Going over old emails - historical context for Russian invasion

20240211

This is an email exchange I had in February 8 2015 with Justin Rosengrant, professor of Slavic languages at Reed College. It appears to have followed an interview given by Putin, in which Putin acknowledged that Yanukovych was a thief. It would be useful to find that interview.

His observations about Russia’s occupation of Crimea and the Donbas go first, my response with purple stripes. This dialog puts things into historical perspective. What were our concerns about Russia back then? It gives the lie to many of the positions taken by Putin, and some by Tucker, in the recent interview.

Judson Rosengrant:

I'm going to respond in some detail, if I may. The issues and our grasp of them in this country are extremely important, and it may possibly be interesting to examine the various points, many of which you will have thought about, certainly, and may or may not agree with.

I think Putin's reasoning is actually pretty simple. Crimea became Russian territory in the 18C, when Catherine II took it from the Ottomans as a sort of culmination of Russia's own Manifest Destiny, and it remained Russian territory until Khrushchev gave it to Ukraine in 1954, an act that Russians never accepted; so that now it will seem right to them and to Putin, who I believe represents a broad consensus in this, to restore the historical balance. That becomes easier given the fact that the region itself has never been comfortable as part of Ukraine; hence, its status as an "autonomous republic" with its own constitution -- explicit recognition of its special (awkward) place within the Ukrainian polity.

I agree in part.  I don't agree that they have never been comfortable as part of Ukraine.  For most of its independent history Ukraine has been governed by men from the east, and Crimea has had a fair amount of autonomy.  The native Crimeans I meet – obviously atypical if they have moved to Kiev – feel themselves fully Ukrainian.

It is true that Russian is the language there.  That has never been under serious challenge.

There are many such situations in the world, of states with irredentist claims on other nations' lands.  Peru maintains its claims for land lost in the War of the Pacific; Argentina fights over the Malvinas.  That's what various treaties such as Helsenki have attempted to resolve.

More importantly, however, the annexation of Crimea will ensure the security of the Sevastopol naval base in the event that any new government in Kiev adopts a strong Western orientation and becomes impatient with the terms of the lease. If Crimea is part of the Russian Federation, Russia won't need a lease; that is, it won't be dependent on Kiev's "whim," on its consent to the arrangement. Crimea will be Russian territory and secure. So there's an important strategic question in play from the Russian point of view, and not merely a historical and emotional one, as profoundly important as the latter will be for Russians themselves, including those who live in the Crimea and will certainly vote to secede this month.

I find this argument weak.  They have a lease through 2042 – another 28 years.  All the players, and indeed the world situation will have changed by then. 

Russia is jeopardizing its standing their by antagonizing the Ukrainians at this juncture.  It is a calculated risk; I think they calculated wrong.

I believe they will vote to secede.  The people are being stampeded into voting before there has been any discussion.  They certainly have not heard both sides of the issue.  Putin has seen to that.

This analysis is not, by the way, intended to favor or approve the claims of either side in the dispute, but merely to indicate that the Russian position is not a trivial one, nor simply the result of some vague or irrational expansionist impulse. It's a logical, coherent policy and was a completely predictable result of the power vacuum produced by the Maidan events. The annexation of Crimea will entail real costs for Russia, to be sure, but in the end it will have been worth it from their national security vantage.

This assumes that Russia's view of its national security is correct, and that the world situation will not change.

My expectation is that the Western powers will collapse of their own demographics, debt and other factors.  Russia could have waited.  The west will not pose a threat to them.  The West's ineffectual response even now is testimony to their weakness.

Accordingly, it will be naïve of us to discount either the historical or the strategic motivation, let alone both, and naïve too to think the we (the US and the EU) are in any position to force a reversal of what would seem to be a fundamental, nonnegotiable policy decision by Russia. That Kiev by itself will not be able to reverse it either is self-evident.

Agree with you.  The West lacks the will, and Kiev does not and will not have the power to reverse things.

Given the unreliability, as Russia sees it, of the new Kiev government, such as it is, and the other issues, it is extremely improbable that Crimea will ever be returned to Ukraine. It's a fait accompli that it will now be wise to find a way to accommodate, since there won't be any way to negate it, short of armed intervention, which would obviously fail, if anyone should be ever stupid enough to attempt such a thing. This isn't 1853, after all, and there won't be any Charges of the Light Brigade or Fourth Bastions.

Agree with you here. 

The energy supply issue is probably not a problem for Russia, which is just across the Kerch Strait from the Crimea. In any case, Ukraine gets most of it energy (sixty percent?) from Russia, so that the idea that it would then refuse to pass on those supplies to a new Russian Crimea is unconvincing. It's Russia that holds the energy cards, not Ukraine. The US is now the world leader in natural gas production (and second in petroleum), but our gas reserves won't have any strategic value for at least a couple of years, not, that is, until we've created the infrastructure necessary to export the resource and use it as a foreign policy tool. So the fact of Ukrainian energy dependence on Russia is indeed a fact and an important part of the complex geopolitical equation. All parties need to recognize that and operate from it as a premise. (As I suspect Angela Merkel does, since Germany is Gazprom's biggest customer, with Ukraine only second.)

Ukraine gets natural gas from Russia.  It is self-sufficient in coal and uranium, and thus electric power.  Oil is bought on a world market.

Russia's advantage in energy will diminish as shale gas comes online in Europe as it has in the US.  Ukraine remains dependent for the time being.  The Yanukovych government was ineffectual in energy policy – and almost everything else.  One can hope (as always) that the new government will do better.

So I think the best we can hope for here is that Russia will be content with the Crimea and not be tempted to occupy eastern Ukraine. That would be an entirely different kettle of fish and entail an ugly armed conflict that would be at least as destructive to Russia in a variety of ways as it would be to Ukraine. For all his incoherence and evident nervousness and clumsy bluster and mystification, it was clear from the Tues. press conference that Putin understood that essential fact and meant to convey his understanding to the Russian public. To use a sort of short hand, he was acknowledging Kiev as the mother city of East Slavic culture and the profound historical and cultural bond between the two nations and peoples, as well as, quite surprisingly, a sympathetic grasp of a motivation of the Maidan protesters, their wish to be rid of the "thieves," as Putin himself called them (and meant Yanukovych). War with Ukraine is something that almost all ordinary Russians would regard with horror, and even an autocrat like Putin would have to accept that, supposing that he didn't share the horror (although I think it's obvious that he does).

I hope also that he will be content with Crimea.  He is absorbing an area with a withered economy – Kiev Post article says that 70% of Crimea's tourists are Ukrainian, 25% Russian, and bookings are off 90% for this season, $5 billion loss in taxable income – and God knows what on the grey market.

I don't know how well the Obama administration understands these issues and the complexities of Putin's more or less conscious revelations on Tues., but so far I would have to say they probably don't, and thus find themselves occupying untenable, reactive positions and failing to work toward the kinds of realistic accommodation that will ultimately be in everyone's interest, but especially that of the very complex society that is modern Ukraine.

The Obama administration seems rather inept at foreign policy.  They are in a weak position both morally and intellectually.  Not that I would wish for a return of the neocons. 

Bottom line – I agree.  Moreover, it is not in Ukraine's interest to be too close to the US or the West in general. 

Yes, Timothy Snyder's Bloodlands is a magnificent work of scholarship and a profound contribution to our understanding of the century. I relied on it in my commentary to the edition of the Wolf autobiography I indicated to you. It puts the events in a much broader and richer historical context than we have been used to regarding them, and it brought to the fore Stalin's horrific devastation of the Ukrainian peasantry -- the terror famines -- so little appreciated in the English-speaking world (Robert Conquest's Harvest of Sorrow notwithstanding).

My rather sour take on the future of the West is that it will become victim of its own liberalism. 

Per Putnam, diversity is eroding our social capital.

Per  Richard Lynn's "IQ and the Wealth of Nations" and most of the psychometric community, we are dumbing ourselves down via immigration and the lack of fertility of the more intelligent of us Caucasians and Jews.  Anecdotally, I was not able to find a single member of my class of '64 who has four grandchildren.  Many that they do have are adopted.  If one assumes that Reed gets the best and brightest, and that it is somewhat typical, we are doing ourselves in.

My lifetime observation is that sex has shifted in a big way from a means of procreation to a vehicle for  recreation.  Swingers and gays.  They do not form as many families, and those they do form are not stable enough, and not connected enough with extended family, to raise kids to perpetuate our culture.

Politicians of both parties refuse to address the debt issue.  Twenty years ago we could say they would have to work hard to ever again have a balance budget.  We can now state with certainty that they will never be able to do it again.  Collapse in inevitable.  Dmitry Orlof has a good comparison of the fall of the Soviet Union and the coming collapse of the US "Reinventing Collapse."

Where to be in these troubled times?  I'm planning to stay here, on the bet that a Slavic culture, traditional by nature and protected by despots like Yaunkovych, will be a better place to raise a kid.

Whether or not there is any justice to what Putin is doing at the moment, it might work in my own long term interest. 

Best regards,

Jud