–40 billion lost annually, which are also due to ruble depreciation and the drop of oil prices.31 Russian membership in the G7 was suspended in March 2014 (though Moscow generally prefers the G20 formula, which includes China). While the Russian annexation of Crimea appeared very popular in the short term, the long-term cost (as much as $4.5 billion a year, if not more, to build infrastructure, transportation systems, and to raise salaries to Russian standards) may be difficult to sustain.32 This is true if new revenues are not soon brought in, in part from Crimean oil and gas reserves and from formerly Ukrainian industry located in Crimea. One problem is that estimated Russian capital out- flows reached $130 billion in 2014, compared to $61 billion in 2013. Russia may have enough international reserves to hold out for two to three years, but not much longer. The drop in oil prices is particularly significant in that 80 percent of Rus- sia’s revenue from hydrocarbons comes from oil. The steep decline in oil prices appears to be in part due to a downturn in the world energy demand, energy savings and alternative energies, an augmentation in US shale-oil production, and an increase in Saudi oil production. Initially, it was thought that the 2009 70 l Crimea, Global Rivalry, and the Vengeance of History recession in Russia (after oil prices had dropped in 2008) had led to a worse financial situation than that of 2014.33 The price of oil then fell below $50 a barrel in early January 2015. While providing some hope for a global upturn in 2015, many oil producers—particularly Russia, Venezuela, Iran, and Nigeria, among others, which have not significantly diversified their economies and which depend on oil prices at $100 a barrel—risk considerable sociopolitical instability. And even American shale oil, whose investments are hurt by prices below $50, has been financed by high-yield, but risky, junk bonds. This means that “shale oil could become the next subprime,”34 forewarning of a deeper global financial crisis given the hedging by multinational companies against lower energy prices and speculation in derivatives.

Sanctions and Countersanctions Citing the IMF (ironically despite Moscow’s own efforts to create an alternative to the IMF with BRICS [Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa]), Russian news media has argued that US and EU sanctions will only boomerang on the Europeans and other countries dependent on Russian trade and energy, including Germany, the Baltic states, Finland, Slovakia, Turkey, a bankrupt Greece, and Ukraine. In addition, countries such as Austria, Hungary, France, and Italy possess banks with subsidiaries in Russia. Since these same banks also lend to other countries in Central, Eastern, and Southeastern Europe (CESEE), a large shock to the Russian economy could trigger a common reassessment of regional risks and could thus result in a broad pullback in lending to other countries as well.35 Yet Moscow has also believed that the Europeans (more so than the Ameri- cans) will be unable to engage in effective sanctions due their relatively significant dependence on Russian gas and trade and investments in Russia itself. Moscow thus appears to be betting that Germany and other European states will not engage in deep sanctions, much as was the case after the 2008 Georgia- Russia War. It was believed that tough sanctions on Russia could directly harm the German economy, which represents the motor of Europe.36 In such a way, Moscow hopes to draw Berlin closer to Russia and away from US and EU policies. In August 2014, President Putin opted to place sanctions on US, European, Australian, Canadian, and Norwegian agricultural products for at least one year in favor of products from Brazil, Argentina, and Ecuador.37 In 2013, EU exports of fruit and vegetables to Russia were valued at roughly $2.7 billion. In addition to hitting Greece, this policy may, in particular, hurt not only Spain, Lithuania, and Poland, which are seen by Moscow as strongly backing Kiev, but Origins of the Russian Backlash l 71 also Finland, which has attempted to mediate the Russia-Ukraine dispute. As prices fell significantly on some items almost immediately, the European Union promised 167 million euros ($125 million) in compensation in an effort to prevent overproduction relative to effective demand. Russian sanctions on US and European agricultural trade, coupled with an overall European economic downturn, could, in turn, significantly harm US global trade. At the same time, however, the imposition of Russian sanctions on agricultural imports represents a risky policy that will probably harm Russia (and Putin’s domestic support) more than Germany/Europe and much more than the United States, while concurrently harming Ukraine, if not Belarus, much more than a relatively stronger Russia. In the present crisis, Russia appears to be carving out a new continental political economy in pressing for a Eurasian Union with Belarus and Kazakh- stan, plus Armenia and possibly Kyrgyzstan, by January 1, 2015. Russia has attempted to press the latter states into a common currency and banking union, but this may prove difficult in the face of sanctions and a deep drop in energy prices. At the same time, however, Moscow is also seeking new political- economic ties with China and the other BRICS. Both the New Investment Bank, founded by the BRICS countries in July 2014, and China’s Asian Infra- structure Investment Bank (to be joined by Russia, as well as by England, if not by France, Italy, Germany, Australia, South Korea, and Taiwan) represent two steps in countering the US-dominated World Bank, the IMF, and the US- Japanese dominated Asian Investment Bank. In attracting the Europeans, these new banks reveal the burgeoning global influence of the Chinese economy (with over $3.8 trillion in foreign-exchange reserves in 2013 and the world’s largest sovereign fund). In taking advantage of China’s disputes with the United States and Japan, Moscow hopes to win China’s political-economic favors, but Beijing could, in turn, eventually overwhelm Russia. The risk is that Moscow’s actions may further isolate Russia from the global economy as developed by the United States and Europe if the latter continue to press significant sanctions on the country and given US and European efforts to find alternative suppliers and general efforts to reduce the dependency of Euro- pean states on Russian energy in particular. Moscow’s actions could also augment US-European efforts to negotiate the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership agreement with the United States, if Russia is no longer seen as a reliable trade partner and if European-Russian relations continue to deteriorate in the long term.38 Yet to counter the sanctions policy, Moscow has hoped to expand gas and oil sales in China and Eurasia.39 Moscow has thus hoped to make up for any losses in European and American trade with a major $400 billion energy deal with China, plus trade deals with Brazil, Argentina, and South Africa. Moscow also hopes to expand relations with Turkey, which did not 72 l Crimea, Global Rivalry, and the Vengeance of History impose sanctions on Russia. When President Putin announced the can- cella- tion of the South Stream pipeline through Ukraine (which he blamed on EU obstruction), he also announced the increase in the capacity of the Blue Stream pipeline and the creation of a new “Turkish stream” pipeline. This would compete with the Trans-Anatolian Natural Gas Pipeline (TANAP) from Azerbaijan through Turkey into southeastern Europe.40 This new pipeline would, like Blue Stream, circumvent Ukraine and also permit Moscow to influence a bankrupt Greece, while potentially linking with Serbia and Hungary, but only if Greek- Turkish disputes can be resolved. But here, given the collapse of world oil prices in the near term, and despite its efforts to find new consumers, Moscow might soon find itself rapidly becoming the junior partner in the Russo-Chinese relationship, as China is already competing with Russian markets throughout Eurasia, including Ukraine. Given the fact that the Ukrainian hryvnia has fallen by more than 70 percent against the dollar from early 2014 to April 2015, Beijing has augmented its purchase of Ukrainian corn and iron ore, while it offered a $15 billion loan to Kiev at low interest rates for construction projects in cooperation with Chinese firms.41 Although China has thus far given priority to Rus- sia, low-priced Chinese products, plus Chinese competition in armaments, shipbuilding, and other industries, coupled with Chinese loans and investments in Russian industries and strategic resources, could begin to consume the Russian economy from the inside out, particularly if the ruble remains undervalued. From this perspective, the highly uneven nature of political-economic inter- dependency has ironically led Moscow to believe that the costs of sanctions against it would be too great to impose for those states that want to protest Rus- sian actions. President Putin has consequently appeared to be engaging in what Stalin had once called “salami tactics”—in the belief that US and European relations will eventually return to normal, as was generally the case in the aftermath of the 2008 Georgia-Russia War—by engaging in intermittent military interventions and obtaining Russian goals slice by slice. But this time, things might not return to “normal.”

The East Ukrainian Military-Industrial Complex In addition to representing a political-economic conflict between Russian and Ukrainian oligarchs over control of Crimean and Sevastopol real estate, the primary geostrategic goal from Putin’s perspective was an act of preclusive imperialism—that is, to prevent the new Euromaidan-backed government from evicting the Russian Black Sea Fleet. By asserting control over Crimea, Moscow could also check both NATO and EU enlargement to Sevastopol and eastern Origins of the Russian Backlash l 73

Ukraine where Moscow possesses major military-industrial and agricultural interests. In addition to upgrading its air capabilities, Moscow could eventually utilize Crimea’s ship-building capacities as a means to expand its naval presence in the eastern Mediterranean.42 While Putin has intended to obtain access to Crimean energy and economic resources, his actions may also be seen as a preclusive act of imperialism in an effort to prevent the United States and European Union from obtaining access to eastern Ukrainian uranium and other strategic raw materials. Moscow may have also wanted to oppose the aims of US and European agro-industries to increase investments in Ukraine’s extensive agricultural sector in corn and wheat and to cooperate in extending the use of biotechnologies (possibly including genetically modified organisms), according to Article 404 of the EU-Ukrainian agreement.43 An additional factor leading Moscow to support eastern Ukrainian “decentralization” is that close political-economic bonds between Russia and Ukraine have been important both for eastern Ukrainians and for Russia, given the much lower production costs and wages in Ukraine. These economic links include the Ukrainian production and sale of products, services, and technology to the Russian military-industrial complex that is regarded as crucial for the Russian defense buildup. In an effort to address Russian military weaknesses (in part revealed during the 2008 Georgia-Russia war), President Putin has nearly doubled defense spending since 2007, and it is expected to increase as much as 18.4 percent in 2014. On the one hand, Russia is the third-largest purchaser of Ukrainian defense products and services after China and Pakistan. More than half of the com- ponents of Russia’s ground-based intercontinental ballistic missiles come from Ukraine. On the other, the Russian arms market is crucial for the survival of Ukraine’s own military-industrial complex. Many Ukrainian enterprises that manufacture defense products are also dependent on imported parts and materials, primarily from Russia.44 It is feared by Moscow and the eastern Ukrainian oligarchs that the EU Association Accord signed in June 2014 by the new Poro- shenko government, after having been rejected by the Yanukovych regime in November 2013, plus a declared ban in June 2014 on all military-technological cooperation with Russia, could lead to the collapse of the Ukrainian military- industrial complex. There is accordingly a growing concern that the potential collapse of the Ukrainian military-industrial complex could significantly exacerbate the economic crisis already impacting eastern Ukraine (after civil war broke out in April 2014), while augmenting the proliferation risks of dual-use, nuclear, and ballistic-missile technology and expertise overseas, particularly to countries such as China, Iran, North Korea, and Syria, in large part due to the near total 74 l Crimea, Global Rivalry, and the Vengeance of History collapse of Ukrainian government controls over the eastern region.45 Given previous US-Russian efforts to press Ukraine to give up its nuclear weaponry (that resulted in the 1994 Budapest accords), the potential spread of nuclear weapons and high-tech military-industrial know-how from a bankrupt Ukraine represents a significant reason for renewing US-EU- Russian cooperation in an effort to put an end to the ongoing conflict between Kiev and Moscow. At the same time, it is not clear that the Ukrainian ban on military- technological cooperation with Russia will necessarily be obeyed and that it will significantly slow down the Russian military buildup, even if Ukrainian companies do abide by government demands. Russian officials have downplayed the impact that the Ukrainian ban on military-technological cooperation would have on military modernization. President Putin has expected that Russian ingenuity can replace defense-related imports from Ukraine within two-and- a- half years. Even though Ukrainian exports represent between only 4 to 7 percent of the total of Russian military imports, Russian military preparation and modernization would still be stymied without Ukrainian parts and systems, at least in the short run, while their replacement may prove even more costly with a worthless ruble.46

NATO Support for Ukraine Even though Kiev is not a member of NATO, the US and NATO allies have asserted their full support for the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine within its internationally recognized borders, as agreed under the 1997 Charter on a Distinctive Partnership, which had established the NATO-Ukraine Com- mission (NUC).47 At the outset, the NATO-Ukraine Commission had been intended to counterbalance the 1997 NATO-Russia Council (NRC) but with the NRC given priority. Now it appears that in the aftermath of what NATO considers Russia’s “illegal” annexation of Crimea and the Russian violation of a number of international agreements—including the 1994 Budapest Accords in which the United States, United Kingdom, France, and Russia all promised to back Ukrainian territorial integrity—NATO is appearing to be granting priority to Ukrainian concerns over those of Russia but at the risk of an even deeper backlash in Moscow.48 Here, the three Baltic states, Poland, Finland, Sweden, and Georgia, if not Turkey as well, generally interpret Russian actions with greater trepidation than do either Germany or France. This is in large part due to Russia’s tremendous conventional-military and nuclear capacities, the proximity of these states to Russia, and the continued claims to great power status in rivalry with the United States and other states. In the interwar period, the Baltic states and Poland feared a German-So viet condominium.49 Today, these same states still fear a Origins of the Russian Backlash l 75

Franco-German- Russian combo that will ignore their interests in favor of those of Moscow; they thus seek stronger American and NATO security guarantees.

The Question of Germany and France Prior to the Russian annexation of Crimea, Germany sought to obtain Russian energy resources (with pipelines that are generally seen as circumventing eastern European states) and to increase trade with Russia. Concurrently, Moscow sought to increase German finance, technology, and investment. This has led to a situation in which Berlin, backed by NATO, has played a role as an intermedi- ary and balancer between the United States and Russia, as well as between Rus- sia and Ukraine. Yet the question remains as to whether Germany can continue to play such a role in juggling each of these states after Russia’s annexation of Crimea. After the annexation of Crimea, Germany cancelled plans for a high- tech shooting range and for a major training facility for Russian troops, for example. The latter could have trained some 30,000 Russians annually, boost- ing the basic combat skills of Russian ground forces. While German defense and political-economic links to Russia have raised fears among eastern European states, the more significant military-industrial linkage is between Russia and France. Prior to the EU embargo, French firms were to provide Russia with night-vision and thermal-imaging equipment, as well as communications hardware. The sale of the Mistral-class amphibious helicopter-carrier warship was suspended in 2014—but not cancelled—in large part due to the promise of $1.7 billion for four ships, while France seems to be using the ship as a bargaining tool to help end the Crimean conflict. Unless the ships are not eventually delivered, Moscow has planned that the Mistral-class Sevastopol, to be built in France, could become the new flagship of the Black Sea Fleet in 2017 after being transferred from the Pacific Fleet, where it was origi- nally planned to be permanently based. A buildup of the Russian fleet could also force a NATO counterresponse.50

NATO and Russian Reaction and Counterreaction In opposition to NATO maneuvers and raising the fears of the three Baltic states, the Russian Baltic Fleet conducted unexpected tactical exercises along the Baltic coast in March 2014. This resulted in NATO’s reinforcement of its air defenses. In April 2014, NATO suspended all practical relations with Russia in the NATO-Russia Council in protest of the Russian actions while intensify- ing its promises of defense cooperation with Ukraine.51 NATO maneuvers in June 2014 then resulted in the Russian deployment of warships and bombers in Kaliningrad. 76 l Crimea, Global Rivalry, and the Vengeance of History

Moscow has periodically continued to threaten to deploy tactical nuclear weaponry in Kaliningrad to counter the expansion of US and NATO military infrastructure.52 In August 2014, at least 16 bomber incursions by the Russians took place within the northwestern US and Canadian air-defense zones over a period ten days. It was the largest number of incursions since the end of the Cold War. US fighter jets were forced to intercept the Russian aircraft and follow them until they exited the defense zone. From the Russian perspective, however, the number of fighters in the NATO Baltic air-policing mission had been significantly increased in early March 2014.53 NATO then decided to build a rapid-deployment force at the September 2014 Wales summit, primarily for the potential defense of the three Baltic states and Poland. Here, Russian pressures could achieve the opposite impact than that perhaps intended by Putin (in the assumption he does not want to intentionally force a new partition of Europe so as to strengthen his domestic political backing against the NATO “enemy”): Moscow’s actions in both Georgia and Ukraine appear to be strengthening the general efforts of eastern European states, including Finland and Sweden, to more strongly integrate with both NATO and the European Union. At the September 2014 NATO summit in Wales, President Obama called for a NATO rapid-reaction force, with naval, air, and special-force units in support. As part of a longer-term Readiness Action Plan, this force would be staffed on a rotating basis by member countries and would be ready to deploy on a few days’ notice, with prepositioned equipment, storage, and a command structure deployed in the three Baltic states, Poland, and Romania. Germany, among other Allies, has opposed stationing “permanent” forces in eastern Europe for strategic reasons: such forces would be the first attacked by Moscow in case of the outbreak of NATO-Russian hostilities. An effective defense structure is needed in the background, not the forefront. On December 18, 2014, President Obama signed the Ukraine Freedom Support Act, which will allocate up to $350 million in military aid to Ukraine, in part for support of its military campaign in Donbass. The US Office of Defense Cooperation, the Joint Contact Team Program–Ukraine (JCTP), International Military Education and Training (IMET), and Foreign Military Sales/Foreign Military Financing will all provide military assistance, coordination with NATO, training, and finance for Ukrainian defense modernization.54 In January 2015, Congress mandated the European Reassurance Initiative (ERI). This promised $985 million for the Department of Defense to augment a rotational US presence in Europe (as is also the case for the so-called pivot to the Indo-Pacific) for NATO activities and to preposition US military infrastructure and assets in Europe. Such aid is also intended to help build the defense capacity of new NATO members as well as Ukraine, Georgia, and Moldova. While building up the defense capabilities of eastern Europe and Origins of the Russian Backlash l 77 deploying missile defense interceptors in Poland, Spain, and Romania (plus long-range radar systems in Turkey and the Czech Republic), the United States has also planned to eliminate 15 military bases in western Europe, primarily in Germany, but also in the United Kingdom, Belgium, Netherlands, Italy, and Portugal. But as a form of compensation, the Pentagon intends to deploy the advanced fighter jet, the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, initially in the United Kingdom.55 And, in response to Russian reliance on tactical nuclear weaponry and repeated threats to deploy tactical nuclear weaponry in Kaliningrad, the United States has begun to upgrade 200 B61 tactical nuclear weapons, which can be delivered by the F-35. NATO military maneuvers in October 2014 furthermore suggest that Polish air-defense forces could be drawn into a nuclear defense of eastern Europe, despite NATO promises not to deploy nuclear weapons on the territories of new NATO members and Obama’s promises that the United States would not deploy new nuclear weapons in Europe.56

Toward a Diplomatic Settlement? The July 2014 downing of Malaysian passenger flight 17 in Ukrainian airspace—allegedly by Russophile separatists and presumably by accident in the belief that the aircraft was a Ukrainian military jet—had initially raised expectations that the horrific incident could actually be used by Washington and Moscow to enhance peace talks. Yet both sides continued to engage in a media war of mutual imprecations.57 Russian calls for a cease-fire were initially opposed by Kiev, which argued that a cease-fire would freeze separatist gains in eastern Ukraine, effectively creating another “frozen conflict” backed by Rus- sia, which would accordingly obtain its goals. For its part, Moscow sees Kiev as stalling on a cease-fire and peace accord. Given Russian interests in keeping Ukraine as a neutral “buffer” and in sustaining its links to Ukraine’s military-industrial complex for as long as possible, Moscow has been accused of providing assistance and advanced weaponry to the anti-Kiev insurgents and has purportedly sent special forces, militias, and mercenaries and permitted volunteers to cross the border to enter the struggle.58 In August 2014, Moscow was accused of infiltrating military personnel and equipment into eastern Ukraine in the guise of humanitarian assistance, before once again being accused of sending in troops. President Obama warned against further Russian interference in eastern Ukraine (Kiev claims there are 9,000 Russian troops).59 By December 19, 2014, however, Russian foreign minister Lavrov stated that Russia would reject separatist aspirations in Donbass and that Russia definitely regards Ukraine (except Crimea) as “an integral territory, and it should be supported in this form.”60 Moscow has thus appeared unwilling 78 l Crimea, Global Rivalry, and the Vengeance of History to finance a separate Donbass region but nevertheless seeks to pressure Kiev through its influence in eastern Ukraine. Despite US and European warnings and efforts to sanction Russia, Mos- cow has thus far attempted to provide sufficient assistance to eastern Ukrainian separatists (with Russian allies) so as to permit them greater bargaining leverage against Kiev’s efforts (backed by US military advisors) to subjugate the region by force in the effort to check both Russophone “decentralists” and “separatists.”61 Concurrently, militant paramilitary and irregular volunteer units that have done most of the fighting for Kiev in eastern Ukraine may obtain greater political influence in Ukraine, thus further antagonizing the Ukrainian-Russian relationship. Not all those resisting Kiev are mercenaries or Russian agents. While many might oppose the violence, decentralist and secessionist movements would have no popular support unless there were not legitimate concerns that the government in Kiev did not truly represent eastern Ukrainian interests. The first problem is that the latter groups, who are not all of ethnic Russian background, suddenly see themselves as minorities within Ukraine after the Soviet breakup. Those with Russian backgrounds generally seek to protect the Russian language, culture, and Russian Orthodox religion, in addition to close political- economic ties with Moscow. But most eastern Ukrainian Russophones probably do not necessarily want to be absorbed by Russia, as was probably the case for the Crimean population, which was predominantly (97 percent) Russophone. In general, these groups identify with Russian culture and language but not necessarily with Putin’s politics.62 This raises the questions: How much of the conflict in eastern Ukraine is due primarily to sociopolitical opposition to Kiev’s perceived efforts to stifle Russian language, culture, and Orthodox religion, and how much is due to Moscow’s meddling and clandestine intervention? And can this conflict remain confined to the Donbass region?

A Dangerous Turning Point? While disputes over NATO and EU expansion have raised tensions with Rus- sia, Boris Yeltsin, and particularly Vladimir Putin, have continued to strengthen steps taken by Mikhail Gorbachev since 1986 to establish political, economic, and military ties with China. President Putin has furthermore sought to hold onto and to sustain Russian influence in remnants of the former global Soviet empire, including Cuba, Vietnam, and Syria, while also seeking to strengthen ties with the rising powers of Brazil, India, China, and South Africa (the BRICS). As its political-economic capabilities have generally strengthened since the Yeltsin era and the rise of world energy prices, Moscow has begun to reach out to other countries where possible, in potential rivalry with the United States, Japan, and Europe. (See Chapter 8.) Origins of the Russian Backlash l 79

The Russian annexation of Crimea and the conflict in eastern Ukraine have consequently added yet another disconcerting issue to the growing list of post– Cold War disputes that have broken out into violence—or that have the potential to break out into violence—raising the question whether the global system is entering a new, and more dangerous, period of interstate and intersocietal rivalries. Russian actions in Ukraine have, for example, raised questions whether states such as Sweden and Finland, in addition to Georgia and Ukraine, should enter NATO. President Obama has maintained NATO’s policy of an “open enlargement,” even if this is one of the major factors that have fuelled a Russian backlash in the first place.63 The key question posed here is whether or not the Russian annexation of Crimea, seen by the United States and Europe, as well as by Kiev, as a violation of many international laws agreed to by Moscow itself, represents a new and dangerous turning point in US-Eur opean-Russian relations, if not more indirectly, in relations with China and Japan as well. If so, could such a turning point result in deeper geostrategic friction and political-economic crisis, including that of a major-power war? Or could the United States and Europe adopt a differing peace-oriented position that could permit Russia to gradually link itself to a wider US-European alliance and political-economic network, thus reducing the risks of a much deeper crisis?

Chapter 5

Uneven Polycentrism and the Global Crisis

n the aftermath of the Soviet collapse in August 1991, the international constellation of major and regional powers, plus antistate organizations, has Inot so gradually shifted away from an essentially bicentric US-So viet system and toward a new polycentrism that is characterized by the rise of differing (and shifting) centers of decision making with highly uneven degrees of power and influence.1 Due to the fact that there are now multiple major and regional actors as compared to the Cold War and that actions of rival states and antistate actors are often unexpected, the possibility of war appears greater today than during the bicentric Cold War. As shown in the recent military interventions in Libya (2011) and now in Iraq and Syria (2014), the United States will remain the predominant military power within the global constellation of forces for some time to come, but it cannot hold the global peace alone. This appears true as its military capabilities appear to be spread too thinly across the globe to take on all the potential regional threats where states can concentrate their forces. The US ability to sustain its political-economic predominance (or global hegemony) appears to be not so gradually waning in response to the rise of a number of significant states and regional challengers, including sociopolitical movements that have been attempting to assert their own spheres of influence and security in potential conflict with global US interests, if not those of other regional powers. In this perspective, the general hegemony of the predominant insular-core power(s) is often challenged over time in specific regions and in relative terms by differing sociopolitical movements and by rising regional powers that are in the process of developing significant core economic, financial, and military-force capabilities that can be augmented by control of key geostrategic positions. In the terms of Francis Bacon, the United States is an “overpower” that is now being challenged by numerous “underpowers.” (See Chapter 6.) 82 l Crimea, Global Rivalry, and the Vengeance of History

As to be explained, the hegemonic-core United States, plus the Europe and Japan, essentially represent insular or quasi-insular powers whose core and insular statuses are seen as increasingly challenged by the now essentially landlocked, yet energy and resource rich, Russian Federation in specific Eurasian regions—primarily in areas once dominated by the ex–So viet Union, and particularly in the Black Sea and Caucasus regions—while concurrently seeking a hoped-for energy/consumer/defense “symbiosis” with China, which flanks it to the east. In the Indo-Pacific, the United States and Japan likewise see themselves as being challenged by a rising China, which represents a continental power that is seeking global overseas status, with major investments in Europe, Eurasia, Latin America, and Africa (in rivalry with the United States, France, and the Arab Gulf states), among other regions. China is in the process of moving from a semiperipheral to a core status (and has perhaps already reached that status in terms of purchasing-power parity). For its part, India represents an amphibious South Asian power in the process of moving from semiperipheral to core status but that thus far appears to be attempting to balance its Eurasian continental interests (with Russia and China) with its amphibious overseas interests (with the United States, Europe, and Japan) as it seeks to develop a blue-water navy. Largely depending on their political-economic capacities, differing centers of power and influence, which can act in cooperation, neutrality, or rivalry, include both states and multilateral actors, such as the UN and regional organizations. But they also include national and transnational antistate factions, such as Al-Qaeda, Islamic State (IS), Al-Shabaab , Boko Haram, the Tamil Tigers, the Kurdish PKK (Kurdish Workers’ Party), Shining Path, and the Real Irish Republican Army, among many other secular or “religious” partisan or “terrorist” groups, which may or may not eventually obtain state power, as was the case for the African National Congress (once considered a “terrorist” organization), the Irish Republican Army (IRA; with its political wing Sinn Féin), or Hamas (which is still on the US list of terrorist organizations), for example.2 Nonstate actors include lobby groups and NGOs, not to overlook financial institutions and transnational corporations, which can possess significant sociopolitical and media influence that directly or indirectly impacts government viewpoints and actions. In many texts, Al-Qaeda is defined as a “nonstate” actor, but it is an antistate actor! Given the rise of a number of emergent state, nonstate, and antistate actors, major core powers can opt to engage or not to engage their diplomatic influence, as well as their own political-economic and military capacities in working for or against those new actors, by utilizing differing forms of strategic leveraging. Concurrently, lesser emerging powers—and even antistate and nonstate actors—can demonstrate significant military, political, social, or economic Uneven Polycentrism and the Global Crisis l 83 influence (including new forms of “asymmetrical” warfare) through strategic leveraging while also playing unexpected roles in the shifting nexus of interstate and intersocietal relationships. Strategic leveraging represents the means in which states mediate between their conflicting domestic and international interests, given their position in a larger geostrategic and political-economic nexus. All states and antistate groups utilize differing forms of strategic leveraging in order to expand, readjust, or even retract their relative position of power and status, as the leadership perceives that position of power and status both in the international system and among their constituents or domestic societies.3 Negative forms of strategic leveraging include arms buildups, deficit spending, sanctions, threats to use force, and acts of state-sponsored and antistate “terror” (however defined), plus the actual use of military force, and so on. Positive forms include promises of trade, aid, development assistance, diplomatic supports, offers of military alliance, and so on. In essence, tensions arise as major core and emergent powers utilize differing forms of strategic leveraging to vie with each other in the effort to press third states into close political-economic accords and military alliances. While major core and emergent powers can periodically engage in direct conflict and major- power wars, conflicts more frequently take place indirectly through proxies in rimland and shatterbelt regions in which lesser states and sociopolitical factions compete for diplomatic, military, and financial supports from rival core and emergent powers, as well as from rimland and oasis states. At the same time, there is often a tense push-pull relationship between major powers and their allies in which the latter attempt to take advantage of the lar- gesse of the superior power and its promises of defense guarantees in pursuing their own interests even in possible opposition to the concerns of that major power. From the US perspective, this appears to be the case for Israel (in generally ignoring US interests in the “wider Middle East”), Arab Gulf states and Pakistan (for supporting Islamist movements) Georgia (in not doing more to prevent war with Russia in 2008), and the Philippines (in demanding US backing against China over island disputes). A stronger “pull” relationship could also prove the case with Japan, for example, as it seeks greater US support in asserting its interests versus China or Russia, or if eastern European states, including Ukraine, seek stronger US supports as they assert their interests versus Russia. It is often argued that more civil wars have taken place in the post–Cold War epoch than interstate wars, but this argument overlooks the fact that domestic factions often possess external support from both state and antistate actors, if not from privately funded nonprofit “charities,” which once raised funds for the IRA, for example, and now for Islamist groups. But if those external supporters do not accept the actual or potential outcome of a particular civil conflict, it is possible that they may opt for more direct diplomatic or military intervention. 84 l Crimea, Global Rivalry, and the Vengeance of History

Moreover, once civil conflicts deepen, the question of sovereignty may arise, so that differing factions in socially and politically divided states can claim sovereignty, transforming a so-called civil conflict into an international or interstate one. The 1990–95 war in Bosnia, for example, started as a civil war, until Croatia was recognized by Germany, making it an interstate conflict, and transforming Yugoslavia into a “shatterbelt.” In this respect, civil wars within divided democratic societies also raise questions about democratic peace theory, given the fact that differing factions may not be able to compromise over, and then resolve, issues involving centralization versus decentralization, for example. If such groups cannot reach compromises, they may appeal to external assistance, as in the Donbass. Not only failed or failing states can be impacted: ex-Yugoslavia, Sri Lanka, and Ivory Coast were all seen as models of development in the 1980s but entered into periods of domestic conflict in the 1990s. While ethnic and class conflict that had previously been masked beneath an ostensibly peaceful coexistence, what has been called “antagonistic tolerance”4 splintered the latter three countries, not all civil wars result from Huntington- style “civilizational” frictions. The civil war in ethnically homogenous Somalia, for example, has been an outgrowth of disputes among rival clans. In contemporary circumstances, the not-so- long-term movement toward a highly uneven polycentric global system in the aftermath of the collapse of the bicentric US-Soviet system, combined with the socioeconomic impact of what Karl Marx called the “ever revolutionizing means of production” (such as the contemporary information-technology, computer, biotechnology, and energy revolutions, which are challenging more traditional modes of production and business), has tended to accentuate differences in wealth and influence both between and within core, semiperipheral, peripheral, and oasis states.5 These dual geopolitical and socioeconomic phenomena possess the potential for exacerbating domestic sociopolitical conflict both within and between differing countries. On the one hand, the concentration of wealth in fewer and fewer hands skews investment decisions in the direction of those individuals’ corporate interests, potentially cutting out rivals through the creation of monopolies or oligopolies while concurrently pressuring governments to cater to their interests through lobbying and other means, generally widening the gap in income and benefits. On the other, given the socioeconomic impact of new and revolutionary industries/technologies and shifting global and regional markets, once prosperous regions and localities may begin to decay while new growth fostered by monopolies may concentrate investment in other areas, often resulting in the exclusion of other regions or social groups, whether unin- tentionally or intentionally, due to overt social and political discrimination. In an effort to counter regional and global inequities in power and influence and/or to assert control over resources and productive capacities, a number Uneven Polycentrism and the Global Crisis l 85 of antistate sociopolitical movements have begun to challenge state leaderships. Differing pan-Islamist movements (often backed by third powers, religious NGOs, theft, and black/grey market activities), for example, have begun to con- tend for power throughout the “wider Middle East” and even internationally. These movements have gained social and political influence in autocratic societies in Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Yemen, and Bahrain, among others, during the so- called Arab Spring. The latter represented social and political protest movements by both Arabs and non-Arabs alike against inequities and differing forms of dictatorship generally confronted by political succession crises. These movements were then, to a certain degree, manipulated by the interests of rival regional and major powers. Oman could be the next to be hit by a political succession crisis. Following the Soviet collapse, pan-Russian, pan-Slav movements continued to possess significant influence in Serbia, Bulgaria, Kosovo, and Ukraine, if not elsewhere in eastern Europe and in central and east Asia, raising fears of Rus- sian imperialist atavism. At the same time, differing autocratic governments— including those of China, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Iran, Saudi Arabia and other Gulf Cooperation Countries (GCC), and Egypt, among others— have generally engaged in a backlash against proponents of multiparty democracy and “democratic internationalism,” whether those proponents are seen as “home grown” or else are supported by American or European NGOs and state- backed “democracy engineering.” In addition to perceived military “threats” from NATO, the European Union, and Japan, a major reason for the general militarization taking place in both the Russian Federation and China is due to elite fears that these pluri- ethnic pluri-cultural societies could begin to disaggregate due to the centrifu- gal forces of “globalization” combined with regional centripetal demands for secession in the case of the Russian-controlled northern Caucasus and east- central Asia. These movements, including differing pan-Islamist groups, can be financed by black- and grey-market activities if they are not also supported by the public or private interests of differing elements within foreign powers, such Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Iran, among other possible sources. Mos- cow likewise fears the potential loss of control over the Russian Far East, with autonomy/independence potentially backed by China and/or Japan, if not by the United States more indirectly, through the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade zone, which, it is feared, could draw the Russian Far East away from Moscow’s controls. Moscow’s efforts to tighten its grasp over the Far East to reduce fissiparous tendencies, while linking with China, is one of the major reasons for President Putin to engage in a Russian version of the “pivot to Asia” in rivalry with the US “rebalancing” to Asia. Russian fears of secessionism are due in part to historical Japanese claims to Siberia up to Lake Baikal since the 1904–5 Russo-Japanese War and then the Russian Revolution, and given 86 l Crimea, Global Rivalry, and the Vengeance of History

Chinese, Japanese, and Mongolian, if not Korean, claims to the Far Eastern regions as well. Thus far, however, the effort to check potential secessionist movements has brought Russia and China closer together in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) and into closer defense cooperation at least since 2005, particularly as Chinese elites also oppose movements they see as demanding the independence of Tibet, Xinjiang province, and Inner Mongolia, as well as Taiwan. Russian support for South Ossetian and Abkhazian secession, and Moscow’s annexation of Crimea, plus perceived support for Russophone secessionist movements in eastern Crimea, initially appeared to upset the general Sino-Russian accord against secessionist movements, which formed the basis of the Shanghai Cooperation Council. Yet, in mid-2014, President Putin signed a historical $400 billion energy deal with China accompanied by major Sino-Russian naval maneuvers, just at the time when the United States and Europe had been threatening “smart sanctions” against Russia in the aftermath of its intervention in and annexation of Crimea. Despite some haggling over the energy pricing, the thirty-year deal has been seen as a new form of nonaggression pact to solidify Sino-Russian relations. Putin also hopes to link the Eurasian Union with the Chinese-led SCO and Silk Road Economic Belt as a means to counter both the US-sponsored Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) and the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade zones. This appears reminiscent of previous historical efforts in which two essentially continental powers tried to cooperate on a larger scale but then failed with tragic consequences. (See Chapters 6, 7, and 8.) The following question can nevertheless be posed: Can Moscow and Beijing continue to hold together their vast pluri-cultural pluri-ethnic empires? And if so, what will be the consequences of their efforts in both domestic and international terms? And, given the general backlash against “democratization” in both Russia and China, how will these governments cope with general sociopolitical demands for social and political reform and opposition to widespread governmental corruption? Will these states and societies seek to deflect internal dis- sent against presumed antagonists by appeals to pan-nationalism? Or can they engage in needed domestic socio-political reforms?

The Question of Renewed European Rivalries In the aftermath of the Cold War, Soviet disaggregation, much like the disaggregation of imperial Germany after its defeat in World War I, has opened up much of Europe to rival irredentist claims, in which newly independent states within the former Soviet Union do not possess clear territorial boundaries, while the European Union itself has not clearly marked its geo-economic limits. Uneven Polycentrism and the Global Crisis l 87

Initially, Moscow had shown little concern for European Union enlargement— that is, until the 2008–9 EU Eastern Partnership reached out to former Soviet bloc states including Belarus, Ukraine, Moldova, Georgia, Armenia, and Azer- baijan. Here, Moscow lashed out to make certain Belarus and Ukraine did not look toward an Association Accord with the European Union, but ironically, it was unable to prevent Moldova, Georgia, or eventually, Ukraine (after Moscow had annexed Crimea) from joining. Belarus has also feared Russian territorial claims while likewise being troubled over a severe downturn in the Russian economy.6 The inability of the European Union and Russia to find a political- economic compromise between their competing projects has consequently increased rivalry for influence over these former Soviet states, resulting in the Euromaidan clash (seen as backed by the United States and Europe) in Novem- ber 2013. (See Chapter 4.) In effect, Moscow has sought to divide, if not partition, Moldova, Georgia, and Ukraine by supporting greater autonomy for Transnistria from Moldova and independence for South Ossetia and Abkhazia from Georgia. Then, by annexing Crimea and by supporting “decentralist” or autonomy movements in eastern Ukraine, Moscow has sought to check Kiev from centralizing control over the eastern regions. Among the ex-Soviet bloc states, this strategy of “sap and mine” weakens the ability of states to centralize controls over rebellious regions. Russian pressures and supports for greater autonomy also make it more difficult for the European Union to potentially integrate ex-Soviet bloc countries into closer association accords with the European Union. In such a way, Moscow has sought to sustain hegemony over these regions and to prevent each region from being impacted by political-economic accords with Brussels, while also seeking to weaken Brussels itself. This is true even if the new Ukrainian Poroshenko government signed the Association Accords in June 2014 after Russia annexed Crimea. Moscow could play “spoiler” in each of these regions, while carving out a Russian version of the US Monroe Doc- trine in the Black Sea area, protecting its energy and export/import facilities at Novorossiysk, which are shielded by the Russian Black Sea Fleet in Sevastopol. In addition to disputes between Ukraine and Russia, there are also territorial disputes between Belarus and Poland and between Finland, the Baltic states, and Russia. Yet, while media attention was focused on Russian-Ukrainian territorial disputes, Estonia and Russia reached an agreement in February 2014 defining territorial waters in the Bay of Narva and the Gulf of Finland. But, as this appeared to grant Russia territory that Estonia has claimed since the 1920 Treaty of Tartu with the Soviet Union but that was taken by the Molotov- Ribbentrop Pact, there has been some nationalist protest on the Estonian side and some hesitation in Moscow.7 Assuming the accord is ratified by both sides in 2015, it appears to represent a step toward peace in the Baltic region. 88 l Crimea, Global Rivalry, and the Vengeance of History

As the ex-Soviet states have not entirely determined their borders, there is no clear definition of “Europe” either. This is true in both a geographical and a sociocultural-political sense. In the aftermath of the Soviet collapse, the Euro- pean Union began its own expansion, which was largely uncoordinated with the United States and NATO, deep into former Soviet-bloc territory but without really any clear determination of what the “new” Europe was to be. This relates to the question as to whether Turkey and Russia should or should not belong to the European Union. Both Turkey (Ottoman Empire) and tsarist Russia had been members of the Concert of Europe in the nineteenth century, but both have been unable to join the European Union or reach close association accords, despite their historical and political ties to European society, culture, and politics. Turkey has consequently sought to balance its interests between Russia, Europe, and the United States/NATO, as well as toward Israel, Iran, and the “wider Middle East,” while Russia has begun to assert its interests in eastern Ukraine to counter European expansion. In effect, both states have increasingly become alienated from Europe, with Russia increasingly seeking to influence and pressure Turkish policy with respect to NATO, even more so in the aftermath of the annexation of Crimea. But disputes within the EU and NATO member countries have also begun to rise to the surface, with many based on the interwar period. Perhaps most significantly, Hungarian claims, in response to the 1920 Treaty of Trianon, which partitioned Hungary, have begun to resurface, potentially impacting the social and political concerns of ethnic Hungarians in Serbia (Vojvodina), Slo- vakia (along the border), and Romania (Transylvania), in addition to the fact that there are roughly 150,000 ethnic Hungarians in Transcarpathia, Ukraine. Romania also has border disputes with both Ukraine and Russia (northern Bukovina and southern Bessarabia), which Romania has claimed dating from the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. While these countries have attempted to reach accords, the Russian venture into Crimea has nevertheless shaken the foundations of legality and mutual trust. Within the larger “Atlantic community,” the United States and Europe have increasingly attempted to divide, counter, or coopt a number of differing “alternative globalization” sociopolitical movements. In Europe, “left-wing” factions have pressed for greater regional and local autonomy from the state. “Right-wing” nationalists have tended to push for greater state control against forces of globalization and regionalization. The latter generally oppose stronger EU controls and perceived EU interference in state sovereignty. In the United States, by contrast, the Tea Party movement has tended to oppose both neoconservative and neoliberal interventionism abroad and thus has supported neoisolationist or “noninterventionist” policies, in the words of former Republican/ Libertarian presidential candidate Ron Paul. A third, and differing, “alternative Uneven Polycentrism and the Global Crisis l 89 globalization” group opposes American unilateralism and generally demands that Washington engage in concerted diplomacy more in accord with international law with greater degrees of multilateral political-economic cooperation among all states, regions, and localities, and with greater attention to social inequities both at home and abroad. How these sociopolitical groups, symbolized by the January 2015 victory of the Syriza party in Greece, which has opposed the German-backed EU-IMF austerity policies, impact European policies remains to be seen. Already, political parties in Spain, Italy, and France (essentially southern European countries, plus Ireland) have shown their support for Syriza, which nevertheless had to turn to the right-wing Greek Independence party (ANEL) to win a majority in the parliament.8 Will the European Union begin to break down over debt, toxic loans, the Eurozone crisis, and the general failure of many EU countries (not just Greece) to minimize deficit spending and to develop viable systems of taxation that also minimize capital flight? Could this lead to the breakup of the European Union, with Greece, followed by other states, moving out of the eurozone? In 2015, the European Central Bank initiated an effort to avert that possibility by injecting a large amount of liquidity into the European Union by expanding the monetary supply. But will that effort be sufficient? Could it lead to a new currency war, following the Japanese devaluation in 2013?9 The additional concern raised here is that Moscow has also begun (not very successfully so far) to reach out to a number of right-wing nationalist and secessionist movements inside the European Union as well, even if these groups do not all necessarily support Russian actions in Crimea or do not back all Russian policies.10 On the one hand, Sweden Democrats, the UK Independent Party, the French National Front, the Dutch Party for Freedom, and the Italian Northern League generally back Moscow’s interests. On the other hand, EU-skeptic parties, who tend to vote against Russian interests, are generally found in the Baltic Region. These include True Finns, the Danish People’s party, the Swedish Left party and the Law and Order party in Lithuania.11 Moscow’s diplomatic backing for a number of these differing “Eurosceptic” movements appears intended to check stronger steps toward a stronger European federalism, if not check their participation in NATO as well.

Dangers in the “Wider Middle East” In the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Cen- ter and the Pentagon, the Bush administration decision to engage in a Global War on Terror (GWOT) in retaliation against both “terrorist organizations with global reach” and “rogue states” (with interventions in Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, and northern Pakistan) has continued to destabilize global relations in 90 l Crimea, Global Rivalry, and the Vengeance of History the aftermath of the Soviet collapse, while a number of conflicts are direct or indirect consequences of that collapse: those in the Balkans (ex-Yugoslavia), Transnistria, the Caucasus (Georgia and the frozen conflicts in South Ossetia, Abkhazia, and Nagorno-Karabakh), and in central and east Asia (Afghanistan and disputes among ex-Soviet states), as well as within the “wider Middle East.” In the latter region, Moscow has been attempting to hold onto one of the last major Soviet client states, Syria, due in part to Russian access to its port of Tartus in the eastern Mediterranean, while concurrently seeking to engage in positive relations with Iran at the same time that it looks to negotiate a major arms deal with Egyptian president Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, given Egypt’s reaction against the so-called Arab Spring that had brought the leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, Mohamed Morsi, to the Egyptian presidency.12 Moscow is thus attempting to reenter the “wider Middle East” much as it did in the Cold War. Here, NATO intervention in Libya, initially justified as the right to protect, transmogrified into regime change, given French and Arab Gulf state support for factions seeking to overthrow the Gaddafi regime. Yet the result has been the collapse of the new government’s ability to control much of the territory. The most immediate result was the overthrow of the Mali government, assisted by arms primarily obtained from Libya and resulting in French intervention in 2013. In addition, the collapse of the Libyan regime may have also directly or indirectly helped supply pan-Islamist forces fighting the pro-Iranian, pro- Russian Assad regime in Syria. Here, the United States (backed by France) appeared on the brink of massively intervening in Syria in August–September 2013, but President Obama stepped back from the brink, due in part to the fear that the destabilization of Syria would not bring “moderate” Islamist factions into power but rather more radical pan-Sunni factions, some with links to Al-Qaeda or Islamic State. The United States may also have been concerned with the capabilities of Syrian air defenses to strike down US fighter jets or, more important, with the threat that Russia could more strongly back Assad militarily. Despite the US decision to withdraw ground forces from Iraq by December 2011, the US decision to bomb heavily armed Islamic State militants in Iraq and Syria in August 2014 will most likely extend the US military presence in the region for a significant length of time.13 In opposing both American and Russian interests, Islamic State militants hope to take advantage of US and Russian disputes over Syria. These groups have opposed the Syrian regime of Bashar Al-Assad (as did the United States, at least initially) but also the US- (and Iranian-) backed regime in Baghdad, formerly led by President Al-Maliki. By 2014, the United States thus began to reengage in Iraq and Syria, while also attempting to strengthen the European contribution to NATO in eastern Europe in response to the Russian annexation of Crimea and its purported Uneven Polycentrism and the Global Crisis l 91 military interference in eastern Ukraine. Washington has been attempting to build a coalition for a long-term battle against the so-called Islamic State involving air strikes in Iraq and Syria, with support for Kurdish forces, the peshmerga. But here, Washington will have a hard time intervening in Syria without engaging in some form of secret cooperation with the Bashar Al-Assad regime and with Russia.14 Getting Moscow and Iran on board will require very complex diplomacy so that Russia and Syria plus Iran and the US coalition forces, can fight a common enemy without appearing to do so otherwise there is a real possibility of a major clash given the risk that such actions against a pan-Sunni movement could alienate the Arab Gulf states. As of February 2015, more than 210,000 people have died, with 3.73 million refugees and as many as 1.5 million injured. One problem is that Moscow has continued to suspect Washington of seeking to overthrow Assad by bombing Syria due to the fact that Washington has not appeared to pressure US allies such as Saudi Arabia and other Arab Gulf monarchies strongly against directly or indirectly backing differing pan-Sunni movements. The key dilemma is that Arab Gulf countries have hoped to deflect a number of radical Islamist movements, which are ideologically opposed to monarchical rule, from attempting to overthrow the Arab Gulf monarchies themselves, leading to accusations of a “double game.” Here, Qatar and Tur- key tend to support groups affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood, including the Palestinian Hamas, while Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) oppose the Brotherhood and support Wahhabi groups believed to be subservient to Riyadh. At the same time, Turkey also hopes to counterbalance Islamic State against Kurdish demands for independence inside Turkey, as from Ankara’s perspective, Islamic State poses less of a threat to Turkey than does the Kurdish PKK and the prospect of a tightly unified Kurdistan, which would be opposed by all states in the region, versus an alternative option of a looser Kurd- ish confederation. There is consequently a real danger that political-economic instability throughout the “wider Middle East” could eventually draw opposing major and regional powers into conflict against one another. The possibility of greater civil strife in Afghanistan after NATO withdrawal (now expected in 2015), much as has occurred in Iraq after the US withdrawal, also forewarns of conflict ahead. This includes China, which has sought to repress a number of Islamist Uighur factions in Xinjiang province, for example. The potential withdrawal of US and NATO forces from Afghanistan (which was opposed by President Putin) additionally opens the door to a number of wider conflicts throughout the region that may or may not be backed by Russia. For its part, Moscow has generally backed pro-Shi’a movements in Iran, Iraq, and Syria against pan-Sunni movements, so as to deflect Iran from pressing irredentist 92 l Crimea, Global Rivalry, and the Vengeance of History claims in the Russian “near abroad” in the Caucasus or even within the Russian Federation itself.

Key Differences in Tools of Strategic Leveraging Threats of geopolitical encirclement and counterencirclement have not changed fundamentally since outlined by Kautilya in The Arthashastra (circa 300 BC); yet the tools, conditions, and environment of those threats have changed significantly.15 This is true in terms of the now truly global distance and space covered, the number of states and sociopolitical movements involved, and the nature of new political-economic and “dual-use” technological tools that have become available since the advent of the industrial age to pressure or cajole rivals in accord with diplomatic and strategic goals. Military tools have expanded from essentially two dimensional land-sea rivalries in the pre–World War I epoch to three-dimensional land-sea-air rivalries in the interwar period. The Cold War then moved into a four-dimensional conflict involving intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) and efforts to control outer space and satellite systems, while the post–Cold War era involves not only outer-space satellites, ICBMs, and missile defenses but also the ability to manipulate a fifth, “inner-space” dimension of cybertechnology involving instant communications, as well as capabilities of cybersabotage and cyberwarfare, if not unintended cyberaccidents due to “loose” viruses.16 The ongoing US-Russian nuclear- and conventional-arms rivalry appears more reminiscent of the naval and arms buildup before World War I than the more rapid and highly uneven polycentric naval and arms buildup that preceded World War II. This appears true even if the arms rivalry before World War I involved multiple powers, and even if Italian, French, Russian, and US naval buildups all helped further stimulate the Anglo-German naval race. The new US-Russian arms race essentially began when the United States unilaterally dumped the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty in 2002 without renegotiating that treaty with Moscow before deploying ballistic missile defenses (BMD). The US withdrawal from the ABM Treaty, which largely set the conditions for a new arms “race” given US plans to deploy BMD systems in eastern Europe, plus disputes over the Conventional Force in Europe (CFE) Treaty, have exacerbated NATO-Russian tensions. This situation consequently appears much more destabilizing than the nuclear arms race during the Cold War. Here, one is reminded of the pre–World War I period, when the HMS Dreadnought, the largest and most powerful battleship of its time, was seen as a deterrent to war; but its deployment severely exacerbated Anglo-German tensions and did nothing to deter Germany from engaging in a two-front war on land in August 1914. Except for the use of submarine warfare, Berlin did not Uneven Polycentrism and the Global Crisis l 93 really pose a threat to Britain by sea during the war, despite the fact that it was Germany’s threat to control the English Channel through control of Belgium that brought Britain into the war in the first place. In the contemporary situation, modern warfare, for the most part, has moved more toward professional and high-tech armies, perhaps closer to the nature of warfare in the eighteenth century (before the levée en mass of Napo- leon). Napoleon’s comment that to fight guerrillas, a state needs to act like guerrillas, has remained accurate in modern circumstances. One could also mention the guerilla tactics used by the Texas Rangers to fight the Comanche and other indigenous peoples in the early nineteenth century.17 The state’s use of clandestine forms of warfare seems all the more relevant, given the stealthy means that Putin, as a state leader, used to take over Crimea, in effect a modern form of Trojan Horse, involving the clandestine introduction of forces (“Green Men” or what Putin called “polite men”) without insignias into Crimea. Use of airpower now appears to be the dominant military tool. Before World War II, air power enhanced travel and communication, but warplanes were also used to terrorize domestic populations for the first time during the April 1937 bombing of Guernica by the Nazi Luftwaffe during the Spanish Civil War as depicted by Picasso’s great painting of the same name. Italy had engaged in the world’s first aerial bombing in the 1911 Italian-Turkish War over Libya. This set the stage for massive, largely indiscriminate, bombing campaigns in World War II against Germany and Japan, as well as later in the Vietnam War, for example. With advanced cruise missiles and drones, targets can now be pin- pointed with greater discrimination (but not without “collateral damage”). The miniaturization of drone weaponry in particular represents a potentially revolutionary military tool for reconnaissance and hands-on attack. On the US side, war has, at least in part, become a video game. One way that states build their political-economic and military capacities is by means of developing efficient systems of transport and lines of communication. In the pre–World War I epoch, land rivalry involved canals (significantly reducing ocean transport costs) and railroads, such as the German Berlin- Baghdad-Basra rail system that was seen as a means to compete with the British- controlled Suez Canal and that would have given imperial Germany military and economic access to the Persian Gulf and to oil. The widening of the Kiel Canal that cut through the Jutland peninsula was completed just before the outbreak of World War I, thus permitting German Dreadnought battleships to pass into the North Sea from the Baltic Sea. The Versailles Treaty subsequently internationalized the Kiel Canal until Hitler repudiated its international status in 1936. In addition to the Panama Canal, the Straits of Gibraltar, and the Suez Canal, among other key naval “choke points,” such as the Straits of Malacca, 94 l Crimea, Global Rivalry, and the Vengeance of History the Straits of Hormuz, and the Bab-el- Mandeb strait, in the Gulf of Yemen, in which Yemen has increasingly become a focal point of tension between Saudi Arabia (which claims hegemony over Yemen and the Bab-el-Mandab strait), Iran (backing the Shi’a Houthi movement and northern Yemeni clans), and Al-Qaeda in Yemen. Control over the Turkish straits (the Bosporus and the Dardanelles) has been major issue in regional and major-power rivalries for centuries. Suspected Russian demands to seize the straits led to both British and American “containment” policies. Throughout the nineteenth century, Britain sought to “dam the Russian current” but then offered Russia the possibility of controlling the straits in 1915 as a bargaining tool to keep Russia in the war against imperial Germany. The United States then brought Greece and Turkey into NATO as a means to counter potential Russian expansion. Passage through the Turkish straits is still determined by the 1936 Montreux Convention.18 This treaty may increasingly be questioned following Russian military buildup in the region and its efforts to forge a Russian version of the US Monroe Doctrine. In addition, the Danish straits have become strategically important as Russia has increasingly been shifting its crude-oil exports to its Baltic ports.19 Likewise, disputes over access to sea lines of communication, energy, and resources have also changed, in technological terms, over the years, as navies have shifted from coal-fueled to oil-fueled fleets just before the outbreak of World War I. Access to oil and rare raw materials became crucial before World War II, with Japan, for example, invading the Dutch East Indies to obtain access to oil. The quest for uranium, raw materials, and technologies and for nuclear weaponry became crucial during the Cold War and remains crucial in the post–Cold War period, as have gas, oil, and coal, as well as rare metals needed for high technology. It remains uncertain whether the increasing use of alternative energy sources, such as solar, wind, and geothermal, will necessarily mitigate the chances of regional or major-power wars, if these can truly help reduce demand for strategic raw materials, unless there is a significant change in global consumer habits and demand for increasingly scarce resources, including water, in some countries. (One, but not the only, rationale for the Russian annexation of Crimea was to control Ukrainian energy sources so as to better monopolize prices.) One can argue that the financial tools of strategic leveraging—involving trade sanctions and economic rewards, currency manipulation and banking policy, public spending and efforts to force the other side into indebtedness— have grown more sophisticated than those of past eras. Efforts to manipulate the public debt had been opposed by Kant as a tool of warfare, for example, in the eighteenth century.20 Philosophers from Aristotle to Marx all forewarned of the dangerous consequences of the highly uneven distribution of wealth and the lack of participation in key decision-making processes. As has recently been the Uneven Polycentrism and the Global Crisis l 95 case for the kleptocracies of Tunisia, Egypt, and Ukraine, if not Libya and Syria as well, highly uneven distributions of power and income exacerbate socioeconomic tensions and ethnic, religious, and class disputes within countries. Yet such domestic conflict (which can weaken military capabilities and prepared- ness) may or may not lead to interstate war. It could lead states into isolation. Or it could lead to external intervention, as has been the case of Moscow’s decision to annex Crimea to take advantage of a bankrupt and instable Ukraine. Efforts of state leaderships to play domestic ethnic and class conflict against rival leaderships while concurrently deflecting one’s own class and ethnic groups against those rival leaderships, generally by blaming those rivals for interfering in domestic affairs (rather than seeking to reform domestic social structures and relations), represents a major factor that can cause interstate war. Support for alienated ethnic or religious groups and differing classes undermines the legitimacy of state leaderships to control their own domestic populations and territory and is thus seen as a challenge to territorial state sovereignty. Imperial German and Austro-Hungarian elites saw tsarist Russia as backing pan-Serb and pan-Slav movements, while France sought to regain Alsace- Lorraine, whether by peaceful means of strategic leveraging or by war if forced into it. By contrast, Hitler saw both France and Russia as repressing the birth of the Third Reich and preventing Germany from achieving lebensraum. During the Cold War, Moscow saw Washington as supporting “captive nations” as well as ethnic and religious groups (Catholics, Protestant fundamentalists, Jews, and Muslims) against Soviet controls, while Washington saw the Soviet Union as supporting Communist and ethno-nationalist movements that were trying to take advantage of class inequities and ethnic discrimination in the United States and throughout the “capitalist” world. In the post–Cold War era, Moscow has seen Washington and Europe as aligned with Japan and the Arab Gulf states and as pressing for the breakup of the Russian Federation in the aftermath of Soviet disaggregation. It has been argued that President Putin, given the accumulation of a purported fortune, needs to appeal to Russian nationalism as a means to offset a severe downturn in the economy and avert a Russian Euromaidan-style movement similar to that which over- threw Ukrainian kleptocrat Yanukovych. The problem is that strong sanctions on a major power have historically not resulted in an amelioration of international relations but, on the contrary, in a general militarization of world affairs.

The Question of Negotiating Peace Given the highly uneven and inequitable nature of global power relationships in a world characterized by highly uneven polycentrism, the question remains whether or not cooperative accords can eventually be achieved by negotiation 96 l Crimea, Global Rivalry, and the Vengeance of History and bargaining between the major core and emergent powers and in relationship to key states in rimland and shatterbelt regions in the effort to transform those regions into “shelterbelts.”21 Despite its peaceful image, diplomacy and negotiation often involves forceful, if not violent, aspects of strategic leveraging, as each side attempts to assert its interests in the background so as to obtain a better bargaining position. Diplomacy may take place in idyllic settings such as Geneva, Oslo, Paris, or Doha, but the reality in the actual area of dispute is generally quite violent or else the threat to use violence lies in the background. At the same time, the major core and emergent powers may continue to engage in conventional and nuclear arms races (at the cost of huge debts) and proxy wars, plus acts of state- supported terrorism such as public beheadings transmitted by Internet, despite promises to work toward peace. Diplomacy evidently becomes more difficult in conditions of sociopolitical instability, due in part to changing leaderships. From this perspective, negotiating peace can be much more difficult from a domestic sociopolitical standpoint than waging war, as long-term peace may require deep compromise over “vital” security and political-economic interests. On the one hand, such compromises may be seen as too far-reaching and unacceptable; on the other, such compromises may also challenge fundamental beliefs and values, making peace even more difficult to achieve. In the contemporary situation, for example, it has often proved difficult for majoritarian, democratic- liberal countries to compromise their norms and values with differing forms of authoritarian and theocratic regimes or movements, whether these be Russia, China, Iran or a variety Islamist states and movements. The Arab GCC countries, for example, are monarchist, Muslim, and generally possess poor human and labor rights records, and they often support conflicting Islamist movements, making US and European alliances with these states difficult to rationalize. The problem is that it appears dubious that many states will suddenly transform into “democracies” (however defined) and support human rights overnight. Here, for example, the People’s Republic of China has generally appeared more acceptable as a US partner than was the Soviet Union, at least from the 1970s until 1989, if not after, due in part to the generally held, but dubious, belief that Chinese market-oriented economic reforms would eventually lead to democratic reforms, until the June 1989 crackdown on the student democracy movement. For its part, Ukraine, a fledgling “democracy,” has collapsed into civil war, with the eastern region of the country seeking a more decentralized or federal model of governance and the western region demanding greater centralization or a unitary system. In the process, Moscow opted to take advantage of Ukrainian bankruptcy and general anarchy by annexing Crimea. Moreover, the very depth of Ukrainian bankruptcy, coupled with the ongoing violent conflict, leads one to question whether any semblance of “democracy” can eventually emerge. Uneven Polycentrism and the Global Crisis l 97

But even if a number of states, including Ukraine, do eventually begin to “democratize,” it is not certain their foreign policies will necessarily coincide with those of the United States and Europe, much as was the case for the Philip- pines after the overthrow of the Marcos kleptocracy by the Aquino government, which then demanded the eviction of US military bases, or the Hamas victory in Palestinian legislative elections in 2006 over Fatah. Or what has been the case for a “federal” Iraq after US-led military intervention in 2003. For its part, Tunisia, for example, appears to have taken positive steps toward democracy in the aftermath of the so-called Arab Spring but has remained on poor terms with its former colonial master, France. Yet Egypt, after the secessionist crisis and the fall of kleptocratic Hosni Mubarak, rapidly fell back into authoritarianism under General el-Sisi after a brief period of rule under the democratically elected Muslim Brotherhood and appears to be turning to Russia for supports, in a pathetic effort to imitate Gamal Abdel Nasser. From this perspective, a more concerted approach toward the prevention of major- and regional-power conflict needs real consideration by US and Euro- pean leaders. This would mean deeper engagement with a number of nondemocratic regimes and could involve significant geostrategic and political-economic compromises and unilateral concessions. An alternative, no-compromise, no- concession approach may well result in an increased arms rivalry—coupled with a significant rise in global tensions and conflicts—without end in sight. From this perspective, it is better to start the process of ameliorating interstate disputes and conflicts between major and regional powers as soon as possible rather than wait until that magic, ever-expected moment when nondemocratic states will somehow opt to radically change their viewpoints and actions due to the reactivation of military and political-economic containment and thus accepting to agree with US and European perspectives and policies while beginning the long (and very uncertain) process of “democratization.” Despite the fact that states and sociopolitical movements often continue to assert their interests violently, even in the midst of negotiations, a peace- oriented strategy is nevertheless in the “enlightened” interest of the major core and emergent powers. Such a peace-oriented strategy is intended to ameliorate global tensions and prevent the real possibility of widening regional wars, if not a major-power war, by means of establishing of interlocking regional peace and development communities backed and financed by overlapping security accords of both major core and emergent powers.22 While the goal may appear “utopian,” the very process of seeking peace among the major core and emergent powers in a pragmatic step-by- step manner—involving deep compromise of perceived “vital” interests—could help reduce overall intrastate and global tensions so as to prevent an even greater catastrophe. (See Chapter 9.)

Chapter 6

A Cross-Historical Method

he key question posed in this book is whether or not the Russian annexation of Ukraine represents a new “turning point” in US-European- TRussian-Chinese-Japanese-Indian relations that could result in deeper friction and crisis? Or can the United States and Europe adopt a different position that could permit Russia to gradually reintegrate itself into a US-Eur opean alliance and political-economic network, thus reducing the real chances of a more intractable crisis? In an effort to answer these questions related to the relevance of historical analogy, Thucydides was one of the first to advance the thesis that the past could help provide a deeper understanding of the present and future. His great book, The Peloponnesian Wars, represented a systemic effort to “understand clearly the events which happened in the past and which (human nature being what it is) will, at some time or other and in much the same ways, be repeated in the future.”1 The question, of course, remains: Which events in the past can be related to the present or future and which events cannot? Can the wars between Athens, as an expanding insular democratic state, and Sparta, as an authoritarian land power, be compared and contrasted with Anglo-Fr ench, Anglo-German, US-Soviet, and US-Russian disputes involving conflict over control of key geostrategic sea or land positions and political-economic trade, energy resources, and productive capabilities, for example, not to overlook parallel disputes between democratic versus authoritarian values and ideology? (While Thucydides focused on bicentric rivalry, this analysis will take a look at polycentric constellations of power.) In the classical view, continental powers tended to be more militaristic and authoritarian, due to the need to directly defend their territories, resources, and productive capacities against enemies on their borders with standing armies, while insular states (or states without powerful enemies in proximity) tended to be less repressive and more “democratic,” as they relied primarily 100 l Crimea, Global Rivalry, and the Vengeance of History on naval power to defend their trade against more distant overseas threats. In this view, major-pow er wars have tended to result from land powers challenging sea powers for control and access to overseas markets, trade, raw materials, and geostrategic positions. International disputes over norms and values also tended to reflect and interact with those sea-land rivalries in that sea powers tended to be more open to debate and freedom of the individual, plus freedom of the seas, than military-dominated and generally protectionist land powers, at least in the cases of Venice, Holland, Great Britain, and the United States. In the modern period, philosopher Francis Bacon looked at the question of war from a systemic perspective. In addition to concerns with overpopulation, the quest of sustenance, as well as military weaknesses related to sociopolitical decadence, Bacon sketched, in 1627, a number of sociopolitical and geopolitical factors that have led to wars:

Upon the breaking and shivering of a great state and empire, you may be sure to have wars. For great empires, while they stand, do enervate and destroy the forces of the natives which they have subdued, resting upon their own protecting forces; and then when they fail also, all goes to ruin, and they become a prey. So was it in the decay of the Roman empire; and likewise in the empire of Almaigne (Holy Roman Empire), after Charles the Great, every bird taking a feather; and were not unlike to befall to Spain, if it should break. The great accessions and unions of kingdoms, do likewise stir up wars; for when a state grows to an over-power, it is like a great flood, that will be sure to overflow. As it hath been seen in the states of Rome, Turkey, Spain, and others.2

Bacon’s analysis appears applicable to contemporary circumstances in which the Soviet collapse (“the breaking and shivering of a great state and empire”) has thus far led to regional wars, primarily in the Black Sea, Caucasus, and southwest and central Asia, if not indirectly in the Balkans, and now venturing into eastern Ukraine. Bacon also observed “that great accessions and unions of kingdoms, do likewise stir up wars; for when a state grows to an over-pow er, it is like a great flood, that will be sure to overflow.” One can thus question whether NATO enlargement, coupled with the US efforts to tighten alliances in Asia, represents a modern form of “great accessions” and a “union of kingdoms” that is concurrently stirring up the possibility of war now that the United States and its allies appear to becoming a megalothymic “over-pow er . . . that will be sure to overflow.”3 In his own discussion of Francis Bacon’s philosophy, John Maynard Keynes recognized the importance of the analogical approach to the study of social sciences. According to Keynes, Bacon’s great achievement “lay in being the A Cross-Historical Method l 101 first logician to recognize the importance of methodical analogy to scientific argument and the dependence upon it of most well-established conclusions.”4 Keynes furthermore argued that scientific methodology must concern itself with what he termed “both positive and negative analogies, and the need to avoid false analogies.”5 For Keynes, the positive analogy represents those properties on which the source and target agree or conform; the negative analogy represents those properties on which they disagree or do not conform. In other words, both positive and negative features, the similarities and differences of the analogy must be weighed and considered, and false or unrelated analogies must be rejected, while hypothetical analogies can continue to raise questions. As Keynes points out, it was John Stuart Mill who advanced Bacon’s theory, if not that of Isaac Newton as well, by recognizing a plurality of possible causes, in effect recognizing the multidimensional and multicausal nature of sociopolitical phenomena that made the effort to compare and contrast more difficult but not impossible. At the same time, however, as pointed out by Keynes himself, the whole approach to analogy was criticized by David Hume, whose arguments predated contemporary “postmodern” skepticism. Hume had attacked the very concept of analogy with the argument that analogical inference from past particulars does not necessarily validate future generalizations. While not refuting Hume, Keynes then lent his support to Gottfried von Leibniz’s argument that the use of an analogy as a hypothesis “as more probable in proportion to its simplicity and its power, that is to say, to the number of the phenomena it would explain and the fewness of the assumptions it involved. In particular a power of accurate prediction and of explaining phenomena or experiments previously untried is a just ground of secure confidence. [My emphasis]”6 In other words, no historical analogy represents an absolutely perfect fit, as the character of states and their environment and circumstances are never absolutely alike, but some analogies lead to more accurate predictions or more probable scenarios than others. Even here, one must distinguish between proba- bilities that are necessary and categorical (or modal) and those that are probable to an undefined degree. And it should be underscored that there must always be a significant degree of skepticism in the use of any historical analogy, as even apparently minor differences between states and systems (plus unexpected events such as the Archduke’s assassination or the September 11, 2001, attacks) can result in very different consequences. The philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, in picking up from Newton’s ter- minology, asked how one can move from the gap of what is (or was) to what might be. In what appears fitting for the study of geopolitics, analogy for Wittgenstein is a traditional method of reasoning from the known to the unknown and from the visible to the speculative, by carrying familiar terms, paradigms, and images across space into unfamiliar territory.7 The two major 102 l Crimea, Global Rivalry, and the Vengeance of History questions for Wittgenstein are whether those familiar terms, paradigms, and images can really carry forth and still represent correct terms that help understand and accurately identify present and future “unknowns” and whether or not the analogy is correctly perceived and identified in the first place, given differing perceptions and interpretations in differing eras, for example. The philosophical issue raised here is that the categories chosen must “mean” somewhat similar things in differing historical and sociopolitical contexts. This viewpoint could lead us to believe that there is no “repetition” of events in history. But this appears to be an exaggeration of his argument. Even if war may be defined differently in differing historical contexts, differing “wars” can still be compared and contrasted in terms of the meaning of those conflicts for the actors involved, the differing causes or forces at the origins of those conflicts, the manner and process in which those conflicts took place, and the interpretations of how and why they “began” and then “ended” or adopted new forms. Wittgenstein anticipated arguments against “historicism”8 and “metanarra- tive,”9 in which single factor analysis, such as class struggle or economic cycles, are forcefully applied to a wide range of divergent social and political phenomena without recognition of significant differences and competing explications that are based on alternative—and often conflicting—factors and modes of analysis and investigation. In examining the causes of war, a plurality of possible (and often conflicting) causes and influences must be examined: geostrategic, political-economic, military-technological, socio-cultural-ideological, and demographic (issues involving biopower), as well as questions of leadership and the nature of foreign-policy decision making, among other possible criteria for analysis. This brings back the issues raised by Hume’s skepticism. Such skepticism is valid in that no analogy is clairvoyant enough to predict the future with absolute accuracy, particularly given multiple variables in which there is no clear priority as to which variable may prove more important or influential than the other. On the one hand, the analogy maybe misconceived in the first place. On the other, even if the analogy might appear accurate in structural terms, it may not result in similar consequences, due to interaction with other factors in systemic terms. This raises an additional issue: One needs to further distinguish between homology (comparable structures and genesis)10 and the more widely used term analogy (comparable functions and interrelationships), so as to better interrelate both structure and system. In this respect, the structure and genesis of differing states in differing historical eras can be compared and contrasted (defined as homology), while their systemic interrelationships within those eras can be compared and contrasted (defined as analogy). In essence, the compared actions of the leaderships of two or more countries in differing epochs not only need to roughly correspond to A Cross-Historical Method l 103 each other, for example, but also must be compared and contrasted in their larger systemic contexts as these countries interact with third actors in their respective times and historical eras. From this perspective, the international- relations theorist cannot base an analysis and prognosis on one factor alone, but he or she needs to develop a number of analytical categories that interact in their multicausal, multidimensional, and systemic context and that can, in turn, help compare and contrast the actions of states in differing epochs. In comparing the structure, function, and actions of two countries in homo- logical terms in differing systemic contexts, historical comparison becomes even more difficult to achieve, given both differing state structures and the vast range of possible foreign- and domestic-policy interactions. In this sense, well- structured analogical inferences are useful for limiting the range of possible actions in terms of “analogical probability,” although the unexpected is always possible! The structure and genesis of empires and the consequences of their collapse can consequently be compared and contrasted with their functions in the systemic interrelationships of their respective eras, even if those empires do not necessarily possess common socio-cultural-political characteristics and may not ascribe similar meanings to what appear to be somewhat similar phenom- enon. The dilemma raised here is that even sociopolitical entities with apparently common characteristics may not behave similarly in differing systemic contexts involving differing geostrategic rivalries and political-economic phases that impact domestic sociopolitical behavior and vice versa. At the same time, a systemic and methodical approach to the historical analogy involving the careful development of analogical inferences can nevertheless help point the way toward consideration of a number of future scenarios and policy options but always with a recognition of significant point-by- point differences between now and then and that those systemic differences can nevertheless lead to a future that differs from that expected by the historical analogy.

Historical Analogies in a Structural and Systemic Context Differing systems of governance, even if they have taken very different forms in the premodern and in the modern periods, can be identified in their global or systemic contexts and then compared and contrasted in terms of their often conflicting geostrategic, political-economic, military-technological, socioeconomic, and cultural-ideological characteristics as well as by the character of their leaderships and decision-making processes. The dilemma for the comparative-historical approach is to identify and cat- egorize the most salient characteristics of differing states (homology) and then to compare and contrast those characteristics in differing historical epochs (analogy). The next methodological problem is to outline the systemic context in 104 l Crimea, Global Rivalry, and the Vengeance of History which a specific historical event or action took place, for example, by pointing out key “turning points” in history and then attempt compare and contrast those turning points with the global situation in the present. To accomplish this, one needs to show the correspondent or homologous behavior between two states in their respective analogous systemic contexts and at key turning points in history. The primary focus of this book is accordingly to compare and contrast the Soviet collapse at the end of the Cold War (in which the Soviet Union, as the central strategic challenger to the United States in Eurasia, became an essentially landlocked continental state) with the imperial German collapse at the end of World War I (in which imperial Germany, as the central strategic challenger to Great Britain in Central Europe, likewise became an essentially landlocked continental state). There appears to be a strong correlation of consequences between imperial German and Soviet disaggregation as major historical turning points, even if both empires evolved quite differently (monarchy versus Communist Party oligarchy) and collapsed due to multiple causes in very different historical circumstances (military defeat in World War I versus political-economic collapse in the Cold War). Nevertheless, the analogy to the defeat and collapse of imperial Germany can lead the international-relations theorist to predict that there is a high degree of probability that Soviet collapse could lead to some form of backlash in a somewhat similar way as imperial Germany’s collapse led to the rise of National Socialist revanchism. This argument, however, is, at least on the surface, problematic due to the fact that imperial-state defeat does not always result in revanchism. Prus- sia’s victory over Austria in 1866, for example, did not result in a strong Austrian revanchist movement, even though a revanchist-policy option was given some support by Foreign Minister Friedrich Ferdinand von Beust. But instead of seeking revanche against Prussia by aligning with France or Britain, for example, Vienna eventually aligned closely with the newly unified Germany, primarily because it did not possess the power capabilities to counter the newly unified Germany, even if it also shared cultural and linguistic affinities. By contrast, Bismarck’s defeat of France and the annexation of Alsace- Lorraine in 1871 did result in a strong French revanchist movement that sought to counter Prussian/German hegemony in Europe and overseas where possible. This was done in the hope that Berlin would exchange Alsace-Lorraine for an overseas French territory by peaceful means if possible—but with the threat of war always in the background. The question raised here is whether one can predict that the Russian annexation of Crimea and its interference in eastern Ukraine necessarily represent a step toward greater interstate militarization as A Cross-Historical Method l 105 both the pre–World War I reference to France in 1871 and the pre–World War II analogy to Nazi Germany infer. One can also compare and contrast Soviet efforts to expand after tsarist Rus- sian disaggregation in 1917 with Putin’s Russia today in terms of his intervention in Crimea and eastern Ukraine (see Chapter 2); the difference is primarily the systemic context. Here, the fact that the Soviet Union represented a powerful, central strategic challenger to the United States in Eurasia, much like imperial Germany in relationship to Great Britain in central Europe, gives greater credence to the argument that a potentially powerful Russia, even after the Soviet collapse, might continue to support pan-nationalist Russophone movements to rebuild its empire as the pre–World War II analogy implies. At the same time, domestic factors, such as political-economic weaknesses and sociocultural forces, also come into play in impacting the nature of Russian foreign and domestic policy, as do other external and systemic factors, such as the relations between the United States, Europe, and China with contemporary Russia. Some have consequently argued that Moscow could begin to overextend itself and once again disaggregate. Here, the question remains whether it will collapse relatively peacefully as did the Soviet Union in 1991 or violently as did tsarist Russia in 1917, ultimately resulting in the formation of a totalitarian leviathan? Or will it be able hold itself together? If so, how? By social and domestic reforms or by militarization? The answer to these questions, not only requires a close analysis of Russian interests and of its foreign-policy decision-making process in its systemic relationship with the policies of both major and regional actors, but also requires a close analysis with respect to socio-psychological factors. In identifying the significant differences between countries and their respective eras, a systemic- structural methodology also needs to take into account the specific nature of the history, leadership, and norms and values of the countries examined. In the case of Russia, as contrasted with imperial and Nazi Germany, it is crucial to point out that the specific nature of Russian history, leadership, and norms and values must also be taken into account in any analysis. One cannot focus on structural considerations alone. Given their own historical rivalries, Russian elites have not thought or necessarily acted like Prussian or German elites. Thus Moscow may be inclined to act quite differently than the analogy to either Weimar or Nazi Germany might imply, while the United States and Europe may also respond to Russian actions quite differently. Another major factor to consider is the often-shifting nature of Russian foreign policy and alliances. Historically, while Russia has opposed the encroachment of foreign militaries into eastern Europe, Russia has also shifted alliances quite unexpectedly, so that surprises can take place. (See Chapter 2.) 106 l Crimea, Global Rivalry, and the Vengeance of History

And finally, the Soviet Union had collapsed in a whimper and not a bang, in part because no one believed in the Communist system. But while the contemporary Russian Federation could still break up in the near future, it is dubious that Russia will go down quietly, as did Gorbachev, precisely due to the mask of nationalism and Orthodox religion that serves to hold its social bonds together and that President Putin has sought to reconstruct to build domestic ideological support against both domestic and international rivals.11 (See Chapter 4.)

Comparison of Consequences of Imperial Collapse In seeking to systematically compare and contrast key similarities and differences between present and past eras, with a focus on key turning points in history, this book argues that Homo geopoliticus is not so gradually being drawn into a new form of “twenty years’ crisis” which nevertheless mixes key characteristics and elements of previous global political-economic crises and major-power wars.12 Here, Alexis de Tocqueville’s well known statement, “the most critical moment for bad governments is the one which witnesses their first steps toward reform,” offers a domestic political-economic explanation for global conflict but in the sense that the failure of “bad governments” to reform not only impacts their domestic-social relations, possibly resulting in revanchist movements, but also impacts their international geostrategic alliances. Tocqueville’s views, of course, apply to the French ancien régime whose failed efforts to reform (in part by balancing the budget) ironically worked to bring about the French Revolution in 1789 after France, as the central strategic- economic challenger to insular-hegemonic core Great Britain, had supported the American Revolution against Great Britain in revanche for its defeat in the 1756–63 Seven Years’ War in which Paris lost most of its colonial possessions to Britain. The high costs of French support for the American Revolution, combined with the grotesque mismanagement of the budget and system of taxation, effectively bankrupted France by 1789 and set the stage for the French Revolution in 1789, followed by the French Revolutionary/Napoleonic Wars by 1792–1815, in which the Brissotin faction sought revanche against Austria and the French pro-monarchist émigrés. In this systemic context, there were 29 years between the French imperial collapse and the outbreak of global conflict. The French humiliation of Prussia in 1806 at Jena and Auerstedt during the Napoleonic Wars then helped lead to long-term Prussian/German revanche in the quest to unify Germany against France and other possible rivals. Ironically, Prussia permitted liberal, but not truly “democratic,” social and political reforms that assisted its military buildup prior to the forced unification of Germany that culminated in the annexation A Cross-Historical Method l 107 of Alsace-Lorraine and that, in many ways, represented the keystone that held together the Second Reich. Yet it was the French defeat after Louis Napoleon opted to initiate the 1870– 71 Franco-Prussian War (provoked, at least in part, by Bismarck) that led to the German annexation of Alsace-Lorraine, which was initially intended as a means to check French power potential and its ability to attack Germany in the future. The annexation of Alsace-Lorraine then led to French patriotic-nationalist calls for revanche and a quest for an alliance with Russia or any state that could put pressure on Germany in an effort to force Berlin to give up Alsace-Lorraine, perhaps by means of an exchange for a French colony. In this case, Tocqueville’s critique does not apply to France but to the incom- plete liberal-democratic reforms of imperial Germany during the period 1890– 94 under Chancellor Leo von Caprivi. After the firm rule of Chancellor Otto von Bismarck, Chancellor Leo von Caprivi hoped that his domestic market- oriented reforms, the legalization of the Social Democratic party, and his international reforms in the period 1890–94 would help coopt the growing Socialist movement, while he likewise worked to achieve an alliance with Great Britain. Instead, Caprivi’s efforts to forge an entente with liberal-democratic Great Brit- ain failed miserably, despite his decision to drop the Reinsurance Treaty with Britain’s authoritarian rival, tsarist Russia. (Germany’s rise to global-pow er status took place in a systemic context in which the French Empire expanded overseas while Britain, France, and the United States all attempted to check German colonial efforts to achieve a “place in the sun” where possible.) The failure to achieve an alliance with Great Britain then represented a major factor in militarizing the German elite, particularly once France and Rus- sia aligned by 1892–94. London’s threats to align with either Russia or France in effect fulfilled Bismarck’s predictions of “encirclement,” particularly after London eventually tightened its defense ties with both France and Russia in the period 1908–14, after forging the Triple Entente in 1907. At the same time, the Socialist movement became stronger, in response to a lack of democratic reforms, even if it was eventually coopted into the war effort in 1914 by the Prussian monarchist elites, who propagandized that the war would be fought against tsarist Russia and not France. In threatening both France and Russia, Berlin also hoped that Great Britain and the US doughboys would not enter the fray. Tocqueville’s views also apply to Russian efforts to reform after its defeat in the Crimean War when St. Petersburg realized that it had to improve its military capabilities and infrastructure, such as railways, over time. The decision to free the serfs was seen as a way to introduce a market-oriented economy, but that action also caused tremendous social dislocation and ultimately provided the pawns for Lenin’s revolution in which the Bolsheviks proved more 108 l Crimea, Global Rivalry, and the Vengeance of History ruthless than the Social Democratic or Menshevik factions. Russian humiliation in 1908 over the Austrian annexation of Bosnia-Herzegovina also caused a Russian backlash, helping tighten Russian defense ties with France and Great Britain. Imperial German defeat involving continental and overseas collapse in 1918 (and the humiliating nature of the Versailles Treaty) then led to the formation of the Weimar Republic whose reform efforts were stymied by hyperinflation and the growth of the Communist Party and the right-wing reaction, which led to the “politics of the diagonal,” in which the government increasingly took a militarist stance, ultimately drawing Hitler into the government “democratically.” This led to Nationalist Socialist revolution in Germany by 1933 and then war in Europe by 1939—a shorter period of 21 years between imperial collapse and global conflict. Allied victory against Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy in 1945 led to Ger- man and Italian integration into a larger Europe, guaranteed by the United States and NATO, but to the exclusion of the Soviet Union, which the United States and its allies sought to “contain” until the end of the Cold War. In this instance, Tocqueville’s observation also applies to the Soviet Union under Mikhail Gorbachev. Gorbachev’s reforms of glasnost, perestroika, and the New Union Treaty from 1985 to 1991, including his efforts to achieve an entente or alliance with the United States and Europe, resulted in an attempted coup d’etat in 1991. Although a pro-Soviet leadership did not seize power, the Russian revanchist backlash gained strength and has grown in force under President Putin’s rise to power in 1999, as explained in previous chapters. The annexation of Crimea by Moscow in March 2014 has now raised fears of an even deeper crisis. Moscow increasingly appears to be moving from a postimpe- rial state to a new form of imperialist state in the aftermath of its preclusive or anticipatory expansion involving the annexation of Crimea.13

Soviet Collapse: Another “Turning Point” toward Major-Power War? A number of questions remain: To what extent will Moscow attempt to assert its interests outside the Russian Federation either unilaterally or in support of differing Russian allies in potential conflict with its neighbors? To what extent can it be brought into a closer relationship with the United States and Europe? But what price might this accommodation entail? In more theoretical terms, how different is the present global system from previous eras in the aftermath of the Soviet collapse, leading to an apparent “turning point” involving the Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014? Will this latter turning point possess the same weight and significance and impact on NATO and the European Union as Tsar Nicolas’ seizure of Moldova and Wallachia had on Turkey, France, and Britain A Cross-Historical Method l 109 before the Crimean War? Or as the Prussian annexation of Alsace-Lorraine had on France, and later on Great Britain in alliance with France, against imperial Germany? Or as the Austrian annexation of Bosnia-Herzegovina had on tsarist Russia? Or as the Nazi annexation of the Sudetenland had on France and Britain in the interwar period? Or is it of lesser relative geostrategic, political- economic, and social-cultural importance, so that it would not represent a factor that could spark a major-power conflict?

A Comparative Historical Methodology The basic methodological concept proposed in this book is to compare and contrast significant structural and systemic similarities and differences between differing major and regional powers across eras. Here, the cross-historical comparison is made on the basis of horizontal geostrategic positioning in which states engage in games of strategic leveraging and of alliance encirclement and counterencirclement (involving flanking and “rear powers” as well as states that attempt to stay neutral) against their rivals. As implied in the previous discussion of Tocqueville, it is possible to synthesize two differing approaches to international-relations theory: the classical geostrategic approach of insular, continental, and amphibious states and the political-economic of core, semiperipheral, and peripheral states.14 In this respect, the global crisis today is not merely a consequence of the breakdown of the Cold War world order established at Yalta. It is also a deeper crisis involving the gradual breakdown of the Eurocentric territorial state system that had been initiated in the gradual splintering of the Habsburg Empire after Charles V abdicated and partitioned the empire between Spain (under Philip II) and Austria and the Holy Roman Empire (under Ferdinand), even if the two empires would remain allies until the eighteenth century.15 The land-sea schism began to be formalized with the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648 at the end of the horrific Thirty Years’ War. The so-called Westphalian system not only permitted the establishment of a rough, and not always effective, system of checks and balances on European powers but also opened up a land-sea schism with the independence of Holland in the aftermath of the overseas expansion of Spain and Portugal since the late 1400s. The 1713 Treaty of Utrecht then established the principle, but not necessarily the practice, of the “balance of power” as games of encirclement and counterencirclement continued in Europe and abroad, even after Bourbon France broke out of the Haps- burg encirclement of Spain and the Holy Roman Empire. This international system not only involved various degrees of concerted action through the evolving Concert of Europe but also created political- economic tensions as the European states spread their interests and influence 110 l Crimea, Global Rivalry, and the Vengeance of History globally, given the evolving geostrategic and political-economic divisions between essentially insular sea-based trading powers (Holland, Great Britain, and the United States) and continental powers seeking blue-water naval capabilities (France, Germany, and the Soviet Union/Russia). These rivalries were coupled with periodic breakdowns into regional European and global conflicts, which really have no precise political-economic cycles to the exact timing of their occurrence, even if they generally follow patterns of wars of initial challenge followed by a war of retaliation or wars of revanche. Insular states are those that possess overseas, blue-water navies and that have limited threats (in terms of land armies) on their borders. Quasi-insular states likewise possess a blue-water capability but may also need to defend against more significant threats to their borders. Rimland continental states possess coastal defense only but may possess significant land armies. Core states are those countries with significant industrial capacity (including agro-industry) and finance. Semiperipheral states possess more limited industrial capabilities but may possess significant finance, depending on the demand and value of their resources. Oasis states may possess significant financial resources but limited industry. Peripheral states (except for “oasis” states) possess very limited finance, industry, and resources. Global geostrategic outreach and political- economic development are interconnected in that the process of developing a blue-water navy to protect sea lines of communication and trade routes generally means moving from semiperipheral to core status.16 The interests of the major insular or quasi-insular core powers (the hegemonic United States, Europe, and Japan), as well as those of the emergent powers (China, Russia, and India), also tend to clash with the rise of a number of semiperipheral or peripheral, rimland, shatterbelt, and “oasis” states. The rimland states are technically those that surround the Eurasian heartland and lie in between that heartland (Russia) and the off-shore insular states of Japan and the United States. In this definition (as geopolitical-economic geography changes from epoch to epoch in differing power constellations), these states surround Russia and include Afghanistan and central Asia, China, Turkey and Asia Minor, India and Pakistan, southeast Asia, the two Koreas, and Mongolia, as well as the Russian Far East (which Moscow fears might separate from the Russian Federation). Rimland or quasi-insular/continental states also include the European countries, both east and west. Here, the United Kingdom now represents a quasi- insular state linked to Europe; it is no longer the hegemonic insular-core state it was during the early twentieth century after losing its empire after World War II. By contrast, China represents a semiperipheral, rimland-continental state that is seeking core and amphibious blue-water status in the aftermath of its period of civil war and revolution in the 1920s and 1930s. At the same A Cross-Historical Method l 111 time, one of the reasons for demands for Chinese core and overseas expansion is precisely the fear of regional fissiparous tendencies away from the centralized Chinese state. Ironically, even though China takes the place of tsarist Russia in geostrategic terms, tsarist Russia was dependent on French and British core finance; today, by contrast, it is the core United States and the core Europe in general, as well as the Russian Federation, which are all looking for Chinese sovereign funds! As distinct from rimland states that surround major and regional powers, such as the lesser powers around China, shatterbelts represent highly unstable regions, generally consisting of peripheral or semiperipheral states, where the geostrategic and political-economic interests of the major and regional powers converge and often clash with each other or with those of the states of the shatterbelt themselves. Before World War I, the “shatterbelt” region, “crush zone,” or “no man’s land” was primarily the Balkans and North Africa, due to the collapsing Ottoman Empire, pressured by Austria-Hungary, Russia, Brit- ain, France, and Italy. The shatterbelt of the pre–World War II period was the ring of eastern European states from Finland to the Balkans between Weimar Germany and the Soviet Union, not to overlook the civil war in Spain. The Cold War shatterbelt was primarily in the Middle East, then dominated by the strategic triangle of Israel, Saudi Arabia, and Iran. In the post–Cold War period, the Soviet collapse at least initially opened up a much larger shatterbelt from central and eastern Europe to the Balkans. This post–Cold War shatterbelt has also extended to include the “wider Middle East” from North Africa and the Sahel to central Asia, plus the Black Sea region and the Caucasus. Today, shatterbelt states include Egypt, Israel, Syria, Iraq, North Africa and the Sahel, Iran, and Saudi Arabia and the other Arab Gulf countries after the Ottoman breakup. This initial shatterbelt region was impacted by the seem- ingly contradictory Sykes-Picot Agreement and the Balfour Declaration after World War I. Yet the Arab Gulf region and Iran are increasingly linked with south and central Asia and the south and north Caucasus, and to North Africa and the Sahel largely due to both political and economic interests and Muslim cultural ties, in the so-called wider Middle East. Here, central Asia has continued to be impacted by the late nineteenth-century Durand line that divides Afghanistan and Pakistan. A number of eastern European states, such as those in the Balkans region after the 1990–95 Yugoslav War and those in the rimland Caucasus, also form their own shatterbelts. Once a stable rimland state, Ukraine could become either a divided shatterbelt state as a regional “focal point” of attention between rival interests or else a neutral “buffer zone” that seeks to mediate between conflicting interests. The former Yugoslavia, during the Cold War, represented a buffer zone, as did Afghanistan before the Soviet invasion (egged on by the 112 l Crimea, Global Rivalry, and the Vengeance of History

Carter administration) in 1979. Shatterbelt states can be aligned by force and conquest, or they can further splinter, as has been the case for Iraq or Syria in the period 2010–14. More positively, shatterbelt states can become “shelterbelt” states if they are unified or confederated in some way that reduces the chances that they will once again become a focal point of potential rivalry between major and regional powers.17 While formerly semiperipheral China has ironically become a source of finance, which appears to contradict the general views of dependency theorists, some shatterbelt regions also include financial enclaves or oasis states. These include the energy-rich Arab Gulf countries, plus financial enclaves, such as Singapore and Brunei, and off-shore financial havens, such as the Bahamas, Bermuda, Cayman Islands, the Netherlands Antilles, and Panama. The wealth of the richest oasis state in the world, Qatar, in terms of per capita income, for example, is based high international demand for natural gas. Doha buys its brain- and manpower from abroad, while also investing abroad. Yet its Achilles heel is its water supply, plus its lack of an adequate national defense against its much larger neighbors, Saudi Arabia and Iran, except for its secret defense ties with the United States. But not all shatterbelt states can attract finance: Central American and Caribbean basin states also lie in a nonunified shatterbelt beneath North America. North and Central Africa largely form two differing, yet interlinked, shatterbelts, while the Republic of South Africa represents a quasi-insular, semiperipheral rimland state, as does Brazil in South America.

The Contemporary Power Constellation as a Hybrid of the Past In brief, the present global system represents a hybrid of the pre–World War I and pre–World War II periods in terms of the nature of geostrategic interrelationships, or constellations of interstate relationships, as formed by the major powers in interaction with regional and lesser actors. On the one hand, the predominant hegemonic-core United States plays a role that is much closer to that played by Great Britain as the hegemonic-core power in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries than it does to the role played by a more withdrawn Great Britain in the pre–World War II period. On the other, the collapse of the Soviet Empire can be compared and contrasted with the collapse of imperial Germany (as well as with tsarist Russia), so that the Russian Federation is primarily seen as a hybrid of a rising Weimar Germany and Leninist Russia, although comparisons and contrasts can also be made with other epochs. The contemporary European Union as a whole (but with its often politically and economically divided Franco-German core) is linked to the United States through NATO and plays a role in flanking the Eurasian central A Cross-Historical Method l 113 strategic challenger, the Russian Federation, to the west much as France flanked the central European strategic challengers, imperial and Weimar Germany, to the west. Contemporary China and Japan now flank Russia to the east, much as tsarist Russia flanked both imperial and Weimar Germany to the east. Contemporary rimland India plays a role as a “land bridge” in relationship to the Indian Ocean and central Asia comparable to Italy in the Mediterranean and south-central Europe. In pre–World War I and World War II periods, Italy had represented a pivotal quasi-insular “land-bridge” in relation to the Mediterranean that could choose an alliance between imperial Germany (with which it was officially aligned in the Triple Alliance) or else with Britain and France.

The Comparative-Historical Map in Greater Detail During the Cold War, the insular-core United States essentially took over the global imperial role of Britain since the Napoleonic Wars, after Washington’s reluctant intervention in World War I and following the Spanish-American War, and the seizure of the Philippines and then Panama, plus the US Open Door policy in China. More like nineteenth-century and not early twentieth- century Great Britain, the United States has continued to expand its global hegemony today through its intervention in Iraq in 2003, which parallels to a large degree the British intervention in Egypt in 1882. While late nineteenth-century Great Britain had hoped to control global trade and markets from the Cape of South Africa through the Suez Canal and into the Asia-Pacific, the United States has hoped to secure the supply of energy from the Arab Persian Gulf to the rest of the world. Much as the British naval and military presence remained in Egypt and the Suez Canal from 1882 to 1956 in an effort to control sea lines of communication from Gibraltar to Hong Kong and from Cairo to the Cape, the US naval and military presence has remained in the Arab Persian Gulf and is presently planning expansion in the Indo-Pacific in accord with the rebalancing to Asia, likewise linking the Atlantic and Pacific through the Panama Canal. The historical parallel between the British intervention in Egypt and the US intervention in Iraq is very interesting. British intervention in Egypt initially split the Anglo-French Entente Cordiale from 1882 to 1904, as France refused to engage military force to assist the British takeover of Egypt and the Suez in 1882. British imperialism continued to generate tensions between Great Brit- ain, France, and Russia, as well as with Germany. In fact, British expansion in Africa almost led to war between democratic France and Britain in 1898 over the Sudan, before the two sides could reach a compromise over their key geopolitical disputes in the process of forging the Anglo-Fr ench entente in 1903–4, 114 l Crimea, Global Rivalry, and the Vengeance of History with Britain then backing French confrontation with Germany over Alsace- Lorraine. In this perspective, the expanding NATO alliance can best be compared to the 1904 Anglo-French Entente Cordiale. Somewhat similarly, the US intervention in Iraq in 2003 initially helped split the NATO alliance, as both the core European countries of France and Germany opposed unilateral American action in Iraq. And as proved the case for Great Britain in Egypt, which repeatedly promised to withdraw its military forces, the United States appears to have been drawn into Iraqi quick- sand for the very long term, given its military intervention (along with Socialist France) against Islamic State in 2014.18 Officially, Washington has accused Rus- sia of acting much like a nineteenth-century power in annexing Ukraine in the twenty-first century; yet Washington can also be accused of acting like a nineteenth-century power with respect to its essentially unilateral intervention in Iraq. At the same time, however, the twenty-first-century constellation of powers differs significantly from that of the nineteenth century, given the fact that the major European powers were somewhat more equally balanced in terms of power capabilities, even though Great Britain possessed the greatest predominance overseas, in part through its control of the Suez Canal and Egypt, angering both France and imperial Germany. While London tried to play the role of “holder of the balance” on the European continent, its insular-core predominance was nevertheless challenged by several major powers throughout the late nineteenth century: by France overseas, by tsarist Russia on the Eurasian continent after the Crimean War, and by amphibious-core Germany in the period 1900–1914. Given its fears of a possible Franco-Russian-German alliance against it in the period 1894–1902, Great Britain finally decided to forge ententes with France and Russia against imperial Germany in the period 1902–14. By contrast, the United States has not been concerned with the rise of Europe as a potential military threat (even though it has sought to keep Germany “contained”) but has been primarily concerned with Soviet expansion and secondarily with China during most of the Cold War. After the Soviet collapse, the United States has found itself confronted with a range of potential state and antistate challengers, including not only Russia and China but also states, such as Iran and North Korea, and antistate actors such as Al-Qaeda. For its part, the Soviet Union during the Cold War had represented a central Eurasian land power seeking overseas naval, air, and outer space power that was most comparable to imperial Germany as a continental power seeking blue-water status plus a strong continental army. Before World War I, imperial Germany had represented the amphibious core challenger in central Europe in search of a blue-water capacity to British hegemony, while Nazi Germany, rising A Cross-Historical Method l 115 from imperial German disaggregation and the socioeconomic instability of the Weimar Republic in the aftermath of World War I, represented the essentially landlocked central European challenger to an overextended British hegemony in the pre–World War II epoch. But while imperial Germany represented a core geostrategic and political- economic challenger to Britain and France in Europe by the turn of the twentieth century, Moscow largely represented a semiperipheral political-economic challenger to US predominance in the Cold War, in that it possessed a much weaker economy than Europe (as a whole) or Japan. US containment policy was, at least in part, designed to check Soviet economic growth by limiting trade and financial investment. Soviet financial, political, social, and ideological bankruptcy helps explain why the Soviet Union collapsed in a whimper and not a bang, unlike imperial Germany, which engaged in a two-front war in the belief that it could somehow stave off its relative decline in global status by eliminating its major rivals, France and Russia. By contrast, Russia (after the Soviet collapse) has represented the essentially landlocked central challenger to US predominance in the post–Cold War epoch, particularly since the rise to power of Vladimir Putin after its “Weimar stage” under Boris Yeltsin. In structural terms, the new Russian Federation, following the largely unexpected collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, represents a hybrid between early twentieth-century Leninist Russia and Weimar Germany (at least in the geopolitical sense of a collapsed empire), but in a global situation in which the new Russian Federation nevertheless remains the central geostrategic and essentially landlocked challenger on the Eurasian continent to both the hegemonic United States and the core European countries, as well as to Japan (and possibly China), despite the Soviet collapse. An expanding contemporary European Union (with its Franco-German core thus far linked to a more independent United Kingdom) can be compared and contrasted with France of the nineteenth and early twentieth century as a quasi- insular, continental state that flanked the Soviet Union and now the Russian Federation. During the Cold War, Germany/Europe sought to unify Germany, much like France had hoped to regain Alsace-Lorraine in the period between the Franco-Prussian War and World War I. Moreover, after World War I, France sought to sustain its control over Germany in Alsace-Lorraine and the Saar- land (before Hitler dared to remilitarize the Rhineland in March 1936) while also seeking to forge alliances with the Little Entente powers of Yugoslavia, Romania, and Czechoslovakia in the interwar period, initially as a means to counterbalance Hungary and Nazi German power and influence as well as that of Moscow. At that time, imperial German and tsarist Russian collapse accordingly opened a “power vacuum” or “strategic void” that could be filled by France (as 116 l Crimea, Global Rivalry, and the Vengeance of History attempted in its backing for the Little Entente powers and in its failed effort to forge a 1933–34 “eastern Locarno,” plus efforts to align with Poland) or else by Nazi Germany and/or the Soviet Union in alliance or through direct occupation. With the failure of the eastern Locarno, France aligned with the Soviet Union in 1935, but then Hitler forged his secret Molotov-Ribbentrop “nonaggression” Pact with Stalin in 1939, which nevertheless ended in aggression. (See further discussion and Chapter 9.) In the immediate aftermath of World War II, the eastern European shatterbelt or “strategic vacuum” was largely filled by Stalin’s Soviet Union and by Tito’s Yugoslavia, plus the US expansion of Marshall aid and then of NATO to Greece and Turkey. At this time, Stalin made a number of territorial shifts that continue to cause political-military tensions today, such as giving German territory to Poland and Polish territory to Belarus and Ukraine, for example. Although he did not venture into Norway as he could have, Stalin retook the province of Petsamo in 1944, which had been granted to Finland under the 1921 Treaty of Tartu and later accords. Finnish irredentists have consequently claimed eastern Karelia, in addition to Petsamo, which would link Finland and the European Union to the Arctic region. And much like Austria-Hungary in relationship to imperial Germany in geostrategic terms, the Warsaw Pact had represented a key buffer state for the Soviet Union in the Cold War. The breakup of the Warsaw Pact in the post– Cold War period has opened up a shatterbelt region that initially created a “strategic vacuum” that in many ways represents a wider shatterbelt region than that of either the pre–World War II or pre–World War II periods and that can also be compared and contrasted to the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. In effect, the collapse of the Warsaw Pact and the Soviet Union initially opened up a much larger shatterbelt from Finland to the Balkans, the Black Sea region, and the Caucasus. As the Soviet Union began to break up, West Germany was in the forefront, seeking the disaggregation of the Soviet Union in 1991, in a policy that was to a certain extent against French and American interests. At the same time, German aid and investments, plus G7 assistance to the ex-Soviet Union, could be seen as a modern version of the Dawes Plan, intended to buy the peace between Germany and Russia and to reform ex- Communist economies, even as Bonn/Berlin had been in the forefront of the states encouraging both Yugoslav and Soviet secessionism. As time progressed, the “power vacuum” or “strategic void” established after the Soviet collapse has, at least in part, been “filled” after NATO and EU enlargement up to the Russian borders instead of establishing a “middle tier” of independent states between Europe and Russia, as proposed by Halford Mack- inder at the turn of the century that would involve a new system of cooperative- collective security. (See General Introduction and Chapter 9.) NATO and EU A Cross-Historical Method l 117 enlargement deep into eastern Europe has subsequently led the Black Sea region and the Caucasus in particular to be contested with Russia in which the Euro- pean Union, backed by NATO, has sought to draw former Soviet-bloc states into a new EU Association Accord.19 In addition to fears that Ukraine might join NATO, the 2008–9 EU East- ern Partnership had raised Russian concerns that the European Union might shift trade and other political-economic advantages over eastern Europe and the Black Sea region away from Russia. In essence, the largely uncoordinated NATO-EU “double enlargement” to eastern Europe—particularly in backing what the Russians call a “Baltic–Black Sea Alliance” (made up of the three Baltic states, Poland, Ukraine, Moldova, Azerbaijan, and Geor- gia) and the EU Eastern Partnership with promises to bring Georgia and Ukraine into NATO—were seen by Moscow as a means to undermine its own spheres of influence and security. In sum, by 2008–9, the rough equilibrium between the United States, Europe, and Russia began to be destabilized by NATO, once the latter promised Ukraine and Georgia the possibility of membership in NATO, and by the European Union, which engaged in the Eastern Partnership with ex-Soviet bloc countries including Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova, and Ukraine while Russia sought to draw Ukraine into the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) and Eurasian Union. Moscow has also feared that NATO and the European Union could either back German, Polish, or Lithuanian irredentist claims to Kaliningrad (or back its autonomy). In the contemporary context, Kaliningrad, as a noncontiguous territory separated from the Russian Federation, takes the place of East Prussia, which was separated by the artificial Polish corridor from Weimar Germany. Moscow has used Kaliningrad to pressure the rest of Europe by threatening to deploy nuclear-capable tactical missiles in the region, while likewise attempting to prevent the enclave from seceding. By using Kaliningrad as a form of strategic leveraging, Moscow has sought to preclude the United States from expanding the NATO alliance to Georgia and Ukraine, if not also to Sweden and Finland, particularly once the United States began to extend NATO membership past the Baltic states, which represented a “red line” according to Boris Yeltsin, even before Putin arrived in power. Moscow has likewise feared, as a possible contingency, that NATO and/or the European Union could ultimately back Finnish claims to eastern Karelia or Petsamo, which would give Finland an opening to Arctic resources. Russia is likewise seeking to exploit Arctic resources and trade routes in potential rivalry with NATO members, Canada, Denmark, Norway, and the United States. In addition to seeking to check NATO and EU enlargement, Russia has been attempting to use its political-economic leverage to press much of the former 118 l Crimea, Global Rivalry, and the Vengeance of History

Soviet empire together in the formation of a larger Eurasian Union (expected by 2015) that is modeled on the European Union and that is to include Belarus, Kazakhstan, Armenia, and possibly, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan. In addition, Russia has discussed a special union with Belarus, despite disputes over energy subsidies for Belarus. The proposals for a Russian-Belarusian union can be compared with the then illegal (according to the Versailles Treaty) Weimar German efforts to establish closer ties with Austria but not (yet) going as far as Nazi Germany did in forcing Anschluss on Austria. Here, it should be noted that the Weimar Republic had attempted to use its political-economic leverage and industrial capabilities in an effort to patch together its former continental political and economic influence in Austria and central Europe, the Baltic states, and in the Balkans, prior to the rise of Hitler. From this perspective, after the Soviet breakup, contemporary Ukraine represents the key pivotal state in eastern Europe, as it remains caught between the NATO-EU-German-Polish-Turkish pincers and Russia. Ukraine thus plays a role comparable to interwar Poland, after the breakup of the imperial Ger- man, Russian, and Austro-Hungarian empires following World War I. At that time, Poland represented the key pivotal state between Weimar Germany and the Soviet Union (after Poland and the Soviet Union had partitioned interwar Ukraine). In the interwar Polish case, Warsaw could align with Germany or Russia or else with France and Britain; the possibility that it could shift sides was one of the factors that led to its violent partition by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union in 1939 (in a grotesque reappearance of the eighteenth-century partitions of Poland). The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact sought to partition the country in a (failed) preclusive measure that was intended to prevent an Anglo-French alliance with Poland, at least until Hitler turned against Stalin in 1941. And much as Poland was eventually partitioned by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union in the interwar era, Ukraine could eventually splinter or possibly (but not necessarily) be partitioned again after Crimea was annexed by Russia in 2014. What is very interesting in this analogy is the wording of the 1939 Molotov- Ribbentrop Pact itself, which actually stated in the secret additional protocol, Article II, that “the question of whether the interests of both parties make desirable the maintenance of an independent Polish state and how such a state should be bounded can only be definitely determined in the course of further political developments. In any event both Governments will resolve this question by means of a friendly agreement.”20 The fact of the matter is that the two sides were not able to reach a “friendly agreement” over Poland, the major focal point of friction that led to war between the two powers. But the concern raised here is that if we substitute Ukraine for Poland, and NATO and Polish-German A Cross-Historical Method l 119 influence in Ukraine today for Nazi German influence in Poland then, plus Russian influence in eastern Ukraine for Soviet influence in Poland at that time, then we see that a similar clash is potentially brewing. One can also make the same parallel with imperial German domination of Ukraine just before the end of World War I. (See Chapter 2.) In the contemporary context, the Russian annexation of Crimea and its support for Russophone movements inside eastern Ukraine has raised the possibility of a rough partition, but one that will most likely remain permanently unstable due to mixed Russian-Ukrainian families and overlapping political- economic interests. In this respect, Ukraine represents the key to the peace of the new European equilibrium. Should eastern and western Ukraine be unable to establish a strong “federal” or “confederal” arrangement, Kiev could seek to align with NATO and/or the European Union, risking an even more dangerous Russian backlash.

The Indo-Pacific In the post–Cold War period, Japan has played a role as a core state (which has only just begun to expand its insular naval capabilities) backed by an alliance with the United States to “counterbalance” both China and Russia, in addition to North Korea, which has engaged in provocative missile and nuclear testing. In the late nineteenth century, Japan had represented an expanding insular and semiperipheral state, seeking to move to core status. This brought it into conflict with continental China and then Russia in the 1894–95 Sino-Japanese War, in which Japan annexed Taiwan, and then in the 1904–5 Russo-Japanese Wars, in which it sought control of Manchuria. While the Asian “theatre” played a secondary role in the origins of World War I, the 1902 Anglo-Japanese alliance, followed by the 1904–5 Russo- Japanese war, ironically helped press Russia closer to both France and Great Britain rather than to imperial Germany, largely with the help of French mediation. The Russian defeat in the 1904–5 Russo-Japanese War ironically led Russia to look to England in aligning against Austria and imperial Germany. During World War I and then during the interwar period, Japan represented a rising insular-core power that sought to achieve imperial status and secure access to raw materials through intervention in China that would greatly expand its security sphere. The Versailles Treaty granted Japan German-controlled Shandong province, provoking the May 1919 protest that helped spark the Communist revolution. Japan then expanded its interests in China, formally announcing a Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere in 1940, after its intervention in China sparked by the 1931 Manchurian incident. Japan then turned against the 120 l Crimea, Global Rivalry, and the Vengeance of History

United States in rivalry over the Indo-Pacific, attacking Pearl Harbor in 1941 and awakening the “sleeping giant.” Yet nothing in Asia today appears anything similar to imperialist Japan in the interwar period. Contemporary Sino-Japanese rivalry, however, does appear more like that of the late nineteenth century before the 1894–95 war in terms of tensions over the Korean peninsula and Taiwan, not to overlook islands and resources in the South and East China seas. At the same time, what is “novel” is the rise of China as a more independent major power, plus its alliance with Russia, in which Moscow could soon become China’s junior partner, unlike the 1950 Sino-Soviet alliance in which Stalin was largely the master, to Mao’s resentment. Since the 1980s, as the Soviet Union and China began to reconcile their territorial disputes under the leadership of Mikhail Gorbachev, the United States increasingly sought to strengthen the military-technological or American-Japanese “Ninja Turtle” alliance (symbolic of links between US-Japanese high technology and consumerism) in an (apparently failed) effort in order to prevent closer Sino-Soviet ties.21 The post–World War II US-Japanese alliance, which the United States and Japan have sought to strengthen in recent years, thus represents the geohistorical parallel to the 1902 Anglo-Japanese alliance. Yet in response to the rise of China, the North Korean threat, plus tensions between Russia and Japan over the Kuril islands and northern territories, Japan has begun a significant military modernization, while seeking to forge a “democratic security diamond” with India, Australia, and the United States (plus a difficult relationship with South Korea). It has also tacitly threatened to move into greater independence from its alliance with the United States. Should the new Japanese military buildup lead Japan to act unilaterally and not in cooperation with its allies as presently claimed by the Shinzō Abe government, then analogies to the early interwar period could become much more relevant.22

The Rise of China It has been argued that while imperial Germany was primarily a land power, owing to the geography of Europe, China will be primarily a naval power, owing to the geography of East Asia.23 But the point here is that China still represents a major rimland power that is flanking Russia, while also representing a potential blue-water naval threat to core Japan and Taiwan. The People’s Republic of China accordingly represents a continental semiperipheral power that is rapidly moving into core status with advanced military capabilities, and an A Cross-Historical Method l 121 amphibious blue-water navy. Here, Beijing has denounced US “decadence,” given the fact that the United States has continued to live off roughly $17 trillion in borrowed money, with China as its primary foreign lender and Japan now second. But Beijing is nevertheless concerned with its own internal intrain- dustrial and provincial debts, as well potential secessionist movements and fissiparous tendencies within its own borders plus potential conflict with its neighbors. Once Beijing’s policy moved toward greater “independence” in the 1980s and away from the close Sino-American entente of the 1970s, China began to suspect that the United States intended to build up Japanese military capabilities and possibly support Taiwanese independence, while attempting to break the Sino-Russian alliance—a position that is exacerbated by US- Japanese cooperation over ballistic missile defenses (BMD), ostensibly aimed at North Korea. Despite Beijing’s claims to desire a “peaceful rise,” Chinese claims to spheres of influence and security will result “in intense security competition.”24 China has also been moving into former European spheres of influence in Africa and Asia, for example, while ironically acting somewhat like tsarist Russia in the Far East and central Asia in the quest for core status. In planning growth well into the future, Beijing has thus been investing in strategic raw materials and in energy resources throughout Africa, central Asia, and South and Cen- tral America. It has consequently been argued that “tensions and proxy wars between the United States and China over such issues (as strategic raw materials) are less likely to mimic the political ideology-fuelled proxy conflicts of the second half of the 20th century . . . than the interactions of the Great Powers across the globe in the 19th century.”25 But in this analogy, the late nineteenth-century roles of Japan and China have switched: China has begun to take the place of Japan as the more assertive power in the Indo-Pacific, although Japan appears to be strengthening its military capabilities and its willingness to engage forces in concert with its allies, in a reinterpretation of its constitutional Article 9 ban on the use of military force except in the case of self-defense. In the assertion of its String of Pearls strategy, it is now China that seeks to overturn the status quo in countering Japan (as well as island claims of other countries in the region), while pressing to regain Taiwan. In this sense, the rise of China can be compared and contrasted to China’s own “self-strengthening movement” from the 1860s to 1895, prior to its defeat by Japan in the 1894–95 Sino-Japanese War, in which Japan had initially seized the Senkaku/Diaoyu islands. That war had been fought over the Korean peninsula and then over Taiwan; those same regions remain in dispute today in differing circumstances. The danger is that either China or Japan could act to 122 l Crimea, Global Rivalry, and the Vengeance of History seize various island chains as rapidly as possible in the optimistic belief that the other side will accept the fait accompli and nuclear weapons will not be used. (See Chapter 7.) At the same time, in historical terms, over a demi-millennial perspective, it should be noted that China, under the ancient regime, began to expand its interests overland and overseas in the Ming and then the Qing dynasties. In the Ming period, from 1405 to 1433 AD, China began to develop an amphibious, overseas naval capability before suddenly abandoning its overseas ambitions and turning toward continental expansion. Under the Qing dynasty, it then reluctantly absorbed Taiwan, in conflict with Ming loyalists (and with the Dutch), but nevertheless continued to expand into central and west Asia. In present circumstances, even after having reabsorbed Hong Kong and Macao, China does not appear to represent a self-satisfied state that is willing to accept the status quo, given demands to increase the standard of living for its burgeoning population while sustaining Communist Party controls and given its refusal to accept Taiwanese “independence” due to fears that Taiwan’s independence will set the precedent for other independence movements in Tibet and Xinjiang province, if not in Inner Mongolia. The question remains whether China will once again turn inward, to concentrate on internal social and ethnic conflicts, as well as secession movements, after a period of overseas expansion, as it did in the early fifteenth century? Or will it continue to seek expansion in potential confrontation with its neighbors?

The Indian Question One of the key questions is the future position of the Indian giant. In the contemporary constellation of powers, as previously argued, India plays a role as a “land bridge” to the Indian Ocean much like Italy did in the pre– World War I period in the nineteenth century in regard to the Mediterra- nean. While Italy declared neutrality at the outbreak of the war in August 1914, it shifted against Germany and Austria by 1915. Before World War II, Mussolini only reluctantly aligned with Hitler, given disputes over Aus- trian territory and other irredentist Italian claims in the Balkans and in the Mediterranean. In the contemporary geopolitical constellation, India has increasingly been courted by the United States and Europe, in addition to Russia and, recently, China (worrying Pakistan). From this perspective, India (whose rate of growth is soon projected to rise above China’s) represents a pivotal semiperipheral rimland or continental core state that is beginning to develop its blue-water navy and rise into core status. A Cross-Historical Method l 123

During the Cold War, India was essentially backed by the Soviet Union even though New Delhi had then also claimed nonalignment at that time. In present circumstances, an ambivalent India now appears to be hedging its bets, gradually opening to the United States (which renewed a major ten-year defense and cooperation accord with New Delhi in January 2015), Europe, and Japan but without dropping its Russian ties. It is tentatively looking toward China as well, despite dangerous territorial disputes with China and Pakistan over Kashmir, in which a nuclear Pakistan does not want China to make a deal with India that would cut out Pakistani interests.

Overseas Parallels Toward the end of the Cold War, Moscow under Gorbachev and Yeltsin began to retract Soviet/Russian supports for overseas revolutionary movements and states. Yet, given the rise of Putin, US-European- Russian disputes over Serbia, Kosovo, Georgia, Libya, Syria, Iraq and Iran, Venezuela, Cuba, and the Arctic region, among others, plus US-Japanese resource disputes with China overseas, appear more reminiscent of Anglo-French-German disputes over the Balkans, North Africa, the Near East, the Persian Gulf, and Africa before World War I than less-intensive overseas disputes before World War II. In other words, unlike imperial Germany after World War I, the Russian Federation, after the Soviet collapse, did not lose all its overseas spheres of influence and security, but it deeply fears that it might. In effect, contemporary Russian fears of being cut out of overseas states and markets by the United States and Europe (if not by China as well) appear to parallel imperial German fears of being cut out of overseas colonies and markets by Britain and France. One could additionally compare and contrast UN and NATO interventions in Bosnia and Kosovo to the situations in the pre–World War I Balkans, not to overlook NATO intervention in Libya in 2011, which can be compared and contrasted to the Italian intervention in Libya in 1911. More specifically, much as imperial Germany had attempted but failed to sustain influence in Morocco in the pre–World War I period, Russia appears to be holding onto Syria by brute force in support for the Al-Assad regime and maintaining a naval and military presence in the eastern Mediterranean in the belief that the next regime could back pan-Islamist movements that could destabilize Russian controls over the northern Caucasus and central Asia. Here, US-European-Russian disputes over Syria appear dangerously similar to Anglo- French-German disputes over Morocco just prior to the unexpected armageddon of August 1914. 124 l Crimea, Global Rivalry, and the Vengeance of History

One can accordingly compare and contrast the conflict and rise of terrorism in the shatterbelt of “wider Middle East” with the conflict in the Balkans that helped spark World War I in structural and systemic terms. Here, the pre– World War I analogy has been used in reference to the September 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon and Global War on Terror (GWOT) retaliation. The American backlash has been compared to the Brit- ish backlash after the killing of General “Chinese” Gordon in the Sudan in the effort to suppress the rise of anti-British Islamist movements prior to World War I.26 Moreover, US-backed interventions in Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003 can be compared and contrasted to the British intervention in the second Afghan War in 1878–80 and in Egypt in 1882. In addition, the Saudi Defense Doctrine has been preparing for a possible two-front war against Iran and Israel based on the imperial German Schlieffen Plan,27 with Iran potentially looking to nuclear-weapons ties to North Korea and Saudi Arabia looking to Pakistan. Concurrently, nineteenth-century anarchist assassinations, plus conflicts in the Balkans, Central Asia, and Africa, can be compared and contrasted with the more violent pan-Islamist attacks in the United States, Europe, Russia, and throughout the “wider Middle East.” The present crisis has been magnified not only by the fact that the post– Cold War shatterbelt encircles the Russian Federation from the Baltic states to the Balkans and Caucasus and then deep into central Asia and Afghanistan but also by the fact that that region has increasingly interlinked with the shatterbelt created in the aftermath of the collapse of the former Ottoman Empire and with the “wider Middle East.”

Comparing and Contrasting Policy Having outlined the methodology, the key problem is how to compare and contrast those past cases with the contemporary global crisis so as to ascertain which policies might appear most appropriate so as to avert conflict. Historical examples are often brought covertly into policy debates in an effort to discredit arguments that appear similar to policies that failed in the past. The past, however, is not necessarily “prelude”; major-power wars do not need to be recurrent. One cannot presume that past strategies that failed to prevent global war in their respective epochs—such as that of “appeasement” before World War II— should necessarily be discredited if new renditions of those ostensibly failed strategies appear applicable and feasible in contemporary circumstances. Historical analogies—if appropriately compared and contrasted in their systemic context—can help clarify the contemporary situation and the dynamics of a very uncertain future. By examining the full range of policy options that had A Cross-Historical Method l 125 been applied in the past and that either failed or succeeded in preventing major- power wars, one can attempt to determine what might be the optimal strategy in averting yet another global conflict. The dilemma for international-relations theorists is to analyze differing cases to see whether sanctions, diplomatic pressures and military threats, or peace-oriented diplomacy actually brought lasting compromise or resulted in further conflict, if not war. (See Chapter 9.)

Chapter 7

Why Major-Po wer War Is Still Possible, Though Not Inevitable!

t the very end of the Cold War, the scenario of a major-pow er war had largely been dismissed by “end of history” and other variants of A democratic-liberal theory. Fukuyama’s “end of history” arguments had been preceded by the obsolescence-of-war theories of Norman Angel, presented in The Great Illusion (1910), and updated by John Mueller among others, who argued that the expense of war preparations and the benefits of free trade, as well as the destruction and insanity of war itself, make major-pow er war largely unthinkable and even more so in the nuclear age.1 Yet the very argument that major-pow er war—or war among states with nuclear weapons or war among countries allied with states that possess nuclear weapons—is no longer possible has tended to diminish the relevance of history and comparative-historical analogy for the study of international relations. If major-power war is no longer possible due to nuclear deterrence, then why even bother to study diplomatic history? This antihistorical attitude appears to prevail, particularly in the United States, even if many other societies and cultures tend to see rivalries with their neighbors in very long-term historical terms. In the United States, the rise of positivism, existentialism, neorealism, and dogmatic Marxism—not to overlook triumphalist “end of history” democratic-liberal theory as well as “peace through strength” neoconservatism—have all tended to downgrade the study of the long-term causes of major-power wars, at least since the 1960s. The reluctance or refusal to foresee that major-pow er conflict is indeed theoretically possible can lead state leaderships to engage in policies that are provocative and risk-taking, as opposed to those that are irenic and peace-oriented. On the one hand, state leaderships may engage in provocative strategies in the name of “the balance of power,” “containment,” “countercontainment,” or some other rationale against their major and lesser rivals, in the belief that deeper 128 l Crimea, Global Rivalry, and the Vengeance of History compromise and reconciliation will prove self-defeating and that peace-oriented policies could be taken advantage of. The general argument against a peace- oriented strategy—what is often dubbed “appeasement” in its twentieth-century meaning—is that mutual compromise (the nineteenth-century definition) will lead to even more unacceptable and excessive demands, if not capitulation, that will then further exacerbate interstate and intersocietal tensions. Much as Thucydides argued, state leaders often react in accord with hubris, as they do not want to reveal weaknesses, insecurities, or indecision to either their adversaries, their allies, or their domestic political rivals and constituents. State leaders can thus be drawn into conflict because they see their antagonists as not bowing to their repeated demands and threats that they alter their policies or else. Repeated threats to intervene may actually pressure state leaderships into violent action so as not to look “weak” or to lose face or credibility if those being threatened do not respond more positively in reaction to threats. Repeated American threats (e.g., George Bush’s December 25, 1992, Christ- mas warning against Serbian President Milošević not to abuse the human rights of Albanians in Kosovo) were a major domestic and international political factor that worked in the background to pressure the Clinton administration into direct NATO intervention against Serbia in 1999. One could also argue that Putin, who has continually referred to NATO intervention in Kosovo and subsequent US support for Kosovar independence to justify differing Russian actions, could only threaten to intervene in Crimea and Ukraine so many times since 2008 and not lose credibility.

The Question of Nuclear Weaponry Both the Cold War and post–Cold War epochs have thus far been dominated by the myth that the use of the atomic bomb in 1945 has somehow transformed the nature of power relations among states. This ostensibly makes war much less likely among those states that possess such weaponry, largely due to the fear of the destructive power associated with such horrific, genetically genocidal weaponry. The fact that major-power war has generally been foreseen as a calculated, and highly destructive, nuclear escalation, once deterrence has failed, has generally led many to discount such a scenario. Once the Soviets acquired nuclear weapons capacity, it was argued that US-Soviet bipolar controls, plus nuclear weapons, created the conditions of mutually assured destruction (MAD) in which the United States and the Soviet Union would never use nuclear weapons against each other. As to be argued, it is not at all clear that it was really the policy of “containment” (coupled with the bipolar controls over nuclear weapons) that helped preserve the so-called long peace and that prevented the Soviet Union from breaking out into a two-front Why Major-Po wer War Is Still Possible, Though Not Inevitable! l 129 war, much as the pre–World War I analogy had apocryphally prophesied at the time.2 After the Soviet collapse, it was argued that the possession of nuclear weaponry would help dampen hypernationalism. It was also argued that so- called multipolarity, plus the managed spread of nuclear weapons, would prevent potential wars between nuclear states.3 Yet, in post–Cold War circumstances, it is still not at all certain that nuclear spread can be effectively “managed” in a polycentric world system in which both states and antistate movements possess highly uneven degrees of power and influence and in which both lesser powers (like North Korea and Iran, among others) and antistate groups (like Islamic State) can potentially obtain such weaponry. Nor is it clear, after scandals involving radioactive leakage and/ or reactor meltdown at Hanford, Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and now Fukushima, that any state can effectively manage nuclear infrastructure so as to prevent genetically genocidal radioactive leakage. Given the poor record of advanced states in handling nuclear materials, one can question how the potential bankruptcy of companies or of less advanced states could impact nuclear- power and nuclear-weapons management? Even more to the point, the very rivalry to obtain nuclear technology and access to uranium creates the grounds for possible war.4 In addition, preparations for nuclear war may not be quite as expensive as generally argued. One study argues that by spending less than 1 percent of GDP, as many as 15 out of 17 states analyzed could afford to produce and maintain a small strategic force. And of these 17 countries, only Israel and North Korea would have to spend more than 1 percent of their GDP to produce 100 weapons a year, assuming they had the requisite fissile materials. This makes it difficult to claim that the United States can sustain nuclear superiority or primacy in the long term over Russia, China, or even lesser powers like North Korea.5 Even a small number of deliverable warheads are sufficient for the purposes of nuclear blackmail, while the miniaturization of nuclear weaponry makes their use more “thinkable.”

Preemption, Accidents, Nuclear Terrorism, and Rogue Militaries While it often argued that states will not go war with other states once they possess nuclear weapons, states have already gone to war in order to preempt or preclude rival states (but not their presumed allies) from acquiring nuclear weaponry or other weapons of mass destruction (WMD). Nothing prevents a nuclear state from supporting less powerful states, fomenting revolutionary movements or proxy groups against their opponents, whether nuclear or not. Both nuclear and nonnuclear states (and antistate partisan movements) can engage in clandestine acts of terrorism, using chemical, biological, or possibly nuclear weaponry, not to overlook new cyber and drone technologies. 130 l Crimea, Global Rivalry, and the Vengeance of History

Dubbed the “poor man’s” atomic weapon, chemical weaponry had been used by the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein (with the knowledge of the US government) against Kurdish populations during the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s. In 1990 and 2003, Washington then threatened reciprocal measures to counter whatever weaponry Saddam opted to use. But it was in the effort to bring together the conflicting perspectives and mandates of the American bureaucracy, so as to justify the essentially unilateral US intervention, that the Bush administration made a number of claims, in addition to evoking human rights concerns, to unify the American people against the Iraqi regime in 2003. One of the major claims to justify war against the regime of Saddam Hussein was the (false) charge that Iraq was attempting to obtain uranium yellowcake from Niger as evidence of its nuclear weapons program.6 More recently, chemical weaponry was used in Syria, purportedly by the Assad regime, if not by opposition forces as well. This led to a September 2013 US-Russian accord to force the Syrian regime to give up its chemical weapons stockpile, but ironically, that accord did nothing to stop the horrific civil war, once again illustrating the point that possession and even use of WMDs do not necessarily prevent conflict and war. Such weaponry—including tactical nuclear weaponry—could be used again in future combat, much as chemical WMDs were used first by the French and then more devastatingly by the Ger- mans, during World War I. In the case of Iraq’s neighbor, Iran, both the United States and Israel have threatened military intervention, if not war (“all options on the table”) in order to deter Tehran from obtaining a nuclear-weapons capacity. International economic sanctions and the relative isolation of the Iranian regime appear to have had an impact on Iran without going to open war; but until all suspected Ira- nian nuclear facilities can be opened to inspection, it is dubious that full trust can be achieved. In January 2015, President Obama urged Congress (and Israeli prime minister Netanyahu) to give negotiations another chance and warned that a new round of sanctions against Tehran could mean war without any allied support.7 In April 2015, the UN Security Council, plus Germany, reached an accord intended to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons and offensive missiles; yet the proxy war between Saudi Arabia, the Arab Gulf states, and Iran concurrently appeared to intensify in Yemen, Syria, Iraq, and throughout the region. The spread of atomic material and weaponry (whether “managed” or not) has raised questions as to what kind of leadership might eventually obtain control over such weaponry and whether or not rogue elements could eventually seize nuclear material and weaponry for the purposes of blackmail or annihilation. At the end of the Cold War, Washington worked with Moscow to pressure and cajole Ukraine, Kazakhstan, and Belarus to give up their nuclear-weapons Why Major-Po wer War Is Still Possible, Though Not Inevitable! l 131 capabilities left over from the Cold War, so that these weapons would not be used to threaten third states or else fall into the wrong hands. In the case of Kazakhstan, it took 17 years (1995–2012) for Kazakh, Russian, and American nuclear scientists and engineers to secure the plutonium spread throughout the tunnels of Degelen Mountain.8 Efforts to make the newly emerged nuclear states after the Soviet collapse abandon their nuclear weaponry in exchange for security assurances by the United States, United Kingdom, France, and Russia also led to the 1994 Budapest Memorandum.9 It is this major cooperative-collective security treaty (among others) that has been regarded as having been violated by Moscow after the latter annexed Crimea in 2014. The Budapest Accords had promised that all states that signed the treaty would agree to protect the territorial integrity of Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Ukraine. Moscow justified its 2014 intervention in Crimea on the basis that it was responding to an internal political and social-economic crisis and thus was ostensibly engaging in the “right to protect,” yet Moscow alone cannot be blamed for undermining the 1994 Budapest convention. This is true in the sense that both Washington and Moscow had attempted to draw Ukraine into a nuclear alliance—either with NATO or with the Russian-led Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO). Nevertheless, the fact that Russia also appeared to break the 1994 Buda- pest Accords guaranteeing Ukrainian sovereignty by seizing Crimea, in addition to breaking other agreements, with respect to the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, for example, also make multilateral accords involving conjoint security assurance even more difficult to accept and implement. Yet Russia is not the only country to violate previous accords: The fact that former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi promised to give up his WMD and not engage in international terrorism but was nevertheless overthrown and killed by a UN and NATO-backed “regime change” has raised additional questions whether Iran, North Korea, and other states would be willing to trust US and Euro- pean security assurances. Here, the military intervention in Libya under a “right to protect” mandate was passed by the UN Security Council, but it was not intended to engage in “regime change.” Yet that was the outcome. Here, rather than abandoning the multilateral principles of cooperative-collective security altogether, it appears necessary to formulate stronger security assurances that would involve closer state-to-state military and naval cooperation coupled with deployments of joint or international peace-keeping forces where necessary. It is furthermore questionable whether the United States, Britain, France, Russia, China and other states can prevent the theft of nuclear material or prevent major accidents involving nuclear weaponry.10 In 2011, it was reported that Al-Qaeda operatives had been devising a scheme to plant dirty (radioactive) roadside explosive devices that would potentially target alliance forces in 132 l Crimea, Global Rivalry, and the Vengeance of History

Afghanistan. A number of terrorist organizations may already have the knowledge and technology to manufacture an explosive device beyond a mere dirty bomb, including Islamic State.11 One fear is that a nuclear device that would be virtually undetectable in a shipping container could be exploded in a major port. It is possible that a rogue military could seize nuclear-capable aircraft or obtain tactical nuclear weaponry, in an updated Dr. Strangelove scenario. The United States has insisted that Pakistani nuclear-military facilities, and those of other countries, be better secured. Rogue Pakistani military, sympathetic to Al-Qaeda or other causes, could seize nuclear-capable aircraft or nuclear weaponry. In the 1960s, the CIA had similarly been concerned that the Algerian National Liberation Front might obtain access to the A-bomb once it came to power. Then, in April 1961, the date for French atomic testing was moved up by three days due to fears that rogue French generals in the Organisation de l’armée secrète (OAS), who opposed de Gaulle’s withdrawal from Algeria, might attempt to seize French nuclear weapons that were being tested. It had been feared that the formerly pro-Soviet African National Congress might obtain nuclear weapons before Nelson Mandela came to power. South Africa consequently destroyed its estimated six to eight nuclear bombs. For- mer President de Klerk proclaimed afterward that South Africa represented the first state to unilaterally give up its nuclear weaponry and urged more states to do the same. This is true even though South Africa’s “remaining dual-use nuclear capabilities have made it both a possible exporter of nuclear technology and know-how, and a target for state and non-state actors seeking nuclear materials.”12 It is probably due to US diplomacy, and not the threat to use nuclear weapons, that India and Pakistan stepped down from engaging in further conflict during the May–June 1999 Kargil War, after Pakistan had infiltrated Indian- controlled Kashmir and when Islamabad was alleged to be preparing nuclear missiles for use against India.13 That dispute appeared to be heating up once again in September–October 2014.14 This renewed dispute over Kashmir has not so ironically been taking place just as China and India are beginning to engage in a rapprochement, so that Pakistan may fear that China will reach a deal with India that does not take into account Islamabad’s interests.15 Efforts to achieve closer relations between India and China can be seen in the larger context of Russia and China seeking to find ways to compromise over Russian plans for a Eurasian Union and Chinese hopes to further develop the Silk Road Economic Belt. Nuclear weaponry and the threat to use WMD may well force states to be more cautious in case they do enter into conflict with one another, but those weapons will not necessarily prevent disputes from initially erupting into clashes Why Major-Po wer War Is Still Possible, Though Not Inevitable! l 133 of conventional weaponry. Moreover, nothing will prevent a nuclear power from engaging in an act of imperialism against a nonnuclear state—if that state’s leadership is willing to take the risk and convinces itself that a nuclear rival will not retaliate directly against it in support of the state that is attacked. Mere possession of atomic weaponry has not necessarily deterred conflict. It has proved possible for nonnuclear states to directly attack the interests of nuclear powers, much as Argentina attacked the British-held Falklands Islands in 1982. It is often overlooked that Japan continued its fervent resistance against the United States despite the firebombing of Tokyo, which was actually more devastating than the use of the two atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Moreover, the Japanese military continued to urge resistance against the United States even after the dropping of the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima.16 That war between nuclear powers is definitely “thinkable” is illustrated by the near confrontation that took place at the end of the 1999 war “over” Kosovo, when Russian KFOR (Kosovo Force) forces suddenly seized Pristina airport, in a possible effort to force a partition of the country. A four-Star Amer- ican general, Wes Clark, supreme allied commander in Europe, ordered the commander of NATO’s Rapid Reaction Corps, three-Star UK general Mike Jackson, to block the Russians at the Pristina airport. After checking with his British superiors, Jackson replied to Clark, “Sir, I’m not going to start World War Three for you.” Jackson believed that the Russians were already isolated and that holding the airport would not advance their control over the area; he believed that Moscow had helped settle the conflict with Milošević and that negotiation was better “than an unnecessary and potentially dangerous confrontation with the Russians.”17 Yet one can wonder what might have happened if General Clark had obtained his way. Would Moscow have stepped back as Clark believed? Or would Russia have called the American bluff? And if this would happen in today’s circumstances, would Putin step back?

Horizontal Escalation Toward the end of the Cold War, the Reagan administration engaged in what it called “horizontal escalation,” with the argument that US nuclear superiority permitted US support for proxy fighters to roll back pro-So viet states and movements without causing a Soviet military backlash or nuclear attack.18 In the post–Cold War epoch, as the predominant global power after Soviet retrenchment from eastern Europe, Washington—backed by both neoconservative and neoliberal ideology—has argued that the United States can engage in military intervention for ostensible humanitarian concerns or in the name of spreading democracy with or without UN Security Council backing. These interventions have taken place in Panama, Serbia, Iraq, northern Pakistan, and 134 l Crimea, Global Rivalry, and the Vengeance of History

Libya, among others, and ostensibly without fear of a counterreaction by Rus- sia, China, or other states. Yet, it is not certain that the United States can continue to intervene unilaterally or without UN Security Council approval in a number of regions without ultimately incurring the wrath of a number of its rivals. In late 2013, the United States and France threatened to intervene militarily against the Syrian regime, but then Washington reached a last-minute deal with Moscow to withdraw chemical weaponry from Syria. But this action, which may have momentarily allayed tensions with Moscow, did nothing to check Assad’s brutal repression, nor prevent the rise of Islamic State.

Stealthy Warfare The possibility of new forms of stealth or clandestine warfare using surrogate “terrorists” between major powers has been raised by the September 11, 2001, Al-Qaeda attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. The attacks on these major symbols of American financial and military power revealed that it was possible to circumvent the American nuclear and conventional deterrent by using commercial airliners as weapons of war. Despite steps taken by Homeland Security and the National Security Agency to prevent new acts of terrorism, it is not absolutely certain that these efforts can check the determination of all antistate individuals and groups, if not state governments themselves, to find new ways, through cyberwarfare and minidrones, for example, to circumvent American defenses. Use of cybersabotage represents one new tool, now used by both states and antistate movements. The use of the Stuxnet computer virus by the United States and/or Israel against Iranian computers and infrastructure (which were generally Russian) was seen by Russian pan-nationalists as an act of war, even if it may have averted a planned attack by Israel on Iran.19 The anarchist group, Anonymous, has, for example, planned attacks on the websites of governments and defense corporations, as well as those of Al-Qaeda and Islamic State. The question remains: What might be the response? Could hitting government or even antistate targets actually help certain “terrorist” operations?20 Here, one cannot ignore the potential ability of states or sociopolitical movements to manipulate a “fifth column” inside the United States, Europe, or other countries. It is feared that Moscow can manipulate elements of the ethnic Rus- sian diaspora in the Baltic states against NATO and EU interests. But this possibility largely depends on how well these minorities are integrated into the countries, whether they believe they might obtain better living conditions in another country, and whether or not they believe in, and accept, Russian propaganda.21 Somewhat similarly, Americans and European Muslims (or converts) can also form a “fifth column” by acting as lone wolves or by joining differing revanchist pan-Islamic organizations in protest against US and European Why Major-Po wer War Is Still Possible, Though Not Inevitable! l 135 interventions in the Arab-Islamic world. At the same time, one cannot overlook the rise of extreme right-wing nationalist movements as well as individuals who may or may not back Russian or Islamist politics. In 2011, a right-wing lone wolf (apparently operating alone) attacked a Socialist meeting in Norway, killing more than ninety people.22 It is possible for such xenophobic groups with extremist ideologies to deliberately attack interests of major powers and assas- sinate individuals and state leaders, for the purpose of heightening sociopolitical tensions. (See Chapter 8.)

Missile Defense It is not at all certain that the deployment of missile defense (MD) systems will necessarily deter a nuclear or conventional missile attack. The shift from mutually assured destruction (which strictly limited MD systems) to “mutually assured security” (which expanded deployments of MD systems) appears to be destabilizing after the United States unilaterally renounced the 1973 Anti- Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty without a substitute treaty or agreement with Moscow in 2002.23 Neither Russia nor China has entirely accepted US rationale for deploying such systems against Iran and North Korea, while a system of joint MD deployments has not yet been devised. As a US-NATO-Russian deal over MD was meant to be a “game changer,” the breakdown of those discussions is in the background of the current NATO-EU-Russian-Ukrainian crisis.24 Despite their high-tech promises, MD systems may not prove entirely effective against a barrage of missiles and can be circumvented by the use of decoys and stealth technology. From this perspective, it is not clear that MD systems will serve to deter war if one side believes it can engage preclusively in a first strike (protected by a missile shield) and the other side believes it counter such defenses by the use of decoys. In addition, US military strategists have developed “dual capable” conventional/nuclear weaponry. Yet one can question what the US opponent might do if it found itself under attack by a dual-capable cruise or ballistic missile? Would it not assume that the warhead was nuclear and possibly retaliate with a nuclear weapon? Concurrently, stealth technology also enhances the uncertainty of precisely what kind of high-speed weapons systems might be attacking, thus potentially pressing the side that is attacked to choose the nuclear option, particularly given very limited reaction times. It seems the implementation of strong confidence-building measures is definitely in order until WMD of all forms can be banned. In addition to the collapse of the ABM Treaty in 2002, the Adopted Con- ventional Force in Europe (ACFE) Treaty collapsed in November 2007 on the Russian side and was suspended in December 2011 on the US side, raising the threat of a conventional-arms race in addition to a nuclear-arms race. 136 l Crimea, Global Rivalry, and the Vengeance of History

Then, almost immediately after the Russian annexation of Crimea, a number of important post–Cold War cooperation accords, in which the United States and Russia could mutually inspect each other’s nuclear capabilities, started to unravel. In July 2014, Washington accused Moscow of violating the 1988 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty and urged immediate talks. Russia had already begun to modernize its nuclear forces while strengthening its military “with enhanced intervention capabilities,” pressuring its neighbors, and exploiting its energy resources for political purposes.25 In its concept of “de-escalation,” 26 as defined in its military doctrines of 2000 and 2010,27 Moscow has repeatedly threatened the possible use of tactical nuclear weapons in response to the deployment of what it sees as superior US and NATO military infrastructure closer to Russian borders. Moscow’s hardline stance is also in response to the fact that NATO has not renounced the “first use” of nuclear weapons, despite the latter’s initial rationalization on the basis of Soviet and Warsaw Pact conventional-force superiority. Now that Soviet forces no longer possess conventional-force superiority, the question remains as to why NATO does not renounce its “first use” policy; NATO’s reluctance to do so, in calling itself a “nuclear alliance” in the November 2010 Lisbon summit, has led Moscow to copycat NATO’s “first use” stance. Moscow has consequently developed a nuclear strategy that presently emphasizes tactical nuclear weapons (while seeking to upgrade its strategic nuclear capabilities), despite NATO’s unilateral promises in the late 1990s not to deploy troops or nuclear weapons in the states of new members. One of the issues raised by the possibility that NATO may bring Kiev into NATO is that the only way to defend Ukrainian territory from a Russian attack is by tactical nuclear forces—that is, if significant numbers of ground troops are not deployed. Despite Obama’s promises not to do so, the United States has engaged in a significant nuclear-force modernization, including ICBMs and tactical B61 gravity bombs, extending the latter’s range and accuracy for deployment on the stealth F35 fighter jet, in rivalry with the Russian SU30 group of flankers. If combined with stealth technology (which makes a surprise attack more feasible) and lower explosive yield, thus reducing nuclear fallout, this could make such weaponry more usable.28 The issue raised here is that too close an identification with nuclear weaponry will tend to undermine NATO’s legitimacy, particularly as the United States and NATO begin to modernize their tactical nuclear-weapons capabilities in response to Russian tactical and strategic nuclear weapons. Tactical nuclear weapons in particular raise questions about US and NATO commitment to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty as these weapons are generally perceived as potential tools of nuclear war fighting as opposed to tools of deterrence, since they lower the threshold for the potential use of nuclear firepower. Tactical nuclear-weapons modernization thus appears Why Major-Po wer War Is Still Possible, Though Not Inevitable! l 137 to represent a sign of increasing suspicion more like the early Cold War period than post–Cold War efforts to forge a closer US-EU-Russian entente.29 In 2011, then Russian general staff chief, Nikolai Makarov, had warned that “the possibility of local armed conflicts virtually along the entire perimeter of the border has grown dramatically. I cannot rule out that, in certain circumstances, local and regional armed conflicts could grow into a large-scale war, possibly even with nuclear weapons.”30 It was then, just after Makarov stepped down in November 2012, that Moscow began to formalize its concept of “hybrid” warfare in the period 2013–14. Hybrid warfare would involve the greater use of nonmilitary methods to achieve strategic goals but would also consider the use of force in new, and clandestine ways, as illustrated in the annexation of Crimea and manipulation of independence Russophone movements inside Ukraine.31 Moscow has subsequently augmented the number of military maneuvers that involve the use so-called limited nuclear strikes since the 2013–14 Ukrai- nian crisis and has tacitly threatened the use of nuclear weaponry in opposition to Kiev’s pledges to eventually regain Crimea.32 Russian deputy prime minister Dmitry Rogozin proclaimed on Navy Day (July 27, 2014) that new Russian nuclear submarines, coupled with the nuclear-arms buildup, will represent a reliable deterrent against any threat: “We see the presence of a nuclear potential can cool the fervor of any aggressor located at any point in the world.”33 But will a strategic nuclear capability necessarily “cool” that “fervor”?

High “Costs” of Major-Power War Under both George W. Bush and Barack Obama, the Global War on Terror (GWOT) retaliation to the September 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon has further destabilized global relations. This destabilization is, in many ways, a result of the “short-war illusion” in which the wars, fought by precision technology, may be short, but the domestic/regional instability caused by the intervention (possibly requiring a peace-keeping process) may prove, by contrast, to be very long term. US-led high-tech military interventions in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya, as well as in northern Pakistan, among other areas, whether under UN auspices or not, have all appeared to have exacerbated domestic and regional instability, even if they rapidly achieved “victory” and regime change, and may result in intermittent interventions over the long term. It is evident that bin Laden cared little about how many people (whether non-Muslim or Muslim) were killed when his September 11, 2001, unconven- tional attack manipulated quotidian technology—passenger jets—to attack the highly symbolic targets of the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. At the same time, however, Washington has also appeared unconscious, if not callous, 138 l Crimea, Global Rivalry, and the Vengeance of History with respect to the death and destruction caused by GWOT—a cowboy-style reaction that bin Laden actually hoped for and encouraged in order to attract a global revanchist following for his pan-Islamist cause. Military interventions in the American-led “global war on terror” have subsequently stretched way beyond a proportional response to the September 11, 2001, attacks as required by the tenets of “just-war” theory—with no “successful” end in sight. In many ways, the United States and NATO have fallen into the trap set by the Kosovo Liberation Army in Kosovo, bin Laden in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and Benghazi protests in Libya, among others. It was hoped by some groups in each of these cases that acts of terrorism and subsequent “ethnic cleansing” and the repression of sociopolitical protest by state leaderships would help provoke a heavy military response by the United States and NATO. Ironically, whether intended or not, each of these interventions have eventually resulted in state collapse and heightened sociopolitical instability, which in turn have helped spread antistate terrorist enclaves that thrive on black and grey market activities and that can be supported by third parties and states. US-led interventions (under a UN Security Council mandate or not) have killed, directly or indirectly, up to 350,000 people and have cost the United States up to $4 trillion (including debts and other obligations). Some 6.7 million people have been displaced, as either internal or external refugees.34 With the exception of the US-led intervention in Afghanistan in 2001, which was supported by Moscow, the Bush administration’s GWOT and the Obama administration’s Struggle against Violent Extremism, has tended to focus on countries backed by the former Soviet Union and Russia—dangerously alienating the latter. Here, however, Obama did do an abrupt “about face” in not striking Russian ally Syria in late 2013. One can furthermore question whether North Korea, given its obscene domestic human-rights record, would be concerned with the horrors unleashed by the use of nuclear weapons. Yet North Korea, which fears absorption by South Korea (much as West Germany gobbled up East Germany), considers these weapons as a legitimate deterrent in the face of US nuclear capability. Despite its own human-rights abuses, Pyongyang justifies its position in remembering the horrors of the Japanese treatment of Koreans (when men and women were treated as subhumans) during World War II, plus the destruction caused by the Korean War, which it sees as being provoked by South Korea even though Pyongyang sought Stalin and Mao’s support for its invasion.35 The fact that NATO called itself a “nuclear alliance” in its 2010 Strategic Concept, thus identifying itself so closely with nuclear weapons, may have influenced North Korea to identify itself as a “nuclear-weapons state” in the revised preamble to its constitution in late May 2012. This is true even if NATO’s Strategic Why Major-Po wer War Is Still Possible, Though Not Inevitable! l 139

Concept “commits NATO to the goal of creating the conditions for a world without nuclear weapons.” Stephen Cohen has warned that if Ukraine joined NATO, it would provoke nuclear war. Following Solzhenitsyn, Cohen argues, without too much exaggeration, that a possible nuclear conflict is not just due to NATO’s close proximity to Russian borders if Ukraine became a member but also due to bio- political roots, resulting from intermarriage.36 Cohen furthermore argues that it was Kiev who was largely responsible for antagonizing Russophones in eastern Ukraine; Moscow exacerbated the situation but did not cause it. And even after October 2014, it has largely been Kiev that has delayed a full sociopolitical settlement over eastern Ukraine.37 The danger is that what Moscow calls “hybrid warfare” could escalate to the threat to use nuclear weaponry much as was the case for the Cuban Missile Crisis.

The Question of Spheres of Influence The fact that there is not a clear division of Europe makes the contemporary situation more dangerous than the Cold War. This is true despite the lines that NATO has attempted to draw in expanding first to East Germany, Poland, the Czech Republic, and Hungary, and then deeper into eastern Europe in 2004, to include the Baltic states of Latvia, Estonia, and Lithuania. The central focal point for conflict has largely shifted from a divided Germany to a highly unstable Ukraine (with its fault lines between Kiev to the west and Kharkiv to the west) and to the Caucasus and the Black Sea. Unless a decentralized and “federal” social-political resolution to the Ukrai- nian crisis can be found, NATO and EU military supports for Ukraine—or more pertinently NATO membership for Ukraine—will tend to foster a new, unstable, and disputed partition of both Ukraine and Europe. The situation may not immediately provoke a strategic nuclear war, but it would most likely prolong a civil war in Ukraine, resulting in an even more dangerous backlash in Moscow. It is possible that even Putin could be considered a saint as compared to the leadership that might follow. (See Chapter 8.) One of the major explanations as to why the Cold War did not become a “hot war” was that both the United States and the Soviet Union generally respected each other’s respective spheres of influence and security. This is true even though each side sought to support pro-Communist or pro-Democratic movements against the other in western and eastern Europe when possible, while concurrently engaging in spy versus spy activities. Global stability was consequently sustained during the post-Yalta Cold War by the fact that the United States, Europe, and the Soviets had clearly delineated their respective sphere of influence and security, at least in Europe after its partition in the 140 l Crimea, Global Rivalry, and the Vengeance of History

1948–49 Berlin crises (after the question of control over Berlin was settled at least on the surface). This resulted in the fact that the most heated US-Soviet conflicts generally took place overseas, even if both sides still attempted to undermine the other’s political and economic controls and influence within Europe through clandestine activities and acts of subversion and support for differing anticapitalist or anticommunist sociopolitical movements. But neorealist considerations are not sufficient to explain why the Cold War did not become a hot war. A more pertinent factor as to why the post–Cold War period is becoming more and more dangerously unstable and insecure is that both the United States and Russia do not appear to possess significant common adversaries such as Germany and Japan, as was the case for the United States and the Soviet Union during World War II. In fact, in the aftermath of World War II, it can be argued that both “superpowers” tacitly collaborated to prevent the rise of potential threats (Germany and Japan, if not China and rising powers of the developing world) that could potentially challenge the interests of both sides—despite their overt and contending rivalry to draw a unified Germany and Japan, as well as China and many of the countries of the developing world, to their respective sides. (See General Introduction.) From this perspective, it is precisely the breakdown of the tacit (and legal) aspects of US-Soviet-European collaboration in keeping Germany partitioned as part of the 1945 Allied Control Council, and later the 1972 Four Power Agreement, that has raised the stakes in the contemporary crisis, along with the more indirect US-Soviet efforts intended to keep Japan, China, and the rest of the world as weak and divided as possible. Not so ironically, despite the evident US-Soviet nuclear- and conventional-arms rivalry, a weak Germany/Europe, Japan, and China actually served to sustain the “superpower” statuses and interests of both Washington and Moscow, as did the division of both Korea and Vietnam, coupled with US-Soviet efforts to play a number of developing states against each other in perpetual disputes and conflicts. As the US-Soviet relationship deteriorated in the 1980s, particularly after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, one of the major reasons that a global war did not break out in the mid to late 1980s was precisely because Gorbachev engaged in a rapprochement with Beijing starting in 1986 in an effort to resolve its border disputes with China, while concurrently engaging in an essentially unilateral Soviet retrenchment from East Germany (the keystone that held the Warsaw Pact together) and from eastern Europe. Moscow likewise began to withdraw forces from Afghanistan while reluctantly accepting the breakup of the Warsaw Pact, but in the hope to forge a new entente or alliance between the United States, Europe, and the Soviet Union. This strategy accordingly helped undercut the NATO-Japanese-China “capitalist encirclement” of the Soviet Union. It has consequently led Russia to play its own version of the “China Why Major-Po wer War Is Still Possible, Though Not Inevitable! l 141

Card,” while handing the sociopolitical complications and irredentist claims of east European states over to the Americans and western Europeans. It was consequently Gorbachev’s retractionist strategy—and not “bipolarity plus nuclear weaponry” plus a revitalized hard-line containment policy—that helped to prevent the Cold War from becoming a “hot war” in the 1980s. The roots of the present crisis accordingly stem from the failure of the United States to reach out to Gorbachev in the first years of the Bush Sr. administration and then to pick up where Reagan left off in the implementation of a new system of European security once Yeltsin came to power that would include both the Russians and the United States. Had Soviet era hard-liners sustained control and were not overthrown by Boris Yeltsin (with secret US assistance) relations between the United States and the Soviet Union would have further deteriorated. While the first reactionary pro-Soviet wave of opposition to Gor- bachev was checked from coming to power in August 1991, and then again in September 1993 against Yeltsin, the second wave of Russian revanchism came to power in support of Vladimir Putin in 1999 and has thus far appeared to have strengthened its position by annexing Crimea in 2014.

The Obsolescence-of-War Theory Norman Angell’s 1910 thesis argued that war was obsolete due to the interconnected nature of the global political economy and the fact that states do not necessarily benefit in economic terms from the acquisition of territory.38 Such democratic peace arguments have downplayed the possibility of a major-pow er war (at least among democratic states) due to the spread of the principles of democracy and liberalism to a greater number of states throughout the world at least since the end of the eighteenth century. At the same time, however, the dilemma is that the democratic-reform process can prove to be destabilizing, if not dangerous, particularly for many poorly managed regimes and for what have been called “fledgling democracies.” As opposed to guaranteeing peace, the dilemma is that the democratic-reform process can, in many cases, bring revolution and civil war—if not interstate war—if majority and minority sociopolitical factions cannot agree to compromise and if free trade does not appear to expand economic benefits fairly. The argument that the expansion of free trade can assist in maintaining peace appears true only as long as domestic protectionist groups do not obtain greater political influence over socioeconomic groups that benefit from free trade.39 Angell’s thesis was soon discarded by imperial Germany just four years after the publication of his 1910 book when considerations of status, security, power, and control—and demands for more protected and controllable political-economic spheres of influence and security—took precedence over 142 l Crimea, Global Rivalry, and the Vengeance of History less-controllable international economic concerns. Ironically, imperial Ger- many did not possess clearly defined war goals at the outbreak of the war, but as the conflict progressed, it nevertheless hoped to consolidate its Mitteleuropa and Mittelafrika schemes, despite the political-economic risks of state collapse if it lost the war. Later, Hitler’s efforts to achieve lebensraum and to balance the industrial and agricultural sectors of the German economy did not prevent him from seeking to expand into central Europe, in the hope that he could get away with it without war. Somewhat similarly, the Japanese sought a protectionist coprosperity sphere that would provide it with direct access to energy resources. And, as discussed, Moscow’s intervention in eastern Ukraine is in part based on the Russian desire to sustain links to Ukraine’s agro-industrial and military- industrial complex. Even though no country can escape the impact of the global market and global trading partners in the long term, and even if pure autarky is not possible, this fact has not prevented state leaderships from attempting to achieve a degree of self-sufficiency in a not always futile effort (at least in some areas) to check external interference and dependence on foreign trade and technology. From the traditional realist perspective, global liberalization can impact access to military capabilities and control over the transfer of dual-use technology, food supplies, energy sources, and other vital issues—even if the effort to control vital goods and technologies and resources is relatively more costly. Contrary to neoliberal thinking, state leaderships generally oppose becoming too dependent on foreign trade, technology, and finance. This is often for fear that these factors may no longer be supplied so that access to vital resources and technologies from sources outside the state become more problematic or for fear that the suppliers may be able to exert political control over those supplied, particularly if they possess a near monopoly (as is the case for Russian gas in much of eastern Europe, for example). While the possibility of multiple suppliers, domestic or foreign, is the ideal in liberal theory, it is not always the reality for most states who can enter into varying degrees of dependency with third states. Moreover, the cooperative aspects of international trade are often out- weighed by strategic economic rivalry and the battle to raise capital among major powers. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, this rivalry tended to revolve around the control over land and sea trade routes, in which the rise of “dual-use” military and civilian rail transport tended to enhance the political-economic power capabilities of essentially continental states versus essentially maritime powers. By contrast, today’s strategic-economic struggles thus far appear to reside primarily in advanced “dual-use” technologies and in the effort to protect access to energy supplies and to sustain control over oil and Why Major-Po wer War Is Still Possible, Though Not Inevitable! l 143 gas pipelines. This has been coupled with the development of “dual-use” nuclear power either as a “peaceful” energy source or for purposes of military “defense” (the “war” atom). Centralized nuclear power, coupled with its potential military applications, for example, tends to appeal to state bureaucrats concerned with the appearance of an infinite power supply (despite eventual decommission- ing costs). This appears true despite the real potential for more decentralized “green” technologies to enhance economic growth and to provide employment, at least in the not-so-long term. As they are more spread out, decentralized technologies are not only ecologically safer but also more “survivable” in case of power-plant shutdown or potential cybersabotage or violent terrorist attacks that could shut down the energy supply for millions of people and industries. At the same time, the rise of new, revolutionary technologies tends to exacerbate political-economic-social-financial instabilities. This is due in large part to the lag time it takes for new technologies to be integrated into the global infrastructure and bring about new growth. It has been argued, for example, that the lag time for the new information technologies and other innovations to bring about global economic recovery has been much longer than for previous innovations in history.40 Coupled with generally increasing government deficits and debts, this phase of creative destruction—or really destructive creation (to overturn Schumpeter’s expression)—makes the management of long-term domestic macroeconomic and international economic policies even more difficult, which in turn exacerbates the possibility of both domestic and international conflict.41 Here, long- cycle theorists have pointed to how fluctuations in the global economy have tended to coincide with global conflict.42 Yet, while financial and economic crises may exacerbate political-economic rivalries and augment the chances for war, the actual choice to go to war is nevertheless a political decision, even if such a decision is based, at least in part, on economic criteria. The question for some leaderships and societies is whether the risks of war are more or less peril- ous than the risks of peace.

Pessimistic “Inevitability” versus “Optimism” as a Cause of War Joseph Nye made the following critical comment with respect to the misuse of historical analogies: “Among the lessons to be learned from the events of 1914 is to be wary of analysts wielding historical analogies, particularly if they have a whiff of inevitability. War is never inevitable, although the belief that it is can become one of its causes.”43 Nye’s essentially pessimistic argument that the belief in war’s inevitability can ironically become one of war’s causes appears true, given the general failure to look for all possible alternative, peace-oriented options as demanded by just-war theory as developed since at least St Augustine. 144 l Crimea, Global Rivalry, and the Vengeance of History

Nye’s observation possesses validity; yet the pessimistic inevitability of war is generally not what inspires or instigates conflict. The dilemma is that it remains difficult to fight and engage others in the potential sacrifice of human life in an ostensibly inevitable war, particularly if one does not believe in the cause or else does not expect to win a conflict from the outset. In this perspective, optimism—or what is really willingness to take risks regardless of the possible negative consequences—that a country or people can fight toward victory, no matter how horrible and no matter what the consequences, is a more salient cause of war. Optimism with respect to victory, or even optimism with respect to the belief that one’s cause is just (even against the odds), is perhaps more important for the long-term continuation of a struggle than is the pessimistic belief that war is inevitable.44 Here, such optimism may be limited to the cause/interests of a leader or the cause of a particular state or society. The potentially dangerous and negative consequences of actions and reactions by and for other states and societies may not be taken fully into consideration. Even if war might be considered inevitable by many, elites and populations still need to be relatively optimistic to continue to fight that war, as pessimism with respect to the ultimate outcome of a particular conflict will tend to undermine belief in the very cause of the conflict. Pessimism will also tend to undermine the militant spirit that looks forward to the “glories” of the struggle or else to some form of better life in the future, after the social revolution and/or after the “great” struggle or “war.” It is true that pessimists may continue to fight for the sake of slowing the steps toward victory of their enemies in wars of attrition; pessimists may also continue the struggle so as not to show cowardice or not to be captured and tortured or accused of insubordination or even treason. But to do so, assuming that they are not total nihilists, they generally need believe in the “cause,” whether or not that cause is actually feasible and whether or not the goals struggled for will actually be implemented in the future. From this perspective, although it is possible to fight on the basis that war is inevitable and that one has nothing left to lose, optimism is generally needed to keep the struggle going in the long term. Such optimism can be based on the expected success in the use of new military strategies and technologies, for example, or in the belief that one side has justice on its side and that the other side is “immoral” or decadent. Belief that the enemy is in social, political, or economic disarray and is not capable of fighting effectively due to either fear or political inability to act is also a way to keep the struggle going. Nevertheless, the decision to go to war may result in unexpected counteractions. All these arguments (and others) have been used to justify actions than can lead to war in differing periods of history. Historical analogies not only are used to explain the actions and behavior of states and societies but also are often used (and abused) as a means to legitimize arguments in favor of or Why Major-Po wer War Is Still Possible, Though Not Inevitable! l 145 against war as a policy option, particularly if the analogy promises success. At the same time, this begs the question as to why those who initiate conflict are pessimistic as to the prospects that peace might eventually bring more positive results.

Historical Examples World War I is a prime example in which the German elites sought to convince themselves through forced optimism that victory is possible. When imperial German leadership went to war in 1914, they had generally believed that a two-front war against France and Russia would last no longer than six months based on the historical analogy of the 1870–71 Franco-Prussian war but forget- ting Bismarck’s warnings against such a war with France in 1887. At the same time, however, General Schlieffen’s own Kriegsspiel (war games) of November– December 1905 indicated that a two-front war, which General Moltke then opted to initiate in August 1914, could result in a war of attrition—the very dangerous situation that Schlieffen himself had hoped to avoid. Berlin also wrongly gambled that neither Great Britain, nor the United States, would enter the conflict. By contrast with imperial German elites, it is clear that Hitler expected, if not desired, war, in that he was perhaps even more optimistic about the possibility of winning a major-power war to eliminate his Slavic and French enemies to the chagrin of many of his generals, not believing that US and British “shopkeepers” would dare fight. Adolf Hitler thus more willingly took the risk of war than did the Kaiser, who at least initially hoped that the assassination of the Archduke would draw Tsar Nicolas II closer to imperial Germany in monarchist solidarity against anarchism, socialism, and ethno-nationalist secessionism. Interestingly, the assassin of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the throne of the Austro-Hungarian House of Habsburg-Lorraine, Gavrilo Princip, did not consider the possibility that his actions and those of his fellow conspirators could ignite a major-pow er war, which was sparked a whole month after the assassination. But he nevertheless rationalized the assassination by arguing that the “Germans would have found some other excuse.”45 While imperial Germany did not clearly define its goals in going to war, Hitler’s more clearly defined goals were to achieve lebensraum by force in an effort to balance both the industrial and agricultural sectors of the country, so that Germany would not be dependent on the vagaries of international trade for its long-term survival. In believing that he had learned from Napoleon’s defeat, Hitler hoped to annihilate Stalin’s Soviet Union in Operation Barbarossa before the onset of the Russian winter, which, along with Russian resistance, 146 l Crimea, Global Rivalry, and the Vengeance of History had previously helped defeat Napoleon. But the Nazi attack, initially planned for May 1941, was nevertheless delayed until June, due to Mussolini’s blunder- ing in Greece and the need to secure the Balkans before engaging in the blitzkrieg against the Soviets. Yet Hitler’s battle to eradicate communism was then lost due to Hitler’s own decision not to attack Moscow directly in the summer of 1941 as his own generals had urged. Hitler was much too optimistic and believed that Nazi Germany could take both Leningrad and Kiev (to seize the Ukrainian breadbasket) before sieging Moscow. In essence, Russian resistance and the Russian winter combined to defeat both Napoleon and Hitler—as history appeared to repeat itself. Hitler had also convinced himself that he could overcome the mistakes that Napoleon made in his efforts to conquer Britain in 1940. While Napo- leon had used naval power and hoped to cross the Channel unobserved or to divert the British fleet, Hitler had hoped that the new weapon of airpower, plus superior communications, could subdue British defenses. Hitler then launched Operation Sea Lion, which consisted of a seaborne and airborne invasion. Fortunately for Great Britain and much of the world, both Napo- leon and Hitler failed.

The Question of “Paper Tigers” Mao, who liked to propagate the myth that he was resurrection of the first emperor Qin Shi Huang, who had unified China under the Qin dynasty (221 BC to 207 BC) after the long period of warring states, had once considered US imperialism to be a “paper tiger”—a proposition he advanced even after the Korean War in the theory that big states that do not possess popular support cannot defeat smaller, determined people’s movements.46 Will China test that thesis today in its conflicts with regional powers, including Japan, over islands and resources in the East and South China Seas? One can also raise the question whether Putin will continue to test US and European nerves in Ukraine, if not elsewhere—after purportedly threatening that “Moscow could take Kiev in two weeks if it wished”—in a statement taken out of context according to a Kremlin spokesperson?47 In sum, optimism that one side can trick or thwart one’s rival can lead to war. By contrast, pessimism generally leads leadership to be more circumspect and more reluctant to engage in conflict: one can always attempt to postpone the so- called inevitability of war or else take steps of engaged diplomacy in the effort to prevent conflict. Here, it must be shown that the prospects for peace will bring more positive results than the prospects for war. This represents an issue that those state leaderships involved in a potential conflict need to hammer out and settle by diplomatic means before the possibility for conflict grows out of control. Why Major-Po wer War Is Still Possible, Though Not Inevitable! l 147

If, however, war does appear inevitable and cannot be stopped, then one generally has the remaining choice to submit or resist: In August 1914, neutral Luxembourg refused to take up arms against imperial Germany, while neutral Belgium opted to fight bravely. Yet it is also true, much as Thucydides pointed circa 300 BC, and observed throughout much of the twentieth century, that powers can opt to massacre whole peoples, whether they seek peace or stand.

Chapter 8

Future Pessimistic Scenarios

he danger today is not so much a “clash of civilizations,” but the rise of differing forms of revanchist movements that claim that they want Tto return the state and society to something closer to a previous period of perceived grandeur, status, and influence that it once ostensibly possessed. These pan- or macromovements, which may initially be initiated by small bands of individuals before they gain greater popular strength, often manipulate religious, civilizational, and other social values in their efforts to achieve their generally dystopian goals, which generally include border revisions. Rather than teaching mutual respect and power sharing, these groups assert the superiority of their cause, values, and beliefs over those of other social or religious communities, or even over those within the same religion or civilization, and seek to play on existing social and ethnic tensions that are often masked beneath ostensibly peaceful coexistence between differing social groups. Russian pan-nationalists seek a return to the time of Peter the Great, when tsarist Russia first dominated the Baltic region and the Caucasus, while likewise playing up the image of Moscow as the “Third Rome.”1 Putin has also attempted to recreate a myth of Catherine the Great’s “Novorossiya” that will prove difficult for opposition leaders to deconstruct. Yet he nevertheless appears to be acting more like Nicolas I, who stumbled into the Crimean War. In developing a concept of fuxing, which can be interpreted as a rejuvenation, if not a restoration, of great power status, the Chinese Communist Party now hopes to rejuvenate China against its feelings of more than a century of “humiliation” that the Chinese people have suffered at least since British defeat in the Opium Wars, plus horrific suffering as a result of Japanese military intervention, followed by US support for Taiwan against the Mainland and for South Korea against Chinese-backed North Korea. But here, while Beijing sustains its own claims versus Taiwan as part of a unified China, Beijing also opposes a unified Korea that could make irredentist claims deep into Chinese-controlled 150 l Crimea, Global Rivalry, and the Vengeance of History territory, possibly backed by Japan and the United States. For its part, the new Japanese nationalism manifests itself in the political influence of groups such as Nippon Kaigi, which asserts Japan’s claim to the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands and denies, for example, that the Japanese military forced Korean women into sexual slavery. In general, distrust of international promises (magnified by the Holocaust), elements of the Zionist movement have outlined differing territorial claims for a greater or Eretz Israel, depending in part on biblical interpretations. The failure to reach a political settlement since 1948, plus the expansion of Israeli settlements into the West Bank since the 1967 Arab-Israeli War, has fuelled a number of pro-Palestinian movements. Here, Hamas and other Islamist movements have tended to supplant pan-Arab movements since the 1990 Iraq War and the defeat of Iraqi pan-Arabism. Depicting Ottoman collapse after World War I as a “humiliation and disgrace,” Osama bin Laden, Islamic State, and other Islamist revanchists seek to rebuild the caliphate that once ruled the Ottoman Empire but differ as to how to achieve that goal. Along with Iraq and the Levant, Islamic State has hyped its claims to the Maghreb, Spain (Andalusia), and Habasha, the Arabic name for ancient Ethiopia, which also includes contemporary Sudan, Somalia, and Eritrea, as well as northeastern Iran, southern Turkmenistan and northern Afghanistan (the region of Khorasan once absorbed by the Arab Umayyad Caliphate in the seventh and eighth centuries). Claims of Boko Harem impact Nigeria, Niger, Chad, and Sudan. In many ways, the 1979 Iranian Revolution, which initiated the pan-Shi ’a movements against the US domination of Iran, likewise stimulated pan-Sunni movements as a counterforce, a fact that resulted in Saddam Hussein’s attack on Iran in 1980, egged on by Washington and the Sunni Arab Gulf states: Iran in revolutionary chaos was falsely seen as an easy victory. Since the 2003 US- led war with Iraq, the Iraqi state collapse has strengthened Kurdish irredentist claims to territories in Iraq, Turkey, and Syria, as well as Iran. For its part, Turkey has adopted a policy of “zero conflict” with its neighbors but nevertheless possesses a concept of “strategic depth” that involves elements of pan-Sunni ideology in peacefully asserting Turkish political-economic interests as heir to the Ottoman Empire. In India, political Hinduism has appeared to have gained in strength in response to the rise of pan-Islamism. In addition to opposing differing minority groups inside India, the Hindu nationalist movement has sought to check any deep India-Pakistan rapprochement, while backing Indian efforts to counter Chinese naval expansion into the Indian Ocean and Chinese control over Tibet and the Himalayan borders. Concurrently, in dealing with all of these rising powers and sociopolitical movements, the United States, as the global hegemon, waivers between Future Pessimistic Scenarios l 151 retractionist neoisolationism and neoconservatism. The latter perspective claims the right to use force if necessary and to protect, if not expand globally, the presumed superiority of American interests and values.

What Are Russian Goals? The 2008 Georgia-Russia War, followed by the annexation of Crimea and the purported military support for secessionist movements in eastern Ukraine in February–March 2014, has raised concerns as to how far post-Soviet Russia is willing to go in overthrowing the status quo. The fundamental question is whether Russia under Putin is seeking to forge a wider local empire in the Russian “near abroad,” more like Nicolas I before the Crimean War, or a later Leninist/Stalinist model, which sought differing regional partitions over Ukraine and the Caucasus? Or is Putin seeking to expand Russian spheres of influence and security more like Bismarck and Khrushchev (and later Soviet leaders), thus seeking to secure a continental defense glacis before beginning to expand political-economic influence overseas? Or will Russia soon take the risk to strive for an even more revanchist vision like that of Napoleon or Hitler? Or could the Russian Federation disaggregate as did the tsarist and Soviet empires? The related question (to be addressed in Chapter 9) is whether the United States and Europe should respond to the Russian annexation of Crimea more like the French who aligned with Russia and then Great Britain at the beginning of the twentieth century in reaction to the 1871 Prussian annexation of Alsace- Lorraine and the later 1908 annexation of Bosnia by Austria-Hungary? Or should the United States respond to the Russian annexation of Crimea as if it were similar to the Nazi German annexation of the Sudetenland? Or are other options possible? It appears certain that, at a minimum, Moscow wants to sustain the situation in Crimea and eastern Ukraine as a “frozen conflict” to check NATO and EU influence, while extending that of Russia. Yet Moscow could go one step further and seek to manipulate the separatist-controlled regions of Donetsk and Luhansk as bargaining chips in negotiations with Kiev. Even more aggres- sively, Moscow could also help those separatists obtain greater autonomy by militarily supporting their efforts to gain control of airports, ports, and nuclear power plants. As of February 2015, with the periodic breakdown of the Minsk II ceasefire, the primary goals of Ukrainian “decentralists” appear to be the railway hub at Debaltseve that links the two separatist regions. Separatists may also seek to control the port city of Mariupol with its steel industry and that provides a land bridge to Crimea. Cities such as Kharkiv, Odessa, Zaporizhya, and Dni- propetrovsk have all witnessed an increase in acts of violence, while Ukrainian authorities have sought to crack down on any signs of proautonomist or pro- Russian movements. 152 l Crimea, Global Rivalry, and the Vengeance of History

If compromises cannot be found, Russian-backed decentralists could expand beyond Donetsk and Luhansk to incorporate Dnipropetrovsk and Kharkiv (home of the Bolshevik movement in 1917). Even more provocatively, separatists could attempt to control the entire Novorossiya region. In this scenario, Moscow could back separatist movements in the Odessa province itself, among other regions, so as to further splinter Ukraine rather than seek to control the Novorossiya region directly.2 In a more extreme scenario, a pro-Russian movement could attempt to seize the entire territory of Novorossiya. This would mean the forced capture of Odessa after Mariupol, which could then link to the Russian-backed Transnistrian Republic. But this scenario would require a force of 200,000 to 300,000 Russian troops plus at least a ten-year commitment and a permanent national mobilization.3 The question remains: Is such a mobilization truly in Putin’s interest? Such a mobilization would expose the lie to the Russian people that Russian military personnel are not directly involved in Ukraine. Moreover, the region is not entirely Putin friendly. Significant resistance could then overextend Russian resources, resulting in greater political- economic instability in Russia itself, which may significantly weaken Putin’s popular domestic support despite his efforts to hype Russian pan-nationalism. It is furthermore possible (but dubious) that Moscow could seek to reconstruct a pan-Russian state that would link the Russian Federation with the predominantly Russophone regions of eastern Ukraine, Belarus, and northern Kazakhstan (the largest landlocked country in the world), regardless of the ethnic, religious, or ideological composition of those regions and even if the Rus- sophone populations of these regions did not necessarily want to fall under Russian governmental control. Roughly one-quarter of Kazakhstan’s population of 17 million is ethnic Russian, but in the north and west of the country, ethnic Russians account for between 40 and 50 percent of the population. But as the case with Ukraine, there are many mixed marriages. This pan-Russian scenario would be somewhat similar to the pan-German empire sought by Hitler, but it appears that it could only become a possibility if Putin’s present attempts to forge a Eurasian Union fail, given the apparent near-term collapse of the ruble, for example, among other political-economic failures. Moscow has been supporting Russophone movements in Ukraine precisely because Kiev had attempted to move out of its sphere of influence and security. Moscow would only do the same in other regions at the risk of considerable sociopolitical turmoil, if Belarus increasingly looks to the European Union or if Kazakhstan looks to closer to China, if not the European Union and the United States. In those circumstances, Putin could threaten to support the Russian diaspora, as he appeared to do in August 2014 in reference to Kazakhstan, whose aging President Nursultan Nazarbayev, could soon be confronted with a succession crisis. Belarus has likewise feared Russian irredentism, Future Pessimistic Scenarios l 153 which helps explain its willingness to help mediate between Kiev and Moscow. But such a pan-nationalist Russian policy would also risk the breakup of non- Russian regions of the Russian Federation itself as well as put an end to Putin’s hopes to forge a strong Eurasian Union. In addition to using the supply and pricing of energy as a form of strategic leverage to pressure individual states, Moscow could also support pro-Russian, anti-EU political parties or secessionist movements throughout Europe, where possible, in order to create fissures in the European Union, particularly in the Baltic states, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Greece, and Hungary, if not Spain, in the future, in addition to non-EU members Serbia, Kosovo, Montenegro, and Macedonia. One scenario is that Putin may want to provoke a Crimea-like conflict in the Baltic states, creating tensions between Baltic states that might lead to civil strife, perhaps leading to the unexpected apparition of “Green Men” to break up Estonia, as was the case for Crimea in 2014. The purpose would not necessarily be to provoke NATO into direct conflict but to further divide NATO members and EU members. As such a conflict would be initiated by secret Rus- sian backing for alienated pro-Russian individuals and groups, it should be met by sound policies aimed at better integrating Russophone groups. And even if not all individuals can be fully integrated into the societies of the Baltic states, pro-Russian protest movements should be met with effective, nonviolent, civil defense and police measures. Since the Soviet collapse, Russia has also been attempting to regain the overseas amphibious access that it once possessed under the Soviet Union (engaging with Venezuela, Iran, Syria, Cuba, and Vietnam as well as Brazil, South Africa, and Argentina, for example). This is somewhat similar to imperial Germany more than Nazi Germany or even tsarist Russia, which possessed only limited overseas access before selling Alaska to the United States. Imperial Germany represented a latecomer to overseas colonialism and imperialism before Berlin lost almost all its overseas influence after the Versailles Treaty. At the same time, however, US rapprochement with Vietnam, plus Chinese pressures on that country, have been designed to diminish Russian influence. Likewise, Obama’s steps to forge a rapprochement with Cuba may be designed in part to head off a Russian (and Chinese) rapprochement after Putin visited Cuba in July 2014 and failed to reach a deal over the possible reactivation of the former Soviet Lourdes radar station. The fact that Putin had closed the Lourdes radar station in 2001 at least initially appeared to represent a step toward closer ties with the United States, but that no longer appears to be the case. Confronted with deeper sanctions, Moscow could prove totally uncoopera- tive in other areas of strategic importance to the United States and Europe, while likewise engaging in a major new arms race. By 2020, despite the high costs and the need to struggle against corruption that will slow the rearmament program 154 l Crimea, Global Rivalry, and the Vengeance of History down, plus sociopolitical opposition against such an expensive arms buildup (which will be impacted by the drop in the value of the ruble), Putin expects to build a professional army of 145,000 soldiers (reducing the size of the present forces). Assuming it is financially feasible, he likewise plans to upgrade some 400 ballistic missiles, 8 strategic submarines, 20 multipurpose submarines, 50 surface vessels, military spacecraft, 600 advanced planes, 1,000 helicopters, and 28 antiaircraft missiles.4 Much as the United States unilaterally dropped out of the Anti-Ballistic Mis- sile (ABM) treaty, Moscow could drop out of START. Or, perhaps even more significantly, Moscow could drop the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty that had eliminated intermediate-range nuclear weaponry (SS-20s) that could threaten Europe, Japan, and the “wider Middle East,” if not China, which did not sign the INF. As intermediate-range ballistic missiles do not directly threaten the US mainland, the purpose would be to further undermine US deterrence and nuclear security guarantees for third parties in Europe and Asia. In March 2015, Moscow suspended further consultations on the Conventional Force in Europe talks ostensibly due to Wikileak reports that the United States had attempted to block NATO allies from engaging in talks on substantive issues. Belarus will represent Russia in future talks.5 Russia is furthermore expected to upgrade the Russian military presence in the Black Sea region. This would permit it to project power toward southern Ukraine, the Balkans, and Turkey, as well as toward Syria, Iran, and the Middle East. In order to check NATO and the European Union from venturing into the Caucasus, an even more expansionist Russian policy would seek to shatter Georgia and force it to capitulate in favor of the formation of a land bridge to Armenia in the Caucasus.6 This destabilizing action would be designed to strengthen its relations with Iran as well as to divert Iran from supporting pan- Shi’a movements inside Russia and its “near abroad” while concurrently supporting Syria. Moscow fears that the collapse of the Syrian Assad regime could strengthen pan-Islamist movements in the northern Caucasus and Tatarstan, among other Muslim regions near or within the soft Russian underbelly. Efforts to strengthen ties with Iran (in countering the US and European rapprochement) would also be intended to counter pan-Sunni movements supported by the Arab Gulf countries in the northern Caucasus and southwest Asia, in the soft Russian underbelly. In 2013, during the Syrian Civil War, Russia created a “permanent task force” for the eastern Mediterranean, so as to support its ally Syria via the Turkish straits. Having seized Crimea, Moscow is no longer constrained by the 2010 Kharkiv Agreement, which covered Sevastopol’s lease, gas contracts, and military deployments with Ukraine. (Fear of losing the Tartus port in Syria has led Russia to demand the opening of a port on Greek Cyprus.) As a means to more strongly back Syria, Russia could also provide stronger defense Future Pessimistic Scenarios l 155 supports for Iran (such as S300 missiles) if the latter agrees to give up its nuclear weapons program in an accord that opens up Iran for conventional-arms sales and energy deals, including peaceful nuclear-power sales.7 But as is the case with Cuba and Vietnam, Moscow will be in tougher competition with the United States and Europe who want their share of the huge Iranian oil and gas markets. Moreover, red-brown popular support for Putin’s policies from both Com- munist Party leader Gennady Zyuganov and Russian pan-nationalist Vladimir Zhirinovsky (who are both being investigated by Kiev for “financing activities aimed at changing Ukraine’s territory and its state borders”),8 raises the question as to how far Putin intends to go, given domestic pressures from the Russian version of the “politics of the diagonal” that pushed both imperial Germany and Weimar Germany toward a more militant foreign policy. Here, for example, much like imperial German policy during World War I in support of the Otto- man Empire and pan-Islamist movements, Moscow could attempt to play some pan-Sunni factions (in addition to pan-Shi’a movements) against the United States and Europe in order to counter US, European, and Arab Gulf support for secessionist movements inside the Russian Federation and in its “near abroad” (in the northern Caucasus and central Asia). It remains to be seen whether the Russian government will be able to raise the funding for the geographically constrained Black Sea Fleet in a period of economic stagnation and in the face of sanctions and the possible loss of energy markets, especially in light of plans to reinforce and upgrade Russia’s Pacific Fleet, given the US “pivot to Asia.” And how Russian society as a whole will bear the costs of Crimea’s annexation in the face of increased tension with the West, sanctions, and the rebuilding of NATO capabilities is far from predictable.9

China It is furthermore likely that Moscow will attempt to tighten military alliances with China as well as with India, if not with Iran, among other states, in addition to the members of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), raising tensions throughout Eurasia. Moscow appears to be playing its own version of the American “China Card” against Japanese and US interests in the Far East. In historical terms, this appears to represent a “neo-Rapallo Pact” as Mos- cow also hopes to engage in greater cooperation with the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). This appears true even if Russia appeared to violate the basic antisecessionist principles of the SCO by supporting the independence of South Ossetia and Abkhazia from Georgia and then Crimea and eastern Ukraine. If there is one thing the Socialist prebendal state of China fears, it is the right to secede. But here, unlike Russian support for the independence of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, Beijing may see Russian absorption of Crimea 156 l Crimea, Global Rivalry, and the Vengeance of History and its actions in eastern Ukraine as asserting Russia’s right to unification. In addition to stating that NATO enlargement had been a “bitter pill” for Russia to swallow, as its strategic space had been contracting, one Chinese military official put it this way: “For Russians, the loss of Ukraine would be even more serious than if China were to lose Taiwan. This would be more akin to China losing the Yellow River Valley, or to losing Shaanxi Province – such a well- spring of culture.”10 In terms of its external relations, China, much like a rapidly growing tsarist Russia, has seen itself surrounded by potentially hostile states, including Japan and India, plus South Korea, Taiwan, and Vietnam, in addition to the Russian Federation, which is not entirely trusted by Beijing and may or may not become a full-fledged ally depending in part on China’s relations with Japan and the United States. China’s cheap consumer goods can undercut Russian domestic production, causing resentment inside Russia, while China is expected to out- produce Russian shipbuilding capacity by 2020 and US shipbuilding by 2030, for example. Assuming no crisis or opposition social movements slow its pace, rapid Chinese economic growth is one of the reasons Russia could become a junior partner to China as Beijing expands its GNP and its accumulation of foreign-exchange reserves over $3.8 trillion, while also buying into the US national debt. At the same time, despite (or because of) its rapid yet uneven growth and with heavy internal and interindustrial debts, Beijing has been confronted with the prospects of secessionist movements in Tibet, Xinjiang province, and Inner Mongolia, as well as Taiwan, plus the internal rise of democracy opposition movements due in part to Chinese governmental corruption and a lack of transparency in decision making. A Sino-Russian alliance, based in part on joint opposition to secessionist movements, would be intended to assert Moscow’s controls over its own Russian Far East while diverting Chinese attention from Russia and toward its disputes over energy, resources, and the Kurile Islands/northern territories with Japan, while likewise seeking to check American hegemonic-core power in the Indo-Pacific. In seeking to strengthen relations between the CSTO, the Eurasian Union, the SCO, and China’s Silk Road Economic Belt project, Rus- sia hopes to achieve a new bloc that can counter NATO, EU, and Japanese influence, and thus prevent China from developing Silk Road trading routes that could potentially exclude Russian interests, despite steps toward greater Sino-Russian energy cooperation. Eventually, Russia and China could also seek to establish a condominium over the Eurasian heartland and over Mongolia, which would be reminiscent of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, going beyond the 1950 Sino-Soviet alliance, which was aimed at Japan and its US ally. In addition, despite its historical rivalry with India and their mutual suspicions, China appears to be considering admitting India and Pakistan (if not Future Pessimistic Scenarios l 157

Mongolia and Iran, which is presently an observer) to the Shanghai Coopera- tion Organization.11 (This is according to Russian diplomats; American diplomats emphasize disagreements between Beijing and Moscow.) China’s interest in widening the SCO would be to counter US efforts to woo both India and Iran into closer political-economic, if not geostrategic ties, while both Rus- sia and China see US, EU, and Japanese political-economic and geostrategic- military policies as aimed against them. President Obama’s visit to India in February 2015 was in part intended to counterbalance both Russian and Chi- nese influence within this burgeoning power. With Moscow expected to sell at least ten nuclear power plants to India in the coming year, for example, it is signaling that it wants to draw India closer to its side versus US, French, and Japanese efforts to woo India. Moscow is concurrently trying to reduce friction between India and China, if possible. While Russia and China have been tightening defense relations since 2005, Beijing’s Nine-Dash Map has led China into potential conflict over islands and resources with most of its neighbors, most particularly with Japan, the Philip- pines, and Vietnam. Concurrently, China and Japan continued to dispute the Senkaku/Diaoyu islands. In addition, Beijing has declared an air defense zone that overlaps with a previous air defense zone declared by Japan. In late Novem- ber 2014, the United States tested that air defense zone by sending ostensibly unarmed B-52s into China’s declared airspace, in what was very heavy symbolism. Japan and South Korea have also sent fighter jets into Chinese-declared air space. Beijing claimed to have monitored those flights but then appeared to back off. In addition to other incidents, China and Japan almost clashed over drones flown by China into Japanese space. While Japan threatened to shoot the drones down, China stated that it would consider that an act of war. In April 2015, when Beijing began to reclaim land in the Spratlys, Washington and Manilla accused it of destabilizing the region. Tensions in Asia have appeared to be mounting in 2014 in the aftermath of North Korean missile tests and North–South Korean artillery exchange. In March 2014, North Korea threatened to conduct a new form of nuclear test for strengthening its nuclear deterrence. Tensions with both North Korea and China have consequently led Japan to lift its 1967 ban on arms exports and to strengthen its military capabilities. Japan has begun to expand its defense perimeter not only ostensibly in acting outside its territorial defenses but also ostensibly in accord with its allies, in reinterpreting its constitutional Article 9 ban on the use of military force except in the case of self-defense. Yet, as the US pivot to Asia seeks to back up Japan and the Philippines, in coordination with Australia, China does not yet appear prepared for confrontation. Nevertheless, it could be possible for China to pressure Vietnam in order to force Hanoi to accept Chinese hegemony, as it appears dubious it will be backed up by either 158 l Crimea, Global Rivalry, and the Vengeance of History the United States or Russia, despite the investments of both countries and their allies in Vietnam. As rivalries between China, North Korea, Japan, and the United States heat up, China’s “String of Pearls” strategy appears to seek control over sea lines of communication in the Indo-Pacific region by linking the South China Sea and the Indian Ocean. China has not yet renounced the use of force to regain Tai- wan, and, in addition to concerns with other secessionist movements within the mainland, the main driving force of PLA (People’s Liberation Army) defense planning is to regain the highly productive island, with the expectation that the United States will come to Taiwan’s defense.12 In terms of historical analogy, the late nineteenth-century roles of Japan and China have switched: China has begun to take the place of Japan as the more assertive power in the Indo- Pacific. The 1894–95 Sino-Japanese War (in which Japan had initially seized the Senkaku/Diaoyu islands) had been fought over the Korean peninsula and then over Taiwan; those same regions remain in dispute today but in differing circumstances. In addition, the close Sino-Russian entente (which grew out of the Sino- Soviet rapprochement beginning in 1986) can be compared and contrasted with the period before World War I with Bismarck’s formation of the imperial German-tsarist Russian reinsurance treaty, which was intended to prevent a Franco-Russian alliance but broke apart in 1890 as Germany sought to forge an alliance with Great Britain. The Sino-Russian entente can also be compared and contrasted with the interwar period, when Weimar Germany reached out to the flanking Soviet Union in forging the 1922–23 Rapallo Pact in an effort to check an alliance with Britain or France with either Weimar Germany or Soviet Russia. These steps toward a close Sino-Russian alliance can also be compared and contrasted with the 1950 Sino-Soviet alliance against Japan and its US ally, but this rapprochement is taking place in new circumstances in which Russia could become China’s junior partner, given China’s burgeoning military and political-economic power capabilities. The latter analogies also raise the question as to how solid Russian and Chinese relations are and also as to when and under what circumstances might the new Sino-Russian relationship break apart, given the fact that 1939–41 Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany broke down violently and that the 1950 Sino-Soviet alliance also collapsed into intermittent violence throughout the early 1960s. One can also go back to the failure to sustain alliances between Prussia/Germany and tsarist Russia. Or are the global geopolitical circumstances so different, given NATO expansion and the rise of Japan (as a potentially expansive military power backed by the United States in China’s views), that Moscow and Beijing might Future Pessimistic Scenarios l 159 be able to overcome their remaining differences? This, in turn, raises questions whether the United States, Europe, India, and Japan are taking steps to forge an “encircling alliance” against Russia and China that will actually reinforce a Sino-Russian alliance or, by contrast, potentially break it up? Here, the fact that Russia is considering a sale of its advanced S-400 missiles (which could cover all of Taiwan’s airspace), advanced SU-35 fighter jets, and possibly its latest Amur 1650 submarines to China indicates either how desperate Russia is to sell its military products or how tight the Sino-Russian alliance is becoming, when Moscow usually holds its more advanced weaponry in reserve before it develops new systems.13 Such a prospect will definitely set off a major- power arms race throughout the region, particularly if Taiwan can also acquire advanced nuclear-capable US F16s and diesel submarines, as it has hoped for.

NATO-EU-Ukraine-Japanese “Encirclement” of Russia and China? As argued, contemporary Russian strategy in eastern Europe presently appears more like that of Lenin’s policy during the Russian Revolution than like that of Hitler. Moscow is unlikely to take over all of Ukraine, despite purported threats to do so. Nor is it likely to threaten to support other Russophile movements in Kazakhstan or elsewhere, without causing deep sociopolitical unrest. But much as Moscow worked to partition Ukraine as did Poland at the end of the Russian Civil War, Moscow could seek to strengthen its own influence in eastern Ukraine, but largely in reaction to stronger NATO-EU efforts to support Kiev. This could ultimately result in a NATO-EU-Russian partition of the country, which would be more like the unstable and disputed division of Poland and eastern Europe under the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. The United States, NATO, and Europe (and possibly China or Japan) could back up Ukraine, while the non-Russian regions of Eurasia could look to alliances with the United States, Europe, Japan, or China. The “encirclement” of Russia could consequently take place by means of a NATO-EU-Ukrainian-Japanese alliance with India and in which China could possibly threaten to shift back toward the United States. What appears more likely, however, is that China will remain closely tied to Russia, while seeking to neutralize India or else bring it into a closer defense relationship, while both Russia and China seek to counter a NATO-EU- Ukrainian-Japanese alliance. Nevertheless, the suspicions aroused in a such a game of “encirclement” could possibly provoke war, nuclear or not, just like the 1939–41 Molotov- Ribbentrop Pact did after just two years or like the breakdown in the Napole- onic continental alliance did in 1810–12. The United States has hoped to build up the defense capabilities of both the Europeans and Japanese, in the effort to counterbalance China and Russia, 160 l Crimea, Global Rivalry, and the Vengeance of History as well as North Korea, not to overlook Iran (depending on US and European efforts to achieve a rapprochement), due in part to the need to cut back on US defense spending in order to reduce American debts and deficits. Prior to the February–March 2014 Russian-Ukrainian conflict, the United States planned to cut, by “sequestering,” nearly $500 billion from the Pentagon’s budget over ten years, with force reductions planned primarily for Europe. The United States then planned a significant buildup in the Indo-Pacific, while insisting that the Europeans build up their rapid-deployment capabilities for NATO after Russian intervention in Crimea. In May 2014, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel announced that the United States would augment its forward-stationed and forward-deploy ed capabilities in the entire Indo-Pacific region, at the same time that the Pentagon had planned to withdraw military forces from Afghanistan in 2014 (which has now been extended to at least 2015). In addition to seeking to strengthen European defenses, a major US and NATO military buildup is thus planned: By 2020, the United States intends to achieve its target of operating 60 percent of both navy and air force fleets out of the Pacific.14 A possible US and Japanese war with China could involve a new US defense concept, called air/sea battle. This represents an attempt since 2010 to address Chinese antiaccess and area denial in maritime regions. The concept foresees an air/sea battle fought primarily by missiles, perhaps much like the 1982 Falkland Islands War between Britain and Argentina, but on a much larger scale. Such a battle could take place if US-Chinese conflict over Taiwan involved China’s new antiship ballistic missile. It is feared that a rapidly growing China could possibly take advantage of the apparent lack of American will to engage in the use of force. In the meantime, the United States and its coalition partners also expect to engage in a potentially long-term war with the so-called Islamic State. The danger is that Syria could play a geostrategic role between the United States, Europe, and Russia similar to the geostrategic role Morocco played for the Brit- ish, French, and Germans before World War I, in which German interests were cut out altogether, exacerbating German fears of isolation and encirclement. At the same time, the problem is that the Crimean issue, much like the Alsace- Lorraine question for the French before World War I, will continue to simmer in the background. With Ukrainian support for joint exercises, NATO could soon opt to deploy a reserve squadron to the eastern Mediterranean under the terms of the Montreux Convention, if the United States and the European Union cannot eventually reach a Black Sea accord with Russia. (See Chapter 9.) Up to now, NATO deployments in the Mediterranean since Crimea’s annexation have been limited.15 In addition to the ongoing conflicts in Syria and Iraq and the buildup of refugees on the Turkish border, the Russian annexation of Crimea puts Turkey Future Pessimistic Scenarios l 161 in a position between a rock and a hard place, given NATO’s expected military buildup. Ankara has refused to recognize the Russian annexation, and yet it has also refused to engage in US-EU sanctions against Russia (along with China, Brazil, Indonesia, and India). While Ankara has hoped to mediate between Kiev and Moscow, Ankara also feels it necessary to speak up for the rights of Crimean Tatars (13 percent of the population). The major question is whether or not NATO will further expand its membership into Ukraine (or even to EU members Sweden and Finland) as demanded by US neoconservatives, among others, since the 1990s. Will NATO enlargement to Ukraine further destabilize Ukraine between “pro-Russian” and “pro- European” factions, while dividing whole families? Could civil war in Ukraine then result in nuclear war if Russia and/or China believe they must break out of a NATO-EU-Ukraine-Japanese “encirclement,” perhaps more like the foreign policy of imperial Germany in sparking World War I than that of Nazi Ger- many? (See Chapters 4–5.) Yet the real “threat” stemming from NATO enlargement is not so much that of a NATO-led attack and the attempt to seize Russia’s resources, as Vladimir Putin has insinuated in a number of speeches, but the more plausible scenario that the United States, Europe, and their allies might purposely or inadvertently manipulate sociopolitical weaknesses within the Russian Federation or among its allies. The danger is that NATO and Russia could soon find themselves backing opposing sides in a direct confrontation involving two conflicting states, which could have been the case, for example, had NATO opted to support Georgia militarily versus Russia in August 2008 and which could take place with respect to Syria today. There is accordingly a real danger that NATO and the European Union could eventually spark a neo-Crimean War in an effort to “roll back” Russian gains in Crimea, eastern Ukraine, and the Caucasus, in that President Putin appears to be imitating Tsar Nicolas I in his efforts to regain territories that Russia had once controlled after its wars with Persia and the Ottoman Empire in 1828. Further Russian expansion then helped provoke the Crimean War in 1856 in confrontation with the Ottoman Empire, backed by France and Britain. At that time, Karl Marx had sounded like a contemporary neoconservative in urging Britain and France, as well as Prussia and Austria, to unify against Russia. In urging military action, he asked rhetorically, “Without Odessa, Cronstadt, Riga, Sebastopol, with Finland emancipated, and a hostile army at the gates of the capital, with all her rivers and harbours closed up, what would Russia be? A giant without arms, without eyes.”16 But as Marx also pointed out at time, the European powers were not at all willing to fully unify against the tsarist empire, so that the Crimea conflict would not (unfortunately in his 162 l Crimea, Global Rivalry, and the Vengeance of History view!) be anything like the much wider French revolutionary wars of 1792 that could result in the roll back of the tsarist empire. This was true “as long as the war is confined to the Western powers and Turkey on the one hand, and Russia on the other.”17 But then again, instead of really observing the 1856 Crimean War, which could have easily become a wider conflict, perhaps Marx was envi- sioning (and hoping for) the breakup of the tsarist empire, which would not take place until World War I? Or perhaps he was actually prophesizing a future global war against Russia in the twenty-first century?

A Euro-Ukrainian-Chinese Alliance? Another possibility is that European disputes with Russia in response to Rus- sian pressures on Ukraine and the rest of eastern Europe could lead France and Germany, along with Ukraine, to look toward an entente with China, in an effort to counterbalance Russian influence, due in part to the quest for new arms markets, while at least ostensibly promising to reconcile China and Japan. Such a EU-Chinese “Red Eiffel Tower entente” (in part in the quest for Chi- nese finance, investments, and trade) has thus far been opposed by the United States but, if implemented, would open a second flank against Russia. Such an approach could take place if a neoisolationist United States does begin to significantly reduce its military presence in Europe and if the Europeans themselves are slow to develop a greater autonomous military capacity. Since the Cold War, the United States has been reducing manpower but beginning to engage in troop rotations. Nevertheless, the Europeans (and the Russians) could continue to question whether the United States would necessarily engage in a nuclear, Article V defense of new NATO members. If developed, and assuming Japan and China could be held at bay, a Sino- European alliance could represent a new “encircling” alliance, similar to the Franco-Russian Dual Alliance that encircled imperial Germany or the Franco- Soviet alliance that “encircled” Nazi Germany. This option could come into reality in the post–Cold War era, as France and Germany continue to demand a greater relative autonomy for Europe within NATO in the aftermath of France’s reintegration into NATO in 2009. On the one hand, too great a European tilt toward China could, however, further undermine the European relations with both the United States and Japan. On the other, if the United States eventually opts for neoisolationism, and appears to withdraw from European defenses, then the possibility that Europe will look closer to China for mutually beneficial trade and investment to counterbalance Russia, rather than looking to Japan, becomes even more likely. At present, the Europeans have not yet formally broken the post– Tiananmen Square arms embargo (since 1989) on China, despite significant Future Pessimistic Scenarios l 163 sales of “dual-use” military/industrial technology to China. Instead, the Euro- peans appear to be hedging their bets by diversifying clients, including India and Japan, in which the latter has traditionally been a client of the American military-industrial complex, while India had been a major purchaser of Russian armaments, although it is beginning to look toward France, among other Euro- pean arms producers, in particular. Despite its significant dual-use technology trade with China and efforts to boost ties, France has entered into joint development of weaponry with Japan.18 Yet it appears dubious that the Europeans (which seek Chinese finance) possess the means to succeed in reconciling China, India, and Japan, without strong US backing. It is more likely that China would use European supports to opt for a more militant approach, likewise obtaining assistance from Russia while still building against the US-Japanese alliance, in the effort to shake Japan away from the American grasp and to regain control over Taiwan and over resources in the Indo-Pacific region. The fact that China has seen itself as a victim of more than a century of conquest and humiliation leads it to distrust all of the former colonial powers. Concurrently, an increasingly nationalist Japan could seek greater military independence and assert its regional interests even against US interests.

The Perils of Russian and/or Chinese Breakup By contrast, yet another scenario foresees the breakup of the Russian Federa- tion somewhat similar to the breakup of the Soviet and tsarist empires. In this scenario, China could gravitate toward Europe and/or the United States in the effort to obtain indirect hegemony, if not direct control, over the Russian Far East. China and Russia could turn against each other: the NATO-Eur opean- Japanese-Ukrainian alliance could be joined by China in the not entirely incred- ible assumption that Japan and China could eventually achieve a modus vivendi. The assumption here would be that Russia would be near disaggregation and that Japan and China could divide the spoils. American neoconservatives, Ukrainian nationalists, as well as Karl Marx, have all believed in extending the containment barrier as far as possible so as to prevent Russia from ever returning to power in Europe and in the effort to fragment the country, as proved to be the case during World War I and at the end of the Cold War, which in effect returned Russia to its position in Eurasia prior to Peter the Great. It is often argued that just as the Soviet Union and tsarist Russia collapsed, so too will the new Russian Federation. In this view, a forceful US, European, and Japanese containment policy, plus the nuclear deterrent, will prevent Moscow from engaging in a global war for fear of its future disaggregation. But this view appears to assume the Russian fear of collapse will mitigate, rather than militarize, Russian behavior. 164 l Crimea, Global Rivalry, and the Vengeance of History

The breakup of the Russian and Soviet empires points to major differences in the nature of Russian, as opposed to German, domestic political rule. The future breakup of the Russian Federation could involve a series of civil wars, much like that taking place in eastern Ukraine since 2014 to the present or like that which took place in the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s. In the latter analogy, Russia would play the role of Serbia; Ukraine, the role of Croatia; and Muslims in Central Asia, the role of the Bosniaks. But in this case, conflict in the Far East over Siberia and Mongolia would be added to conflict in eastern Europe and in east-central and central Asia. The breakup of Russia could consequently lead to civil and interstate conflict between the rump of Russia and China, Japan, and differing secessionist and pan-Islamist movements throughout the Russian Federation and its “near abroad,” for the spoils. In the final paragraph of his 1904 article, Halford Mackinder had forewarned of the possibility that China (backed by Japan) could “overthrow” Russian control of the “pivot region” by conquer- ing its territory, thus adding “oceanic frontage to the resources of the great continent, an advantage as yet denied to the Russian tenant of the pivot region.”19 But he was speaking of the near future, in his epoch, and not the twenty-first century. In contemporary circumstances, it appears dubious that China would be able to conquer Russia by force. But if the Russian Federa- tion did begin to break up, China, whether or not it is in alliance with the United States, Europe, and Japan, could aspire to seize Primorsky Krai (with its capital of Vladivostok). Primorsky Krai represents a sliver of Russian territory that was once under the control of the Qing Empire. As this region separates China’s Heilongjiang from the Sea of Japan, “a Chinese shipping corridor through Primorsky Krai would help boost the economic development of northeast China.”20 Yet still another possible scenario is the breakup of both China and Russia as occurred at the beginning of the twentieth century. In the case of Russia in World War I, the tsarist empire, although it showed signs of reforming in 1905 at the time of defeat to Japan in the Russo-Japanese War, did not fully collapse until 1917 when the social democratic government of Alexander Kerensky was unable to remain in the war and control the more militant Bolshevik factions who opposed the war, with Lenin’s calls for peace backed secretly by Germany. The country splintered into civil war, with Germany seeking to control much of eastern Europe to Ukraine while Japan sought to control the Russian Far East. In the case of China, the imperial reform process began under the Empress dowager after Chinese defeat in the 1894–95 Sino-Japanese War, but General Yuan Shikai betrayed the Guangxu reformers. By 1911, Sun-Yat Sen declared a republic only to be once again betrayed by Yuan Shikai. The country then moved into a period of civil war and “warring states,” until Mao was finally able Future Pessimistic Scenarios l 165 to defeat his rival Chiang Kai-shek, expelling the latter to Taiwan, while Mao consolidated the mainland. Both these analogies raise fears among both Russian and Chinese elites of potential geopolitical disaggregation and revolutionary “chaos,” if Russia and China do begin the process of reform. For this reason, Chinese and Russian elites generally militate against sociopolitical reform, for fear that such reforms may fail and particularly if it is believed foreign powers will take advantage of those reforms. In fact, Putin began to centralize power over the Russian republics, krais, and oblasts by appointing governors after Yeltsin had implemented a number of decentralized reforms. In the pre–World War I epoch, reforms in China and Russia only took place after defeat in the 1894–95 Sino-Japanese War and the 1904–5 Russo-Japanese War. But these reforms were then followed by revolutions in both countries. Yet is war really needed to impel domestic social and political reforms in both Russia and China? If defeat in war is the fundamental source of demands for change, does that not imply that such reforms would really be designed to strengthen the state and society for future wars, as was the case for Prus- sian reforms after the Napoleonic Wars, or for tsarist Russia after the Crimean War? By contrast, could interstate and interregional cooperation, backed by closer socioeconomic and cultural interaction between civil societies, eventually achieve a more evolutionary transformation in the political governance of states and societies—in which the differing sides offer each other their best practices?

A Much More Likely Scenario than Russian or Chinese Breakup While it remains a distant possibility, it appears dubious that Beijing would eventually turn against Moscow in the Far East in the quest to obtain the Russian-controlled Primorsky Krai. What is more likely is that China would bring a relatively weaker Russia into a junior partner relationship, hence controlling the Eurasian “pivot region” through a Sino-Russian alliance. Moreover, and what appears more likely at least in the short run, given the rise of Japan as a perceived threat to China, and in the assumption that Japan and China cannot resolve their geoeconomic differences, is that China could seek Russian backing for its own irredentist claims. Much as China largely looked the other way as Russia annexed Crimea, Russia could more overtly back Beijing’s claims to islands claimed by either Vietnam or the Philippines or even the Senkaku/ Diaoyu islands claimed by Japan. Given strong Russian backing, China could eventually take the risk of potential of conflict with the Philippines, Taiwan or even Japan, likewise taking the risk that the United States would not intervene. On the Russian side, neither Putin nor a future Russian leader would want to be thrown out of power as was the Russian tsar or were east European leaders 166 l Crimea, Global Rivalry, and the Vengeance of History at the end of the Cold War or, more recently, the President of Ukraine, Yanu- kovych. Perhaps more like Chinese elites with respect to the nation-wide crackdown after the Tiananmen Square protests in June 1989, such a leader could opt for greater domestic repression coupled with militarist demands. Given the bitter resentment for Gorbachev’s soft policies of glasnost and perestroika toward the United States and Europe, which have been seen as causing the Soviet collapse and permitting NATO expansion, it appears dubious that future Russian leaders will engage in a retractionist policy. More likely, they will continue to take a tough line in bargaining for clear-cut security guarantees. In this regard, domestic elites’ fears of Russian breakup (and one can see fears of disaggregation in the speeches of Putin and other leaders) could lead to a more dangerous and bitter backlash, in which that feared breakup would be blamed on the influence of external actors and states, as well as by subversives within, which are ostensibly backed by foreign states. Unlike the unexpected breakup of the Soviet Union, which had been predicted by Andrei Amalrik in his book Will the Soviet Union Survive Until 1984?, it is dubious that pan-Russian nationalism will permit the Russian Federation (and an alliance of Reds and Browns in support of Russophone movements in Ukraine) to break up easily, without the real risk of war. And even if Russia did begin to disintegrate, it is possible that the Russian rump state would still engage in war with secessionist republics, plus neighboring states, in a war that could easily extend outside Eurasia. Should Russia fear that it was about to break up, such a dangerous situation could consequently explode in a series of intermittent conflicts, through air/sea battle in the Asia-Pacific, possibly using tactical nuclear weaponry. But such a pessimistic scenario would only take place if the United States, Europe, and Russia cannot soon reach an all-encompassing settlement with respect to Euro-Atlantic and global security. Yet the effort to manage a much more assertive Russia is not the only issue confronting the United States and Europe. American and European strategy also needs to prevent Russia and China from moving closer together in a military alliance, while preventing the burgeoning possibility of Chinese conflict with Vietnam, the Philippines, or Japan. Potential conflicts in the east and west—not to overlook the ongoing conflicts in Iraq and Syria and throughout much of the “wider Middle East,” the Balkans of today—will require truly engaged diplomacy, if they are not to spark an even wider systemic conflict. These pessimistic scenarios could take place, but only if the United States does not first begin to reach out for a Euro-Atlantic compromise in forging a “neutral” and “federalized” Ukraine, while Russia itself needs to realize that it requires US and European support for its growth and development while a military alliance with Beijing would ultimately lead Russia to become a junior Future Pessimistic Scenarios l 167 partner of China. It is thus necessary to show that Russian (and Putin’s) interests lie in forging closer political-economic ties with the United States and Europe, and attempting to better balance its political-economic relations between West and East, rather than accepting the trap of a Eurasian alliance in which Chi- nese political-economic and financial potential will nibble Russia raw from the inside out, like flesh-eating bacteria. The final chapter will attempt to formulate a Euro-Atlantic compromise between NATO, the European Union, and Russia.

Chapter 9

Once, and If, the Dust Settles

n the aftermath of the 2008 Georgia-Russia War, then US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates outlined what he saw as the contemporary strategic Idilemma in the US and NATO effort to deal with a more assertive Rus- sia. To prevent the outbreak of major-power war, it was necessary to seek out policies that did not result in either the pre–World War I or pre–World War II models of confrontation or capitulation:

The goal must be to come together and take the steadfast and prudent steps now—political, economic and, when appropriate, military—to shape the international environment and choices of other powers . . . Our policies and responses must show a mixture of resolve and restraint . . . To be firm, but not fall into a pattern of rhetoric or actions that create self-fulfilling prophecies . . . We must try to prevent situations where we have only two bleak choices: confrontation or capitulation, 1914 or 1938.1

Erupting six years after the Georgia-Russia conflict in 2008, President Putin’s actions in Crimea and eastern Ukraine in 2014 have revealed the complete failure of NATO, the European Union, and Russia to find a path toward defense and security cooperation in the post–Cold War era. This is true given Russian opposition to NATO enlargement as the primary means to achieve a new post– Cold War system of Euro-Atlantic security and the US-European refusal or inability to develop alternative Euro-Atlantic security and political-economic options that could have been more inclusive of Moscow’s interests. As discussed in the General Introduction, the United States and Europe failed to find ways to bring the Soviet Union into the process of reform under Mikhail Gorbachev and then the new, democratizing Russian Federation under Boris Yeltsin into a new Euro-Atlantic security relationship prior to NATO’s decision to engage in an “open ended” enlargement, as warned against by Cold Warriors George Kennan, Paul Nitze, and Jack Galvin, among others. 170 l Crimea, Global Rivalry, and the Vengeance of History

In particular, the US and NATO refusal to incorporate Russian concerns during NATO’s “exceptional” intervention against Russia’s ally Serbia in the war “over” Kosovo in 1999 helped spark the Russian backlash under Vladi- mir Putin. And although President Barack Obama, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and Vice President Joe Biden had attempted to achieve a “reset” of US-Russian relations in the aftermath of the 2008 Georgia-Russia War, the fact of the matter is that the “reset” was never “reset,” in that allied support for the “open enlargement” of NATO has continued to send the mixed signals to both Kiev and Moscow. On the one hand, Putin has claimed to support the right of national self- determination for Russophones in Crimea; on the other, he has also claimed to respect Ukrainian sovereignty despite the Russian annexation of Crimea and interference in eastern Ukraine.2 On the one hand, Putin was among the first non-NATO leaders to support NATO’s mission in Afghanistan, and he has hoped that it would remain in place for as long as possible, but on the other, he has also vehemently opposed NATO expansion into the Black Sea and Cauca- sus regions, after being impelled to accept the rapid NATO enlargement to the Baltic states and deeper into eastern Europe. Putin’s ambivalent policy toward NATO and the European Union consequently makes it difficult to predict his next moves, but it nevertheless indicates that Moscow does possess at least some common interests in engaging with the United States and Europe. On the one hand, this offers some hope that finding common interests can mitigate even more expansionist or revanchist Russian policies; on the other, failure to find common approaches means that that Russia could increasingly play the negative role of a “spoiler.”

The Georgia War and the Roots of the Crimea Crisis The Russian intervention in Georgia in August 2008 had initially raised the issue whether Crimea and Ukraine might be next, given President Putin’s comments with respect to Kiev at the Budapest NATO summit that preceded the Georgia-Russia War.3 These statements raised fears that Moscow intended to move into Ukraine sometime after the war with Georgia. NATO ambassador Kurt Volker argued that failure to bring Ukraine into NATO membership (provided Ukraine requested it) would “embolden Russia to increase its bullying behavior towards Ukraine and others in the neighborhood.”4 Georgian president Saakashvili likewise predicted that Russia would bully Kiev by threatening to seize Crimea.5 In 2008, NATO allies were divided over whether NATO’s offer of potential membership encouraged Russian aggression in Georgia (the German and French position) or whether the lack of full support for a Membership Action Once, and If, the Dust Settles l 171

Plan (MAP) appeared to give Russia a green light to intervene (the American and Canadian position, as well as that of eastern European states). Yet the problem is that the pro-NATO position, which was expressed by then US NATO ambassador Volker, overlooked viable alternatives other than doing nothing. First, NATO membership alone for Ukraine and Georgia could not have solved the range of regional security problems in the Caucasus. Second, Russia would have most likely intensified efforts play a spoiler in the region (in seeking closer ties with Armenia, for example) even if Georgia or Ukraine possessed a MAP. Third, given the range of territorial, financial, and sociopolitical disputes within the Caucasus as a whole and between Ukraine and Russia, it was not really plausible for NATO to even consider protecting Georgia or such a large territory as Ukraine with Article V security guarantees in the first place. Fourth, NATO expansion to Ukraine and Georgia risks an overextension of NATO capabilities and its ability to protect its expanded number of core members, let alone raising questions as to how to defend Ukraine and Georgia except with tactical, or even strategic, nuclear weapons. In sum, Kiev is not at all prepared for NATO membership (which the United States has been unwilling to admit), while it is also not truly in the United States’ or NATO’s interests to bring in Ukraine as a full member. From this perspective, it can be argued that NATO enlargement to Ukraine and Georgia has never really been in the cards, except in rhetoric. It was accordingly not NATO’s failure to take action by expanding its membership and its mission but the deeper failure to take appropriate action with respect to the regional security needs of the entire Black Sea and Caucasus and to recognize that the security of the region cannot be resolved without Russian backing and cooperation. An alternative option would have been for the United States and NATO to support the more realistic proposal of NATO-member Turkey for a “Cau- casus Stability and Cooperation Platform.” This approach would have sought to address Dmitri Medvedev’s June 2008 calls for a new European Security Treaty rather than continue to push for full NATO membership of Ukraine and Georgia.6 While the Turkish position was supported by Paris and by Moscow (as the proposal was announced by Turkey in Moscow), Ankara’s proposal was not given backing by Washington, largely because it did not appear, at least on the surface, to give NATO a major role. From this perspective, not finding ways to build on the Turkish proposal that could have involved Ukraine as well as Russia in the formation of a Black Sea/Caucasus “peace and development community” represented a major error on the part of the United States and NATO.7 Here, the neoliberal narrative of former US ambassador to Moscow, Michael McFaul, appears oblivious to the deeper roots of the Crimean annexation but so too does the neorealist critique of John Mearsheimer. Not unexpectedly, the 172 l Crimea, Global Rivalry, and the Vengeance of History neorealist Mearsheimer largely blames NATO enlargement and fears of isolation on the Russian backlash while the neoliberal McFaul blames the Crimean crisis on the failure to bring Ukraine into NATO.8 But this debate does nothing to advance the situation. This is true because neither perspective points to the real roots of the problem: The failure to establish joint NATO-Russia power- sharing arrangements since the end of the Cold War. (See Chapters 1 and 3.) In this perspective, opportunities were missed to forge power-sharing arrangements at the time of the Russia-Georgia War, in that Turkish proposals for a Caucasus stability pact in working with Russia were not supported by the United States. As promises to bring Ukraine into NATO continued to predominate US discourse even after the 2008 Bucharest NATO summit (even if Ukraine and Georgia were not given Membership Action Plans then), possible options to “internationalize” security in the Black Sea region were given short shrift. These options represented realistic alternatives to either halting NATO enlargement altogether (in accord with neorealist and neoisolationist views) or expanding NATO and the European Union (in accord with neoliberal and neoconservative views).

Collapse of the 1994 Budapest Accords And now, in the aftermath of Russian intervention in Crimea, a major cooperative-collective security arrangement implemented during the post–Cold War period, the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, has collapsed. In the Budapest accord, Ukraine obtained security assurances (although not as strong as Kiev hoped) that the United States, United Kingdom, France, and Russia would protect its territorial integrity if it would give up its nuclear-weapons capabilities. Yet the reasons for the Budapest Memorandum’s collapse cannot entirely be blamed on the Russian annexation of Crimea alone. It can be argued that rival efforts to draw Ukraine into membership in either NATO or the Russian- led Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), which are both nuclear alliances, represented one of the primary factors that began to undermine the 1994 Budapest Accords, which were initially intended to sustain Ukraine’s nonnuclear status. Thus, in opposition to Kiev’s eventual alliance with NATO as a nuclear alliance, combined with the probable eviction of the Russian Black Sea Fleet from Sevastopol by the Euromaidan movement once it took power, it can be argued that Moscow saw itself as acting defensively, while claiming that it was responding to a domestic Ukrainian crisis under the Yeltsin-era national security doctrine that promised the “right to protect” the Russophone diaspora. In this perspective, Moscow’s actions in Crimea and in eastern Ukraine can be defined as a form of defensive or preclusive imperialism, but it is imperialism nevertheless. Once, and If, the Dust Settles l 173

Despite the fact that Moscow has regarded itself as acting defensively, the breakdown of the Budapest Accords, among other agreements recognizing Ukrainian territorial integrity (see Chapters 1 and 4), has given further ammunition to those who have argued “you can’t trust the Russians.” Neo- conservatives and neoliberals have largely abandoned all hope of working with Moscow, or with Putin in particular, in the hope that Putin might ultimately be forced out or step down. These groups generally argue (almost in a form of group think) that the roots of the crisis reside not in the failure to engage with Moscow early enough but in not pushing fast enough to bring Ukraine and Georgia into NATO and the European Union, as if that were a panacea and if it were truly feasible. Many pressure groups now seek to strengthen NATO force capabilities and security guarantees while still pushing for NATO and EU enlargement to Ukraine and the Caucasus.9 These factions additionally argue that relatively limited sanctions on the Russian elites and economy will not prove to be sufficient to pressure Moscow into altering its expansionist demands, despite significant capital flight from Russia, for example, in the aftermath of the Crimean annexation. In sum, to permit Putin to get away with the annexation could embolden Moscow to press for greater concessions and further expansion. It is in this perspective that the September 4, 2014, Joint Statement of the NATO-Ukraine Commission strongly condemned Russian actions in Ukraine: “We strongly condemn Russia’s illegal and illegitimate self-declared ‘annexation’ of Crimea and its continued and deliberate destabilization of eastern Ukraine in violation of international law. We call on Russia to reverse its self-declared ‘annexation’ of Crimea, which we do not and will not recognise . . . . Allies consider any unilateral Russian military or subversive action inside Ukraine, under any pretext, including humanitarian, as a blatant violation of international law”10 [My emphasis]. It is accordingly in its support for an “independent, sovereign and stable Ukraine, firmly committed to democracy and the rule of law,” as the “key to Euro-Atlantic security,” that NATO further declared the following in the effort to build up Ukrainian defense and military capabilities:

(NATO) will further strengthen our cooperation in the framework of the Annual National Programme in the defence and security sector through capability development and sustainable capacity building programmes for Ukraine. In this context, Allies will launch substantial new programmes with a focus on command, control and communications, logistics and standardisation, cyber defence, military career transition, and strategic communications. . . . Allies have taken note of Ukraine’s requests for military-technical assistance, and many Allies are providing additional support to Ukraine on a bilateral basis, which Ukraine welcomes.11 174 l Crimea, Global Rivalry, and the Vengeance of History

In supporting a hardline stance in support of Kiev versus Moscow, both neoconservatives and neo-liberals, with Hitler in mind, have argued that NATO must continue to boost political-economic, as well as military, supports for Kiev and cannot back down. Rather, it is Moscow which must eventually back down or “capitulate.” In this view, if the United States, Europe, and NATO do not stand tough, an emboldened Putin could act even more forcefully in the future in the belief that the United States and Europe will do very little to stop him, much as Hitler appeared more willing to confront France and Great Britain after the reluctance/refusal of both London and Paris to check his march into the Rhineland in 1936. It is argued that as late as September 1938, it might have been possible to back a coup against Hitler had France and Britain, as well as the United States, taken a tougher stance.12 In this view, if the United States and Europe do not engage in a tough sanctions and containment policy in contemporary circumstances, then Russian actions could soon be followed by a US-Eur opean “appeasement” of Putin, somewhat similar to Chamberlain’s “appeasement” of Hitler at Munich even if Putin stated in May 2014 that he did not want to reconstruct the Soviet empire. As Kasparov put it, Putin is not Hitler, but he still needs to be stopped.13 Given this particular historical analogy, it is not surprising that Putin himself would claim in November–December 2014 that the United States and Europe were seeking regime change in Russia by implementing sanctions, much as Moscow had also claimed that the United States and the European Union were behind the overthrow of President Yanukovych in Ukraine in February 2014. Accordingly, in order to mitigate the potentially negative impact of a significant downturn in the Russian economy and of US and European sanctions, if not block a feared coup attempt, Putin has hoped to appeal to Russian pan-nationalism and Russian Orthodoxy. This ideological appeal represents an effort to check the rise of domestic opposition movements inside Russia, with their serious complaints about the highly unequal distribution of income, governmental corruption, and human rights abuses, issues that are likely to be magnified if the Russian economy continues to spiral downward with the collapse of world oil prices. Here, for example, knowing how the rise of vodka prices led to the steep loss of popular support for Mikhail Gorbachev, Putin has attempted to freeze the price of vodka and prevent its substitution by cheaper liquor! But can Putin weather the storm? Despite his efforts to appeal to Russian pan-nationalism and Orthodox spirituality, a deep and long lasting drop in energy prices, coupled with western sanctions, could eventually turn Russian kleptocrats and large sections of the population against him. But would such a possibility necessarily lead Putin or another leadership to seek peace? Would Putin be able to avert a possible Euromaidan-style revolution or coup d’etat against him? Or could the potential overthrow of Putin result in a new and Once, and If, the Dust Settles l 175 even more militant phase of Russian leadership in reaction to US and European sanctions, the strengthening of NATO’s power capabilities, plus Kiev’s Decem- ber 2014 New Year’s resolution to eventually enter NATO? The crucial questions remain: How is Putin to be stopped? By stronger economic sanctions? Or military threats? Or by realist geostrategic and political-economic diplomatic compromise? If a combination of these, in what proportion should each be pursued if the blunt choice between either capitulation or war is to be avoided? Although NATO and the European Union have supported the “commitments made by all parties, including in Geneva and Berlin, and other ongoing negotiations to work toward establishing the conditions for a peaceful solution,”14 there is a real danger of a general global militarization in accord with the insecurity-security dialectic as long as both sides stick to their guns. As long as NATO, Ukraine, and other countries “will not” recognize Russian sovereignty over Crimea, and as long as Moscow claims it “will not” give up that sovereignty, there will be no lasting peace. Here, however, one can argue that it is almost always dangerous to assert “will not” in international politics, as circumstances and “vital” interests can always change. Such pronouncements make leaders lose diplomatic flexibility and discretion, while making a dangerous domestic and international political issue out of which side will give in, “appease,” or “capitulate” first, if a mutual diplomatic compromise cannot eventually be framed.

Toward an Alternative Strategy As former US Defense Secretary Gates has affirmed, it is absolutely necessary to prevent situations that could lead to a major-power confrontation along the lines of August 1914. Yet it is still not clear that US and European responses to the Russian annexation of Crimea can be considered as commensurate with Chamberlain’s “capitulation” of September 1938, as many evoking the pre– World War II analogy are now asserting. In this viewpoint, despite Moscow’s “illegal” and “illegitimate” acts, even if they could debatably be called “defensive,” the United States and Europe should do nothing to further exacerbate Russian isolation, as a tougher sanctions policy would only generate a more militant Russian backlash while harming the European and world economies as well. The worse may be yet to come, and a new Gorbachev may not be the outcome of Putin’s eventual demise. The essential problem is that Russian elites, who generally detested Gorbachev for not negotiating more firmly with the United States and Europe, have been alienated by the fact that neither NATO nor the European Union, has found ways to draw Russia into a more cooperative relationship. On the one hand, NATO has failed to draw Russia into a more cooperative partnership and to “reset” relations. On the other, the European Union could have significantly 176 l Crimea, Global Rivalry, and the Vengeance of History reduced Russian fears of isolation by offering Moscow membership in a Euro- pean Free Trade Association in coordination with Ukraine, for example, in an effort to strengthen reforms and help develop the Russian and Eurasian economy while concurrently seeking to benefit the economy of Europe and indirectly the world. In order to prevent an essentially regional Russian revanchist movement from becoming a global one, steps must be taken to rekindle the US, European, and Russian dialogue without further alienating Moscow. While NATO and Ukraine claim they will not recognize the Russian annexation of Crimea, it is highly dubious that Russia will give up the territory after having gone to such great lengths to seize it with general popular support on the part of the both Russian and Crimean populations. Even though the referendum on Crimea was hasty and the questions stacked, the majority probably did support joining Russia, although a good number (and not only the Crimean Tatars) might have preferred independence or greater autonomy from Ukraine.15 The first step toward bringing Russia into a new relationship with the United States and the European Union is evidently to work toward a resolution of the Ukraine crisis, going beyond a cease-fire and leading to an eventual resolution or positive transformation of the conflict. Yet questions abound: How are militias to be disbanded and disarmed? Will all factions accept the resolution? Will it be possible to control all the groups? Hard-line Russophones have demanded secession; hard-line Ukrainian factions want to erect a barrier or new wall between Ukraine and Russia; they assert that they will not give up Donetsk and Luhansk (the Donbass regions) against Russophile secessionist demands that they argue are backed by Moscow. Will Russia withdraw secret forces it says are not there? How can power be decentralized and how should regional governors be appointed? Is Kiev prepared to make decentralized constitutional reforms? How will the Russian language be protected? By region? Will Rus- sian be accepted by Kiev as a second official state language? Or will Russian be banned from the major media? Likewise, how will Russian culture and Ortho- dox religion be protected? The failure to respond to many of these issues led to the breakdown of a promised cease-fire in January 2015, with a major military mobilization planned by Kiev. This is true even if the leaderships of Ukraine and Russia have a common interest in the effort to weaken the influence of pro-Russian and pro-Ukrainian extremists on both sides, or else these groups could work to further polarize relations between the two sides. If the United States, France, Germany, Belarus, and other mediators cannot help Kiev and Moscow find a general sociopolitical settlement, then the tensions between the two sides will remain unabated. Those potential tensions will in turn impact the relationship between Russia, Ukraine, NATO, and the European Union. Once, and If, the Dust Settles l 177

On the one hand, if it ever appears that Kiev is on the verge of subjugating the region without a political accord, it is then possible that Moscow could opt for more direct intervention but at the risk of dangerously escalating tensions with the United States, NATO, and Europe. On the other, if Kiev should eventually “reconquer” the region, and Moscow decides not to intervene, sociopolitical tensions will remain high between pro- and anti-Kiev factions. This is due in large part to the property and damage claims of more than 500,000 internal and 250,000 external refugees (primarily to Russia) as of March 2015, with statistics continuing to mount.16 Moreover, if Kiev does eventually succeed in crushing the separatists, Putin would be seen by the Russian population as having failed to achieve his promises of support for the Russophone diaspora. Pro- Russian militants could then become a domestic problem for Moscow should they return to Russia in defeat. The possibility of Ukrainian-Russian compromise also depends on how Russia reacts to US and EU sanctions and whether the United States, NATO, the European Union, and Ukraine can ultimately reach an acceptable modus vivendi over Crimea and eastern Ukraine. At the same time, however, given the need for Kiev to engage in major economic reforms, it does not appear to be in the Ukrainian interest to engage in a long-term war of attrition, which Moscow could continue to fuel, even given the drop in world energy prices and the high costs of its intervention. In June 2014, Ukrainian president Poroshenko proposed a peace plan that Kiev itself has appeared reluctant to accept and called for greater US and European military supports, thus angering Moscow.17 Then, in September 2014, Presi- dent Putin took the step to propose his own seven-point peace plan despite criticism that he was still fuelling the conflict and that he did not acknowledge the purported presence of Russian forces on Ukrainian territory, as charged by Kiev.18 The September 2014 Minsk summit finally led to a 14-point peace plan (similar to the one proposed by Poroshenko in June), but Kiev refused to meet with separatists and did not accept all of the key demands.19 Neither side could agree on the boundaries of the demarcation lines, and both possessed the means to continue their struggle.20 In January 2015, the hoped-for cease-fire broke down again when Kiev accused Russian national forces of entering into Luhansk on the eve of a meeting between European foreign ministers and engaging in large-scale bombard- ments. The parties did eventually agree to a 18.5-mile buffer zone between the two sides, with bans on offensive operations and military flights over the area. Yet on the basic issues, Ukrainian president Poroshenko refused to compromise: Ukraine would remain a unitary state, there would be “no discussion” of Ukraine’s European choice, and the only national language is and will be Ukrai- nian. While the United States planned to engage in the training of Ukrainian forces, Ukrainian prime minister Yatsenyuk demanded that regional authorities 178 l Crimea, Global Rivalry, and the Vengeance of History prepare plans for moving the country “onto a war track.” Ukrainian authorities planned a mobilization of up to 400,000 new troops by 2015. This was to fight more than 36,000 rebels, of which roughly 8,500 were said to be Russian military personnel.21 After the crucial January 2015 Minsk II accord, the question remains as to whether that demarcation line will stop before Mariupal, as that line could be expanded by force by the Russophone separatists if there is no political settlement. On the one hand, promising Kiev more weapons sends the signal to Kiev to fight on; on the other hand, it sends the signal to Moscow and the separatists to act preclusively in the effort to prevent Kiev from building up its power capabilities. It is hoped that Minsk II will result in a settlement by the end of 2015. Pessimists, however, argue the eastern Ukrainian separatists will attempt to break off Odessa from Kiev’s control and then attempt to carve Novorossiya out of southern Ukraine with Russian military supports. (See Chapter 8.) Although the situation appears to be deteriorating, a “federalist” or “decentralized” solution within Ukraine ultimately needs to be implemented in order to demilitarize the situation. In this respect, Kiev should recognize eastern Ukraine movements in the Donbass; this is true as continuing the struggle represents a waste of resources that are needed to help rebuild a bankrupt economy. There should be a thirty-mile “no forces zone” around the current area of fighting, coupled with the deployment of peace-keeping forces chosen by the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) with US, NATO, Russian, and Ukrainian participation, and with separatist forces also participating in the selection of those forces (perhaps NATO PfP forces). There should also be a symbolic Ukrainian pull back in certain areas, while Russian forces should also pullback from the Ukrainian border, and while Moscow also withdraws its so-called nonexistent military backing for separatist forces.22 This approach could be accepted by both Kiev and Moscow. By late March 2015, Russian foreign minister Lavrov announced the possibility of deploying peacekeepers for the Donbass region but only if the separatists agree. Moscow had previously argued that the separatist republics should monitor their own territories, in accord with the Minsk agreements, after Kiev had finally appealed to the UN given its inability to contain separatist demands. Moscow appeared to admit that some form of peacekeeping force might be necessary, but at the same time, Moscow put its military and nuclear forces on alert in the Arctic and Black Sea ostensibly in response to NATO maneuvers.23 Nevertheless, despite its military threats, Moscow appears to be slowly shifting position. A number of Russian observers have begun to warn that Moscow should not underestimate the ability of Kiev to more strongly mobilize Ukrai- nians against Russia. Even more, increased Russian pressure on Ukraine could foreclose the possibility of ever restoring a strong partnership between Russia, Once, and If, the Dust Settles l 179 the European Union, and the United States within the foreseeable future. Already, Russian relations with the G8, the NATO-Russia Council, and other international regimes have been suspended. It is furthermore likely that sanctions on Russia will be strengthened, and the United States and Europe will attempt to keep a bankrupt Ukraine afloat financially, even in the face of Rus- sian economic pressures and military threats. US and European efforts to check Russian-Ukrainian trade will furthermore cut out a major market for Russia, while sociopolitical instability could result in political extremism crossing the border into Russia, possibly resulting in domestic strife inside Russia, if not resulting in some form of continual Russian intervention that will prove highly costly in political and economic terms.24 This grave situation is further complicated by the fact that local separatist militias in eastern Ukraine do not fully trust international accords negotiated by the OSCE, nor (as during the Russian Civil War) do they trust either Russian or Ukrainian oligarchs and other state power brokers. Here, however, the dismissal by Ukrainian president Poroshenko of the powerful governor of Dnipropetro- vsk, Ihor Kolomoisky, who had bankrolled pro-Ukrainian militias against the pro-Russian insurgents, could be a sign in a shift of Kiev’s policy in the fight against high level corruption, in accord with US and EU demands, while likewise sending a signal of reconciliation to Moscow.25 In sum, in the effort to end the domestic side of the Ukrainian conflict, support for a decentralized or federalized Ukraine, even with a highly autonomous Donbass region, would appear to be in the long-term interests of both Kiev and Moscow. It appears highly dubious that it will prove possible to resolve the conflict over eastern Ukraine (as difficult as that already is) without also finding a resolution to the international dimension of the conflict, as each dimension, regional and international, tends to fuel the other in the insecurity-security dialectic. As of this writing, the arming of Kiev is a decision for individual states and not NATO as a whole; yet the Obama administration remains split between high ranking officials and think tanks, who have been publicly advocating arming Ukraine with lethal, yet ostensibly, “defensive” weaponry versus those who argue that a heavily armed Russia can continue to up the ante in terms of escalation dominance (even to the nuclear option). This appears true even if arming Kiev may raise the short-term costs for Russia and the separatists. Moreover, the training and arming of the Ukrainian security forces and its military by the United States in particular could provide even greater substance to Putin’s propaganda and could consequently be used to justify a visible Russian military presence in eastern Ukraine, if not provide a pretext for further expansion.26 And even if it is up to individual NATO members to decide whether to supply Kiev with “defensive” weaponry, Moscow may still see NATO as coordinating those efforts. 180 l Crimea, Global Rivalry, and the Vengeance of History

This approach thus means holding back on the use of force in eastern Ukraine, but it does not exclude providing major political-economic assistance to stabilize Ukraine as a whole. From this standpoint, US and EU assistance to Kiev should be made conditional on measures intended to provide reassurance to Russophone interests in eastern Ukraine. This means respecting elected local authorities, restoring of the official status of minority languages, and protecting all minorities. In addition to the questions involving the arming Ukraine, proposals to bring Kiev into NATO or into a new Baltic–Black Sea alliance also appear to be further antagonizing the situation. In addition to calling for forward deployments of multinational forces in the Baltic states and Poland, a closer alliance between Poland, the Baltic states, and Romania, as well as Moldova, Georgia, and Azer- baijan with Ukraine has been advocated as a potential stepping-stone to NATO enlargement to the Black Sea and Caucasus.27 Some observers have also proposed a “five year pledge not to apply for NATO membership.” But this proposal will not be seen as a lasting peace but only a temporary five-year truce, while a new Baltic–Black Sea alliance could drag NATO and the European Union into a new confrontation with Moscow. In April 2015, President Poroshenko proposed a national referendum to see if Ukrainians want to join NATO. If the result is positive (whether the votes are fixed or not), such a referendum could put the United States and NATO in a political bind, while antagonizing Moscow. As to be argued, the option of the US, European, and international recognition of Ukrainian neutrality needs to be taken into full consideration as soon as possible. Kiev, the United States, NATO, and the European Union will most likely refuse to formally recognize the separatist republics in the Donbass until a new Ukrainian constitution that recognizes “decentralization” is framed. Likewise, they will refuse to recognize the Russian annexation of Crimea (much as the United States refused to recognize the Baltic states during the Cold War). But it is also highly unlikely that Russia will withdraw from Crimea. The danger is that if neither side can find a way a compromise, then a rump Ukraine could seek to rebuild its political-economic and military capacities. If this proves to be the case, and if Ukraine does not opt for “neutrality,” then Russia could soon be faced with a NATO, Ukrainian, and Japanese “encirclement,” in an alliance which India could possibly join, further antagonizing global relations. (See Chapter 8.)

A Neo-Jaurès Strategy Going back to before World War I, Jean Jaurès forewarned as early as December 1887 that the formation of an “encircling” Franco-Russian alliance could lead to war with imperial Germany. Despite the signing of the 1871 Treaty of Paris, in which Paris recognized defeat and the loss of Alsace-Lorraine, France continued to press for a revision of the status quo that resulted in a military buildup Once, and If, the Dust Settles l 181 in Germany. France did not necessarily seek war but nevertheless hoped to pressure Germany to return Alsace-Lorraine in exchange for a colonial territory, for example. Once the tight Franco-Russian Dual Alliance was forged, however, Paris largely dragged Great Britain into a near alliance relationship so as to prevent both the latter and Russia from aligning with imperial Germany but at the cost of a global war.28 Jaurès had opposed the revanchist tendencies of the Left (Georges Clem- enceau) as well as the Right (Raymond Poincaré). He argued that France should be patient and wait until Germany “democratized” or was ready to accept an international solution. In the meantime, France needed to work with imperial Germany to find a common resolution, in addition to working with the British as well, rather than seeking to pressure imperial Germany by means of a military buildup and by forging a tight military alliance with tsarist Russia. Rather than advocating a policy designed to “encircle” and “contain” imperial Germany, which Jaurès and other opponents of war rightly feared could lead to a major-power conflict, Jaurès thus pressed for better Franco-German relations. He had hoped that by working with both Great Britain and Ger- many over the disputed Alsace-Lorraine, it might be possible to find a solution involving some form of power sharing or shared sovereignty. This could have led Alsace-Lorraine toward a more autonomous, neutral, or “internationalized” status. In comparison with the pre–World War I analogy, the NATO-Ukrainian partnership can nonetheless be seen as somewhat similar to step-by-step British backing for France, and indirectly its revanchist claims to Alsace-Lorraine, in the period 1903–14 after the formation of the Anglo-French entente. In other words, there is a danger that NATO could continue to back “peaceful” Ukrai- nian irredentist claims to Crimea, given the general unwillingness to formally recognize the Russian annexation of Crimea, even if Ukraine is not a formal, full-fledged member of the NATO alliance. But this reactivation of containment, coupled with promises that Ukraine could join NATO at some undefined point in the future, could nevertheless cause a deeper backlash in Moscow. It is highly dubious that Moscow will give the territory back, even if the disputes in eastern Ukraine are eventually settled. Today, much as opponents of war with imperial Germany before World War I advocated the “neutralization” or establishment of some form of joint sovereignty over Alsace-Lorraine, but in working with Germany to achieve that goal, it is in the greater US-European- Russian interest to seek out the “internationalization” of the naval port at Sevastopol, in addition to making the economy of Crimea a free-trade zone, while likewise seeking a “federalized” or “decentralized” eastern Ukraine.29 The key is to find a way to work with 182 l Crimea, Global Rivalry, and the Vengeance of History

Russia to achieve that goal by showing Moscow the benefits of working with the United States and Europe, while concurrently seeking a general settlement of the remaining US-European-Russian disputes.

The 1907 Anglo-Russian Entente as a Model The fact that London was able to come to terms with tsarist Russia in the early twentieth century opens the door to possible reconciliation with the new Rus- sian Federation in the present circumstances, even under Putin’s leadership. Contrary to general expectations at the time, which believed that the Anglo- Russian “Great Game” would never come to an end, London was unexpectedly able to satisfactorily resolve its disputes with tsarist Russia throughout Eurasia (over Afghanistan, Baluchistan, Tibet, and Iran) in addition to previously (and likewise unexpectedly) resolving its disputes with France in the period 1903–4. Instead of aligning with imperial Germany as it threatened to do, tsarist Rus- sia opted to pursue a different “pivot policy” (in Halford Mackinder’s words); in 1907, St. Petersburg opted for an alliance with the Anglo-French Entente Cordiale. Yet, rather than preventing a major-power war as hoped by London and Paris in the belief that Berlin would back down and reduce the size of its navy and army, if not relinquish its controls over Alsace Lorraine, the formation of the Anglo-French- Russian Triple Entente reinforced imperial German fears of the “nightmare of coalitions” that had been opposed by Jaurès, thereby setting the stage for World War I. While efforts by Jaurès and others to prevent the so-called Great War between France and Russia with Austria and Germany failed miserably, the fact that Britain was unexpectedly able to reach a full-fledged entente with Russia in the period 1903–7 with French assistance nevertheless opens the possibility that the United States and Europe (with German, French, Belarusian, and Turkish diplomatic supports) could reach an entente or alliance with an autocratic Rus- sia today in contemporary circumstances. And even London’s efforts to resolve military-strategic and colonial disputes with democratic France in 1903–4 was not an easy feat either, particularly due to the question of Egypt and the Suez, among others. Nevertheless both ententes showed that compromise between rival states over “vital” interests was indeed possible if there was truly a common interest in pursuing those compromises. Yet to prevent a wider conflict in contemporary circumstances means that the United States and the European Union cannot pursue a policy of an unspo- ken revanche for Russia’s “illegal” annexation of Crimea as the French did in reference to the German annexation of Alsace-Lorraine. Instead, the United States must pursue an approach similar to that pursued by Great Britain with respect to Russia, while not alienating either the Europeans or the Chinese. Once, and If, the Dust Settles l 183

The Interwar Eastern Locarno Efforts to achieve peace in the interwar period are also relevant to the contemporary crisis, given the risk that the United States and the European Union have been creating a self-fulfilling prophecy by comparing Putin to Hitler. By pressing for control of eastern Europe through NATO and EU enlargement, the United States and NATO have appeared to be attempting to control the heartland through control of eastern Europe, as depicted by Mackinder’s (in)famous dictum, “Who rules East Europe commands the Heartland; who rules the Heartland commands the World-Island; who rules the World-Island controls the world.” Yet in 1919, Mackinder did not advocate the extension of British or French security alliances in accord with efforts to control eastern Europe and thus the “heartland” and “world-island.” Instead, he argued that it was absolutely essential to settle relations between Germany, eastern Europe, and the Russian- controlled “heartland” in order to prevent a major-power war and to establish preconditions for the League of Nations. In essence, he proposed building up eastern European security and defenses as a counterpoint to both Germany and Soviet Russia. In Mackinder’s words, “the condition of stability in the territorial rearrange- ment of East Europe is that the division should be into three and not into two-state systems. It is a vital necessity that there should be a tier of independent states between Germany and Russia . . . .” [My emphasis].30 Mackinder further stated that “any mere trench line between the German Powers and Russia, would have left German and Slav still in dual rivalry, and no lasting stability could have ensued.”31 The states of that independent tier, which he believed should form a counterbalance with an “approximately equality of power” would be supported by the “outer nations” and would also be recruited by the League of Nations.

The 1934 Barthou Plan Contrary to Mackinder’s advice, however, the interwar system of global governance (the League of Nations) was unable to prevent German-Russian rivalry in part because it was unable to create a strong, independent interstate system (or “Middle Tier”) in eastern Europe, given the failure to implement an “eastern Locarno.” The latter needed to be backed by Great Britain and the United States, in addition to France. Here, the US refusal to join the League of Nations, and likewise to help guarantee the security of both France and Great Britain, represented a major background factor in causing World War II. The second failure was related to the need, as proposed by Mackinder, to build up a strong independent or separate system of regional security in eastern Europe 184 l Crimea, Global Rivalry, and the Vengeance of History as soon as possible that would counterbalance both Russia and Germany while seeking to draw Russia and ultimately Germany into cooperation. In 1934, just after Hitler came to power, French Foreign Minister Jean Louis Barthou belatedly attempted to forge a system of collective European security—an eastern Locarno—designed to address issues in eastern Europe that were not dealt with by the original Locarno Pact of 1924–25. The latter had hoped to guarantee Weimar German borders with France, Belgium, Poland, and Czechoslovakia; Locarno had likewise demilitarized the Rhineland. The belated eastern Locarno proposal of 1934 was accordingly intended to deal with ongoing disputes among Nazi Germany, Soviet Russia, and the Baltic states, in addition to providing stronger security provisions for Poland and the Little Entente powers. France was expected to conclude mutual assistance pacts with both Moscow and Berlin and then to bring the Soviet Union, and possibly Germany, into the League of Nations. Needless to say, Barthou’s unexpected assassination (along with the primary target, King Alexander of Yugoslavia) by the Croatian Ustaše helped weaken the Little Entente and blocked the Barthou Plan’s implementation. Whether Barthou’s belated plan could have been successful is, of course, subject to debate. Certainly the rise of Adolph Hitler—plus the lack of countervailing Soviet supports—worked to doom the plan. Moreover, neither Britain nor Italy wanted to guarantee the pact, nor commit themselves to a defense of East- ern Europe. For its part, Poland was hesitant and opted for a nonaggression pact with Nazi Germany. Warsaw was suspicious of Soviet intentions and refused to participate in any security obligations toward either Lithuania (having annexed Vilnius in 1920) or Czechoslovakia, which it regarded as pro-Soviet and which it would partition with Germany in October 1938 after Chamberlain’s Munich agreement with Hitler. (See Chapter 2.) Moreover, once France aligned with the Soviet Union in 1935, without also seeking a security accord with Germany, Berlin predictably denounced the Bar- thou Plan as violating the spirit of Locarno and representing a form of encirclement or Einkreisung. Nazi Germany then opted to remilitarize the Rhineland in 1936. British foreign secretary Anthony Eden appeared to offer Hitler a general settlement as Britain did not want to intervene to stop Hitler. In the midst of financial crisis, France likewise did not want to engage in the heavy costs of a full mobilization that would have been required to oust Hitler. This meant that Hitler believed he could act with relative impunity. Yet, had efforts to forge an eastern Locarno been implemented prior to the rise of Hitler, with US support as a member of the League of Nations, perhaps tensions between Weimar Germany and its eastern neighbors, including the Soviet Union, could have been ameliorated. In 1936, Lloyd George belatedly argued that Hitler’s rise, and the fall of the compromise-oriented government of Once, and If, the Dust Settles l 185

Chancellor Heinrich Brüning, was largely a consequence of the failure of France to carry out its own promises of disarmament and to support the League of Nations, in addition to the resurrection of the pre–World War I Franco-Russian (Franco-Soviet) alliance in 1935.32 Similarly, former member of the Polish resistance, Jan Karski, who first reported on the Nazi concentration camps to Lon- don, argued after the fact that Warsaw itself should have supported the League of Nations, “encouraging rather than rejecting collective security.”33 The issue raised here is that if a more concerted global strategy, which would have involved the United States as well, had been implemented at an earlier date, it may well have helped stem the rise of the Nazi movement, in part as Weimar Germany’s claims to geopolitical parity or isothymia as a major power, given its legitimate security concerns and political-economic interests in Eastern Europe, could have been better managed. But Anglo-Fr ench policy differences prevented a coordinated strategy: France wanted to keep imperial Germany weak and divided while Great Britain and the United States had hoped to build up Germany but in such a way as to draw it away from its Rapallo ties with Moscow. This alternative historical account of pre–World War II events indicates that World War II could have theoretically been prevented, but only if there had been a greater commitment by both major and minor powers—most impor- tantly, the United States—to the principles of collective security and to the League of Nations. In contemporary circumstances, the failure to bring the former Soviet Union under Gorbachev and then the new Russian Federation under Yeltsin into a closer strategic and security relationship (and in working more closely with Russia and the United Nations in the case of Kosovo, for example) has helped cause the Russian backlash under Putin’s leadership. In the contemporary situation, NATO-EU enlargement to eastern Europe— particularly in backing what the Russians call a “Baltic–Black Sea Alliance”— can be compared and contrasted to a certain extent with French alliances with the Little Entente powers, Yugoslavia, Romania, and Czechoslovakia, in the interwar period. Much as Nazi Germany sought to break up the Little Entente, Moscow has put pressure on the three Baltic states, Poland, Ukraine, Mol- dova, Azerbaijan, and Georgia, who generally take anti-Russian positions, due in large part to historical fears of Russian imperialism. In addition to hoping to block an associated partnership between former Soviet-bloc states and the European Union, Moscow has also sought to preclude the United States from expanding the NATO alliance to Ukraine and Georgia, if not to Sweden and Finland. From the Russian perspective, both Weimar German and Nazi Ger- man reaction to the French military buildup and efforts to keep Germany weak and divided can be compared and contrasted to both Yeltsin’s and Putin’s reaction to NATO and EU expansion into the so-called Russian near abroad. In 186 l Crimea, Global Rivalry, and the Vengeance of History effect, Russian pan-nationalists continue to argue that a “softer version of the Treaty of Versailles was imposed upon the country (Russia).”34 In today’s geostrategic constellation, by contrast with the interwar period, it is the United States (unlike insular Great Britain with respect to Germany) that has sought to reactivate the “containment” of Moscow by means of expanding NATO, while European policy (as the power flanking Russia) remains divided between France and Germany, which appear more willing to “appease” Moscow versus the eastern European states who most fear Russian pressures. These significant differences between then and now indicate that a strategy that seeks to engage Russia, as opposed to attempting to contain it or roll it back, could possibly work in contemporary circumstances, even if such a strategy did not prevent war in the interwar period. Such an alternative policy could be attempted due to significant difference between the sociopolitical nature of Nazi Germany and Russia today, not to overlook the key differences between the Hitler’s seizure of the Sudetenland and Putin’s annexation of Crimea from the perspective that Putin’s actions more closely imitate those of Lenin in the interwar period than those of Hitler. (See Chapters 1 and 2.) But such a “neo- appeasement” strategy still requires greater US and European policy coordination in their approaches toward Russia and China, and among other rising powers and sociopolitical movements.

Toward a Euro-Atlantic Compromise As discussed, one proposed option prior to the 1997–99 NATO enlargement was to create a separate Euro-Atlantic Command under the NATO-Russia Council and through the expansion of the Partnership for Peace as a means to build up eastern Europe between NATO/Germany and Russia. The purpose of this proposed system of cooperative-collective security was to play a diplomatic and political role in helping resolve political, ethnic, border, and legal disputes, a role in which NATO alone, as a defense and security organization, was not really designed to play. The goal should have been to forge an independent tier of states between Germany and Russia instead of expanding NATO’s integrated command deep into eastern Europe, much as Halford Mackinder proposed. It now seems clear that Mackinder, if he were alive, would most likely have opposed the expansion of NATO into eastern Europe, if that expansion led to a division of Europe between NATO (backing a unified Germany) against Rus- sia. This is true in that instead of forcing Russia to back down, the promise of NATO expansion to Ukraine and Georgia has risked a new polarizing division of Europe through the jagged edges of Huntington’s clash of civilizations “fault- line.”35 Yet Ukraine cannot be as easily partitioned as Huntington’s map appears Once, and If, the Dust Settles l 187 to imply, and the struggle in eastern Ukraine could unexpectedly escalate in other areas of the globe. In many ways, in the contemporary crisis, Ukraine represents the key to the peace of the new European equilibrium, if not the entire world, particularly if the negative, conflictual sides to the US-European Russian relationship tend to predominate as suggested by the pre–Crimean War, pre– World War I, pre–World War II, and the early Cold War analogies, and if the United States, Europe, and Russia are unable to reach geostrategic and political- economic compromises in the new age of nuclear warhead miniaturization, drones, stealth technology, and cyber warfare. There is nevertheless a last chance to create an independent middle tier of states between Europe and Russia—that is, for Ukraine and the Caucasus states to become a neutral gateway (which could open and temporarily shut if necessary) between these major centers of social, political, and military power. This approach would likewise seek to counterbalance NATO member Turkey’s relations with Russia in the Black Sea region as well. The key point is that efforts to achieve an “eastern Locarno” with regard to the Black Sea and the Caucasus appear to remain relevant today but in a differing situation in which the United States could still open the door to deeper strategic cooperation with Russia. This would require overlapping US, European, and Russian security accords for a “neutral” and “decentralized” Ukraine and the states of the Caucasus, coupled with the “internationalization” of Crimea, and joint NATO, European, and Russian protection for sea lines of communication and trade, but only once and if the dust settles in the aftermath of Russia’s annexation of the region. The Russian annexation of Crimea and the pressure on eastern Ukraine represent crucial security issues for the states of the Black Sea and the Caucasus given the probability of a Russian military buildup in the region. A significant Russian military buildup (plus efforts to engage in Moscow’s own version of a US Monroe Doctrine) would require that NATO counterbalance Russian capabilities, despite the fact that the Straits are still controlled by NATO member Turkey. This, in turn, would raise questions as to whether NATO should remain committed to the 1936 Montreux Convention that limits the military deployments of non–Black Sea states. A Russian military buildup is also problematic for Poland and the Baltic states, not to overlook Finland and Sweden (plus Canada), given Russian military pressures on these states, and given the strong Russian interests in exploiting Arctic resources and sea routes. Yet this scenario still does not require that Ukraine join NATO. Both Henry Kissinger and Zbigniew Brzezinski have argued (even after Mos- cow’s annexation of Crimea) that Kiev should not join NATO and that Ukrai- nian leaders should pursue a “neutral” posture comparable to that of Finland, even if the United States and Europe should still arm Kiev with “defensive” weaponry to counterbalance Russian pressures.36 (Or perhaps a better analogy is 188 l Crimea, Global Rivalry, and the Vengeance of History that of neutral Austria in relationship to Germany after World War II.) Yet the proposal of this book goes beyond both Kissinger and Brzezinski: The United States and NATO need to modify NATO’s “open ended expansion,” while likewise affirming Austrian, Finnish, and Swedish neutrality. Such a modification of NATO’s “open door policy” would take place in exchange for the implementation of a new regional, yet international, system of cooperative-collective security for the entire Black Sea and Caucasus regions. In other words, instead of extending full NATO membership to Ukraine, Georgia, or other states and then attempting to integrate these countries back into NATO’s command structure, the United States, Europe, and Russia would extend overlapping US, European, and Russian security guarantees for the entire Black Sea and Cauca- sus regions in the formation of a “peace and development community.” The purpose would be to implement a cooperative-collective security approach to the region that seeks to protect “vital” Russian and Ukrainian interests, while at the same time looking for new forms of regional and international cooperation. A neutral, nonaligned Ukraine (with deep demilitarized zones on both sides of the Russian-Ukrainian border) could also participate in peace-keeping and joint security measures in the Black Sea and Caucasus regions. Here, Partnership for Peace forces (jointly agreed to by the United States/NATO, Europe, Russia, and Ukraine, as well as by separatist factions) could be deployed under a general OSCE mandate. These peace-keeping forces could initially be deployed alongside Russian and other troops from states of the Caucasus, in the so-called frozen conflicts in Transnistria, South Ossetia, Abkhazia, and Nagorno-Karabakh, assuming sociopolitical settlements to these disputes can be found. This would represent a “neo-Jaurès strategy” mixed with an eastern Locarno and the 1907 entente with Russia, if not with the steps taken to resolve the Cuban Missile Crisis as well. On the one hand, the United States and NATO would need to make a unilateral concessions over the question of Ukrainian neutrality, much as the Kennedy administration did in removing nuclear missiles from Turkey in order to resolve the Cuban Missile Crisis, while tacitly accepting Fidel Castro’s rule over Cuba. On the other hand, the United States and Europe would, in return, demand that Moscow deescalate its military build-up in the Black Sea and elsewhere, much as Moscow removed its missiles from Cuba, but permit Russia to sustain its sovereignty over Crimea. It is furthermore possible that the proposed internationalization of Sevasto- pol, and the opening of its port to regional security and development cooperation, could then open the doors for Russia to cooperate with Ukraine, as well as the United States and Europe, despite the fact that the evident friction over the annexation of Crimea will not dissipate for a number of years. This could, Once, and If, the Dust Settles l 189 in turn, lead both Russia and Ukraine to forge new forms of memberships with a reformed (and renamed) NATO and the European Union, given deeper security and defense and political-economic cooperation. These steps could take place even if Russia retains a degree of hegemonic oversight and sovereignty over an “internationalized” Crimea. A “Euro-Atlantic compromise” between the United States, Europe, and Russia that seeks to draw Russia into a new relationship with NATO and the European Union—by means of establishing a regional system of peace and development for the entire Black Sea and Caucasus region involving the internationalization of Crimea, the gradual demilitarization of the region, and the opening of Sevastopol to ships of all navies (but sustaining Russian sovereignty)—should be in the interests of all parties. The formation of a peace and development community, backed by the United States, European states, and Russia under a general OSCE mandate would be key to ending the so- called frozen conflicts of the Caucasus region. But such a proposal will only work if it is given a real testing by truly engaged diplomacy in which US, EU, and Ukrainian “vital” interests, and those of Mos- cow, are eventually redefined and reconciled, while compromises over other areas of US-European-Russian dispute are concurrently worked out. Former Senator Samuel Nunn has advocated reassuring members of the alliance by strengthening the European commitments to defense, particularly for those states that share a border with Russia. But he has also urged a review NATO’s tactical nuclear-weapons deployments while concurrently engaging in political restraint and nonprovocative behavior through US, European, and Russian political-security cooperation. But while opposing a Russian veto in NATO affairs, Nunn also questions the “right” of any state, Georgia or Ukraine, to join NATO. It is only NATO that can decide which states should be members.37 It can thus be argued that Nunn’s position indirectly opens the door to an alternative proposal for Black Sea and Caucasus defense and security, in terms of implementing a “regional peace and development community.” The latter would be backed by overlapping NATO, European, and Russian security assurances, internationalized maritime cooperation, and deployments of neutral Partnership for Peace forces in the frozen conflicts of the Black Sea and Caucasus, if not the Bal- kans as well. In such a way, the United States, Europe, and Russia (and other countries) would need to engage in the joint protection of Moldova, Crimea, eastern Ukraine, the Black Sea, and the Balkans, in the effort to establish a regional peace and development community involving joint defense and security cooperation with step-by- step confidence-building measures for purposes of regional and global development. 190 l Crimea, Global Rivalry, and the Vengeance of History

A Practical Approach to Peace This approach would lead to the gradual demilitarization, if not eventual internationalization, of the entire Black Sea region. As a step toward drawing Russia into a closer relationship with Europe and the United States, an International Peace Center in Sevastopol could be mandated to help reduce tensions between Russia and Ukraine (as well as ameliorate Russian tensions with the European Union and NATO). Moreover, in an effort to prevent Ukraine from becoming a permanent “focal point” of tension between the United States, NATO, the European Union, and Russia, regional peace centers could be established in Kharkiv and Lviv so as to help coordinate political-economic relations between east and west as a neutral, yet “federalized,” Ukraine while likewise coordinating aid and development assistance from the United States, the European Union, and Russia. Much like the European Coal and Steel Community, which implemented a system of European joint sovereignty that permitted France and Germany to cooperate after World War II, a number of International Peace and Development Centers could be mandated in Europe and Asia as well as in the “wider Middle East.” This could play a dual role in building security and confidence and in enhancing political-economic development.38 These centers could work in coordination with the United Nations or OSCE, the European Union, the NATO-Russia Council, the NATO-Ukrainian Coun- cil, NATO’s Partnership for Peace, the CSTO, Black Sea Economic Cooperation Forum, Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN 10), the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and World Bank, as well as the BRIC’s New Investment Bank and China’s Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, among other international organizations (and NGOs), where appropriate. The purpose is not to create a new bureaucracy but to better coordinate the activities and goals of international organizations and NGOs that already exist in order to minimize the redundancy of efforts where possible. Each of these centers could find ways to develop confidence and security-building measures, deploy peace-keepers, and engage in the multilateral protection of energy-transit routes, and coordinate socioeconomic development strategies, among other possible roles, such as countering terrorism, human trafficking, and drug smuggling. On the military side, these international centers could help build confidence on political- security issues. On the socioeconomic side, they could also do more to bring the United States, Europe, and Russia into closer political and economic cooperation and help diversify the Ukrainian and Russian economies and open the tremendous potential of the entire Black Sea region. The establishment of International Centers for Peace and Development in Kaliningrad and Cyprus, in addition to Sevastopol, could represent an effective means to implement a new framework for Euro-Atlantic security and Once, and If, the Dust Settles l 191 development. An International Peace Center in each of these regions could significantly ameliorate tensions throughout the Euro-Atlantic community. These centers would be intended to help bring Russia closer to the United States, European Union, and Japan through international mediation, while also cooperating with China, in the process of seeking a resolution to the Ukraine- Russian conflict. The goal of these Centers would be to better integrate Rus- sia’s economy, which is in dire need of diversification away from exports of energy and raw materials, into the global economy. The Russian economy needs greater international competition and technological supports on all levels, so as to benefit the Russian population, given the predominance of imports over domestically produced products and the burgeoning gap between rich and poor. These Centers could also help Moscow address the issue of corruption and the criminalization of its political-economy that effectively check the free development of Russia and its citizens and that harms Russia’s image in the world, making positive political-economic and security relations even more difficult to sustain in the long term. An International Peace Center in Kaliningrad could help reduce tensions between Russia, Belarus, Germany, and the Baltic states (as well as ameliorate Russian disputes with the European Union and NATO). This center could oversee conventional and tactical nuclear arms reductions and oversee joint NATO- Russian overflights, for example. International observers, if not peace-keepers, could be deployed in the Baltic states, Kaliningrad, and the Russian northwest, with Russian supervision through the Partnership for Peace and NATO-Russia Council under a general OSCE mandate, so as to guarantee the security of the region. An International Peace Center in Cyprus could reduce tensions between Turkey and Greece (as well as ameliorate tensions between Turkey, Israel, and the European Union) and help develop vast energy resources in the eastern Mediterranean for all concerned. Moreover, regional peace and security communities can be envisioned in Doha, Qatar, as well as Tunis, Tunisia, if not in Karachi, Pakistan, among other possible locations, so as to ameliorate sociopolitical tensions in the “wider Mid- dle east” in an effort to transform that extremely dangerous “shatterbelt” into a loose confederal “shelterbelt.” This would also mean incorporating Russia into a larger Middle East settlement, given its efforts to achieve positive relations with both Israel and Hamas.39 At the time of this writing, the key issue to resolve will be the conflicts in Syria and Iraq. This needs to be done by seeking to isolate Islamic State and find ways for the Syrian regime to cooperate with those groups that are opposed to the Al-Assad leadership as well as Islamic State. This means engaging in real dialogue with Assad (if his government survives) through the formation of a Contact Group bringing together the United States, Russia, European 192 l Crimea, Global Rivalry, and the Vengeance of History

Union, Turkey, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, as well as Iran, given US steps toward a rapprochement with Tehran under the Obama administration. As the conflict, in many ways, represents a surrogate war fought behind the scenes by most of the latter powers, it is absolutely necessary for all sides to find a way cooperate. But such cooperation will require a number of major political and economic trade-offs. With the Syrian regime thus far backed by Russia and Iran, the fact that the United States, Israel, and Iran have begun to intervene in Syria with differing goals in mind exacerbates the risk of a wider regional conflict, if not opening the possibility for a major-power war, unless the United States, Europe, and Russia can come to a general settlement, and not only dealing with Syria. Even if the Syr- ian crisis does not provoke a major or regional power clash, there is a real danger that an Islamic State victory will splinter Syria and destabilize the wider region, including its Arab Gulf supporters, which will also be pressured by Iran, for years into the future. The concern raised here is that the more the Ukrainian crisis blocks Russia from cooperating fully with the European Union and the United States, resulting in threats and counterthreats to impose differing forms of political and economic sanctions, the more difficult it will be to cooperate on other issues of common concern and true mutual interest. The key diplomatic dilemma is that Moscow wants to separate the Crimean issue from other areas of cooperation. Yet the United States and Europe, as the September 2014 NATO- Ukraine statement indicated, have so far remained opposed to separating these issues, given the ostensible geostrategic importance of Crimea and despite the fact that full Russian cooperation is absolutely needed in Afghanistan (particularly after NATO withdrawal), Syria, Iraq, Iran, and North Korea, plus in areas such as nuclear and conventional arms control/reductions (including tactical nuclear weaponry), and international “terrorism.”

The Indo-Pacific In Asia, building a regional peace and development community means supporting ASEAN’s aspirations to “become a solid political-security community.”40 In the Russian view, this also means strengthening political-military dialogue at all levels in ASEAN. And it should be pointed out that Djibouti already represents a nascent, though not perfected, “regional peace and development community” that is paving the way toward international naval and security cooperation, combined with international development assistance for the region. In effect, with Djibouti as a model, International Peace and Development Cen- ters in Asia could be located in Hainan Island, Vladivostok, and Okinawa or elsewhere (under a general UN mandate in working with ASEAN 10). These Peace and Development Centers could oversee joint Chinese, Taiwanese, and Once, and If, the Dust Settles l 193

Japanese development of the Senkaku-Diaoyu Islands, and the Spratly Islands (given many claims), among other islands under contention. And they could have both security and political-economic functions: They could implement joint naval and air patrols to protect resources. They could also engage in joint- development projects in disputed island areas in the Asia-Pacific with diplomatic support from Singapore, Brunei, and ASEAN10, with the backing of the United States and Russia. The centers would seek to devolve heavy military presence in each of these places, while seeking to exploit—in a safe and eco- logical manner—the vast resources of the region that are truly plentiful and sufficient for all.41 The East China Sea Peace Initiative (ECSPI), promoted by Taiwanese president Ma Ying-jeou seeks to promote dialogue, abide by international law, establish a code of conduct based on the November 2002 ASEAN 10 Declaration of Conduct, and allow for joint exploration and development of resources in the disputed areas.42 Here, just as is the case of an internationalized Crimea, the issue of sovereignty over the territories in question could be simply ignored, or sovereignty over the territory could be awarded to one state, as would be the case for Russia in Crimea, but resource-related rights could be assigned to all claimants. Here, it seems power sharing and joint sovereignty, coupled with the joint development of resources, represent possible options for peace both in the eastern Mediter- ranean, with respect to Cyprus, and in the Indo-Pacific, with respect to island claims. In the case of Crimea, Russia may continue to hold ultimate sovereignty, but that should not prevent joint development and the “internationalization” of the isthmus, involving the implementation of a system of cooperative-collective security for the entire Black Sea and Caucasus region. Regardless of the differences between the present and previous eras, Homo geopolitics appears to be polarizing into a Russia-China Eurasian alliance (possibly with Iran and North Korea) versus a US-NATO-Ukrainian-Japanese alliance. India (and possibly Turkey) remain as key pivot states that could remain neutral or shift to either side. Although China is still not fully aligned with Rus- sia, both countries hope to develop their respective versions of the US Monroe Doctrine: Russia in the Black Sea (in possible conflict with NATO) and China in the Indo-Pacific through its “String of Pearls” strategy (in possible conflict with the United States and the “democratic security diamond” of Japan, Aus- tralia, and South Korea, and possibly India and other states). Just as the US Monroe Doctrine and the annexation of the Panama Canal Zone sought to open links between the Atlantic and Pacific, China has hoped to link the South China Sea and Indian Ocean through its “String of Pearls” strategy. It has also sought to expand its influence in reviving the ancient Silk Road, which may not entirely exclude Russia, while reaching all the way to Ukraine, the Black Sea, the Balkans, and the Suez Canal in Egypt. 194 l Crimea, Global Rivalry, and the Vengeance of History

Because the significant differences between now and then generally outweigh the similarities, the present global crisis will require very different foreign- and security-policy responses than those taken before World War I and World War II, as well as those taken during the Cold War. At the same time, in the process of developing new US and EU foreign and security policies, a careful reconsideration and reassessment of those previous policies that have generally been regarded as having failed to prevent global wars in the past is nevertheless crucial in the effort to prevent yet another global conflict from “imitating” previous ones. While the pre–World War I and interwar periods were confronted with the collapse of the Concert of Europe and then the League of Nations, the post–Cold War world has seen deep splits in the UN Security Council. Yet these splits have been mediated to a certain extent by the new post–Cold War con- ception of multilateral Contact Groups that permit dialogue among conflicting states. These more flexible Contact Groups have, in effect, kept international diplomacy alive despite their imperfections and the imperative need to keep the diplomatic process going and to settle disputes over a relatively long period of time. Given the constantly changing US and European democratic leaderships, a more consistent and coordinated policy can hopefully be achieved through the Contact-Group process. Unlike many major-pow er wars, the Cold War did not end with a definitive geopolitical peace settlement. The Soviet collapse has helped generate a new polycentric global system that is characterized by the rise of differing state, nonstate, and antistate actors with highly uneven power capabilities and degrees of influence. This fact exacerbates the chances of global conflict, particularly as forces of globalization have tended to generate greater and greater degrees of socioeconomic inequity both within states and societies and between states and societies. Given the breakdown of clearly demarcated “spheres of influence and security” in Europe after the Cold War, NATO, the European Union, and the United States have engaged in a largely uncoordinated enlargement into ex- Soviet space while Moscow has sought to sustain its interests over the largely undefined “near” and “inner” abroad (in the Black Sea and the Caucasus), in effect imposing a potentially new division of Europe along the Russian and Ukrainian borders. In addition, Moscow perceives the wealthy Arab Gulf monarchies (and potentially Iran) as seeking to undermine its controls over predominantly Muslim regions of Russia or in the Russian “soft underbelly” in Asia. A wide range of defense and (in)security issues in eastern Europe, the Bal- kans, the Black Sea, and the Caucasus, as well as in the Euro-Mediterranean and “wider Middle East” (including Afghanistan) with respect to Iran, Iraq, Syria, and throughout the Sahel, have accordingly begun to draw the United States, NATO, and Europe into diplomatic, if not military, intervention. And Once, and If, the Dust Settles l 195 here, in addition to Indian-Pakistani rivalry in south and central Asia, it is the “wider Middle East”—the Balkans of today—that appears to be in the lead in the competition to decide which part of the world will declare the vengeance of history. Concurrently, a number of geo-economic disputes between China, Japan, India, and other regional powers in the Indo-Pacific have begun to draw the United States, if not Europe as well, into the new “rebalancing” to Asia. No matter which historical analogy appears more appropriate to today, it is clear that Russian efforts to check NATO and EU enlargement to Georgia and Ukraine have risked the possibility that the two sides will continue to dig trenches even deeper throughout the region, if not throughout much of the world. While the demolishing of the Berlin Wall in 1989 was intended to open the frontiers between Europe, eastern Europe, and Russia, the present reality is that a new Wall could soon be constructed between Russia and the borders of eastern Ukraine in the aftermath of the Russian annexation of Crimea.43 Yet a possible “partition” of Ukraine between NATO, Europe, and Russia will not prove to be as stabilizing as was the case for the Berlin Wall that split Germany during the Cold War. This is largely due to the continuing political- economic instability of Ukraine itself, significant intermarriage between Rus- sians and Ukrainians, and the fact that there are no clear boundaries between the Russophone and non-Russophone regions of Ukraine. It is better that a “federalized” Ukraine, with a largely autonomous Donbass, serve as a neutral gateway between Russia and Europe rather than attempt to turn Ukraine into a containment barrier that will ultimately prove incapable of blocking Russian expansion. As the analogy to interwar Soviet-Ukrainian- Polish conflict suggests, this will require careful and painstaking diplomacy to achieve. (See Chapter 2.) The Russian annexation of Crimea does not mean that Ukraine cannot eventually participate in a new, “internationalized” system of regional security for the Black Sea and the Caucasus assuming, of course, that the United States, Europe, and Ukraine can ultimately reach a new Euro-Atlantic compromise with the Russian Federation. Concurrently, US-Russian relations can be improved if the two sides are able to coordinate strategy with regard to at least one truly common enemy—Islamic State in Iraq and Syria—while seeking to coordinate policy in other areas, such as Iran and North Korea, where the United States and Russia possess mutual interests. Washington and Moscow, along with the Europeans and Japanese, also need to develop a common, but nonbelligerent, approach toward a rising China, along with the Europeans and Japanese so as to better channel Beijing’s rapid rise to major-pow er status. Working step by step with great determination, it may be possible to achieve a grand diplomatic compromise that is intended to bring Russia into a larger Euro-Atlantic community in eastern Europe and the Black Sea region, as well as in the Asia-Pacific, if not the “wider Middle East” as well. In historical terms, 196 l Crimea, Global Rivalry, and the Vengeance of History the diplomatic path had already been blazed by Great Britain’s steps to forge an entente with both France and tsarist Russia in the early twentieth century, thus indicating that an entente or alliance relationship with a Russian autocracy is feasible. But unlike that era, in which closer British ties to France and tsarist Russia soon alienated imperial Germany—ultimately resulting in a global confrontation—potentially closer American, European, and Japanese ties to Russia must not alienate China in today’s circumstances, at the same time that Moscow seeks to better balance its relationships between West and East. There is nevertheless a danger that if history does take its vengeance, then major-power war in the Indo-Pacific could precede a war in Europe, as was the case for World War I (the Sino-Japanese and Russo-Japanese Wars) as well as World War II (the Japanese invasion of Manchuria). What needs to be emphasized, is that it is primarily China, among the major powers, and perhaps secondarily India, who will most benefit from US-European-Ukrainian- Russian rivalry. And it is this realization that should press the United States and Europe, as well as Japan, to seek an end to the conflict in Ukraine as soon as possible, while it is dubious that Russia itself really wants to become a junior partner of China. The path toward global peace cannot take place without a complete reassessment of US, NATO, and EU goals and aspirations, combined with a willingness to take risks in engaging fully with both Russia and China in the diplomatic process in which all sides will need to agree to compromise on “vital” interests. In order to prevent the spiral of actions and reactions that characterize the “insecurity-security dialectic,” this path may require unilateral concessions, such as NATO’s acceptance of Ukrainian neutrality, among others, much as was the case in the steps taken to resolve Cuban Missile Crisis in which both the United States and the Soviet Union had to compromise their “vital” interests. At the end of the Cold War, it was largely Gorbachev’s unilateral concessions to the United States and NATO, as well as to China, among other states, that helped put an end to the Cold War (even if the United States and NATO then took advantage of those concessions). It is now time for the United States and its Allies to consider a number of concessions that need not lead to pre–World War II style “appeasement” or capitulation but only if these options are carefully framed to benefit all sides. In the concluding sentence of my first book, Surviving the Millennium (see General Introduction), I warned in 1994 that “as in the interwar period, divisive Allied foreign policies and the failure to establish and sustain a larger concert of states may well mean—and in the not so distant future—having to choose between ‘supporting,’ ‘appeasing,’ ‘containing,’ and ‘rolling back’ radically divergent revisionist or revanchist powers. The right choice will prevent Once, and If, the Dust Settles l 197

World War III.”44 On the one hand, a process of diplomatic engagement as proposed in this book will definitely not be without deep pitfalls, backstabbing, miscomprehension, and miscalculations. On the other, only a fully engaged and multidirectional diplomacy with Russia and China can prevent regional and rising power disputes from escalating into wider conflicts, if not global war.

Notes

General Introduction 1. Hall Gardner, Surviving the Millennium: American Global Strategy, the Collapse of the Soviet Empire, and the Question of Peace (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1994), 225. In fact, after the Russian annexation of Crimea, Putin may have wanted Poland to commit troops to Ukraine. Ben Judah, “Putin’s Coup,” Politico Maga- zine (October 19, 2014), available at http://www .politico.com/magazine/story/ 2014/10/vladimir-putins-coup-112025_Page3.html#ixzz3Nms2WcFp. 2. Francis Fukuyama, “Book Review: Surviving the Millennium,” Foreign Affairs (April 1995), available at http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/50626/francis -fukuyama/surviving-the-millennium-american-global-strategy-the-collapse-o. 3. Andrei Grachev, Gorbachev’s Gamble (Cambridge: Polity, 2008). 4. See my earlier articles, Hall Gardner, “The Military Integration of Eastern Europe: Toward an Eastern Locarno?” in Defense: Next Step in European Inte- gration? Cicero Paper 1, 1996; “Toward a Euro-Atlantic Compromise,” Focus, Center for Political and Strategic Studies, Washington, D.C., November 1997; “NATO Enlargement: Toward a Separate Euro-Atlantic Command” (Janu- ary 30, 1999), available at http://fas.org/man/nato/ceern/hallga2.htm. Two states that could have assisted NATO build a separate system of collective defense and security in eastern Europe in coordination with Russia would have been Austria and, particularly, Sweden in the Baltic region. Yet this was not the path taken. 5. Hall Gardner, Dangerous Crossroads: Europe, Russia and the Future of NATO (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1997). 6. Gardner, Surviving the Millennium. It should be pointed out that Soviet disaggregation was not an explicit goal of US containment policy as initially defined by NSC-68 in 1950. 7. Fukuyama recognized this concern with expanded NATO membership, arguing for either weighted voting (as if that were feasible in wartime conditions!) or del- egation to a smaller committee. See Fukuyama, America at the Crossroads (New Haven, CT: Yale University, 2006), 174. But doesn’t a smaller committee imply a select hierarchy against the principle of consensus? 8. Richard C. Holbrooke, assistant secretary of state for European and Canadian affairs, US Department of State, “Letter to Ambassador Davies” (July 25, 1995). My copy. 9. Richard C. Holbrooke, To End a War (New York: Random House, 1998), 21. 200 l Notes

10. Francis Fukuyama, Trust: The Social Virtues and the Creation of Prosperity (New York: Free Press, 1995); and Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man (New York: Avon, 1993). 11. Gardner, Surviving the Millennium, chapter 2; Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man. 12. Charles Krauthammer, “The Unipolar Moment,” Foreign Affairs, Special Issue, 1990. 13. Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man, 336. 14. Francis Fukuyama, Political Order and Political Decline (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2014). On the one hand, the failure of the US executive branch to develop a coherent and cost-effective post–Cold War global strategy, coupled with Republican and Democratic squabbling over which states should obtain huge defense contracts cannot be considered a consequence of “vetocracy.” On the other hand, given the rising governmental debts, bureaucratic attempts to cut US defense spending through an arbitrary and dangerous process of “seques- terization” can be considered a result of “vetocracy.” In his book, Fukuyama ironically redefines the “end of history” as the implementation of governmental reforms and development of an efficient state apparatus that does not necessarily have anything to do with “democratic liberalism.” And it was these reforms, he only tacitly admits, that assisted Prussian militarism and expansionism from the 1806 Battle of Jena onto World War I! But does this mean that his celebration of the “end of history” in 1989 now applies to Russian “liberal” reforms in the 1990s followed by Russian militarism and territorial expansionism at the turn of the millennium? 15. Hall Gardner, American Global Strategy and the “War on Terrorism” (Farnham: Ashgate, 2007). 16. In a letter to Senator Moynihan, Nitze forewarned, “NATO expansion distracts both us and the Russians from (the goal of lending political and economic support to the development of a democratic, market-oriented society in Russia.) . . . Indeed, the open-ended expansion being proposed for the alliance points toward increasing friction with post-Communist Russia for years to come. Driving Rus- sia into a corner plays into the arguments of those most hostile to forging a productive relationship with the US and its allies. It is not a sound basis for future stability in Europe, particularly when no current or projected threats warrant extending that alliance” Congressional Record, vol. 144, Pt 5 (April 21–30, 1998), 6785. 17. When asked why US-European-Russian relations were growing colder, Solzhenit- syn replied, “[I]n 1994, the Western world and its states were practically being worshipped . . . This mood started changing with the cruel NATO bombings of Serbia . . . The situation then became worse when NATO started to spread its influence and draw the ex-Soviet republics into its structure. This was especially painful in the case of Ukraine, a country whose closeness to Russia is defined by literally millions of family ties among our peoples, relatives living on different sides of the national border. At one fell stroke, these families could be torn apart by a new dividing line, the border of a military bloc. So, the perception of the West as mostly a ‘knight of democracy’ has been replaced with the disappointed Notes l 201

belief that pragmatism, often cynical and selfish, lies at the core of Western policies. For many Russians it was a grave disillusion, a crushing of ideals.” Spiegel interview with Alexander Solzhenitsyn, “I Am Not Afraid of Death” (July 27, 2007), available at http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/spiegel-interview -with-alexander-solzhenitsyn-i-am-not-afraid-of-death-a-496211.html. 18. I argue that the League of Democracies concept is a misreading of Kant. Hall Gardner, Surviving the Millennium, chapter 2, 40–43; Gardner, American Global Strategy and the “War on Terrorism,” chapters 2 and 7. 19. Fukuyama linked NATO with Kant’s League of Democracies in his neoconservative phase (End of History and the Last Man, 283). But he does not entirely dis- miss that claim in his “admittedly awkward” (his locution) “realistic Wilsonian” phase (America at the Crossroads, preface and chapters 6 and 7). In that book, Fukuyama discusses the pros and cons of a global League of Democracies, as well as multilateral security accords that could include China, for example, plus the concept of “shared sovereignty.” Fukuyama then ends his mea culpa with praise for Bismarck as a model for a so-called new Wilsonian realism. But Bismarck was not a proponent of collective security or shared sovereignty over Alsace-Lorraine! On Bismarck and Alsace Lorraine, see Hall Gardner, The Failure to Prevent World War I (Farnham: Ashgate, 2015). 20. The NGO NATOWatch.org, founded by Ian Davis, offers a fair and balanced critique of NATO “transparency.” 21. Dmitri Medvedev, “Speech at Meeting with German Political, Parliamentary and Civic Leaders” (Berlin: June 5, 2008). This speech took place before the April 2008 NATO summit in Bucharest, where President Putin appeared to question Ukrainian sovereignty. By November 29, after the Georgia-Russia War, Med- vedev presented his draft European security treaty to the EU, NATO, and the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE). The proposal’s goal was to create a single, indivisible space in the sphere of military-political security in the Euro-Atlantic region. 22. Fukuyama, Political Order and Political Decline. The intense conflict between centralized democratic liberalism and more decentralized modes of governance in Ukraine points to the reality that there are a multiplicity of “ideas” of democracy, which may not at all prove compatible. Moreover, the fact that the struggle in eastern Ukraine has involved the pressures of external actors on both sides works to undermine the prospects for “pure” democracy within one state that is not affected by outside forces. Both these points question the “idea” (in the singular) that liberal democracy represents the “end of history.” Other forms of “democracy” are possible! 23. On the German/European need to support federalism in Ukraine, see Anatol Lieven, “Ukraine: The Way Out,” New York Review of Books (June 5, 1014), available at http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2014/may/05/ukraine-only -way-to-peace/. 24. Francis Fukuyama, “The End of History,” The National Interest (Summer, 1989), 3–18. 25. Fukuyama, Book Review: “Surviving the Millennium,” Foreign Affairs (April 1995). In asserting that I had presented a “familiar” history of the Cold War (as if 202 l Notes

it were common knowledge that the basis of the 1973 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty could be found in Soviet proposals as early as 1947 or that the roots of Gorbachev’s unilateral nuclear and conventional arms reductions could be found in the demilitarized nuclear and conventional weapons zone as proposed in the series of Rapacki/Bulganin plans in 1958, 1962, and 1964), Fukuyama missed the key point: just because certain policies may have failed in one epoch does not mean that similar policies will necessarily fail in differing circumstances in a future epoch. 26. Hall Gardner, Surviving the Millennium, chapters 1–2 and p. 231, note 1. My definition of double containment significantly differed from that of Wolfram H. Hanre- ider, Germany, America, Europe (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1989). 27. See Hall Gardner, Dangerous Crossroads: Europe, Russia and the Future of NATO. 28. Hall Gardner, “NATO Enlargement and Geohistory,” in Carl C. Hodge, ed., NATO for a New Century (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2002). 29. Edmund Burke, “Remarks on the Policies of the Allies with Respect to France (1793)” The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, vol. 4, available at http://www.gutenberg.org/files/15700/15700-h/15700-h.htm. 30. Ibid. 31. On the 30-year Russia-China gas deal, see “The New Non-Aggression Pact,” Wall Street Journal, available at http://www.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424 052702303480304579576052453731102. Russia and China could also be planning to create an international payment system linking the ruble and remimbi to replace the SWIFT system so as to reduce the ability of the United States and Europe to impose financial sanctions against them. In addition, both states have been attempting to restrict Internet access and create their own nationally controlled data networks, plus reduce trade, financial, and communication links with the West. Whether this is successful remains to be seen. Fyodor Lukyanov, “Global Aikido: Russia’s Asymmetrical Response to the Ukraine Crisis,” Russia in Global Affairs (December 13, 2014), available at http://eng.globalaffairs.ru/redcol/Global -Aikido-Russias-Asymmetrical-Response-to-the-Ukraine-Crisis-17177. 32. Hall Gardner, NATO Expansion and US Strategy in Asia (New York: Palgrave, 2013). 33. On the insecurity-security dialectic, see Hall Gardner, “Alienation and the Ori- gins and Prevention of War,” in Hall Gardner and Oleg Kobtzeff, eds., The Ash- gate Research Companion to War (Farnham: Ashgate, 2012).

Chapter 1 1. Zbigniew Brzezinski, “What Is to Be Done? Putin’s Aggression in Ukraine Needs a Response,” Washington Post (March 3, 2014). 2. Philip Rucker, “Hillary Clinton’s Putin-Hitler Comments Draw Rebukes as She Wades into Ukraine Conflict,” Washington Post (March 5, 2014), available at http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/hillary-clintons-putin-hitler-comments -draw-rebukes-as-she-wades-into-ukraine-conflict/2014/03/05/31a748d8 -a486–11e3–84d4-e59b1709222c_story.html. Notes l 203

3. “McCain, Rubio, and Graham Appreciate Hillary Clinton’s Putin-as- Hitler Analogy,” Slate (March 5, 2014) available at http://www.slate.com/blogs/weigel/ 2014/03/05/mccain_rubio_and_graham_appreciate_hillary_clinton_s_putin _as_hitler_analogy.html. 4. Garry Kasparov, “Vladimir Putin and the Lessons of 1938” (March 16, 2014), available at http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/03/vladmir-putin -crimea-hitler-1938–104711.html#.U99la2OUlqg. Kasparov questions what is the right analogy: “Is it Budapest 1956? Prague 1968? Austria 1938?” 5. US Senator Lindsay Graham put it this way: “[Clinton’s] right in this regard: The excuse given by Hitler, when going into the Sudetenland, was that he had to protect the German people. But I don’t think either of us are saying Putin is Hitler,” Slate (March 5, 2014). 6. On the analogy of Putin to Mussolini, see Marcel van Herpen, Putin’s Wars: The Rise of Russia’s New Imperialism (Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, 2014). 7. Henry Kissinger pointed out that the “demonization of Vladimir Putin is not a policy; it is an alibi for the absence of one.” Henry Kissinger, “How the Ukraine Crisis Ends,” Washington Post (March 5, 2014). Dmitri Simes argues that Obama’s demonization of Putin is pushing Russia and China closer (“How Obama Is Driving Russia and China Together,” The National Interest [June 24, 2014]). Simes ironically compares Obama to Russia’s last tsar, Nicholas II, who professed to be a man of peace: much as Russia drove Japan into war in 1904, the United States is driving Russia into war by believing it can respond as it pleases to Moscow’s conduct in Ukraine without taking any real risks. 8. The Estonian cyberattacks can be considered a popular pro-Russian “cyber-riot” intended “to get back at Estonia” for moving the Soviet World War II memorial of the unknown soldier, in which some militants used more advanced cyber techniques than others. Gadi Evron, “Authoritatively, Who Was behind the Estonian Attacks?” Dark Reading (March 17, 2009), available at http://www .darkreading.com/risk/authoritatively-who-was-behind-the-estonian-attacks/d/ d-id/1130584. 9. Groups like Svoboda and Right Sector, who consider themselves “national democratic” and not pro-Western, see themselves as playing a fundamental role in helping overthrow Yanukovych and in preventing Russia from “subjugating” the country, while more moderate members of the interim government believe they can “co-opt” such militant parties. Critics argue these parties hold more power behind the scenes than their numbers reveal. On the significance of the far right from a pro-Maidan Ukrainian perspective, see Anton Shekhovtsov, “A Response to Cas Mudde’s ‘A New (Order) Ukraine,’” Open Democracy (March 3, 2014), available at http://opendemocracy.net/anton-shekhovtsov/response-to -cas-mudde%E2%80%99s-Ukraine-Far-RIght-How-Real-Russia. 10. Putin’s advisor on Eurasian integration, Sergei Glazyev, argued in early February 2014 for the “federalization” of Ukraine. This would help bring the southeastern part of Ukraine closer to the Russia-led Eurasian Customs Union. See more at: Stefan Meister, “Crimea: what does Putin want?” European Council on Foreign Relations (March 6, 2014), available at http://ecfr.eu/blog/entry/crimea_what _does_putin_want#sthash.0vt9fYP6.dpuf. 204 l Notes

11. Rajan Menon and Devin T. Stewart, “Ukraine: The New Cuban Missile Crisis?,” Carnegie Council (February 22, 2015), available at http://www.carnegiecouncil .org/publications/articles_papers_reports/724. 12. European Parliament, “Texts Adopted” (February 25, 2010), available at http:// www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?pubRef=-//EP//TEXT+TA+P7-TA -2010-0035+0+DOC+XML+V0//EN. 13. Maxine David, Marlene Laurelle, and Andrei Tsygankov, “No. 158: Russian For- eign Policy and the Ukraine Crisis,” Russian Analytical Digest (RAD). Center for Security Studies (CSS), ETH Zurich; Research Centre for East European Studies, University of Bremen; Institute for European, Russian and Eurasian Studies, George Washington University (2014), available at http://www .css.ethz .ch/publications/pdfs/Russian_Analytical_Digest_158.pdf. 14. Margaret MacMillan, Dangerous Games (New York: Modern Library, 2010), pp. 160–61. 15. “Godwin’s Law” https://www.princeton.edu/~achaney/tmve/wiki100k/docs/ Godwin_s_law.html. 16. Philip Rucker, “Hillary Clinton’s Putin-Hitler Comments Draw Rebukes as She Wades into Ukraine Conflict,” Washington Post (March 5, 2014), available at http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/zbigniew-brzezinski-after-putins -aggression-in-ukraine-the-west-must-be-ready-to-respond/2014/03/03/25b3f928 -a2f5–11e3–84d4-e59b1709222c_story.html. Hillary Clinton has been hawkish in support of the wars in Iraq and Libya, in addition to backing NATO’s “open enlargement” to Ukraine and Georgia once they meet NATO standards. 17. Gardner, NATO Expansion and US Strategy in Asia. See also Hall Gardner “The Reset Was Never Reset,” NATO Watch, 49 (April 3, 2014), available at http:// www.natowatch.org/sites/default/files/briefing_paper_no_49_-_ukraine_russia _crimea.pdf. 18. David Birnbaum, “In Kremlin Speech, Putin Rails at West, Tries to Bolster Economy as Recession Looms,” Washington Post (December 4, 2014), available at http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/in-kremlin-economy -speech-putin-rails-at-west-tries-to-avert-russia-recession/2014/12/04/ f940afe8–79b4–11e4–8241–8cc0a3670239_story.html. 19. Vladimir Putin, interview with Radio Europe 1 and TF1 TV, available at http:// eng.kremlin.ru/news/22441#sel=. 20. Ibid. 21. Henry Kissinger, “Do We Achieve World Order through Chaos or Insight?,” Spiegel interview, available at http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/ interview-with-henry-kissinger-on-state-of-global-politics-a-1002073.html. Mikhail Gorbachev stated, “The world is on the brink of a new Cold War. Some say that it has already begun” (Bettina Borgfeld, “Gorbachev Says World Is on Brink of New Cold War,” Reuters [November 8, 2014], available at http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/11/08/us-ukraine-crisis-gorbachev -idUSKBN0IS0QC20141108). Some have argued that the Cold War never really ended and that it was the United States that failed to end it. John Feffer, “The Cold War Never Ended,” Institute for Policy Studies (September 10, 2014), available at http://www.ips-dc.org/cold-war-never-ended/. For a comparison Notes l 205

with the Cuban Missile Crisis, see William R. Polk, “The Cuban Missile Cri- sis in Reverse” (February 24, 2015), available at http://www .williampolk.com/ assets/the-cuban-missile-crisis-in-reverse.pdf. 22. Roger Cohen, “Yes, It Could Happen Again,” The Atlantic (July 29, 2014), available at http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/08/yes-it-could -happen-again/373465/?single_page=true. See also, Major General Giorgio Spagnol, “The Ukrainian Crisis: Prodrome to the Third World War?” Work- ing Paper 15–2014 (June 11, 2014), Brussels: Institut Européen des Relations Internationales. 23. See Edward Carr, The Twenty Years’ Crisis, 1919–1939 (New York: Perennial, 2001). 24. Norman Podhoretz, World War IV: The Long Struggle against Islamofascism (New York: Doubleday, 2007). 25. Chester A. Crocker, “The Place of Grand Strategy, Statecraft and Power in Conflict Management,” in Leashing the Dogs of War: Conflict Management in a Divided World, edited by Crocker, Aalls, and Hampson (Washington, DC: USIP, 2007). 26. On the pre–World War I analogy, see George Liska, Quest for Equilibrium (Balti- more: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1977); George Liska, Russia and the Road to Appeasement (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1982); and Robert Gilpin, War and Change in World Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986). For a list of anecdotal references to the pre–World War I analogy, see Hall Gardner, Alternatives to Global War (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987), pp. 223–27. 27. Hall Gardner, American Global Strategy and the “War on Terrorism.” 28. “An Interview with Henry A. Kissinger: ‘We Were Never Close to Nuclear War,’” Washington Post (August 11, 1985), L8. 29. William Russell Mead, “In the Footsteps of the Kaiser: China Boosts US Power in Asia,” The American Interest (September 26, 2010), available at http://www .the -american-interest.com/wrm/2010/09/26/in-the-footsteps-of-the-kaiser-china -boosts-us-power-in-asia/; Edward N. Luttwak, “China’s Military Adventurism Is Ill-Timed,” Wall Street Journal (December 29, 2013) available at http://online .wsj .com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303345104579286480552285954; Joseph Nye, “1914 Revisited?” Project Syndicate (January 13, 2014) available at http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/joseph-s—nye-asks-whether -war-between-china-and-the-us-is-as-inevitable-as-many-believe-world-war-i-to -have-been#qBCGT7X665PBrOz4.99. 30. Aaron Friedberg, “Will Europe’s Past Be Asia’s Future?” Survival: Global Politics and Strategy, 42 (3), 2000, 147–59. 31. Nialls Ferguson, “‘Chimerica’ Is Headed for Divorce,” Niall Ferguson website (August 31, 2009), available at http://www.niallferguson.com/site/FERG/ Templates/ArticleItem.aspx?pageid=210. For a list of differing theories, see Wash- ington’s Blog, “Top Financial Experts Say World War 3 Is Coming . . . Unless We Stop It” (August 1, 2014), available at http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2014/ 07/war-2.html. 206 l Notes

32. James Holmes, “Three Reasons Why China Isn’t Imperial Germany (It’s Tougher),” available at http://thediplomat.com/2013/03/three-reasons-why -china-isnt-imperial-germany-its-tougher/4/. In this view, China has less immediate major military threats than imperial Germany, such as France and Russia; the United States is a distant rival unlike Great Britain in relationship to Ger- many; and unlike imperial Germany, China can now support its sea power with airpower and antiship missiles. 33. Victor Davis Hanson, “China Believes It’s Now Time for Its Military to Reflect Its Economic Power,” National Review (January 9, 2014) available at http:// www.nationalreview.com/article/367886/changes-pacific-return-1930s-victor-davis -hanson. 34. On December 23, 1989, France, the United Kingdom, and the United States vetoed a draft United Nations Security Council resolution, backed by Moscow and Beijing as well as by the seven nonpermanent council members who had introduced the resolution, that demanded the immediate withdrawal of US forces from Panama. Washington cited the right to protect 35,000 Americans. The United States additionally failed to win any international support outside its traditional European allies for the newly installed Panamanian regime. Paul Lewis, “Fighting in Panama: United Nations; Security Council Condemnation of Invasion Vetoed,” New York Times (December 24, 1989), available at http://www.nytimes .com/1989/12/24/world/fighting-panama-united-nations-security-council -condemnation-invasion-vetoed.html. 35. Greg Grandin, “How the US Created a ‘Little Hiroshima’ in Central America,” The Nation (December 22, 2014), available at http://www.thenation.com/ article/193505/how-us-created-little-hiroshima-central-america. 36. David Klion, “The Best Historical Analogy for Crimea Doesn’t Involve Nazis: For precedent, look to Cyprus instead of Poland,” New Republic (March 7, 2014) available at http://www.newrepublic.com/article/116931/putin-invades-crimea -nazi-analogy-isnt-best-europe. 37. Other annexations include the Jordanian annexation of the West Bank (1950); Ethiopian annexation of Eritrea (1962); Indonesian annexation of East Timor (1975–76), and the Moroccan (and initially Mauritanian) annexation of the Western Sahara (1975). This is not to overlook the Soviet annexation of eastern Poland (Galicia and Volhynia) in 1939–40, ostensibly to protect Ukrainian and Belarusian (White Ruthenian) minorities. Moscow also annexed parts of Bessarabia and northern Bukovina in June 1940 from Romania, in addition to annexing Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania in June, plus eastern Karelia and Pet- samo from Finland in 1941. After the collapse of the secret Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, Nazi Germany attacked the Soviet Union and occupied the three Baltic states from 1941 to 1944, until the Soviet Union returned, occupying the Baltic states from 1994 to 1991. The United States and Europe refused to recognize the three Baltic states until after their de facto independence from Soviet controls in 1991. Soviet annexation of two northern Kurile Islands/northern territories and South Sakhalin in 1945 remains an issue of contention between Russia and Japan. Notes l 207

Chapter 2 1. The threat to turn the Euromaidan protests into an armed struggle may have forced Yanukovich to flee. If so, the affair had elements of a staged coup d’etat. See International New York Times (January 5, 2014), 1; 4. 2. Nearly all members of the new Ukrainian Euromaidan government, most promi- nently the new Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk, had been on the record as wanting to renegotiate, if not scrap, the Kharkiv Accords. Interview of Nicolai Petro Nicolai N. Petro and David C. Speedie, “Crisis in Ukraine: Crimean Stand- Off,” Carnegie Council (March 4, 2014), available at http://www.carnegiecouncil .org/studio/multimedia/20140304/index.html. 3. Orest Subtelny, Ukraine: A History (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000); and Alexander J. Motyl, Dilemmas of Independence: Ukraine after Totalitarianism (New York: Council of Foreign Relations, 1993), pp. 101–2. 4. The 1829 Treaty of Adrianople forced Turkey to recognize Russian control over the mouth of Danube with its islands, the whole Caucasian Black Sea coast from the mouth of Kuban river to the north border of Adjara (an autonomous part of Georgia today). Turkey also acknowledged the annexation of Georgia, Imere- tia, Mingrelia, and Guria, as well as the Khanates of Erivan and Nakhicheva (Azerbaijan) to Russia that were taken by St. Petersburg from Iran according to the 1828 Treaty of Turkmenchay. “Adrianople treaty signed,” Presidential Library (September 14, 1829), available at http://www.prlib.ru/en-us/History/Pages/ Item.aspx?itemid=1152. 5. Mara Kozelsky, “The Crimean War, 1853–56,” Kritika, 13, No. 4 (Fall 2012), 903–17. 6. The Declaration of Paris opened the door for the distribution of Austrian, Brit- ish, and French merchandise and was, in turn, seen by Russia as causing considerable damage to Russia’s exports. “Laws of War: Declaration of Paris, April 16, 1856,” Avalon Project, Yale Law School, available at http://avalon .law.yale.edu/ 19th_century/decparis.asp; “Russia Initiated the Repeal of the Black Sea Neu- tralization,” Yeltsin Presidential Library, available at http://www.prlib.ru/en-us/ History/Pages/Item.aspx?itemid=301. 7. Serbian nationalists and Russian and French elites all had reasons to oppose Archduke Franz Ferdinand, who hoped to incorporate Serbia into the Austro- Hungarian Empire, revive the Dreikaiserbund, and to break the Franco-Russian alliance. See Hall Gardner, The Failure to Prevent World War I (Farnham: Ash- gate, 2015). 8. Vinichenko, “Ukrainian Proclamation on Independence,” Firstworldwar.com (November 20, 1917), available at http://www.firstworldwar.com/source/ ukraine_vinichenko1.htm. 9. Ibid. 10. Lenin: “Ultimatum Against Ukrainian Independence,” Firstworldwar.com (December 17, 1917), available at http://www.firstworldwar.com/source/ukraine _lenin1.htm. 11. Ivan L. Rudnytsky, “The Fourth Universal and Its Ideological Antecedents,” in Taras Hunchak, ed., The Ukraine, 1917–1921: A Study in Revolution (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1977), p. 201, cited in Kataryna Wolczuk, The 208 l Notes

Moulding of Ukraine: The Constitutional Politics of State Formation (Budapest: Central European University Press, 2001), available at http://books.openedition .org/ceup/1739. 12. “Peace Treaty between Ukraine and Central Powers,” Firstworldwar. com (February 9, 1918), available http://www .firstworldwar.com/source/ ukrainianpeacetreaty.htm. 13. In the “Act of Unity” (Akt Sobornosti), “the concept of Sobornist’, which until then referred to the ecclesiastical unity of the Orthodox Church, came to denote the unification of all historical Ukrainian territories into one state. The enlarged Ukrainian state was to be quasi-federal as Galicia was to maintain its autonomy as a Western Ukrainian Oblast of the UNR (ZOUNR).” Kataryna Wolczuk, The Moulding of Ukraine; and Orest Subtelny, Ukraine: A History, p. 362. 14. Orlando Figes, A People’s Tragedy: The Russian Revolution 1891–1914 (New York: Penguin, 1996), pp. 706–8. 15. Kataryna Wolczuk, The Moulding of Ukraine; and Orest Subtelny Ukraine: A History. 16. “Hitler’s Reply To the President’s Message on the Threat of War,” The American Presidency Project (September 27, 1938), available at http://www.presidency.ucsb .edu/ws/?pid=15543. 17. Richard Pipes, Survival Is Not Enough (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1983). 18. In Kievan Rusʹ, the veche (вече) was a town assembly of free men, but it was severely restricted by the Mongols. Dustin Hosseini, “The Effects of the Mon- gol Empire on Russia,” The School of Russian and Asian Studies (December 12, 2005), available at http://www.sras.org/the_effects_of_the_mongol_empire_on _russia. See also Fukuyama, “Political Order and Decay,” 394. One can debate whether the veche was truly “democratic” or was controlled by the boyars. 19. Hall Gardner, The Failure to Prevent World War I. 20. Western Ukraine practiced parliamentarianism since 1867, despite its significant imperfections. By contrast, parliamentary forms of governance were not fully developed in eastern Ukraine. Yet sociopolitical rivalries and military conflict tended to lead to the acceptance of authoritarian leaderships in both eastern and western Ukraine prior to the Soviet era. Kataryna Wolczuk, The Moulding of Ukraine: The Constitutional Politics of State Formation (Budapest: Central Euro- pean University Press, 2001).

Chapter 3 1. During the Holodomor, Stalin attempted to Russify millions in the North Caucasus and Eastern Slobozhanshchyna, an essentially ethnic Ukrainian territory that is currently in the Kursk, Belgorod, and Voronezh Oblasts of the Russian Federation, as well as in part of the Sumy, Kharkiv, and Luhansk Oblasts in Ukraine. Oleksandr Kramar, “Unknown Eastern Ukraine,” Ukrai- nian Week (March 14, 2012), available at http://ukrainianweek .com/History/ 43727. 2. Mark Kramer, “The Transfer of Crimea from Soviet Russia to Soviet Ukraine, 1954,” Woodrow Wilson Center for Scholars CWIHP e-Dossier No. 47, available at Notes l 209

http://www.wilsoncenter.org/publication/why-did-russia-give-away-crimea -sixty-years-ago. 3. Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Interview, Forbes (August 5, 2008), available at http:// www.forbes.com/2008/08/05/solzhenitsyn-forbes-interview-oped-cx_pm _0804russia.html. 4. President George Bush (August 1, 1991) stated that “Americans will not support those who seek independence in order to replace a far-off tyranny with a local despotism. They will not aid those who promote a suicidal nationalism based upon ethnic hatred. We will support those who want to build democracy.” Available at http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Chicken_Kiev_speech. See also Bush’s views in 2004, available at http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2004/may/ 23/20040523–101623–2724r/. 5. Andrei Gratchev, Gorbachev’s Gamble (Cambridge: Polity, 2008). 6. Marilyn Berger, “Boris Yeltsin, Russia’s First Post-Soviet Leader, Is Dead,” New York Times (April 23, 2007), available at http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/23/ world/europe/23cnd-yeltsin.html?pagewanted=print&_r=0. 7. Dick Cheney wanted the United States to establish closer relations with the ex- Soviet Republics, while James Baker supported a stronger central government. See http://www.nytimes.com/1991/12/09/world/noting-soviet-eclipse-baker-sees -arms-risks.html and http://oralhistory.org.ua/en/interview-en/287/. 8. “Aggressive US posture might strengthen the resolve of Japan to resist the Soviets and then cooperate with US forces, and even encourage the Chinese to cooperate with the West.” See Martin L. Lasater, “US Maritime Strategy in the West Pacific in the 1990s,” Strategic Review (Summer 1990), 21. 9. Paul Goble, “Ten Issues in Search of a Policy,” Current History (October 1993), 305–8. 10. Le Monde (January 25, 1992); “Minsk Agreement on Strategic Forces” (Decem- ber 30, 1991), available at http://www.bits.de/NRANEU/START/documents/ strategicforces91.htm. 11. Stepan Kisseliov, “Ou va la Russie,” Les Nouvelles de Moscou, No. 42 (Octo- ber 22, 1991), 1–3. 12. Financial Times (November 21, 1991), 3. 13. Wall Street Journal (November 15–16, 1991); Minsk Agreement on Strate- gic Forces (December 30, 1991), available at http://www.bits.de/NRANEU/ START/documents/strategicforces91.htm. 14. Paul Kolstoe, Russians in the Former Soviet Republics (Bloomington: Indiana Uni- versity Press, 1995), 190–99. Here, one can raise the pitfalls and legitimacy of plebiscites in general. See Peter Emerson, “Majority Rule: A Cause of War?” in Hall Gardner and Oleg Kobtzeff, eds., The Ashgate Research Companion to War. 15. “Ukraine Finds ‘Active Independence’ despite Military and Other Obstacles,” New York Times (September 6, 1992), available at http://www.nytimes.com/ 1992/09/06/world/ukraine-finds-active-independence-despite-military-and -other-obstacles.html?src=pm&pagewanted=2. Motyl, Dilemmas of Indepen- dence, 108. Motyl lists Russian and Ukrainian policy decisions that exacerbated tensions. Some Ukrainian legislators opposed ratifying the Strategic Arms Reduc- tion Treaty and the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty because Moscow threatened 210 l Notes

Kiev over Crimea and the Black Sea Fleet. Moscow was also accused of stirring up nationalism around Donetsk and Donbass. 16. NATO, Rome Declaration on Peace and Cooperation, available at http://www .nato.int/docu/comm/49–95/c911108a.htm. 17. Norman Kempster, “Just Kidding, Russian Says after Cold War Blast Stuns Euro- peans,” LA Times (December 15, 1992), available at http://articles .latimes.com/ 1992–12–15/news/mn-2214_1_foreign-ministers. 18. “Yeltsin: Help Is Urgent,” Seattle Times (March 3, 1993), available at http:// community.seattletimes.nwsource.com/archive/?date=19930317&slug= 1690960. 19. Cited in Victor Zaborsky, “Crimea and the Black Sea Fleet in Russian-Ukrainian Relations,” Discussion Paper 95-11, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard University (September 1995), available at http://belfercenter .ksg.harvard.edu/files/disc_paper_95_11.pdf. 20. National Security Archives, The George Washington University, available at http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/nukevault/ebb245/index.htm. 21. Cited by Paul H. Nitze and Robert W. Chandler in “At What Price an Enlarged NATO” (May 16, 1995). Draft editorial, not published. 22. Marshall Lee and Wolfgang Michalka, Germany Foreign Policy, 1917–33 (New York: St. Martin’s, 1987). 23. Motyl, Dilemmas, 122–23. 24. Roman Popadiuk continued, “That statement was huge! I had the defense ministry, the foreign ministry calling me. ‘Are you sure Mr. Ambassador? Is this what you said, is this what the United States has said?’ I said ‘Yes. This is what the United States has said.’ Not the Embassy, I said the United States of America. It went like wildfire, and the Ukrainians were really pleased. I think that helped a lot,” The Collapse of the Soviet Union: Oral History of Independent Ukraine, available at http://oralhistory.org.ua/en/interview-en/287/. In the long term, the significance was even larger than Mr. Popadiuk could have imagined. 25. Solzhenitsyn may have supported a pan-Russian empire, but it was not to be achieved by force: “. . . never, under any circumstances, will either I or my sons join in a Russian-Ukrainian clash, no matter how some hotheads may be pushing us towards one,” in “A Prophecy of Pain,” Daily Telegraph (May 28, 2014), available at http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sponsored/rbth/opinion/10860269/solzhenitsyn -predicted-future-ukraine.html. 26. Andrei Kozyrev, “The Lagging Partnership,” Foreign Affairs (May/June 1994). 27. NATO, “Finale Communique” (December 10, 1996), available at http://www .nato.int/docu/pr/1996/p96-165e.htm. 28. Richard C. Holbrooke, US Department of State, “Letter to Ambassador Davies” (July 25, 1995). My copy. 29. Richard C. Holbrooke, To End a War (New York: Random House, 1998), 21. 30. Holbrooke to Davis (July 25, 1995). 31. Holbrooke to Davis (July 25, 1995). 32. Noam Chomsky, “A Review of NATO’s War over Kosovo,” Z Magazine (April–May, 2001), available at http://www.chomsky.info/articles/200005— .htm. The refugee crisis resulted primarily from ex-Yugoslav assaults, but this is Notes l 211

precisely what Milošević had threatened if NATO did begin its bombing campaign. Milošević probably believed that US/NATO threats to attack were a bluff. But NATO had to prove its credibility and justify its right to exist (and expand) after Soviet collapse, while Moscow was in no position to back Milošević, nor was it totally supportive of his actions. 33. Rambouillet Interim Accords, available at http://www.alb-net.com/kcc/interim .htm. Henry Kissinger, “The New World Disorder,” Newsweek (May 31, 1999). One could even argue the Rambouillet Summit resulted in an ultimatum that was even stronger than that which Austria put on Serbia during the July 1914 crisis that led to World War I! On the problem of false historical analogies and Kosovo, see Henry Kissinger, “Finding a Solution to the Kosovo Crisis Must Begin by Rejecting False Analogies to the Traumas of the Past,” News- week (April 5, 1999). See also, Noam Chomsky, “A Review of NATO’s War over Kosovo,” Z Magazine (April–May, 2001), available at http://www.chomsky .info/articles/200005—.htm. Ironically, Chomsky, the nonviolent anarchist, and Kissinger, the traditional realist, took similar positions on the NATO war “over” Kosovo. 34. See Hall Gardner, NATO Expansion and US Strategy in Asia, 45–47. The Chinese embassy may have been serving as a relay system for Serbian army radio signals and for monitoring US cruise missile attacks. “NATO Bombed Chinese Delib- erately,” The Guardian (October 17, 1999), available at http://www .guardian.co .uk/Kosovo/Story/0,2763,203214,00.html. 35. Charles Krauthammer, “The Path to Putin,” cited in Congressional Record Sen- ate S2555 (April 12, 2000), available at http://www .gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/CREC -2000–04–12/pdf/CREC-2000–04–12-pt1-PgS2553–9.pdf#page=4. 36. Senator Pat Roberts (R-KS), cited in Congressional Record Senate S2555 (April 12, 2000), available at http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/CREC-2000–04–12/ pdf/CREC-2000–04–12-pt1-PgS2553–9.pdf#page=4. 37. Michel Dobbs, “US Advice Guided Milosevic Opposition,” Washington Post (December 11, 2000). Fukuyama admits that US democracy engineering in Serbia, Georgia, and Ukraine represented a violation of traditional concepts of sovereignty. Fukuyama, America at the Crossroads, 178. 38. For a critique of the war “over” Kosovo, see William D. Hartung, “The Costs of NATO Expansion Revisited,” A World Policy Institute Issue Brief (April 21, 1999), available at http://www.bu.edu/globalbeat/nato/Hartung0499.html. 39. Interview, Richard Holbrooke, Frontline Interviews PBS (no date), available at http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/kosovo/interviews/holbrooke .html. 40. Thomas W. Lippman “Russian Leader Cancels Trip in Protest,” Washington Post (March 24, 1999), A22, available at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/ inatl/daily/march99/russia032499.htm.

Chapter 4 1. Niall Ferguson and Brigitte Granville, “Weimar on the Volga,” The Journal of Economic History Vol. 60, No. 4 (December 2000). See also Stephen E. Hanson 212 l Notes

and Jeffrey S. Kopstein, “The Weimar/Russia Comparison,” Post-Soviet Affairs Vol. 13, No. 3 (1997), 252–83. 2. Francis Fukuyama and Michael McFaul, “Should Democracy Be Promoted or Demoted?,” The Washington Quarterly Vol. 31, No. 1, 23–45. One can question why McFaul, a known critic of Putin, was chosen as ambassador to Russia in 2012, instead of a more traditional diplomat, if the goal was truly to reset US-Russian relations. There is a difference between “leading by example” and US efforts to actively promote democracy in Russia, as advocated by Fukuyama and McFaul. The latter has helped cause a backlash, particularly given the fact that US actions are not always perceived by Moscow or other states as actually practicing what one preaches. 3. Sarah E. Mendelson and Theodore P. Gerber, “Us and Them: Anti-American Views of the Putin Generation,” The Washington Quarterly Vol. 31, No. 2, 131–50, available at http://www.twq.com/08spring/docs/08spring_mendelson.pdf. 4. Hall Gardner, “Breaking the Cycle of Mutual Imprecations,” Russian Interna- tional Affairs Council (April 8, 2013), available at http://russiancouncil.ru/en/ inner/?id_4=1671#top. 5. See Lilia Shevtsova, Russia: Lost in Transition; The Yeltsin and Putin Legacies (Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2007). 6. See Hall Gardner, NATO Enlargement and US Strategy in Asia (Palgrave, 2013), chapter 4. 7. Putin, cited in Kurt Volker, Cable 08USNATO290, Ukraine, MAP and the Russia- Georgia Conflict, available at https://wikileaks.org/cable/2008/08/08USNATO290 .html. Georgian president Saakashvili also predicted that Russia would incite tension in Crimea and then make a generous offer to Yanukovych (presumed to be the next president) to help solve the problem. https://www .wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/ 09TBILISI1965_a.html. 8. Putin, cited in Kurt Volker, Cable 08USNATO290. 9. See Ukrainian protest in parliament against the decision to extend the lease of the Russian fleet. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7qsRaBFw—AA http://en.rian .ru/infographics/20100423/158718722.html. 10. The threat to turn the Euromaidan protests into an armed struggle may have forced Yanukovych to flee. If so, the affair had elements of a staged coup d’etat. See International New York Times (January 5, 2014), 1, 4. For evidence of Yanokovych’s corruption, see “Ukraine: The Ex-President’s Caretaker,” Yano- kovychleaks (July 22, 2014), available at http://yanukovychleaks .org/en/stories/ ukraine-the-ex-presidents-caretaker.html. 11. Putin’s advisor on Eurasian integration Sergei Glazyev argued in early February 2014 for the “federalization” of Ukraine. This could help to bring the southeastern part of Ukraine closer to the Russia-led Customs Union. See more at http:// ecfr.eu/blog/entry/crimea_what_does_putin_want#sthash.0vt9fYP6.dpuf. 12. “Ukraine PM Tells Russia to Accept ‘Reality’ of EU Trade Deal,” Reuters (August 28 2013), available at http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/08/28/us -ukraine-russia-azarov-idUSBRE97R0JM20130828. 13. Even her former ally, former President Yushchenko, had testified against Tymosh- enko for ostensibly selling out Ukrainian interests to Russia; yet her jailing Notes l 213

nevertheless held up the European Association Accord with Ukraine, which she herself opposed. 14. Scott Belinski, “Ukraine’s Two New Energy Deals,” Oil Price (December 10, 2013), available at http://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/Ukraines-Two -New-Energy-Deals.html. 15. “Deadly Clashes in Ukraine,” Streaming WSJ, available at, http://stream.wsj .com/story/deadly-clashes-in-ukraine/SS-2–457850/SS-2–469908/?mod=wsj _streaming_deadly-clashes-in-ukraine. 16. UNIAN, “Yury Lutsenko Calls for Eastern Maidan, Sets Priorities for Protest- ers,” Zik (February 9, 2014), available at http://zik.ua/en/news/2014/02/09/yury _lutsenko_calls_for_eastern_maidan_sets_priorities_for_protesters_459368. 17. Dmitry Trenin, “Russia Needs to Stay Clear of Ukraine,” Carnegie Moscow Cen- ter (October 9, 2013), available at http://carnegie.ru/eurasiaoutlook/?fa=53848; The Guardian (January 28, 2013), available at http://www.theguardian.com/ world/2014/jan/28/vladimir-putin-ukraine-crisis-eu. 18. “Ukraine’s dependence on the Russian market means that it will have to adapt simultaneously to two competitive integration regimes, the EU and the ECU. At the same time, there are emerging opportunities for economic cooperation. Russia has been rapidly adopting EU and international standards in the context of creating the ECU and of accession to the WTO.” See Rilka Drag- neva and Kataryna Wolczuk, Russia, the Eurasian Customs Union and the EU: Cooperation, Stagnation or Rivalry? (London: Russia and Eurasia Programme, Chatham House, August 2012), available at http://www.chathamhouse.org/ sites/files/chathamhouse/public/Research/Russia%20and%20Eurasia/0812bp _dragnevawolczuk.pdf. 19. See Samuel Charap and Mikhail Troitskiy, “Russia, the West and the Integration Dilemma,” Survival (December 2013–January 2014), 49–62. 20. Rilka Dragneva and Kataryna Wolczuk, Russia, the Eurasian Customs Union and the EU. 21. Jean-Pierre Chevènement, “Sans la Russie il manque quelque chose à l’Europe,” Le Figaro (March 8, 2014), 22. 22. Hubertus Hoffmann, Russia, NATO and the EU: A Plea for a True Partnership (Berlin: World Security Network, March 26, 2014). 23. See Walter Schwimmer, Secretary General of the Council of Europe from 1999- 2004, as to how the EU criticism of the Russia-Ukraine deal over the Black Sea Fleet in 2010 made the Russian military concerned that they could lose the naval base in Sevastopol and that NATO should have somehow given Moscow a guarantee that it could retain the base: “Now Russia and the EU are trapped. Russia will not retreat from Crimea and the EU cannot acknowledge its annexation, since it was against international law. And now Russia and the EU are trapped in this escalation of sanctions that are leading to nothing.” Alexey Khlebniko, “There Is No Europe without Russia and No Russia without Europe,” Russia Direct (March 19, 2015), available at http://www.russia-direct.org/qa/there-no -europe-without-russia-and-no-russia-without-europe. 24. On US support for the Maidan demands and opposition to any Ukrainian or EU-Ukrainian deal with Moscow, see “Ukraine Crisis: Transcript of Leaked 214 l Notes

Nuland-Pyatt Call,” BBC (February 7, 2015), available at http://www .bbc.com/ news/world-europe-26079957. The alleged conservation between Assistant Sec- retary of State Victoria Nuland and the US ambassador to Ukraine, Geoffrey Pyatt, which revealed US efforts to intervene in Ukrainian affairs, probably took place in late January 2014 after Yanukovych offered Arseniy Yatsenyuk the position of prime minister, which he refused. 25. Kyiv, “Agreement on the Settlement of Crisis in Ukraine” (February 21, 2014), available at http://www.auswaertiges-amt.de/cae/servlet/contentblob/671350/ publicationFile/190051/140221-UKR_Erklaerung.pdf. 26. Robert Wade, “Rethinking the Ukraine Crisis,” London School of Economics and Political Science (February 11, 2015), available at http://blogs .lse.ac.uk/ internationaldevelopment/2015/02/19/robert-wade-rethinking-the-ukraine -crisis/. 27. Nicolai N. Petro and David C. Speedie, “Crisis in Ukraine: Crimean Stand-Off,” Carnegie Council (March 4, 2014), available at http://www .carnegiecouncil.org/ studio/multimedia/20140304/index.html. 28. Mark Thompson, “Ukraine to Get $18 Billion Rescue from IMF,” CNN Money (March 27, 2014). 29. Scott Morris, “Will Mr. Putin Drive Congress into the Arms of the IMF?,” The Hill (March 7, 2014), available at http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/foreign -policy/200227-will-mr-putin-drive-congress-into-the-arms-of-the-imf. 30. Robin Wigglesworth, “Ukraine’s Bonds Sink as Debts Spiral,” Financial Times (January 6, 2015), available at http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/2b00232e-95b7 -11e4-b3a6-00144feabdc0.html#axzz3Y2NV8FPa. 31. Iana Dreyer and Nicu Popescu, “Do Sanctions against Russia Work?,” EU Insti- tute for Security Studies (December 2014), 1–4. 32. Larry Hanauer, “Crimean Adventure Will Cost Russia Dearly,” Moscow Times (September 7, 2014), available at http://www.themoscowtimes.com/opinion/ article/crimean-adventure-will-cost-russia-dearly/506550.html http://www.osw .waw.pl/en/publikacje/osw-commentary/2014–08–01/a-bottomless-pit-costs -crimeas-annexation-russia. 33. Iana Dreyer and Nicu Popescu, “Do Sanctions against Russia Work?” 34. Larry Elliott and Angela Monaghan, “Five Issues That Will Make—or Break— the World Economy In 2015,” The Observer (December 28, 2014), available at http://www.theguardian.com/business/2014/dec/28/five-issues-world-economy -2015. 35. Aasim M. Husain, Anna Ilyina and Li Zeng “Europe’s Russia Connections,” IMFdirect (August 1, 2014), available at http://blog -imfdirect.imf.org/2014/ 08/01/europes-russian-connections/. See also Sputnik Report (July 29, 2014), available at, http://en.ria.ru/business/20140729/191450645/Sanctions-Against -Russia-May-Have-Severe-Impact-on-Global.html. 36. Germany’s strong business ties with Russia are more than double the value of Russian trade with the United States. For details, see Jack Ewing and Alison Smale, “In Reversal, Germany Cools to Russian Investment,” New York Times (December 28, 2014), available at http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/29/business/ international/in-reversal-germany-cools-to-russian-investment.html?_r=0. Russia’s Notes l 215

largest trading partners (in terms of total trade, in billions, January through August 2014) were China ($43.4), Netherlands ($38.2), Germany ($34.3), Italy ($25.2), Ukraine($16.1), Belarus($15.7), Turkey ($15.5), Japan ($15.3), United States ($15.0), and Poland ($12.1) according to the German-Russian Chamber of Commerce. The German industry’s Committee on Eastern European Eco- nomic Relations believes that the crisis could endanger up to 25,000 jobs in Germany. Were a broad recession to befall Russia, German growth could sink by 0.5 percent. Matthias Schepp and Cornelia Schmergal, “The Boomerang Effect: Sanctions on Russia Hit German Economy Hard,” Der Spiegel (July 21, 2014), available at http://www.spiegel.de/international/business/german-economy-hit -by-us-eu-sanctions-on-russia-a-982075.html. 37. Neil MacFarquhar and Andrew Roth, “Putin Urges Economic Retaliation for Sanctions over Ukraine Conflict,” New York Times (August 5, 2014), available at http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/06/world/europe/putin-urges-economic -retaliation-for-sanctions-over-ukraine-conflict.html. 38. On state of TTIP negotiation, see European Commission, “State of Play TTIP Negotiations after the 6th Round” (July 29, 2014), available at http://trade .ec .europa.eu/doclib/docs/2014/july/tradoc_152699.pdf. 39. One-third of Europe’s gas supply comes from Russia, and almost half of that is transported through Ukraine. Germany obtains about one-third and Sweden almost one-half of their imported energy from Russia. Poland, Slovakia, Bul- garia, and Lithuania depend on Russia for 90 percent or more of their imported energy, excluding intra-EU trade. Tensions with Russia have led some European countries to sign contracts with the United States for future natural gas delivery. The United States is also exporting its excess supply of coal to Europe, as the domestic shale gas and oil boom reduce US coal consumption. Henry Meyer and Evgenia Pismennaya, “China Embraces a Russia Cut off from Western Capital,” Bloomberg Business Week (October 16, 2014). 40. “Turkey Does Not Recognize Russia’s Crimea Annexation,” Anadolu Agency (Jan- uary 14, 2015), available at http://www.aa.com.tr/en/turkey/449841—turkey -does-not-recognize-russias-crimea-annexation. 41. In March 2014, Kiev and China’s CITIC Construction signed an agreement that Ukraine will receive $15 billion from China at a minimal interest rate for 15 years to build housing and infrastructure (Gazeta.ru, March 26), cited in “Ukraine Conflict Benefits China,” Eurasia Daily Monitor, Vol. 12, No. 62 (April 3, 2015), available at http://www.jamestown.org/programs/edm/single/?tx_ttnews %5Btt_news%5D=43740&cHash=e6cb2fd34b5fe5b45207046561df1ce2# .VTV_hCGqpBc. 42. John C. K. Daly, “Hot Issue: After Crimea: The Future of the Black Sea Fleet,” Jamestown Foundation (May 22, 2014), available at http://www .jamestown.org/ programs/hotissues/single-hot-issues/?tx_ttnews%5Btt_news%5D=42411&tx _ttnews%5BbackPid%5D=61&cHash=18fb1cd8a0f31ab19fc65b39ef83d021. 43. Frederic Mousseau, “What Do the World Bank and IMF Have to Do with the Ukraine Conflict?” IPS (August 12, 2014), available at http://www.ipsnews .net/2014/08/what-do-the-world-bank-and-imf-have-to-do-with-the-ukraine -conflict/. 216 l Notes

44. Eugene Rumer and Alexandra McLees, “Saving Ukraine’s Defense Industry,” ISN (August 12, 2014), available at http://www.isn.ethz.ch/Digital-Library/ Articles/Detail/?ots591=4888caa0-b3db-1461–98b9-e20e7b9c13d4&lng=en& id=182641. 45. Ibid. 46. Ibid. 47. NATO, “NATO’s Relations with Ukraine” (March 31, 2015), available at http:// www.nato.int/cps/en/natolive/topics_37750.htm. 48. In addition to Article 2(4) and Article 51 of the UN Charter, Moscow has been charged with violating the Minsk Declaration of December 1991, the Alma Ata Declaration of December 1991, the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, the 1997 NATO-Russia Founding Act, and the 1997 Treaty of Friendship and Coopera- tion between Russia and Ukraine, as well as the 1997 legal framework surrounding the Russian Black Sea Fleet, plus the 2002 Rome Accords that established the NATO-Russia Council. The March 16 referendum on the future of Crimea appeared to violate Article 73 of the Ukrainian constitution, which states that questions of Ukraine’s territorial sovereignty can only be decided by referendums put to the whole of the population. Russian actions also appear to have violated the basic principles of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (which opposes secessionist movements) plus the European Security Treaty that was proposed by Moscow itself in June 2008. 49. Although allusions have been made to the 1923 Rapallo Pact (between Weimar Germany and Soviet Russia), in contemporary circumstances, it is the burgeoning Russian-Chinese relationship that best parallels the 1923 German-Soviet Rapallo Pact. As I pointed out in 1998, “As long as the newly unified Germany remains within the EU and NATO, Bonn will not seek out a Rapallo Pact or a neo-Molotov Ribbentrop Pact with Russia. On the other hand, EU expansion, coupled with the possibility of NATO membership for selected states in central Europe, could lead to a de facto partition between those states that enter NATO and those that do not—if Russia does take the countermeasures as it has threatened.” I also argued that Russia could soon distrust all promises of cooperation with NATO and the EU. Hall Gardner, “NATO, Russia and Eastern European Security beyond the Interwar Analogy,” in Piotr Dutkiewicz and Robert J. Jackson, eds., NATO Looks East (Westport, CT, Praeger, 1998). 50. John C. K. Daly, “Hot Issue: After Crimea: The Future of the Black Sea Fleet,” Jamestown Foundation (May 22, 2014), available at http://www .jamestown.org/ programs/hotissues/single-hot-issues/?tx_ttnews%5Btt_news%5D=42411&tx _ttnews%5BbackPid%5D=61&cHash=18fb1cd8a0f31ab19fc65b39ef83d021. 51. Statement by NATO Foreign Ministers, NATO-Russia Council (April 1, 2014), available at http://www.nato-russia-council.info/en/articles/20140327 -announcement. 52. Agnia Grigas, “Russia-Baltic Relations after Crimea’s Annexation: Reasons for Concern?,” Cicero Paper, No 14/05 (June 2014), available at http://www .cicerofoundation.org/lectures/Agnia_Grigas_Russia-Baltic_Relations.pdf. 53. Bill Gertz, “Russian Strategic Bombers near Canada Practice Cruise Mis- sile Strikes on US,” Washington Times (September 8, 2014), available at Notes l 217

http://freebeacon.com/national-security/russian-strategic-bombers-near-canada -practice-cruise-missile-strikes-on-us/.For a Russian perspective, Alexander Yer- makov, “Cold Peace in European Skies,” RIAC (December 15, 2014), available at http://russiancouncil.ru/en/inner/?id_4=4963#top. This dispute would suggest the need for joint NATO-Russian air patrols. 54. Embassy of the United States, Ukraine: Office of Defense Cooperation, available at http://ukraine.usembassy.gov/odc.html. 55. US Department of Defense, “DoD Announces European Infrastructure Consolida- tion Actions and F-35 Basing in Europe,” Defense-aerospace.com (January 8, 2015), available at http://www.defense-aerospace.com/article-view/release/160104/us -cuts-more-bases%2C-forces-in-europe.html. 56. In October 2014, Polish F-16s, which could carry US B61 tactical nuclear weapons if modified, participated in nuclear strike exercises, known as Steadfast Noon 2014, in northern Italy, which had been planned before the Russian annexation of Crimea, raising questions about NATO nuclear policy. Hans M. Kristensen, “Polish F-16s in NATO Nuclear Exercise in Italy,” FAS (October 27, 2014), available at http://fas.org/blogs/security/2014/10/steadfastnoon/. On Polish considerations to upgrade Polish F-16s to carry B61 tactical nuclear weapons (replac- ing German Tornadoes), see National Centre for Strategic Studies, “America Needs a Poland That Is More Self Sufficient,” Stratfor (June 6, 2014), available at http://www.stratfor.com/the-hub/america-needs-poland-more-self-sufficient #axzz3NktGukOO. Another option would be for Poland to buy dual-capable Tomahawk cruise missiles with a range exceeding a thousand kilometers and equip the Polish navy with a new class of submarines. The Polish hardline position argues that submarine-launched cruise missiles would augment uncertainty for Russian nuclear planners but at the cost of a dangerous arms race. East European NATO-member demands for a permanent stationing of forces have been met by a rotating system of force deployments, which is seen by hardliners as inadequate. 57. The SA-11 BUK missile system, which was allegedly supplied by Moscow and which allegedly shot down the Malaysian airliner, has a sophisticated high-tech radar-led system, which can only be handled by a team of trained military spe- cialists, who would allegedly also be supplied by Moscow. Mark Kramer, “It’s Happened Before: MH17 Tragedy Was Part of a Bigger Air War,” CNN (July 24, 2014), available at http://edition.cnn.com/2014/07/23/opinion/kramer-russia -ukraine-shoot-down/index.html?iid=article_sidebar. 58. Russian “separatists” consist of four groups: (1) Russian special forces (Spetsnaz), belonging to the GRU, the intelligence service of the Russian army; (2) Rus- sian militias, consisting of former (contract) soldiers; (3) Cossack and Chechen militias (these were also active in South Ossetia during the war with Georgia in 2008); and (4) local mercenaries who sympathize with the Kremlin’s annexation- ist drive. Marcel van Herpen, “Ukraine: Who is Responsible is Responsible for the Death of the Passengers of the MH17?,” Cicero Paper No. 14/02 (July 2014), available at http://www.cicerofoundation.org/lectures/Marcel_H_Van_Herpen _The_Ukraine_Plane_Crash.pdf. 59. In August, Kiev and Moscow reached an, at least temporary, arrangement to permit humanitarian aid into the embattled region, in an accord mediated 218 l Notes

by Finland, France, and Germany. Daryna Krasnolutska and Anton Doro- shev, “Ukraine-Russia Talks Seek to Ease Crisis Amid Aid Accord,” Bloom- berg News (August 17, 2014), available at http://www .bloomberg.com/news/ 2014–08–16/ukraine-russia-talks-seek-to-ease-crisis-amid-aid-accord.html. Jeffrey Sparshott, “Obama Warns Russia Against Further Intervention in Ukraine” Wall Street Journal (August 11, 2014), available at http://online .wsj .com/articles/obama-warns-russia-against-further-intervention-in-ukraine -1407786233. 60. Sergei Lavrov “‘We Will Survive Sanctions,’ Says Russian Foreign Minister,” France 24: The Interview (December 16, 2014), retrieved from www.france24 .com. 61. Ukrainian sources state that Russian operatives began to plan operations in Crimea and eastern Ukraine in 2012, if not as early as 2010, at least two years after Putin’s speech at the 2008 Bucharest NATO summit. Polish intelligence became alarmed by the summer of 2013. Ben Judah, “Putin’s Coup,” Politico Magazine (October 19, 2014), available at http://www.politico.com/magazine/ story/2014/10/vladimir-putins-coup-112025.html#.VTV1pCGqpBd. 62. Nicolai Petro, “Six Mistakes the West Has Made (and Continues to Make) in Ukraine,” The National Interest (May 8, 2014), available at http://nationalinterest .org/feature/six-mistakes-the-west-has-made-continues-make-ukraine-10397. See Petro’s website at http://www.npetro.net/8.html. 63. “NATO needs to make concrete commitments to help Ukraine modernize and strengthen its security forces. And . . . we have to do more to help other NATO Partners, including Georgia and Moldova, strengthen their defenses as well. . . . And we must reaffirm the principle that has always guided our Alliance—for countries that meet our standards and that can make meaningful contributions to allied security, the door to NATO membership will remain open.” Remarks by President Obama to the People of Estonia (September 3, 2014), available at http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2014/09/03/remarks-president -obama-people-estonia.

Chapter 5 1. The absurd term “multipolarity” implies three or more equal “poles” (the earth only has 2 poles!) that necessarily repel one another and hence cannot come to terms; the term “polycentricism” implies differing centers of power that may or may not conflict with one another. 2. For US list of antistate “terrorist” organizations, see Bureau of Counterterror- ism, “Foreign Terrorist Organisations,” US Department of State, available at http://www.state.gov/j/ct/rls/other/des/123085.htm. Not all states agree with US definitions of terrorism, and governments themselves can also be considered as engaging in totalitarian and state-supported terrorism. See Hall Gardner, American Global Strategy and the “War on Terrorism.” 3. “Strategic leveraging” provides an alternative to “rational-actor” models and “cost/benefit” models to interstate behavior, as it shows the willingness of states and antistate groups to engage in “nonrational” behavior to press their interests, Notes l 219

even if their actions do not necessarily enhance the overall economic well-being of a society or sociopolitical group or class. 4. Robert M. Hayden, “Intersecting Religioscapes and Antagonistic Tolerance: Tra- jectories of Competition and Sharing of Religious Spaces in the Balkans,” Space and Polity Vol. 17, No. 3 (September 2013), 320–34. 5. Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Cambridge, MA: Belknap, 2014). See discussion of Piketty by Paul Krugman, “Paul Krugman: Why We’re in a New Gilded Age,” Moyers and Company (April 16, 2014), available at http:// billmoyers.com/2014/04/16/paul-krugman-why-we%E2%80%99re-in-a-new -gilded-age/. Unfortunately, Piketty does not examine how wars tend to level incomes. 6. Balázs Jarábik and Anaïs Marin, “Belarus,” available at http://www.lse.ac.uk/ IDEAS/publications/reports/pdf/SR019/SR019-Jarabik-Marin.pdf. 7. “Estonian-Russian Border Treaty in Proceedings in Moscow,” The Baltic Course (April 4, 2015), available at http://www.baltic-course.com/eng/transport/?doc= 104700. 8. Helena Smith, “Syriza’s Tsipras Sworn in after Greek Government Formed with Rightwingers,” The Guardian (January 26, 2015), available at http:// www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jan/26/syriza-forms-government-rightwing -independent-greeks-party. 9. Leonid Bershidsky, “America’s Losing the Currency War,” Bloomberg View (January 23, 2015), available at http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015–01–23/europe -just-started-waging-currency-war-on-the-u-s-, See “Global Risks 2015 Report,” World Economic Forum, 10th ed. (2015), available at http://www3.weforum.org/ docs/WEF_Global_Risks_2015_Report.pdf. 10. Paul Taylor, “Russia in Crimea? It’s Europe’s Fault, Say Eurosceptics,” Reuters (March 21, 2014), available at http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/03/21/us -ukraine-crisis-eurosceptics-idUSBREA2K0ZB20140321. In December 2013, a member of Putin’s United Russia party attended the summit of Eurosceptic groups in Turin. TNO Staff, “Italy’s Northern League Elects New Party Secre- tary at Turin Congress,” The New Observer (December 16, 2013), available at http://newobserveronline.com/italys-northern-league-elects-new-party-secretary -at-turin-congress/. 11. Jason Karaian, “Putin Has Friends of Europe’s Far Right and Left (but Mostly Right),” Quartz (January 15, 2015), available at http://qz.com/326487/putin -has-friends-on-europes-far-right-and-left-but-mostly-right/. Patrik Oksanen, “Russia-Index: 11 New Eu-Sceptic Parties Added,” EUbloggen (January 10, 2015), available at https://eublogg.wordpress.com/2015/01/10/russia-index-11 -new-eu-sceptic-parties-added/. 12. The Russian arms deal is to be financed by Saudi Arabia and the UAE. FRANCE 24, “Egypt, France to Conclude €5.2 Billion Deal for Rafale Jets,” France 24 (February 16, 2015), available at http://www.ipsnews.net/2014/03/russian-arms -egypt-threaten-undermine-u-s-mideast/. Egypt has also purchased the French Rafale so as to better balance its armed forces (France 24 [February 16, 2015], available at http://www.france24.com/en/20150216-france-egypt-sign-deal-sale -rafale-fighter-jets/). 220 l Notes

13. See Micah Zenko, “The Slippery Slope of US Intervention,” Foreign Policy (August 11, 2014), available at http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2014/08/ 11/the_slippery_slope_of_us_intervention_iraq_islamic_state_humanitarian _intervention. 14. “Obama Calls for anti-Jihadist Front as France, UK Weigh Strikes,” France 24 (September 3, 2014), available at http://www .france24.com/en/20140903 -obama-calls-anti-jihadist-front-france-uk-weigh-strikes/. 15. Kautilya, The Arthashastra (New Delhi: Penguin Classics, 1992), 551–70. 16. Hall Gardner, “War and the New Media Paradox: A Critique of Marshall McLu- han,” in Athina Karatzogianni, ed., Cyber-Conflict and Global Politics (New York: Routledge, 2008). 17. S. C. Gwynne, Empire of the Summer Moon (New York: Scribner, 2011). 18. Permanent Delegate of Turkey, “Convention Regarding the Regime of the Straits Signed at Montreux, July 20th, 1963” (December 11, 1936), available at http:// sam.baskent.edu.tr/belge/Montreux_ENG.pdf. For a primer, see “A Primer on the Montreux Convention,” Bosphorus Naval News (March 5, 2014), available at http://turkishnavy.net/2014/03/05/a-primer-on-the-montreux-convention/. 19. Gus Lubin, “A Brief Tour of the 7 Oil Chokepoints That Are Crucial to the World Economy,” Business Insider (February 5, 2011), available at http://www.businessinsider.com/oil-chokepoints-suez-canal-2011–1?op=1 #ixzz3QR4Tju1v. For a list of strategically vital cable landings, mines, energy producers, and weapons and medical manufacturers that could be attacked by terrorists or states, see Gus Lubin, “Wikileaks Unveils over 300 Foreign Sites That Are Critical to U.S. National Interests,” Business Insider (December 6, 2010), available at http://www.businessinsider.com/wikileaks-critical-foreign -dependencies-2010–12?op=1#ixzz3QR5nEBdZ. 20. “National Debts Shall Not Be Contracted with a View to the External Fric- tion of States.” Immanuel Kant (1795). Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch. Retrieved from https://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/kant/kant1.htm. 21. Saul Bernard Cohen, Geopolitics of the World System (Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, 2003). 22. Hall Gardner, “Toward Regional Security Communities: NATO, the UN and the 1948 Vandenberg Resolution,” Civitatis International, available at http://dl .dropboxusercontent.com/u/36509234/Vandenberg.pdf.

Chapter 6 1. Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War (New York: Penguin Classics, 1985), I.22, 48. 2. “Of Vicissitudes of Things,” Sir Francis Bacon, Essays of Francis Bacon or Coun- sels, Civil and Moral (1627), available at http://www.literaturepage.com/read/ francis-bacon-essays-115.html. 3. Ibid. 4. J. M. Keynes, A Treatise on Probability (London: Macmillan, 1921), 309. 5. Ibid., 309. 6. Ibid., 313. Notes l 221

7. Eve Tavor Bannet, “Analogy as Translation: Wittgenstein, Derrida, and the Law of Language” New Literary History, Vol. 28, No. 4, Philosophical Thoughts (Autumn, 1997). 8. Karl Popper, The Poverty of Historicism, 2nd edition (London: Routledge, 1961); Richard E. Neustadt and Ernest R. May, Thinking in Time: The Uses of History for Decision Makers (New York: Freedom Press, 1986); and Margaret Macmillan, Dangerous Games: The Uses and Abuses of History (New York: Random House: 2009). 9. Jean-François Lyotard, The Post-Modern Condition: A Report on Knowledge (Min- neapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984, reprint 1997). 10. In biology, homology refers to common structural and ancestral characteristics. 11. In effect, appeals to nationalism and religion represent a means to assert unity and overcome nihilism through what Nietzsche poetically called Geisterkreig (ghost or ideological war). See Frederick Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, translated by Helen Zimmern, available at http://www .gutenberg.org/files/ 4363/4363-h/4363-h.htm; Frederick Nietzsche, The Will to Power, edited by Walter Kaufmann (New York: Vintage, 1968). For Nietzsche, Europe needed to become “One Will” against the “threatening attitude of Russia,” yet Europe still seems far from establishing a common foreign, security, or defense policy toward Moscow. 12. Edward Carr, The Twenty Years’ Crisis, 1919–1939 (New York: Perennial, 2001). 13. Marcel van Herpen, Putin’s Wars: The Rise of Russia’s New Imperialism (Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, 2014). 14. I have derived many of these concepts from the following works: George Liska, Quest for Equilibrium (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1977); Immanuel Wallerstein, The Capitalist World Economy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979); Immanuel Wallerstein, The Politics of the World Economy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press: 1984); Saul Bernard Cohen, Geo- politics of the World System (Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, 2003); Halford Mackinder, “The Geographical Pivot of History,” The Geographical Journal Vol. 23, No 4 (April 1904), 436–37; Halford Mackinder, Democratic Ideals and Real- ity (London: Constable, 1919); and Nicholas J. Spykman, The Geography of the Peace (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1944). 15. George Liska, Ways of Power (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1990). 16. I am not following either Mackinder, Spykman, or Wallerstein. These definitions are more geo-political-economic than political-geographic and can change in differing historical contexts. 17. Saul Cohen, Geopolitics. 18. A. J. P. Taylor, The Struggle for Mastery in Europe, 1848–1918 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971), 90. Historian Niall Ferguson made the same point in 2003 that I made in September 1990. See Niall Ferguson, “Lessons from the British Empire: True Lies,” The New Republic, 27 (May 2003); Niall Ferguson, Colossus (New York: Penguin, 2004), 220. See Hall Gardner, “From Egypt in 1882 to Iraq in 1990–91” Scripta Politica, American University of Paris, Vol. 7, No. 4 (March 1991). Hall Gardner, “From the Egyptian Crisis of 1882 to Iraq of 2003: Alliance Ramifications of British and American Bids for ‘World 222 l Notes

Hegemony,’” Sens Public, available at http://www.sens-public.org/IMG/pdf/ SensPublic_HGardner_From_the_Egyptian_Crisis.pdf. 19. The Russian reaction to the EU Eastern Partnership can also be compared and contrasted with the Soviet reaction to Marshall Aid, given the Soviet decision to crack down in Czechoslovakia, Poland, and the rest of eastern Europe in 1947–48. 20. “The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, 1939.” In Article III of the secret protocol, Ber- lin stated it was disinterested in Bessarabia. This corresponds to the question of Transnistria today, in which Moscow has asserted its hegemony. 21. A Kuwaiti told me that Ninja Turtle comic book characters were painted on wall murals following the 1990 Persian Gulf War. Considering that Japan (and Ger- many) paid the costs for much of the American-led UN rollback of Iraqi forces from Kuwait, the symbolism did not seem entirely inappropriate. 22. Should the United States fail to sustain the US-Japanese alliance in contemporary circumstances, that failure could parallel the failure of the British to sustain the Anglo-Japanese alliance following the Washington Naval Conference in 1921–22. On historical parallels between the Anglo-Japanese and US-Japanese alliances, see Hisahiko Okazaki, A Grand Strategy for Japanese Defense (Lanham: University Press of America, 1986), 135. 23. Robert D. Kaplan, “The South China Sea Is the Future of Conflict,” Foreign Policy (August 15, 2011), available at http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/ 2011/08/15/the_south_china_sea_is_the_future_of_conflict. 24. Aaron L. Friedberg, “The Struggle for the Mastery of Asia,” Commentary Vol. 110, No. 4 (November 2000); and Aaron L. Friedberg, “Ripe for Rivalry: Prospects for Peace in a Multipolar Asia,” International Security Vol. 18, No. 3 (Winter 1993–94), 5–33. See also John J. Mearsheimer, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics (New York: W. W. Norton, 2001), chapter 10; and Glenn H. Sny- der, “Mearsheimer’s World: Offensive Realism and the Struggle for Security; A Review Essay,” International Security Vol. 27, No. 1 (Summer 2002), 149–73. 25. Kimberly Field and Stephan Pikner, “The Role of U.S. Land Forces in the Asia Pacific,” National Defense University Press (August 11, 2014), available at http://www.isn.ethz.ch/Digital-Library/Articles/Detail/?ots591=4888caa0-b3db -1461–98b9-e20e7b9c13d4&lng=en&id=182633. 26. Niall Ferguson, Colossus (New York: Penguin, 2004), 220. 27. Nawaf Obaid, “Saudi Arabia Shifts to More Assertive Defense Doctrine,” Al- Monitor, available at http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2014/06/saudi -arabia-regional-defense-doctrine-counterterrorism-plan.html.

Chapter 7 1. John Mueller, Retreat from Doomsday (New York: Basic, 1996), available at http://politicalscience.osu.edu/faculty/jmueller//doom.pdf. 2. John Lewis Gaddis, The Long Peace: Inquiries into the History of the Cold War (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987). 3. John Mearsheimer, “Back to the Future: Instability in Europe after the Cold War,” International Security Vol. 15, No. 1 (Summer 1990), 5–56. Mearsheimer Notes l 223

continues to assert that if Kiev possessed nuclear weapons, then Moscow would have been less likely to have ventured into Crimea. John Mearsheimer, “Getting Ukraine Wrong” (March 14, 2014), available at http://www .nytimes.com/2014/ 03/14/opinion/getting-ukraine-wrong.html. 4. J. Robert Oppenheimer, “International Control of Energy,” in Morton Grodzins and Eugene Pabinowitch, eds., The Atomic Age (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1963), 54. 5. Dan Lindley and Kevin Clemency, “Low-Cost Nuclear Arms Races,” Bulletin of Atomic Scientists Vol. 65, No. 2 (April 2009), 44–45, available at http://www3 .nd.edu/~dlindley/handouts/Costs%20of%20Arms%20Races.pdf. The countries studied include Argentina, Brazil, China, Egypt, France, Germany, India, Iran, Israel, North Korea, Pakistan, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, Syria, Taiwan, Turkey, and Britain. 6. See NTI, Iraq Nuclear Chronology (February 2009), available at http://www .nti .org/media/pdfs/iraq_nuclear.pdf?_=1316466791. 7. Barak Ravid, “Obama and Netanyahu: Stop Pushing Congress toward New Sanctions on Iran,” Haaretz (January 23, 2015), available at http://www .haaretz .com/news/diplomacy-defense/.premium-1.638604. 8. Eben Harrell and David E. Hoffman, “Plutonium Mountain: Inside the 17- Year Mission to Secure a Legacy of Soviet Nuclear Testing,” Cambridge, MA: Report for Project on Managing the Atom, Belfer Center for Science and Inter- national Affairs, Harvard Kennedy School (August 15, 2013), available at http:// belfercenter.ksg.harvard.edu/publication/23327/plutonium_mountain.html. 9. “Budapest Memorandums on Security Assurances, 1994,” Council on Foreign Relations: Primary Sources (December 5, 1994), available at http://www.cfr .org/arms-control-disarmament-and-nonproliferation/budapest-memorandums -security-assurances-1994/p32484. 10. Eric Schlosser, Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety (New York: Penguin Press HC, 2013). See also Nate Jones, “The Department of Defense List of 32 ‘Accidents Involving Nuclear Weap- ons,’” Unredacted (October 9, 2013), available at http://nuclearweaponar chive .org/Safrica/SADisarming.html. 11. “Al-Qaeda Close to Acquiring ‘Dirty Bomb’, Cables Say,” Global Security News- wire, NTI (February 2, 2011), available at http://www.nti.org/gsn/article/al -qaeda-close-to-acquiring-dirty-bomb-cables-say/. In 2014, it was reported that roughly 88 pounds of uranium compounds were seized by Islamic State (IS) in Mosul, but the substances were purportedly judged not useful for a dirty bomb. Rachel Oswald, “U.S. Downplays Extremist Seizure of Low-Grade Uranium in Iraq,” Global Security Newswire, NTI (July 11, 2014), available at http://www .nti.org/gsn/article/us-downplays-extremist-seizure-low-grade-uranium-iraq/ ?mgs1=ee4dgy7ZaE. See also Graham Allison, “Nuclear Terrorism Fact Sheet,” Policy Memo, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard Kennedy School (April 2010), available at http://belfercenter .ksg.harvard.edu/ publication/20057/nuclear_terrorism_fact_sheet.html. 12. Nuclear Threat Initiative: South Africa (November 2014) available at http:// www.nti.org/country-profiles/south-africa/nuclear/.“South Africa’s Nuclear 224 l Notes

Weapons Program: Putting Down the Sword,” Nuclear Weapon Archive (September 7, 2001), available at http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/Safrica/ SADisarming.html. 13. Paul K. Kerr and Mary Beth Nikitin, Pakistan’s Nuclear Weapons: Proliferation and Security Issues (Washington, DC: CRS, May 10, 2012), available at http:// www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/nukevault/ebb388/docs/EBB035.pdf. 14. International Strategic Analysis, “The Kashmir Flashpoint” (2014), available at http://www.isa-world.com/news/?tx_ttnews[backPid]=1&tx_ttnews[tt_news]= 34&cHash=f801016a25ed5aa74c4f53dc826562ad. 15. Ankit Panda, “Will China’s ‘Reset’ With India Work?” (June 25, 2014), available at http://thediplomat.com/2014/06/will-chinas-reset-with-india-work/. 16. David W. Pike, ed., The Closing of the Second World War (New York: Peter Lang, 2001). 17. General Sir Mike Jackson, “My clash with NATO Chief,” The Telegraph (Sep- tember 4, 2007), available at http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/ 1562161/Gen-Sir-Mike-Jackson-My-clash-with-Nato-chief.html. Clark was pressured to step down from his post at SACEUR two months later. 18. Hall Gardner, Surviving the Millennium. 19. Charles Arthur, “Symantec Discovers 2005 US Computer Virus Attack on Iran Nuclear Plants,” The Guardian (February 26, 2013), available at http://www .theguardian.com/technology/2013/feb/26/symantec-us-computer-virus-iran -nuclear. 20. Jon Davis, “Why Won’t Anonymous Target ISIS?,” Forbes (January 19, 2015), available at http://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2015/01/19/why-wont -anonymous-target-isis/. 21. Lithuania has not only ostensibly done a better job in integrating ethnic Rus- sians than either Latvia or Estonia but is also concerned with pro-Russian elements of its Polish minority. See Marina Best, “The Ethnic Russian Minority: A Problematic Issue in the Baltic States,” Verges: Germanic & Slavic Studies in Review (GSSR) Vol 2, No. 1, 33–41; and Agnia Grigas, “Russia-Baltic Relations after Crimea’s Annexation: Reasons for Concern?,” Cicero Paper, No 14/05 (June 2014), available at http://www.cicerofoundation.org/lectures/Agnia_Grigas _Russia-Baltic_Relations.pdf. Seventy-seven percent of ethnic Latvians were opposed to Moscow’s annexation of Crimea; but among non-Latvians, mainly ethnic Russians, 34 percent fully supported Russia’s annexation and 32 percent said they partly supported it. John D. Stoll, Charles Duxbury, and Juris Kaža, “Latvia Casts Wary Eye on Russia,” Wall Street Journal (May 5, 2014). Latvians fear pro-Russian provocateurs: some 15 percent of the Latvian population is a noncitizen. Latvia, which is 100 percent dependent on Russian gas exported 11 percent of its goods to Russia in 2013, more than to any country except its two Baltic neighbors. Western sanctions and countermeasures by Russia could cost Latvia “hundreds of millions of euros.” John D. Stoll, Charles Duxbury, and Juris Kaža, “Latvia Casts Wary Eye on Russia,” Wall Street Journal (May 5, 2014). 22. Peter Beaumont, “Norway Attacks,” The Guardian (July 23, 2011), available at http://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/jul/23/norway-attacks. Notes l 225

23. Hall Gardner, “From Balance to Imbalance of Terror,” in Hall Gardner, ed. NATO and the European Union: New World New Europe New Threats (Farnham: Ashgate, 2004). 24. Hall Gardner, NATO Expansion and the US Strategy in Asia. 25. “Le Journal,” Les Echos (27 April 2015), available at http://www .lesechos.fr/ journal/index.php. See also https://russiandefpolicy.wordpress.com/category/ strategic-forces-modernization/. 26. The concept of “de-escalation” stems from the Cold War arguments of Thomas Schelling that the “tailored” use of nuclear weapons could cause unacceptable damage so that the costs of an opponent’s aggression would exceed the presumed benefits. Nikolai N. Sokov, “Why Russia Calls a Limited Nuclear Strike ‘De- Escalation,’” The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists (March 13, 2014), available at http://thebulletin.org/why-russia-calls-limited-nuclear-strike-de-escalation. 27. “In the event of the outbreak of a military conflict involving the utilization of conventional means of attack (a large-scale war or regional war) and imperiling the very existence of the state, the possession of nuclear weapons may lead to such a military conflict developing into a nuclear military conflict.” The Military Doctrine of the Russian Federation, approved by Russian Federation presidential edict on February 5, 2010, and available at http://carnegieendowment.org/files/ 2010russia_military_doctrine.pdf. The 2000 document allowed for the use of nuclear weapons “in situations critical to (Russian) national security”; the 2010 edition, however, limited the use of such weaponry to situations in which “the very existence of the state is under threat.” Nikolai N. Sokov, “Why Russia Calls a Limited Nuclear Strike ‘De-Escalation,’” The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists (March 13, 2014). 28. “The (Life Extension Program) for the B61 gravity bomb will add a guided tail kit to one of the existing B61 types to increase its accuracy. The new type, known as the B61–12, will be able to strike targets more accurately with a smaller explosive yield and reduce the radioactive fallout from a nuclear attack.” Hans Kris- tensen, “Nuclear Weapons Modernization: A Threat to the NPT?,” Arms Control Today (May 1, 2014), available at http://www.armscontrol.org/act/2014_05/ Nuclear-Weapons-Modernization-A-Threat-to-the-NPT; see also Hans M. Kris- tensen, Non-Strategic Nuclear Weapons, Federation of American Scientists (May 2012), available at http://fas.org/_docs/Non_Strategic_Nuclear_Weapons.pdf. “Under current plans, approximately 480 B61-12s are set to be produced by the mid-2020s, and they would serve all U.S. gravity-bomb missions contemplated for five different aircraft. In addition to deployment in Europe, the U.S. Air Force also intends to use the B61-12 to arm heavy B-2 and B-52 bombers based in America” (John Mecklin, “Disarm and Modernize,” Foreign Policy [March 2015]). The US is also planning to modernize its nuclear strategic triad of land, sea and air forces. 29. David E. Sanger and William J. Broad, “U.S.-Russia Nuclear Deal Stalls as Ten- sions over Ukraine Rise,” New York Times (August 2, 2014), available at http:// www.nytimes.com/2014/08/03/world/europe/us-nuclear-deal-with-russia-fails -as-tensions-rise.html?emc=edit_th_20140803&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid= 32636370&_r=0. 226 l Notes

30. Interfax, “Russian General Sees Growing Threat of Nuclear War,” Global Secu- rity Newswire, NTI (November 18, 2011), available at http://www .nti.org/gsn/ article/russian-general-sees-growing-threat-nuclear-war/. 31. Valery Gerasimov put it in January 2013, “The emphasis in methods of struggle is shifting toward widespread use of political, economic, informational, humanitarian, and other non-military measures, implemented through the involvement of the population. All this is supplemented by covert military means, including implementation of measures of informational struggle, and the actions of special forces. Overt use of force, often under the guise of peacekeeping and crisis management, occurs only at a certain stage, primarily to achieve definitive success in the conflict” (cited in Fiona Hill and Clifford G. Gaddy, Mr. Putin [Washington, D.C.: Brookings: 2013], 337). 32. Zachary Keck, “Russia Threatens Nuclear Strikes over Crimea,” The Diplomat (July 11, 2014), available at http://thediplomat.com/2014/07/russia-threatens -nuclear-strikes-over-crimea/. Ukrainian Defense Minister Valeriy Heletey pledged to retake Crimea before the Ukrainian parliament, “Ukraine’s New Defence Minister Promises Crimea Victory,” Kiev Ukraine News Blog (July 4, 2014), available at http://news.kievukraine.info/2014/07/ukraines-new-defence -minister-promises.html. 33. Kennette Benedict, “How Did We Get from Trade Disputes in Ukraine to Nuclear Threats in Severodvinsk?,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (July 8, 2014), available at http://thebulletin.org/how-did-we-get-trade-disputes-ukraine-nuclear -threats-severodvinsk7363. 34. “Over 350,000 Killed by Violence, $4.4 Trillion Spent and Obligated,” Costs of War Project, Watson Institute, Brown University (June 2014), http://costsofwar .org/. 35. See the argument that North Korea was provoked into attacking South Korea. Bruce Cummings, The Origins of the Korean War, 2 volumes (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990) 36. Stephen Cohen, cited in George Washington—Zero Hedge, “Ukraine Joining NATO Would Provoke Nuclear War,” Other News. September 7, 2014, Stephen Cohen interview, “Ukraine Ceasefire Takes Hold, but an Expanding NATO on Russia’s Borders Raises Threat of Nuclear War,” Democracy Now, available at http://www.democracynow.org/2014/9/5/ukraine_ceasefire_takes_hold_but _an. See also Solzhenitsyn, previously cited, Spiegel interview with Alexander Solzhenitsyn, “I Am Not Afraid of Death.” 37. Nicolai Petro, “The Real War in Ukraine” (December 2014), available at http:// nationalinterest.org/feature/the-real-war-ukraine-the-battle-over-ukrainian -identity-11782?page=2. 38. Norman Angel, The Great Illusion (New York: Putnam and Sons, 1913), available at https://archive.org/details/cu31924007365467. 39. Patrick J. McDonald and Kevin Sweeney, “The Achilles’ Heel of Liberal IR The- ory? Globalization and Conflict in the Pre–World War I Era,” World Politics Vol. 59, No. 3 (April, 2007), 403. 40. See, for example, Robert J. Gordon, “Does the New Economy Measure up to Innovations in the Past?,” Journal of Economic Perspectives Vol 14, No. 4–5 (Fall Notes l 227

2000); Hall Gardner, “War and the Media Paradox,” in Athina Karatzogianni, ed., Cyberconflict and Global Politics (New York: Routledge, 2009). 41. Joseph A. Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy (New York: Harper, 1975) 42. In his chapter “Preventing Global War,” George Modelski seeks to break out of the deterministic aspects of long-cycle theory. See Hall Gardner and Oleg Kobtzeff, eds., The Ashgate Research Companion to War: Origins and Prevention. 43. Joseph Nye, “1914 Revisited?,” Project Syndicate (January 13, 2014), available at http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/joseph-s—nye-asks-whether-war -between-china-and-the-us-is-as-inevitable-as-many-believe-world-war-i-to-have -been#qBCGT7X665PBrOz4.99. See also the critique of historical analogy by Var- tan Oskanian, “Ukraine: Ominous World War II Parallels?,” Aljazeera (March 14, 2014), available at http://m.aljazeera.com/story/201431372034569427. Nye’s critical remark tends to reconfirm Hume’s skepticism with regard to the predic- tive relevance of historical analogy. 44. Geoffrey Blainey, Causes of War, 3rd edition (New York: Free Press, 1988). 45. Sean McMeekin, July 1914: Countdown to War (London: Basic, 2013), 390fn. 46. “U.S. Imperialism Is a Paper Tiger,” Selected Works of Mao Tse-tung (July 14, 1956), available at https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected -works/volume-5/mswv5_52.htm. 47. Vladimir Isachenkov, “Putin’s ‘2 Weeks to Kiev’ Out of Context: Aide,” Yahoo! News (September 2, 2014), available at http://news.yahoo.com/putins-aide-confirms-2 -weeks-kiev-remark-081030630.html.

Chapter 8 1. This image was symbolically ridiculed by the rock band Pussy Riot in criticizing Putin, yet the group likewise offended those reminded of the Communist des- ecration of the Orthodox Church, even if they were not pro-Putin. 2. “Ukraine Defuses Pro-Russia Instigations in Odesa Province,” Eurasia Daily Monitor Vol. 12, No. 66 (April 9, 2015). 3. Luke Coffey, “Will Putin Bite off More than He Can Chew?” Aljazeera (Janu- ary 9, 2015), available at http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2015/ 01/will-putin-bite-off-more-than-he-20151745338179641.html. Ben Judah, “Putin’s Coup: How the Russian Leader Used the Ukraine Crisis to Consolidate His Dictatorship,” Politico (October 19, 2014), available at http://www .politico .com/magazine/story/2014/10/vladimir-putins-coup-112025_Page3.html #ixzz3NmzsgOLr. 4. “Le Journal,” Les Echos, available at http://www.lesechos.fr/journal/index.php. See also “Russian Defense Policy,” World Press, available at https://russiandefpolicy .wordpress.com/category/strategic-forces-modernization/. 5. Interfax, “Wikileaks Prompted Russia to Suspend Joint Consultative Group on CFE Participation-Russian Foreign Ministry,” Russia Beyond the Headlines (March 11, 2015), available at http://rbth.co.uk/news/2015/03/11/wikileaks_prompted _russia_to_suspend_joint_consultative_group_on_cfe_par_44387.html. 228 l Notes

“A Treaty That Ended the Cold War in Europe Is Denounced in Moscow,” Eur- asia Daily Monitor Vol. 12, No. 46 (March 12, 2015). 6. Pavel Felgenhauer, “Russia’s Coming War with Georgia,” Eurasia Daily Moni- tor Vol. 6, No. 29 (February 12, 2009), available at http://www .jamestown .org/single/?no_cache=1&tx_ttnews%5Btt_news%5D=34493&tx_ttnews %5BbackPid%5D=7&cHash=36bb337090#.VMU3LGTF_pA. 7. Andrei Retinger, “Russia-Iran Deal Is about More than Nuclear Power,” Rus- sia Beyond the Headlines (November 26, 2014), available at http://rbth .co.uk/ opinion/2014/11/26/russia-iran_deal_is_about_more_than_nuclear_power _41727.html. 8. Based on reports by Pravda.com and Interfax, “Ukraine Launches Probes of Zyuganov, Zhirinovsky,” Radio Free Europe/ Radio Liberty, available at “Ukraine Launches Probes of Zyuganov, Zhirinovsky” (July 25, 2014), available at http:// www.rferl.org/content/zyuganov-zhirinovsky-avakov-kolomoyskiy-probe/ 25469971.html. 9. John C. K. Daly, “Hot Issue: After Crimea; The Future of the Black Sea Fleet,” Jamestown Foundation (March 22, 2014), available at http://www.jamestown.org/ programs/hotissues/single-hot-issues/?tx_ttnews%5Btt_news%5D=42411&tx _ttnews%5BbackPid%5D=61&cHash=18fb1cd8a0f31ab19fc65b39ef83d021. 10. Lyle J. Goldstein, “What Does China Really Think about the Ukraine,” The National Interest (September 4, 2014), available at http://nationalinterest .org/ feature/what-does-china-really-think-about-the-ukraine-crisis-11196. The Chi- nese military is also interested in how Moscow carried out large exercises in parallel to the takeover of the Crimea. 11. Fyodor Lukyanov, “Global Aikido: Russia’s Asymmetrical Response to the Ukraine Crisis,” Russia in Global Affairs (December 13, 1014), available at http:// eng.globalaffairs.ru/redcol/Global-Aikido-Russias-Asymmetrical-Response-to -the-Ukraine-Crisis-17177. 12. Shirley A. Kan, “Taiwan: Major U.S. Arms Sales Since 1990,” Congressional Research Service Report (June 13, 2010). 13. Henry Meyer and Evgenia Pismennaya, “China Embraces a Russia Cut off from Western Capital,” Bloomberg Business Week (October 16, 2014). 14. For details on the buildup, see Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel, Shangri-la Dialogue, IISS (Singapore: May 30–June 1, 2014), available at http://www.iiss .org/en/Topics/shangri-la-dialogue/sld14–05-plenary-1–36fb. 15. John C. K. Daly, “Hot Issue: After Crimea; The Future of the Black Sea Fleet,” Jamestown Foundation (March 22, 2014), available at http://www.jamestown.org/ programs/hotissues/single-hot-issues/?tx_ttnews%5Btt_news%5D=42411&tx _ttnews%5BbackPid%5D=61&cHash=18fb1cd8a0f31ab19fc65b39ef83d021. 16. Karl Marx, New York Tribune, February 2, 1854, available at https://www .marxists .org/archive/marx/works/subject/russia/crimean-war.htm. 17. Marx, New York Tribune. 18. Siemon T. Wezeman and Pieter D. Wezeman, “Trends in International Arms Transfers, 2013,” SIPRI Fact Sheet (March 2014), available at http://books.sipri .org/files/FS/SIPRIFS1403.pdf; François Godement, “France’s Pivot to Asia,” European Council On Foreign Relations Policy Brief (May 2014); Nicola Casarini, Notes l 229

“The European ‘Pivot,’” Issue Alert Vol. 3 (March 2013), 1–2, available at http://www.iss.europa.eu/uploads/media/Alert_Asia.pdf; and Nanae Kurashige, “Japan, France to Establish Committee to Control Arms Exports,” The Asahi Shimbun (June 5, 2013), available at http://ajw.asahi.com/article/behind_news/ politics/AJ201306050091, http://news.yahoo.com/japan-france-tighten-nuclear -defense-060425544.html, http://www.iss.europa.eu/uploads/media/Alert_Asia .pdf. 19. Halford. J. Mackinder, “The Geographical Pivot of History,” The Geographical Journal, Vol. 23, No. 4 (April 1904), 436–37. Mackinder differentiates between the “pivot region,” then controlled by Russia, and a “pivot policy” pursued by shifting alliances among major states but with control over the key “pivot region” in mind. 20. Michael G. Roskin, “The New Cold War,” Parameters Vol. 44, No. 1 (Spring 2014), available at http://www.strategicstudiesinstitute.army.mil/pubs/parameters/ issues/Spring_2014/1_Roskin.pdf.

Chapter 9 1. US Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates, Blenheim Palace, September 19, 2008. 2. Vladimir Putin, Meeting of the Valdai International Discussion Club (October 24, 2014). 3. Kurt Volker, cited in Cable 08USNATO290, Ukraine, MAP, and the Georgia- Russian Conflict. 4. Kurt Volker, cited in Cable 08USNATO290. 5. Contrary to the US position, based on my conservations in Tbilisi, it can also be argued that the Russian intervention was provoked by Tbilisi to gain stronger US supports. 6. For a proposal to place the “Caucasus Stability and Cooperation Platform” in discussion of Medvedev’s European Security Treaty, see Eleni Fotiou, “Caucasus Stability and Cooperation Platform: What Is at Stake for Regional Coopera- tion?,” International Centre for Black Sea Studies (ICBSS), ICBSS Policy Brief No. 16 (June 2009). 7. Hall Gardner, “The Reset Was Never Reset,” NATO Watch, No. 49 (April 3, 2014), available at http://www.natowatch.org/sites/default/files/briefing_paper _no_49_-_ukraine_russia_crimea.pdf. Such an approach in engaging Russia and its Eurasian Union (in which Belarus and Kazakhstan have some veto power) might have prevented Armenia from joining the Russian-led Eurasian Union as a full member on January 1, 2015, despite four years of negotiation with the European Union given Armenian’s previous efforts to maintain a multidirectional policy that sought to balance its Russian and European interests. By contrast, despite Russian pressures, both Moldova and Georgia have sought out EU Association Accords, while a relatively wealthy Azerbaijan has hoped to sustain its independence between the European Union and Eurasian Union. Yet should Azerbaijan enter the Eurasian Union, this could give Moscow a monopoly over gas transport in the Caucasus. See Amanda Paul, “The Eastern Partnership, the 230 l Notes

Russia-Ukraine War, and the Impact on the South Caucasus,” IAI Working Paper (February 2015), available at http://www.iai.it/sites/default/files/iaiwp1506.pdf. 8. Michael McFaul, Stephen Sestanovich, and John J. Mearsheimer, “Faulty Pow- ers: Who Started the Ukraine Crisis?,” Foreign Affairs (November–December 2014), available at http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/142260/michael-mcfaul -stephen-sestanovich-john-j-mearsheimer/faulty-powers. 9. “NATO allies such as Poland and the Baltic states will likely support Ukraine’s NATO aspirations, while seeking greater reassurances of the US commitment to their own security. These new demands on US extended deterrence will further strain US-Russian relations.” Mariana Budjeryn, “The Breach: Ukraine’s Territorial Integrity and the Budapest Memorandum,” Nuclear Prolifera- tion International History Project, Issue Brief No. 3 (2014) available at http:// www.wilsoncenter.org/sites/default/files/Issue%20Brief%20No%203—The %20Breach—Final3.pdf. 10. NATO Press Release, “Joint Statement of NATO-Ukrainian Commission” (Septem- ber 4, 2014), available at http://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/news_112695.htm. 11. Ibid. 12. Harold C. Deutsch, “Dress Rehearsal Crisis 1938,” in Dennis E. Showalter and Harold C. Deutsch, eds., If the Allies Had Fallen: Sixty Alternative Scenarios of World War II (New York: MJF, 1997). 13. See Garry Kasparov, “Vladimir Putin and the Lessons of 1938,” Politico (March 16, 2014), available at http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/ 03/vladmir-putin-crimea-hitler-1938–104711.html#.U99la2OUlqg. 14. NATO Press Release, “Joint Statement of NATO-Ukrainian Commission” (Sep- tember 4, 2014). 15. September 2014 opinion polls in Kharkiv and Odessa (which were not possible in Donetsk and Luhansk) represent areas that are supposedly pro-Russian. But few respondents had any understanding of what Novorossiya even was (43 percent didn’t know or refused to comment, only 4 percent correctly recognized it as a historical term), a huge majority (87 percent) wanted their regions to remain part of Ukraine, a smaller majority (56 percent) had a negative impression of Vladimir Putin, and a slightly smaller majority (52 percent) said that Russian troops were directly engaged in the recent fighting. But a mere 26 percent of the respondents think that Ukraine should join NATO versus 48 percent who think that it should not. http://www.forbes.com/sites/markadomanis/2014/09/ 23/ukrainians-still-dont-want-to-join-nato/. 16. Rajan Menon and Devin T. Stewart, “Ukraine: The New Cuban Missile Crisis?,” Carnegie Council (February 22, 2015), available at http://www.carnegiecouncil .org/publications/articles_papers_reports/724. 17. “Ex-NSA Director, US Intelligence Veterans Write Open Letter to Merkel to Avoid All-Out War,” Zero Hedge (September 1, 2014), available at http://www .zerohedge.com/news/2014–09–01/ex-nsa-director-us-intelligence-veterans -write-open-letter-merkel-avoid-all-out-ukra. 18. Kremlin, “The Putin Plan for Settling the Conflict in Ukraine” (September 3, 2014), available at http://eng.kremlin.ru/news/22899. Notes l 231

19. Neil MacFarquar, “Ukraine Deal Imposes Truce Putin Devised,” New York Times (September 5, 2014). Putin may have wanted Poland to commit troops to Ukraine, arguing to Polish prime minister Donald Tusk (soon to be president of the European Council) that “Ukraine is an artificial country and that Lvov is a Polish city and why don’t we just sort it out together.” Tusk did not answer. Ben Judah, “Putin’s Coup,” Politico Magazine (October 19, 2014), available at http://www.politico.com/ magazine/story/2014/10/vladimir-putins-coup-112025.html#.VTV1pCGqpBd. 20. The September 19 accord Minsk Memorandum signed by the rebel leaders of the Donbass and Luhansk People’s Republics and other participants of the Trilateral Contact Group includes the following points (Nicolai N. Petro, “Timeline for Donbas since the Signing of the Minsk Accords”): Point 1: Mutual cessation of use of weapons. Point 2: Withdrawal to demarcation of forces line as of 19 September. Point 3: Prohibition on offensive operations. Point 4: Withdrawal of heavy artillery (above caliber of 100mm) at least 15 km. within 24 hours. Point 5: Prohibition on heavy weapons placement in four settlements. Point 6: Removal of landmines and prohibition on placement of new landmines. Point 7: Prohibition on combat and surveillance flights, with exception of OSCE monitoring. Point 8: Deployment of OSCE monitoring missions within 24 hours. Point 9: Removal of all “foreign military formations, military equipment, militants and mercenaries from Ukrainian territory, to be monitored by the OSCE.” 21. Nicolai N. Petro, “Timeline for Donbas since the Signing of the Minsk Accords” Sept 5—Twelve point Minsk Protocol signed. The conflict has continued because of failure to reach all points: Point 1: Immediate bilateral ceasefire [never fully implemented] Point 2: Monitoring and verification of ceasefire by OSCE [implemented] Point 3: Decentralisation of power through the adoption of a “law on special status” of some areas of Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts. [passed by Rada but never signed into law and later revoked] Point 4: Monitoring of border and security zone on Russian-Ukrainian border by OSCE. [implemented] Point 5: Immediate release of hostages and detained persons. [partially implemented] Point 6: An amnesty law. [passed Rada but never signed into law and later revoked] Point 7: “Continued inclusive national dialogue” [never implemented] Point 8: Measures to improve the humanitarian situation in Donbass [partial blockade introduced by Kiev] Point 9: Local elections to be held in accor- dance with “law on special status.” [implemented by Donbass, but not recognized by Kiev] Point 10: Withdrawal of all military and mercenaries from Ukraine. [never implemented] Point 11: Program of economic recovery and reconstruction for Donbass [legislation initiated] Point 12: Security for participants in negotiations. [implemented] The two sides have differed on the date set for elections due to the following: 1) “Kiev withdrew its signature from the demarcation line designated on 10/29, as a result electoral districts could not be drawn up; and 2) the act on special status was never actually signed into law by the president and speaker of parliament” (Nicolai N. Petro, “Timeline for Donbas Since the 232 l Notes

Signing of the Minsk Accords,” available at https://drive .google.com/file/d/ 0BxHXhkTO_ICnYmtKMGxLeFhURFk/view?pli=1). 22. Rajan Menon and Alexander J. Motyl, “Ukraine Should Put Russia to Donbas Test,” LA Times, cited in Gulf News (December 26, 2014). 23. “Lavrov: Moscow Is Ready to Discuss Peacekeepers in Donbas,” ZN, UA Mirror Weekly (March 16, 2014), available at http://mw.ua/WORLD/lavrov-moscow-is -ready-to-discuss-peacekeepers-in-donbas-1455_.html. 24. Andrei Kortunov, “Russia between Two Maidans” RIAC (December 3, 2014), available at http://russiancouncil.ru/en/inner/?id_4=4890#top. 25. Poroshenko’s sacking of the Ukrainian banking, media, and energy oligarch, Ihor Kolomoisky, could be seen as a concession to the EU’s Association Accord, western creditors, and the IMF in an effort to clean up the corrupt state energy sector, while checking the political independence of Ukrainian oligarchs. It could also be seen as a concession to Russia by checking his financing of antiseparatist militants to prevent eastern separatists from seizing the industrial region of Dni- propetrovsk. “Anti-Corruption Tide Sweeping across Ukraine,” Eurasia Daily Monitor Vol. 12, No. 60 (April 1, 2015). Concurrently, a number of Ukrainian separatist leaders have either been assassinated or said to have committed suicide. See “Ukraine Ally of Ex-President Yanukovych Found Dead,” BBC, available at http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-32329512. It is possible that Russian opposition leader Boris Nemtsov may have been assassinated because he opposed Russian involvement in Ukraine. Lucian Kim, “How War in Ukraine Led to Russian Opposition Leader Boris Nemtsov’s Death,” Reuters, available at http:// blogs.reuters.com/great-debate/2015/03/02/how-war-in-ukraine-led-to-russian -opposition-leader-boris-nemtsovs-death/. 26. Paul J. Saunders, “5 Reasons Why Arming Ukraine Won’t Work,” The National Interest (February 12, 2015), available at http://nationalinterest .org/feature/5 -reasons-arming-ukraine-won’t-work-12234. James Carden, “Reckless: Obama’s Advisers Go Rogue,” The National Interest (March 20, 2015). Paul McLeary, “US Trainers to Deploy to Ukraine,” Defense News (January 22, 2015), available at http://www.defensenews.com/story/defense/land/army/2015/01/21/ukraine-us -army-russia/22119315/. 27. Interview with Damon Wilson, “Permanent Neutrality and ‘Finland Status’ Are Bad Ideas for Ukraine’s Own Interests,” Ukrainian Week (July 10, 2014), available at http://ukrainianweek.com/World/115456. 28. Hall Gardner, The Failure to Prevent World War I: The Unexpected Armageddon (Farnham: Ashgate, 2015). 29. This would mean allocating greater financial and development resources to the regions (which now obtain only 15 percent of the Ukrainian budget) and not primarily to the central government (which now obtains roughly 85 percent), so as to better counterbalance Moscow’s political influence. See interview of “pro- Russian” Ukrainian oligarch, Dmytro Firtash, “Dmitry Firtash: Europe, Ukraine and Russia Should Sit Down and Talk,” Euronews (March 2, 2015), available at http://dmitryfirtash.com/stance. 30. Mackinder, Democratic Ideals and Reality (1919), 158. 31. Ibid., 170–71. Notes l 233

32. Lloyd George, House of Commons (July 27, 1936), available at http://www .theyworkforyou.com/debates/?id=1936–07–27a.1115.14#g1207.1. 33. Jan Karski, The Great Powers and Poland (Lanham: University Press of America, 1985), 316. 34. Sergei Karaganov, cited in Roger Cohen, “Russia’s Weimar Syndrome,” NY Times (May 1, 2014), available at http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/02/opinion/cohen -russias-weimar-syndrome.html?_r=0. 35. Samuel Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (New York: Simon and Shuster, 1996). 36. See my critique of Kissinger, Hall Gardner, “Crimea: When and If, the Dust Set- tles,” RIAC (April 11, 2014), available at http://russiancouncil.ru/en/inner/?id_4 =3507#top. For a perspective on how Finland kept its relative independence from Moscow through the threat of resistance and links to Europe, see René Nyberg, “Finnish Lessons for Ukraine,” New York Times (September 2, 2014), available at http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/03/opinion/finlands-lesson-for-ukraine.html. 37. “A fundamental question too often forgotten in recent years by NATO is: Can the applicant country be defended and are the members of the alliance and the applicant country willing to build the capacity and spend the resources required to do so? By ‘defended’ I do not mean defended by the early use of nuclear weapons which could destroy much of Europe and probably also escalate to both the U.S. and Russia.” Sam Nunn, NTI Analysis (September 4, 2014), available at http://www.nti.org/analysis/opinions/former-senator-sam-nunns-perspective -nato-summit-russia-ukraine/. 38. Hall Gardner, NATO Expansion and US Strategy in Asia. 39. See my more concrete proposals in Hall Gardner, Averting Global War and NATO Expansion and US Strategy in Asia (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2013). 40. Purnomo Yusgiantoro, Minister of Defense, Indonesia has argued that the “US would remain a military superpower, China was a rising force, and ASEAN was destined to become a solid political-security community. Conflict is not inevitable because the region is large enough to accommodate all powers, and the regional security architecture should accommodate this ‘evolving dynamic equilibrium.’” Proceedings, Shangri-la Dialogue, IISS (Singapore, May 30–June 1, 2014), available at http://www.iiss.org/en/publications/conference%20proceedings/sections/ shangri-la-aa36/the-shangri-la-dialogue-2014-f844/sld14–07-plenary-3-bbe0. 41. Hall Gardner, NATO Expansion. See also, Hall Gardner, “The Impact of the US ‘Re-Balancing’ to Asia on French Strategic Thinking,” in Greg Kennedy, ed., Assessing the US Re-Balance Strategy: Effects on the Maritime Balance of Power (Farnham: Ashgate, 2015), forthcoming. 42. Republic of Taiwan, East China Sea Initiative (August 2012), available at http:// www.mofa.gov.tw/en/cp.aspx?n=A3C75D6CF8A0D021. 43. Hall Gardner, “From Berlin to Ukraine/Russia: Definitely There Are Things That Do Not Love Walls . . . ,” Other News (Nov ember 6, 2014), available at http:// www.other-news.info/2014/11/from-berlin-to-ukrainerussia-definitely-there -are-things-that-do-not-love-walls/. 44. Hall Gardner, Surviving the Millennium (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1994), 230.

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Index

Abe, Shinzo, 9, 120 historical analogy, 21–27, 38, 99, 101–3, Abkhazia, 11, 18, 61–62, 86–87, 90, 127, 145, 174, 195, 206, 227 155, 188 homology, 102–3, 221 Afghanistan, 12, 21, 45, 59, 60, 89, Angel, Norman, 127, 226, 235 90–91, 110–11, 124, 132–38, 140, The Great Illusion (1910), 127, 235 150, 160, 170, 182, 192–94 Anglo-French entente, 113–14, 181–82 intervention in (2001), 137–38 Anglo-Japanese alliance (1902), 120, 222 Africa, 13, 55, 70–78, 82, 111–13, 121–24, Annan, Kofi, 26 132, 153, 223–24 Annexations (as causes of war), 23–28 Central, 112 Anonymous, 134, 224 North, 111–12, 123 Arab Gulf/Arab-Persian Gulf, 9, 26, 56, 60, African National Congress, 82, 132 82, 90–95, 111–14, 130, 150–55, Akkerman Convention (1826), 32 192–94 Alaska, 153 Arab-Israeli war (1967), 150 Al-Assad, Bashar, 90–91, 123, 130–34, Arab Spring, 6, 90–97 154, 191 Arctic region, 116, 123 Alexander I (Tsar), 40 Argentina, 70–71, 133, 153, 160, 223 Algerian National Liberation Front, 132 Aristotle, 94 Allied Control Council (1945), 140 Armenia, 13, 32, 40–48, 64, 71, 87, Al-Maliki, Nuri, 90 117–18, 154, 171, 229 Al Qaeda, 45, 56, 82, 90–94, 114, 131–34, Arms Control, 46, 192, 223–25 223 Adopted Conventional Force in Alsace-Lorraine, 23, 34, 95, 104–9, Europe (ACFE) treaty, 135 114–15, 151, 160, 180–82, 201 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) treaty, Prussian annexation of (1871), 109, 151 62, 154 alternative globalization, 88 Budapest Memorandum (1994), 4, Amalrik, Andrei, 166 131, 172, 216, 223, 230 America, 11, 23, 82, 121, 202–6, 210 Conventional Force in Europe (CFE) Central, 112, 121 treaty (1990), 92, 135, 227 North, 23, 112 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces South, 112, 121 (INF) treaty, 49, 136, 154 See also United States (US) START I, 44–47, 154 analogy, 12–19, 20–27, 33–38, 52–53, START II, 47–49 60, 99, 101–5, 118, 121–29, 145, ASEAN, 190–93, 233 164, 174–75, 181–87, 195, 203–6, ASEAN 10 Declaration of Conduct, 216, 221–27 193 240 l Index

Asia, 13, 22, 39, 45, 62, 85, 90, 100, Berezovsky, Boris, 59 111–13, 120–24, 154–57, 164–66, Beria, Lavrentii, 36, 44, 85, 164 190–95, 202–8, 211 Berlin-Baghdad-Basra rail system, 93 Central, 39, 45, 85, 90, 100, 110–13, Berlin Wall, 1, 195, 233 121–24, 155, 164, 195 Bermuda, 112 South, 82, 100 Bessarabia, 33, 88, 206, 222 Augustus II, 30 Biden, Joe, 170 Australia, 9, 70–71, 120, 157 bin Laden, Osama, 137–38, 150 Austria, 9, 13, 22–23, 31–37, 70, 104–6, Black Sea, 10–13, 29, 30–38, 44–47, 51, 118–19, 122, 161, 182–88, 199, 61–67, 72–75, 82–87, 100, 111–17, 203, 211 139, 154–55, 170–78, 180–89, War of Austrian succession (1740–48), 190–95, 207, 210–16, 228–29 23 Black Sea Economic Cooperation Forum, Austro-Hungarian empire, 31–34, 45, 190 116–18, 207 Boko Haram, 82 Axis Powers, 13 Bolsheviks, 35–37, 107 Azarov, Mykola, 64–66, 212 Anti-Bolshevik movements, 35–36 Azerbaijan, 32, 40–48, 64, 72, 87, 117, Pro-Bolshevik movements, 35–36 185, 207, 229 Bonaparte, Jérome, 31 Bonaparte, Louis-Napoléon, 32, 107 Bab-el-Mandeb strait, 94 Bonaparte, Napoleon, 31, 40, 93, 145–46, Bacon, Francis, 81, 100–101, 135, 220 151 Bahamas, 112 Berlin Decree (1806), 31 Bahrain, 85 Napoleonic wars, 39, 40, 106, 113, Baker, James, 3, 47, 209 165 Balaklava, 33 Borodino, 31 Balfour Declaration, 111 Bosnia-Herzegovina, 23, 33, 47, 108–9 Balkans, 45, 55–57, 90, 100, 111–18, Austro-Hungarian annexation of 122–24, 146, 154, 166, 189, 193–95, (1908), 23 219 Bosnian war (1990–95), 4–6, 52–57 Baltic-Black Sea alliance, 117, 180–85 Bourbon France, 109 Baltic Sea, 32, 93 Brazil, 13, 70–78, 112, 153, 161, 233 Russian Baltic Fleet, 75 BRICS (Brazil-Russia-India-China-South Baltic states, 18, 21–25, 43–47, 70–76, Africa), 70–78 117–18, 124, 139, 153, 170, 180–87, Brissotin faction (French Revolution), 106 191, 206, 224, 230 Bruening, Heinrich, 185 Bandera, Stepan, 18 Brunei, 112, 193 Barthou, Jean Louis, 184 Brzezinski, Zbigniew, 22, 187–88, 202–4 Barthou Plan, 183 Budapest Memorandum or Budapest Battle of Navarino (1827), 32 Accords (1994), 4, 51, 74, 131, Battle of Poltava (1709), 28 172, 216, 223, 230 Bay of Narva, 87 Bukovina, 88, 206 Belarus, 4, 13, 29, 30–36, 47, 51, 64, 71, Bulgaria, 18, 35, 55, 85, 153 85–87, 116–18, 130–31, 152–54, Burke, Edmund, 12–13, 202 176, 182, 191, 206, 215–19, 229 Bush (George W.) administration, 21, 62, Belgium, 77, 93, 147, 184 89, 128, 130–38 Index l 241

Bush, George, Sr., 25, 209 Sino-Russian entente, 158 “Chicken Kiev” speech, 44, 209 Sino-Soviet alliance (1950), 120, 158 Byzantium, 39 Sino-Soviet rapprochement, 158 Tiananmen square, 14, 162–66 Caribbean, 112 Ciesyn, 36 Carter, Jimmy, 21–25, 112 Clark, Wes (General), 133, 224, 235 Caspian Sea, 32, 72 Clemenceau, Georges, 181 Catherine II (Catherine the Great), 30 Clinton, Hillary, 19, 20, 170, 202–4 Catholics, 32, 95 Clinton Administration, 5–6, 52–57, 128 Caucasus, 22–28, 30–38, 45, 61–62, 82–85, Cohen, Stephen, 139, 226 90–92, 100, 111–17, 123–24, 139, Cold War, 5–8, 10–19, 21–29, 40–49, 149, 151–55, 161, 171–73, 180–89, 50–56, 64, 76–79, 81–86, 90–95, 193–95, 208, 229, 230 104–9, 111–19, 123–29, 130–39, Cayman Islands, 112 140–41, 162–69, 172, 180–87, 194–96, Central Asia, 39, 45, 85, 90, 100, 110–13, 200–204, 210–17, 222–29, 235 121–24, 155, 164, 195 Collective Security Treaty Organization Central Powers, 35, 41, 208 (CSTO), 13, 48, 117, 131, 155, Peace Treaty with Ukraine (1918), 172, 201 35, 41 Colombia, 24 Charles V, 109 Commonwealth of Independent states, Chechnya, 59 46–47, 64 Chechen Islamist movements, 60 Communism, 6–7, 146 China (Imperial) Comparative or cross-historical method, Ming dynasty, 122 103–9, 113. See also under analogy Opium Wars, 22, 149 Concert of Europe, 33, 88, 109, 194 Sino-Japanese war (1894–95), 22, Constantinople, 31 119, 158, 165, 196 Contact Groups, 15, 191–94 Qin dynasty, 122, 146 containment Qin Shi Huang, Emperor, 146 US-Soviet “double containment,” 11, Qing dynasty, 122 202 China (People’s Republic of), 8–9, cooperative-collective security, 2–8, 12–15, 11–15, 21–27, 39, 45–49, 56, 54, 131, 172, 186–88, 193 64–69, 70–79, 82–86, 91–96, 105, Crimea 110–19, 120–29, 131–35, 140–49, annexation of by Moscow (2014), 10–19, 152–59, 160–67, 186, 190–97, 21–28, 30, 61–69, 74–79, 86, 202–6, 215, 222–28, 233 90, 108, 136–37, 151–55, 161, air defense zone, 76, 157 170–76, 181–88, 195, 217, 224 Chinese Communist Party, 14, 149 Crimean Declaration of Independence Heilongjiang, 164 (1992), 46, 207 Nine Dash Map, 157 Crimean Khanate, 31–32, 207 Silk Road Economic Belt, 11, 86, 132, Crimean Tatars, 39, 43, 161, 176 156 Crimean War (1853–56), 22–28, 30–34, Sino-American entente, 121 40, 109, 114, 149, 151, 161–65, Sino-European alliance, 162 187, 207 Sino-Japanese rivalry, 120 Declaration of Paris (1856), 33, 207 Sino-Russian alliance, 121, 156–59, 165 siege of Sevastopol (1854–55), 30–32 242 l Index

Croatia, 47, 84, 164, 184 British intervention (1882), 113 Ustashi, 184 Eisenhower, Dwight (President), 8 Cuba, 24, 78, 123, 153–55 Elbe river, 31 Cuban Missile Crisis, 19, 21–28, 139, encirclement, 92, 107–9, 140, 159, 160–61, 188, 196, 204–5, 230 180 Lourdes radar station, 153 Estonia, 18, 36, 46, 50, 61, 87, 139, 153, cyberwar, 18, 61, 92, 134 203–6, 218–19, 224 Russian-Estonian, 18, 61 Estonian “cyber war” (April–Sept. Cyprus, 9, 26, 56, 154, 190–93, 206 2007), 18, 61 Turkish seizure of eastern Cyprus Eurasia, 13–15, 38–39, 64–68, 71–72, (1974), 26 82–86, 104–5, 110–18, 132, Czechoslovakia, 38, 115, 184–85, 222 153–59, 163–67, 176, 182, 193, 1968 Czechoslovak protest, 21 203–4, 212–15, 227–29, 232 Czech Republic, 36–39, 55, 62, 77, 115, Euro crisis, 68, 70–71 139 EuroMaidan movement/protests, 65, 87, 95, 172–74 Danilevsky, Nikolay, 39 European Atomic Energy Community, Danube, 32–33, 207 65 Danubian Principalities, 32 European Bank for Reconstruction and European Danube Commission, 32 Development, 69 Dardanelles, 31–32, 94 European Central Bank, 89 Davies, Joseph E. (Ambassador), 53, 199, European Coal and Steel Community, 210 190 Dawes Plan, 116 European Parliament, 19, 204 Dayton Accords (1995), 54 European States, 2, 53–54, 64, 75–76, de Klerk, Frederik Willem, 132 141, 171, 186–89 democracy, 2–8, 10–15, 25, 45, 56, 60–64, 85, 96–97, 133, 141, 156, 173, central, 54 200–209, 211–12, 226–27, 237 eastern, 2–3, 53–54, 64, 75–76, 111–16, Denikin, Anton (General), 36 171, 186 Denmark, 30, 118 western, 2, 52, 141 de Tocqueville, Alexis, 107–9 European Union (EU), 2–7, 10–12, 20–29, diaspora, 1, 17–18, 45–46, 50, 134, 152, 33–39, 48–49, 51–54, 61–69, 172–77 71–76, 85–89, 96, 108, 110–19, Russian, 18, 46, 50, 134, 152 123, 140–41, 152–59, 160–69, Dostoievsky, Fyodor, 39 170–79, 180–89, 190–96, 203–6, Dreadnought, 92–93 213, 225–29, 235 Duchy of Warsaw, 31 EU arms embargo on China (since Dugin, Alexander, 50 1989), 69, 162 Dutch East Indies, 94 EU association accords, 10, 232 EU-Chinese “Red Eiffel Tower East China Sea Peace Initiative (ECSPI), entente,” 162 193 EU Eastern Partnership (2008–9), 87, Eden, Anthony, 19, 184 117, 222 Egypt, 12, 25–26, 85, 90–97, 111–14, EU-Russian relations, 12, 137 124, 182, 193, 219, 221–23 ‘Eurosceptic’ movements, 89, 219 Index l 243

Fabius, Laurent, 67 Eastern, 2–3, 12 Falklands/Malvinas islands, 24, 133 Imperial Germany, 22, 34–37, 40, 50, Fascism, 7–8, 12–17, 205, 237 86, 93–95, 105–9, 113–23, 141, Fatah, 97 145–47, 153, 155, 158, 161–62, Fattah el-Sisi, Abdel, 90 164, 181–82, 185, 196 Ferdinand, Franz (Archduke), 34, 104–9, Kriegsspiel, 145 149, 207 Schlieffen Plan, 124 Finland, 9, 28, 31, 53, 70–79, 87, 111–17, Nazi Germany, 13, 23–24, 38–39, 161, 185–87, 206, 218, 232–33 41–49, 53, 63, 93, 105–9, Four Power Agreement (over Germany, 115–19, 146, 153–58, 161–62, 1972), 140 184–86, 206 France, 4, 22–23, 31–38, 40, 52–56, Anschluss, 21, 118 60–66, 70–75, 82–89, 90–97, 104–9, Blitzkrieg, 146 111–19, 123, 131–34, 145, 158, Holocaust, 150 161–63, 172–76, 180–86, 190–96, Luftwaffe, 93 202–6, 218–19, 220–29 Weimar Germany, 12, 21–28, 37–38, ancien regime, 106, 122 50–59, 60, 105–8, 111–18, Franco, Franciso (General), 18 155–58, 184–85, 211–16, 233 Franco-Prussian War (1870–71), 32, 145 Global War on Terror (GWOT), 21, 60, Franco-Soviet alliance or pact (1935), 89, 124, 137–38, 201 158, 185 Goa, 25 French Revolution, 22–23, 30–31, 106, Indian annexation of (1961), 25 162, 207 Godwin’s Law, 19, 204 Fukuyama, Francis, 2–8, 10–14, 32, 56, Gorbachev, Mikhail, 3–7, 11–13, 44–46, 127, 199, 200–208, 211–12, 235 50, 78, 106–8, 120, 141, 166–69, isothymia, 7, 185 172–75, 185, 196–99, 202–9, 236 megalothymia, 7, 12–15 vetocracy, 8, 200 New Union Treaty, 45, 108 Gordon, ‘Chinese’ (General), 124, 226 Galvin, Jack (General), 4–5, 169 Great Britain, 22–27, 31–39, 40, 93, Gates, Robert, 144, 161–69, 175, 229 100–109, 110–19, 145–46, 151–`58, Gaza, 25–26 174, 181–86, 196, 206 Gazprom, 64–65 Anglo-Russian rapprochement, 34 George, Lloyd, 184, 233 Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere Georgia, 10, 28, 46–68, 50–55, 61–64, (Japanese), 120, 200 70–79, 83–87, 90, 117, 123, Great Northern War (1700–21), 30 151–55, 161–69, 170–73, 180–89, Greece, 8, 26, 56, 70–72, 89, 94, 116, 201–7, 211–18, 228–29 146, 153, 191 Georgia-Russia war, 10, 61–62, 73, Greek Cypriots, 26 151, 170–72 Greek Independence party (ANEL), Germany, 2–6, 11–13, 22–27, 34–49, 89 40–49, 50–56, 60–66, 70–77, Syriza party, 89 84–86, 92–95, 104–9, 110–19, Group of 7 (G–7), 55–59, 60–69, 116 120–23, 130–39, 140–47, 153–58, Group of 20 (G–20), 69 161–64, 176, 180–88, 190–95, Guam, 24 206, 210–18, 223, 236 Guantanamo Bay, 24 244 l Index

Gulf Cooperation Countries (GCC), sea lines of communication, 93–94, 85, 96 110–13, 158, 187 Gulf of Finland, 87 International Monetary Fund (IMF), 60, Gulf of Yemen, 94 190 Gusinsky, Vladimir, 59 Iran, 9, 25–26, 40, 70–73, 85–88, 90–96, 111–14, 123–29, 130–35, Habsburg Empire, 109 150–57, 160, 182, 192–95, 207, Hainan Island, 25, 192 223–28 Chinese annexation of (1950), 25 Iranian revolution (1979), 26, 150 Hamas, 82, 91–97, 112, 150, 191 Iran-Iraq war, 130 Hamilton, Alexander, 8 Iraq, 12, 26, 60, 81–89, 90–97, 111–14, Hanover, 30 123–24, 130–37, 150, 160–66, Hawaii, 24 191–95, 204, 220–23 US annexation of (1898), 24 Ireland, 89 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm, 9, 13, 31 Irish Republican Army (IRA), 82 Hitler, Adolf, 7, 11–19, 20–28, 38–39, Islamabad, 132 41, 59, 61, 93–95, 108, 115–18, Islamic State (or ISIS, ISIL, or Daesh), 26, 122, 142–46, 151–59, 174, 183–86, 82–83, 90–91, 114, 129, 132–35, 202–8, 230 150, 160, 191–95, 222–23 Hizb’allah, 25 Israel, 25–26, 33, 83–88, 111, 124–29, 130–34, 150, 191–92, 223 Holbrooke, Richard, 6, 52–57, 199, annexation of East Jerusalem, 25 210–11, 236 Eretz, 150 Holy Lands, 32–33 occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Holy Roman Empire, 100–109 (1967), 25 Hong Kong, 113, 122 Italy, 8, 13, 70–77, 89, 93, 108, 111–13, Hume, David, 101–2, 227 122, 184, 215–19 Hungary, 9, 13, 35, 40–49, 55, 70–72, 88, 111–16, 139, 151–53 Jackson, Mike (General), 133, 216, 224, 1956 Hungarian insurrection, 21 235 ethnic Hungarians, 88 Japan, 9, 11–15, 22–27, 34–39, 45–49, Hussein, Saddam, 26, 130, 150 71–79, 82–85, 93–99, 110–19, 120–23, 133–38, 140–46, 150–59, imperialism, 7, 10, 28–29, 72, 113, 133, 160–66, 180, 191–96, 203–9, 215, 146, 153, 172, 185, 203, 221, 227, 222–29, 237 236 American-Japanese “Ninja Turtle” Imperial Japan, 22 alliance, 120, 222 India, 9, 12–13, 23–27, 49, 56, 70–78, Jaurès, Jean, 28, 180–88 82–82, 99, 110–13, 120–23, 132, Jefferson, Thomas, 8 150–59, 161–63, 180, 193–96, Johnson, Lyndon, 19 209, 223–24, 236 Indian-Pakistani rivalry, 195 Kai-chek, Chiang, 165 Operation Vijay (1961), 25 Kant, Immanuel, 6, 94, 201, 220 Indian Ocean, 113, 122, 150–58, 193 “League of Democracies,” 8–9, 201 Indo-Pacific, 12–15, 76, 82, 113–19, Karelia, 116–17, 206 120–21, 156–58, 160–63, 192–96 Kargil war (1999), 132 Index l 245

Kars, 33, 185, 233–36 Kuwait, 3, 26, 49, 222 Karski, Jan, 185, 233–36 attempted Iraqi annexation of (1990), Kashmir, 123, 132, 224 26 Kasparov, Garry, 17, 174, 203, 230 Kyrgyzstan, 48, 71, 118 Kautilya, 92, 220, 236 Kazakhstan, 4, 13–18, 29, 47–48, 51, 64, Lake Baikal, 36, 85 85, 118, 130–31, 152–59, 229 Latvia, 36, 46, 50, 139, 206, 224 Kennan, George, 5, 169 Lavrov, Serge, 24, 77, 178, 218, 232 Kennedy, John F., 19, 188, 223, 233 League of Nations, 38, 183–85, 194 Kerensky, Alexander, 34, 164 Lebanon, 25–26 Keynes, John Maynard, 100–101, 220, Lebed, Alexandre (General), 52 236 Lebensraum, 22, 95, 142, 145 Khanates of Erivan, 32, 207 Lenin, Vladimir, 115 Khanates of Nakhichevan, 32 Leninist Russia, 27–28, 112–15, 151 Kharkiv Agreement (Ukraine-Russia, Libya, 9, 81–85, 90–95, 123, 131–38, 2010), 154 204 Khodorkovsky, Mikhail, 59 French intervention (2013), 90 Khrushchev, Nikita, 43–46, 63, 151 Italian-Turkish war over (1911), 93 Kiel Canal, 93 Lithuania, 30–38, 46, 70, 89, 117, 139, Kiev, 1–4, 10–19, 25–29, 30–39, 184, 206, 215, 224 40–48, 51, 62–68, 70–79, 87, Republic of Central Lithuania, 38 119, 136–39, 146, 151–59, 161, Vilnius, 184 170–79, 180–187, 208–9, 210–17, Little Entente, 115–16, 184–85 223–27, 231. See also Ukraine Locarno Pact of 1924–25, 184 Kievan Rus, 39, 208 Eastern Locarno, 28, 116, 183–88, Kingdom of Westphalia, 31 199 Kissinger, Henry, 6, 22, 55, 187–88, Lugar, Richard, 6 203–5, 211, 233 Lukin, Vladimir, 67 kleptocrat, 29, 63–67, 95–97, 174 Lutsenko, Yuri, 64–66, 213 Korean peninsula, 120–21, 158 Luxembourg, 147 Korean War, 138, 146, 235 Lvov, Georgy (Prince), 34, 231 Kornilov Putsch, 50 Kosovo, 6–9, 10, 54–59, 62, 85, 123–28, Macao, 122 133–38, 153, 170, 185, 210–11 Macedonia, 47, 54, 153 Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), 55, Machiavelli, Niccolò, 21 138 Mackinder, Halford, 4, 164, 182–86, war “over” Kosovo (1998–99), 6–8, 221–29, 232–36 10, 55–59, 123–28, 170 Madison, James, 8 Kozyrev, Andrei, 48, 210 Magnitsky Act (2013), 61 Krauthammer, Charles, 7, 56, 200, 211 major-power war, 11–15, 20, 39, 79, Kravchuk, Leonid, 47 97, 108, 124–27, 135–39, 143–47, Kuchma, Leonid, 48 183, 194 Kurdish PKK, 82, 91 Makarov, Nikolai, 137 Kurdistan, 91 Malenkov, Georgii, 44 Peshmerga, 91 Manchuria, 22, 119, 120, 196 Kuril islands, 120, 156, 206 Japanese invasion of, 196 246 l Index

Mandela, Nelson, 132 Mueller, John, 127, 222, 236 Maritime Provinces, 36 Muscovy, 30–39 Marshall Plan, 64, 116, 222 Muslims/Moslems, 39, 56, 95, 134, 164 Marx, Karl, 22, 41, 84, 94, 127, 161–63, Muslim Brotherhood, 90–97 227–28 Mussolini, Benito, 17, 122, 146, 203 Ma Ying-jeou, 193 mutually assured destruction (MAD), McCain, John, 17–19, 203 128, 135 McFaul, Michael, 61, 171–72, 212, 230 mutually assured security, 135 Mearsheimer, John, 1, 171–72, 222–23, 230–36 Nagorno-Karabakh, 90, 188 Mecklenberg, 30 Najibullah, Mohammed, 45 Mediterranean, 26, 73, 90, 113, 122–23, Nasser, Gamal Abdel, 19, 97 154, 160, 191–94 NATO, 1–9, 10–15, 20–29, 41–49, 50–59, Medvedev, Dmitri, 10, 61–62, 171, 201, 60–66, 72–79, 85–89, 90–94, 229 100–108, 112–19, 123–28, 131–39, Middle East, 11–15, 27, 38–39, 57, 62, 140, 151–59, 161–69, 170–79, 83–89, 90–91, 111, 124, 154, 166, 180–89, 190–99, 200–204, 210–18, 190–95 224–29, 230–36 Mill, John Stuart, 101 Baltic Air Police, 72 Milosevic, Slobodan, 55–57, 128, 133, Bucharest summit (2008), 62–63, 211 172, 201, 218 Minsk Summit (2014), 177 “Caucasus Stability and Cooperation Minsk Agreement (1991), 46, 178, 209 Platform,” 171, 229 Minsk Statement on Strategic Forces Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council, 48 (1991), 46 NATO-EU “double enlargement,” 117 missile defense system (MD systems), NATO Membership Action Plan 14, 62 (MAP), 48 Mittelafrika, 142 NATO-Russia Council (NRC), 54–59, Mitteleuropa, 142 74–75, 179, 191, 216 Moldavia, 23, 33 NATO-Russia Permanent Joint Moldova, 32–33, 46–49, 64, 76, 87, 108, Council, 54 117, 180–89, 218, 229 NATO-Ukraine Charter on a Molotov-Ribbentrop “non-aggression” Distinctive Partnership (1997), pact (1939), 24, 53, 88, 116–18, 74 156–59, 206, 216, 222 NATO-Ukraine Commission, 54, 74, Molotov-Tōgō accord, 24 173, 230 Mongolia, 86, 110, 122, 156–57, 164 Partnership for Peace (PfP), 2, 48, 53, Inner Mongolia, 86, 122, 156 186–88, 190–91 Monroe Doctrine, 13–14, 61, 94, 187, US-NATO-Ukrainian-Japanese 193 alliance (tacit), 193 Morgenthau, Hans, 12 Nazarbayev, Nursultan, 152 Montreux Convention (1936), 94, 160, Near East, 123 187, 220 neoconservatives, 6, 19, 49, 161–63 Morocco, 123, 160 neoisolationist, 20, 162, 172 Morsi, Mohamed, 94 Neo-Jaurès strategy, 28, 180–88 Mubarak, Hosni, 97 Neo-liberals, 174 Index l 247

Netanyahu, Benjamin, 130, 223 Organization of American States (OAS), Netherlands (Holland), 77, 112, 215 25 Antilles, 112 Orthodox, 10, 32, 60, 78, 106, 174, 208, Newton, Isaac, 101 227 New Zealand, 9 Ottoman Empire, 13, 22, 30–39, 40, 88, Nicolas I (Tsar), 22–28, 32, 40, 108, 111, 124, 150–55, 161 149, 151, 161 Nicolas II (Tsar), 145 Pacific Ocean, 32 Niger, 130, 150 Pakistan, 12, 73, 83–89, 110–11, 122–24, Nigeria, 70, 150 132–38, 150–56, 191–95, 223–24 Nitze, Paul, 5–8, 169, 200, 210 Palestine, 33 Nogai Horde, 31 Green line, 33 Noninterventionist policy, 88 Panama, 24–25, 93, 112–13, 133, 193, Noriega, Manuel, 25 206 North Atlantic Partnership Council, 48 Panama Canal, 24–25, 93, 113, 193 North Korea, 9, 11–19, 73, 114–19, Torrijos-Carter Treaties (1979), 25 120–29, 131–38, 149, 157–58, pan-nationalism, 10, 36, 44, 51–52, 86, 160, 192–95, 223–26 95, 150–52, 166, 174, 209, 210 Arab, 150 North Sea, 93 German, 152 Norway, 116–18, 135, 224 Islamist, 12, 45, 57, 82–85, 90–91, nuclear power, 47, 129, 133, 143, 151–57, 123–24, 138, 150–55, 164, 192 228 Russian, 10, 52, 152, 166, 174 nuclear weapons, 1, 12, 51–55, 74–77, Shi’a, 150–55 122–29, 130–39, 155, 171–72, Slav, 39, 50, 85, 95 189, 217, 223–25, 233–37 Sunni, 90–91, 150–55 Nunn, Samuel, 189, 233 Paul, Ron, 88 Nuremburg War Crimes trials, 19 peacekeepers, 2–4, 50–57, 178, 190–91, Nye, Joseph, 143–44, 205, 227 232 IFOR, 54–55 Obama, Barack, 19, 76–79, 90, 130–38, Pearl Harbor, 120 153–57, 170–79, 192, 203, 218, Peloponnesian war, 12, 99, 220, 237 220–23, 232 Pentagon, 49, 59, 77, 89, 124, 134–37, “reset” policy with Russia, 19 160 oil, 26, 33, 46–49, 66–69, 70–72, 87, Perestroika, 46, 108 93–94, 142, 152–55, 163–64, Pereyaslav Agreement (1654), 30 170–74, 213–15, 220 Persia, 22, 32, 40, 93, 113–14, 123, 161, oil prices, 46, 69, 70–72, 174 222 shale oil, 69, 70, 215 Peter the Great, 40, 149, 163 Operation Barbarossa, 30, 41, 145 Philip II, 109 Operation Sea Lion, 146 Philippines, 12, 24, 83, 113, 157, Organisation de l’Armée Secrète (OAS), 165–66 132 Marcos kleptocracy, 97 Organization for Security and Co- US annexation of (1898–1902), 24 operation in Europe (OSCE), 2, 50, Piatakov, Georgi, 36 178, 201 Piłsudski, Józef, 38 248 l Index

Poincaré, Raymond, 181 Republic of Novgorad, 39 Poland, 2, 23, 30–39, 41–49, 53–55, Resurgent Emergent Global Threat 60–66, 70–77, 87, 116–19, 139, (REGT), 49 159, 180–87, 199, 206, 215–17, Revanchism, 12, 48, 104, 141 222, 230–36 Rhineland, 23, 115, 174, 184 Austrian-Prussian-Russian partitions Confederation of the Rhine, 31 of (1772), 31 Rimland, 11, 83, 96, 110–13, 120 German-Soviet September 1939 Rogozin, Dmitry, 137 attack, 23 Romania, 30–33, 55–56, 76–77, 88, Polish-Ukrainian conflict, 30 115, 180–85, 206 Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, Romney, Mitt, 19 30–38 ruble, 14, 66–69, 72–74, 152–54, 202 Popadiuk, Roman, 51, 210 Rugova, Ibrahim, 55 Poroshenko, Petro, 68–69, 87, 177–79, Russia, Tsarist, 28, 39, 43, 50, 88, 95, 180, 232 105–7, 111–16, 121, 149, 153–58, Portugal, 8, 25, 77, 109 165, 181–82, 196 Primakov, Yevgeny, 57 Dual Alliance (France and Russia), 33, Primorsky Krai, 164–65 162, 181 Princip, Gavrilo, 145 Russo-Japanese war (1904–5), 24, province of Petsamo, 116 119, 164–65, 196 Prussia, 22–23, 31–39, 104–9, 115–17, Russian Revolution (1905), 28, 34, 145, 151–58, 161, 200 86, 208, 235 East Prussia, 39, 117 Russian revolution/civil war (1917–21), Puerto Rico, 24 12, 30–35, 40–43, 66, 159 Punic wars, 12 Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Putin, Vladimir, 10–19, 20–29, 41, 55–59, Republic (RSFSR), 37 60–67, 70–78, 85–86, 91–95, 105–8, Russian-Turk war of 1828–29, 32 115–17, 123–28, 133–39, 141–49, Russo-Turkish War of 1768–74, 30 151–56, 161–69, 170–79, 182–86, See also Russian Federation (Russia); 199, 201–6, 211–19, 221–29, Soviet Union 230–37 Russian Federation (Russia), 13–18, 20–27, Vladikavkahz speech (2008), 62 31–32, 82–85, 92–95, 106–8, 110–17, 123–24, 151–56, 161–69, Qaddafy, Muamar, 131 182–85, 195, 208, 225 Qaddafy regime, 90 Black Sea fleet, 10, 29, 44–47, 51, Qatar, 9, 85, 91, 112, 191–92 62–67, 75, 155, 210–16 Eurasian Union or Eurasian Customs radioactive leakage, 129 Union (ECU), 13, 38, 64–68, Rambouillet summit, 55, 211 71, 86, 117–18, 132, 152–59, Rapallo Pact (1922–23), 37, 155–58, 212–13, 229 216 Kaliningrad, 46, 75–77, 110–17, rapprochement, 33–36, 40, 132, 140, 190–91 150–51, 158, 160 Russia-China Eurasian alliance, 193 Austro-German-Russian, 40 Russian backlash, 2–7, 10–14, 46–48, Reagan, Ronald, 45, 133, 141 55–59, 63–69, 71–79, 108, 119, Reinsurance Treaty, 107, 158 170–75, 185 Index l 249

Russian “diaspora,” 1, 18, 46, 50, 134, Sinn Féin, 82 152, 172–77 Slovakia, 18, 38, 56, 70, 115, 153, 184–85, “shock therapy,” 46–49 215, 22 Siloviki, 50, 61 Slovenia, 47 Ultranationalists, 50 Smolensk, 30 Weimar Russia, 12, 21 soft power, 14 youth groups, 61 Solzhenitsyn, Alexander, 8, 44, 51, 139, Nashi (Ours), 18, 61 201–9, 210, 226 Walking Together, 61 South Africa, 13, 55, 70–78, 82, 111–13, Russophones, 4, 17–18, 28, 41, 50, 132, 153, 223 63–67, 78, 86, 105, 119, 137–39, Southern Gas Corridor, 72 152–53, 166, 172–78, 180, 195 South Korea, 9, 14–19, 71, 120, 138, 149, 156–57, 193, 223–26 Saakashvili, Mikheil, 170, 212 South Ossetia, 10–18, 61–62, 86–87, 90, Saarland, 115 155, 188, 217 Sahel, 111, 194 South Stream, 69, 72 Saudi Arabia, 3, 49, 85, 91–94, 111–12, Soviet Union, 3–7, 11–12, 20–29, 34–39, 124, 130, 192, 219, 222–23 44–49, 50–53, 61–64, 82–88, Saudi Defense Doctrine, 124 95–96, 100–108, 110–19, 120–28, Sea of Azov, 32, 44 132–39, 140–45, 153–58, 163–69, Sea of Japan, 164 174, 183–96, 206, 210–12, 235 Senkaku/Diaotu islands, 121, 150–58, August 1991 coup, 44, 50, 216 165, 193 Glasnost, 45, 108, 166 Serbia, 10–18, 40–47, 55–57, 72, 85–88, Holodomor, 19, 37, 43, 208 123–28, 133, 153, 164, 170, 200–207, Menshevik faction, 108 211 New Union Treaty, 44–45, 108 NATO intervention against (1999), Soviet Constitution (1936), 44 128 Supreme Soviet, 44 Sevastopol, 24–49, 30–33, 44, 51, 62–67, White Army, 36 71–75, 87, 154, 181–89, 190, 213 Spain, 24, 38, 56, 70–77, 89, 100–109, siege of (1854–55), 30–32 111, 150–53 Seven Years War (1756–63), 23, 106 Spanish-American war (1898), 24, 113 Shandong province, 119 Spanish civil war, 18, 93 Shanghai Cooperation Organization Spanish Reconquista (1492), 39 (SCO), 14, 86, 131, 155, 216 Spratly islands, 193 Shi’a, 26, 91–94, 150–55 Stalin, Joseph, 27, 36–38, 40–43, 53, Shikai, Yuan (General), 164 60–61, 72, 116–18, 120, 138, 145, Shining Path, 82 151, 208 Siberia, 36, 85, 164 state typology Sikorski, Radoslaw, 41, 67 continental, 110, 142 Silesia, 23 core, 82, 110 Prussian annexation of Silesia, 23 insular, 82, 99, 110 Silk Road Economic Belt, 13, 86, 132, oasis, 83–84, 110–12 156 periphery/peripheral, 110–11 Simes, Dimitri, 56, 201 rimland, 110–12 Singapore, 112, 193, 228 semi-peripheral, 82, 110–19 250 l Index

shatterbelt, 11, 83–84, 96, 110–16, treaties 124, 191 Treaty of Adrianople (1829), 22, 32, quasi-insular, 82, 110–12 40, 207 Steinmeier, Frank-Walter, 67 Treaty of Berlin (1878), 33 Straits of Gibraltar, 93 Treaty of Brest-Litvosk (1918), 30–36 Straits of Malacca, 93 Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation strategic leveraging, 83, 92–96, 109, 117, between Russia and Ukraine 218 (1997), 51, 216 Stuxnet computer virus, 134, 224 Treaty of Good Neighborliness, Sudan, 113, 124, 150 Partnership and Cooperation Sudetenland, 11–19, 23–28, 38, 109, (1990), 47 151, 186, 203 Treaty of Paris (1856), 24, 33, 180 annexation of (1936), 11–18, 21–28, Treaty of Riga (1921), 37 38, 109, 151, 186 Treaty of San Stefano, 33 Suez Canal, 93, 113–14, 193, 220 Treaty of Schoenbrunn (1809), 31 Suez crisis (1956), 19, 93 Treaty of Tartu (1920), 87, 116 Sweden, 9, 28, 30–31, 53, 63, 74–76, Treaty of Tilsit (1807), 31, 40 89, 117, 161, 185–87, 199, 215 Treaty of Trianon (1920), 88 Sykes-Picot accords, 111 Treaty of Turkmenchay (1828), 32, Syria, 12, 25–26, 73, 81, 90–95, 111–12, 40, 207 123, 130–38, 150–54, 160–66, Treaty of Utrecht (1713), 109 191–95, 223 Treaty of Versailles, 186 Treaty of Westphalia, 109 Taiwan, 12–15, 25, 71, 86, 119, 120–22, Triple Entente (Anglo-French-Russian, 149, 156–59, 160–65, 192–93, 223–28, 233 1907), 107, 182 Tajikistan, 48, 85, 118 Trotsky, Leon, 28, 37 Taliban, 45, 59 Truce of Andrusovo (1667), 30 Tamil Tigers, 82 Truman, Harry S., 19 Tartus, 90, 154 Tuchman, Barbara, 19 Tatars, 39, 43, 154, 161, 176 The Guns of August, 19 Texas Rangers, 93 Tunisia, 85, 95–97, 191 Thirteen Years War (1654–67), 30 Turkey, 8, 26, 32–35, 56, 62, 70–77, 88, Thirty Years War (1618–48), 30, 109 91–94, 100–108, 110–16, 150–54, Thucydides, 12, 99, 128, 147, 220, 237 160–62, 171, 187–88, 191–93, The Peloponnesian Wars, 99, 237 207, 215, 220–23 Tibet, 22–25, 86, 122, 150–56, 182 Turkish-EU tensions, 26 Trans Anatolian Natural Gas Turkmenistan, 48, 150 Pipeline (TANAP), 72 “Two plus Four” accords, 44 Transatlantic Trade and Investment Tymoshenko, Yulia, 64–65 Partnership (TTIP), 13, 71, 86 Transnistra (Transnistrian Republic), 18, Uighur, 91 33, 50, 87, 90, 150, 152, 188, 222 Ukraine, 1–9, 10–19, 21–29, 30–38, Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), 13, 41–49, 51–57, 60–69, 70–79, 83–88, 85–86 95–99, 100–105, 111–19, 128, Transylvania, 88 130–39, 142–46, 152–59, 161–69, Index l 251

170–79, 180–89, 190–99, 200–209, Ukrainian Directory, 36 210–19, 223–28, 231–37 Pro-Bolshevik forces, 28 Act of Unity (1919), 35, 208 provinces/regions cities Don Dnipropetrovsk, 152, 179 Crimea (see Crimea) Don Army Oblast, 37, 165, 208, Kiev, 1–4, 10–19, 25–29, 30–39, 231 40–48, 51, 62–68, 70–79, 87, Donbass, 10–18, 37, 63, 76–78, 119, 136–39, 146, 151–59, 176–79, 180, 195, 210, 161, 170–79, 180–87, 208–9, 231–32 210–17, 223–27, 231 Donetsk, 151–52, 176, 210, Mariupol, 151–52 230–31 Odessa, 30, 151–52, 161, 178, 230 Galacia, 31–37, 44, 206–8 Sevastopol, 24–29, 213 Kharkiv, 34–37, 40, 60, 139, 151–54, Constitution (1992), 46–49, 51 190, 207–8, 230 Cossack Hetmanate, 30 Kuban, 35–37, 207 Council of Pereyaslav, 30 Kursk, 37, 208 Eastern separatists, 50, 77–78, 151, Luhansk, 151–52, 176–77, 208, 177–79, 217, 232 230–31 governments (in Ukraine) Lviv, 36, 190 Central Council, 34 Novorossiya, 149, 152, 178, 230 Directory (Dnieper), 34 Stavropol, 37 Eastern Ukrainian People’s Volhynia, 36–37, 44, 206 Republic of Soviets/Congress Voronezh, 37, 208 of Soviets, 35 Rada (Supreme Court), 34–35, 62–67, Hetmanate, 30–34 231 Kyiv People’s Congress, 35 Sevastopol naval base, 24–29, 213 Makhno Anarchist movement Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), 18 (1918–21), 34–35 western Ukrainians, 30–37, 44 People’s Republic (Kharkiv), 34–35, uneven polycentrism, 81–89, 93–97 96, 120, 231 United Arab Emirates (UAE), 9, 91 Ukrainian military-industrial United Kingdom (UK), 4, 24, 74–77, complex, 72–77 100, 110–15, 131, 172, 206 Ukrainian National Republic United Nations (UN), 8, 10, 56, 192–97, (UNR)/Ukrainian People’s 213 Republic (UPR), 34–35 UN Security Council, 25, 48–49, Ukrainian Socialist Soviet Republic, 133–38, 194 36 United States (US), 4–9, 10–18, 20–28, Western Ukrainian People’s 36, 40–49, 50–59, 60–68, 71–79, Republic (Galacia) (ZUNR), 82–88, 90–99, 104–8, 110–19, 34–35 120–29, 130–39, 140–45, 150–59, Orange Revolution (2005–10), 10, 60 160–69, 170–79, 180–89, 190–96, Polish-Soviet partition of, 28, 37 202–9, 210–17, 222 Political parties American military industrial complex, Borothists, 36 6–8, 163 Constitutional Democrats, 35 American Revolution (1775–83), 23, Ukrainian Bolshevik party, 36 106 252 l Index

Defense Planning Guidance (DPG), 49 Warsaw Pact, 3–4, 11–12, 45, 116, 136, Department of Defense, 76, 217, 223 140 Global War on Terror, 21–17, 59, 60, weapons of mass destruction (WMD), 89, 124, 137–38, 200–205 129 Homeland Security, 134 West Bank, 25–26, 150, 206 Joint Contact Team Program–Ukraine West Indies, 24 (JCTP), 76 White Sea, 32 Manifest Destiny, 39 Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 101–2, 221 National Security Agency (NSA), 134 World Bank, 71, 190, 215 National Security Directive NSC-68 World Trade Organization (WTO), 65 (1950), 5 World War I, 8, 12–19, 21–28, 31–39, Operation Just Cause, 25 40–45, 92–94, 104–5, 111–19, “pivot to Asia,” 85, 155–57, 228 122–29, 130, 145, 150–58, 160–69, political parties 180–87, 194–96, 200–208, 211, Democrats, 19, 35, 50–51, 89 226, 236 Republicans, 19 Austro-German alliance, 23 September 11, 2001 attacks, 21, 59, Franco-Russian alliance, 23, 158, 162, 89, 101, 124, 134–38 180–85, 207 World War II, 12–18, 20–28, 40, 63, Ukraine Freedom Support Act, 76 92–94, 105, 111–16, 120–23, 138, US-Japanese alliance, 120, 222 140, 169, 175, 183–88, 190–94, US Office of Defense Cooperation, 76 203, 227, 230–37 US-Russian relations, 17, 170, 195, 212 Uzbekistan, 48 Xi Jinping, 14 Xinjiang province, 86, 91, 122, 156 Venezuela, 70, 123, 153 Versailles Treaty, 93, 108, 118–19, 153 Yalta conference (1945), 53 Vershbow, Alexander, 57 Yanukovych, Viktor, 10–19, 29, 60–67, Vienna Note (1853), 32 73, 95, 166, 174, 203, 212, 232 Vietnam, 12–19, 78, 93, 140, 153–58, Yat-sen, Sun, 164 165–66 Yatsenyuk, Arseniy, 177, 207 North, 19 Yeltsin, Boris, 3–5, 45–49, 50–59, 61, Vietnam war, 93 78, 115–17, 123, 141, 165–69, Vilna region, 38 172, 185, 207–9, 210–12, 237 Vinichenko, Volodimir, 34, 45, 207 Yemen, 85–89, 94, 130 Voivodine, 88 Yugoslavia, 1, 12, 38, 47, 54, 84, 90, Volker, Kurt, 170–71, 212, 229 111–16, 164, 184–85 von Beust, Friedrich Ferdinand, 104 Alexander I, 40 von Bismarck, Otto, 104–7 Yugoslav war (1990–95), 111 von Caprivi, Leo, 107 Yushchenko, Viktor, 10–18, 62, 212 von Leibniz, Gottfried, 101 Vukovar, 47 Zedong, Mao, 120, 138, 146, 164–65, 227 Żeligowski, Lucjan (General), 38 Wahhabi, 91 Zhirinovsky, Vladimir, 50, 155, 228 Wallachia, 23, 32–33, 108 Zionist movement, 150 War Powers Act (1973), 8 Zyuganov, Gennady, 50–52, 155, 228