Would earlier escalation have stopped Russia?

There’s a hard-line argument about Russia that has recently revived and which deserves cold demolition. It is once again circulating. It has been provoked by President Donald Trump’s bilateral overtures to Moscow – and sidelining of Ukraine and Europe- over ending the war in Ukraine. And it has been provoked by the general fear that Washington is about to capitulate, which will lead to further crisis.

It goes like this: the West was weak in the face of Russian aggression in two earlier crises, in Georgia in 2008 and Crimea in 2014. Western under-reaction in both cases emboldened the Vladimir Putin-Dmitry Medvedev regime. And with their boldness further lubricated by the chaotic U.S. drawdown from Afghanistan, Russia went on to invade and rape Ukraine in 2022.

Mark Wallace, CEO of “TotalPolitics”, puts it thus: “we don’t even need to look back to 1938 – in 2008, Putin was allowed to invade and occupy Georgia. Emboldened, he invaded and occupied Ukraine in 2014. Emboldened even more, having been allowed to gain from that, he further invaded Ukraine in 2022. Appeasement creates war.” 

Likewise, Foreign Secretary David Lammy and Secretary of Defence John Healey argue that “For 20 years, Vladimir Putin has been repeating the mistakes of Russia’s past: by seeking to recreate the Russian empire and suffocate the countries around its borders. Too often in the past, the West has let him. We did too little in 2008 when he invaded Georgia, and in 2014 when he first went into Ukraine.”

Notice the language deployed here. It is rhetorically strident yet substantively vapid. What alternative policies precisely are these get-tough critics proposing? What is their counterfactual? If Putin only attacked countries around Russia because we “let” or “allow” him, how ought we to have disallowed him in 2008 and 2014? They rarely say. “Putin only responds to strength”, offer Lammy and Healey. Very well. What would “strength” have looked like?

It would be refreshing to hear some specifics supporting this theory of peace, given the high stakes. If “strength” means a direct intervention, say, the insertion of a U.S.-led coalition into Georgia, or a seaborne expedition into the Black Sea to retake Crimea, it’s possible that would have worked. Nothing is certain. It might have frightened off the regime that hawks insist is pathologically homicidal and obsessed with strength. It might have gotten the regime to rethink the costs and benefits, even though it has been demonstrably willing to sacrifice blood and treasure in abundance in its “near abroad.” That is, though, a best-case scenario. Cakewalks can happen, but we shouldn’t count on them.

History also suggests that militarised confrontation sometimes leads to crisis and war, not peace. This is especially so where the adversary being challenged has the balance of resolve in its favour. Determined, risk-accepting powers with a large dog in a conflict over the border may not back off so easily, like Russia-Serbia in 1914, China in 1950, or India in 2019. This raises a further problem: the fixation on 1938 and appeasement admits only one pathway towards war. Perceived weakness can cause war. So too can belligerence, even belligerence of a righteous kind. 

And under some conditions, concessions coupled with credible deterrence can prevent further war, as over Cuba in 1962. In 1962, John F. Kennedy kept a cool-head, tempering confrontation with concession. He resisted the Munich analogies that his counsellors relentlessly used to urge him to go beyond a naval blockade and to strike. This rarely features in hawkish indictments. Perhaps 1962 is an inconvenient analogy, because it involves the very thing some hawks like to play down, the nuclear dimension.

Recall, too, that in the summer of 2008, Russia struck Georgia despite — or partly because — a U.S.-led coalition was bleeding in Iraq, and was struggling to contain an insurgency and civil war. That, too, was a military adventure that hawks, armed with the Munich analogy, had insisted would signal general “strength” to other predators, and deter them elsewhere. It achieved the opposite result. It distracted, demoralised and depleted the west, reducing its appetite to intervene directly in further crises. This helped convince Russia that it could attack Georgia and get away with it. At the same time, the west was looking to Moscow as a partner in containing Iran and its nuclear ambitions. Was it worth shredding that relationship, and helping Iran, to make a point against Russia? Perhaps. But the trade-offs are weighty. 

Alternatively, hardliners might be implying a milder policy mix in 2008 or 2014. They might have in mind some punitive package of economic sanctions, arms supply and/or a fast-tracking of Georgia and Ukraine into NATO. That may have been preferable. But imminent NATO membership may have prompted further Russian escalation, adding haste to the calculations of an insecure and war-prone state. And by taking measures short of direct intervention and potential war, it also would have demonstrated if anything a reluctance to intervene directly, and escalate to the point of collision. It would have underlined the hard truth that the west was not willing to ramp up the risks of war with a large nuclear power outside NATO territory. At best, supplying arms may have sent only a weak deterrence signal. 

Maximal sanctions would have inflicted more pain. Yet Russia has demonstrated how difficult it is to use sanctions to break large committed states. This is especially so, given many countries of the Rest are not interested in isolating Moscow given their own energy, trading and military needs. Russia and other adversaries are countries, not just risk-averse economies.

Earlier and greater supplies of arms may have helped in other ways, at least to prepare the defences of Georgia or Ukraine. Yet given that the increasing flow of arms and growing NATO-Ukraine security cooperation was one factor we know precipitated the invasion of 2022, that may also have resulted not in peace through strength, but earlier invasion. That, in turn, would have come at a non-trivial price: it would have prevented years of effective international training of Ukrainian forces, Operation Interflex, one reason they were able to hold the ring when Putin re-invaded. History might well have been worse, not better, than the current state of bloody stalemate, with Russia succeeding deeper and faster in its invasions, and the west also still fighting in Afghanistan. 

… it would be wise if we regarded past crises, like the present, less as tests of strength and more as matters for judgement

Lastly, a word about Munich, Chamberlain, Hitler and the undying effort to treat every crisis as a test of martial virtue, and all compromise as intolerable folly. If Britain and France had given Hitler an ultimatum over the Sudetenland in 1938 and then enforced it by threatening war, Hitler would not have backed off. He was undeterrable. Indeed, he desired a clash. True, the resulting war may well have defeated Hitler and destroyed his rule, given the correlation of forces at the time. But that wouldn’t have solved the deeper problem of German hyper-nationalism, territorial revisionism and the fear of growing Soviet strength, which many German elites across the spectrum agreed on. Another revisionist, expansionist leader may well have emerged, but a more disciplined and effective one. In the history that actually unfolded, at least the Nazis lost.

Earlier war in 1938 may also have sacrificed one major political advantage of postponement, namely that Hitler established himself in the eyes of the world as an unambiguous aggressor. Earlier preventive war would have positioned Britain and France as the aggressors in the eyes of Washington. And in the event of war coming later, that would have made it harder for Franklin Roosevelt to send the material and maritime aid that proved so critical to Britain’s war effort and survival, which was in turn a critical part of the allied campaign. There are many knock-on effects to consider. Earlier war, for instance, would also have interrupted the vital strides of Polish codebreakers, a critical part of allied victory. 

What’s more, once war was underway from 1939, there was no way of defeating Hitler and rolling back fascist conquests without appeasing another force, namely the Soviet Union, which Churchill and Roosevelt did. What counterfactual do our supremely confident maximalists offer here?

So it would be wise if we regarded past crises, like the present, less as tests of strength and more as matters for judgement. And our forbears’ judgements should be considered more seriously, with less of the condescension of posterity.