An internet acquaintance called Tim Starr, who writes a lot about foreign policy from a “realist libertarian” point of view (ie, the opposite of the sort of “it’s all our fault” line that I see too much) has an interesting comment about the Russia/Ukraine drama on his Facebook page. I asked him if I could reprint it here, and he said go ahead. So here it is. It skewers the notion that there were parallels with Putin’s fears about Ukraine becoming pro-Western and JF Kennedy’s alarm at the Soviet Union’s stationing of nuclear weapons in Cuba in the early 1960s. And he makes an excellent point about the difference between NATO and the Warsaw Pact. These are obvious points, but a lot of those excusing Putin’s monstrous regime seem to be trying to confuse them.
A false analogy keeps being made between the Cuban Missile Crisis and Russia’s supposed fear of having offensive missiles in NATO countries bordering Russia. Supposedly, Russia has just as much right to object to NATO missiles in its neighboring countries as the USA had to object to them in Cuba.
One of the main problems with this analogy is that the Cuban Missile Crisis happened before there was such a thing as ICBMs – Inter-Continental Ballistic Missiles. Thus, there were no Soviet missiles capable of hitting the continental USA, until they sent IRBMs to Cuba, thus threatening the USA with nuclear missiles for the first time ever. Russia has already been living under the threat of nuclear ICBM attack by the USA for decades, we have never launched one, we have signed multiple nuclear arms-control treaties with Russia, we have kept the terms of those treaties (unlike Russia), etc.
Another problem is that Russia already has nuclear-capable missiles stationed on NATO’s borders, in the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad, which borders both Lithuania and Poland, and is within IRBM range of many other EU and NATO countries. Do those countries have the right to invade Russia because of the IRBMs in Kaliningrad?
(Emphasis mine.)
Going back to the Cuba analogy, Castro was so unstable that he actually urged the Soviets to launch a nuclear first strike on the US from Cuba. Fortunately, the Soviets never put Cuba in command of their nuclear forces there, didn’t grant his request, and soon thought better of leaving their nukes where he might be able to get his hands on them.
Another disanalogy is that NATO membership is voluntary. No country is forced to join NATO against its will, the agreement of all existing NATO members is required for any new members to join, and any member can leave at any time. Cuba was taken over by Castro in a violent, Soviet-sponsored revolution, so Cuba had no choice about whether to become a Soviet ally. No Soviet ally was ever allowed to stop being a Soviet ally without Soviet permission, and none of the other Soviet allies ever had any say in the matter. Cuba was a Soviet puppet, completely dependent upon the Soviets. Cuba was ruled by its secret police, who were under the command of the Soviet secret police. It was subsidized by the Soviets with billions of dollars a year. Cuba remains a one-party state, more than 30 years after the demise of the Soviet Union, having only in desperation permitted a little bit of free enterprise and replacing its former Soviet subsidies with money from Venezuela’s oil exports, drug smuggling, etc. Cuba sponsored terrorism all over the Americas, and engaged in military adventurism in Africa. Nothing comparable to that has ever been the case with any NATO members.
To the final point Starr makes, it is worth noting that in the 1960s, France left the NATO command structure (de Gaulle was not happy about US foreign policy). No Warsaw Pact country was able to do so; any attempt at dissent was crushed (Hungary 1956, Czechoslovakia 1968).
Albania actually did leave the Warsaw Pact in 1968, officially as a protest against the invasion of Czechoslovakia. I wonder if it got away with it because (1) it was tiny and largely irrelevant to Moscow (2) it’s relations with Moscow had been barely existing for nearly a decade already (3) it didn’t have borders with other Warsaw Pact states so was hard for the others to invade, and it was unlikely Yugoslavia would have cooperated with a Warsaw pact attack on Albania (4) had Beijing as a patron.
“One of the main problems with this analogy is that the Cuban Missile Crisis happened before there was such a thing as ICBMs – Inter-Continental Ballistic Missiles. “
Sputnik 1 was 1957. Sputnik 2 (a dog + life support, in total half ton payload) was also 1957.
If you can orbit that mass, and have the H-Bomb, ergo you have ICBM in 1957.
Atlas ICBM became operational in 1959.
Cuban missile crisis (1962) was 5 years after Russkies had demonstrated ICBM capability, and 3 years after US had deployed operational ICBM.
So no, doesn’t wash.
It was yet another hypocrisy. US IRBM aimed at Russia in Turkey: Good. SU IRBM aimed at US in Cuba bad.
Stop seeing it as a Christmas pantomime. Just ‘cos that lot is a villain, doesn’t mean the other lot is a fairy godmother. Sometimes, they are both bad and deserve each other. And the people in the middle? Well, do the people have any say or responsibility over who and how they are governed?
The mistake is thinking there are rules and teacher will enforce them.
There are no rules. Be strong and well armed, and you may survive. Be weak and gullible: get eaten.
You probably don’t like these rules. Reality ignores your screams. Peace is an indulgence of the well armed, well prepared and those not obsessed with inquiring the correct pronoun to inscribe on each bullet.
For as long as you must buy gas from the Russians: you are in their pocket. Hang their paid-for Gretards for treason, and spend the next 10 years gaining energy independence. Then, and only then, may you have a choice. If, of course, you are allowed that long.
Teacher! Teacher! Putin isn’t allowed to do this! I want you to stop him! He must be stopped by the headmaster! Oh Sir….
One small point.
Libya comes to mind.
What continent are Kenya, Algeria, and Mozambique on? Or does holding onto distant 19th century conquests not count as adventurism?
Good thing Asia is off limits for this comparison.
Tim the Coder: They could physically fire an H-bomb to another continent in 1957, yes. But your goal is generally not “nuke some random bit of North America”. Getting the accuracy needed for a useful ICBM, and the space industry required to build a lot of them, took another decade or so.
You have a better point about Turkey, but remember that the settlement of the Cuban Missile Crisis was to remove those, so the US did implicitly agree that it wasn’t a great plan.
Under the Warsaw Pact, the armed forces of the non-Soviet members were legally subordinated to a Soviet Deputy Defence Minister, as Viktor Suvorov put it, ‘there is sovereignty for you‘.
The same man had a theory that the Cuban Missile Crisis was a Soviet exercise in upping the ante, and that they used the threat of Soviet missiles in Cuba, and its removal, as a bargaining chip to make it easier for the Americans to tolerate a pro-Soviet but denuclearised Cuba as an acceptable outcome, rather than going for the overthrow of Castro, hence the half-hearted Bay of Pigs invasion, which seems to have been designed to destroy the hopes of Cuban exiles.
And so Cuba, safely in Soviet orbit (with IIRC a brigade of Soviet troops stationed there to encourage the loyalty of the local forces) could be used to export Soviet terror and power to Latin America and the environs, as we saw in Argentina (the Montoneros), Chile (Allende), Nicaragua, Grenada, the Colombian cartels, Peru (pro-Soviet in its own right) and right up to today, Venezuela.
Albania actually did leave the Warsaw Pact in 1968, officially as a protest against the invasion of Czechoslovakia. I wonder if it got away with it because (1) it was tiny and largely irrelevant to Moscow (2) it’s relations with Moscow had been barely existing for nearly a decade already (3) it didn’t have borders with other Warsaw Pact states so was hard for the others to invade, and it was unlikely Yugoslavia would have cooperated with a Warsaw pact attack on Albania (4) had Beijing as a patron.
I wasn’t aware it did. Albania was in any event such a hardline, Stalinist place that the Sovs probably concluded that it was not a problem, whereas in the case of Dubcech and the Czech change, the shift to “socialism with a human face” (lol) was a more clear threat to Russia’s view of what Communism etc was all about.
Err…didn’t the USA put missiles in Poland ( allegedly against Iranian missiles…🙄🙄) and withdraw from the ABM Treaty?
Yes, I think it did…
Kennan was right all along, both on Containment and what NATO expansion would produce; but then no doubt he was a Russian shill…🤣🤣
And Mearsheimer is right…again! Amazing how these Russian shills can be so perceptive…
Alsadius beat me to the punch on the point about the accuracy of possible Soviet ICBMs in the 1950s – hopelessly inaccurate.
As for Tim the Coder – he seems to be arguing two different cases, “be strong or be eaten” and DE FACTO “give in to Mr Putin – appease him, appease him”.
The two cases that Tim the Coder is arguing in his comment are in opposition to each other.
Mr Putin was appeased in 2014 (over areas of Ukraine that he took) and he was appeased in many other other attacks he has made on other countries (such as Georgia) – indeed this policy of Appeasement seems to be what has given him the impression he could get away with a total invasion of the Ukraine.
By his own argument (the first argument “be strong or be eaten”) Tim the Coder should have been arguing for a stronger response much earlier.
Certainly Mr Putin must be opposed NOW – people who deny that just rule themselves out of the discussion, the public will have utter contempt for such Appeasers.
As I have repeatedly said – some conservatives and libertarians (GOOD PEOPLE) have found themselves on a hole on Ukraine – they honestly did not believe that Mr Putin would invade, but then HE DID.
When you are in a hole – STOP DIGGING.
The Dictator Mr Putin must be opposed. Whatever you used to say (“he is just trying to secure his borders” and other nonsense that will, sadly, haunt the people who said it), you now have to change your tune, denounce Mr Putin and do whatever you can to back the opposition to him.
Again to people pushing this pro Putin stuff – you are in a hole over the Ukraine (and many other matters – including all the RUSSIAN people Mr Putin has murdered), so please (please) STOP DIGGING.
@Paul Marks: “and DE FACTO “give in to Mr Putin – appease him, appease him”.”
That is your invention, not my pitch at all. I don’t have to defend a strawman invented by someone else.
“should have been arguing for a stronger response much earlier”
Yes, but there wasn’t and the moving pen has writ.
“The Dictator Mr Putin must be opposed”
And we are back to Teacher again.
Europe CANNOT oppose Putin because it is utterly dependent upon Russian gas. It can pretend, squawk, make a few irrelevant and impotent statements, but until the chokehold is removed, it can DO nothing. But I agree “Ooooo, ain’t it awful!”
Do you see any signs that UK & Europe might be trying to escape this dependency?
Fracking? New North Sea extractions, massive nuclear builds, indigenous coal mining?
No, thought not. UK and Europe still in hock to the Nut-Nut front. And no doubt, these front organisations will be well rewarded.
We can ship them a few obsolete weapons I suppose, until the shipment routes get interdicted. Poland will be so keen. Oh no, not again!
US was briefly energy independent, but with Biden’s manipulators, they are going the same way. Begging to the murdering psychopath in Saudi for oil to replace that lost from the murdering psychopath in Russia. Well, there’s always Venezuela, nowt wrong with there. Oh, wait…
And China is watching intently.
So are NK and Iran. Lesson of the last 30 years: “The Lord’s My Shepherd, says the song. But just in case, betta get a bomb!”
If Taiwan & Japan haven’t, they know what’s coming.
Regrettably Paul Marks seems to believe that pointing out reality is being pro Hitler or pro Putin.
It isn’t…it’s being realistic. Tim the Coder has it right.
@Alsadius
Not sure I agree. For MAD, the idea is total destruction of cities. With 15MT yield (e.g. Castle Bravo), you destroy everything in a few hundred miles: so for the Russkies, anywhere on either coast of US would be good enough. Plenty of targets within any arbitrary 200-mile diameter circle.
And you only need a few.
Accuracy is actually destabilising, because you only need accuracy for a first strike: taking out hardened targets like the other side’s silos.
The defence to that is quantity: so even after the other side has had first serve, you still have plenty left.
But for a grudge match, you only need a few, and not accurately delivered. DHL would be good enough.
To our very good fortune, those in charge back then were rational. India-Pakistan also held off. In the forthcoming Iran-Saudi and Iran-Israel fixtures, let’s us hope that fortune persists.
Oh, and memory fades. It is of course: “The Lord’s My Shepherd, says the psalm. But just in case, betta get a bomb!”
Albania was able to leave Warsaw Pact because of geography. It had non-Warsaw Pact Yugoslavia between it & any Russian tanks.
Mr Ed: And so Cuba, safely in Soviet orbit (with IIRC a brigade of Soviet troops stationed there to encourage the loyalty of the local forces) could be used to export Soviet terror and power to Latin America and the environs, as we saw in Argentina (the Montoneros), Chile (Allende), Nicaragua, Grenada, the Colombian cartels, Peru (pro-Soviet in its own right) and right up to today, Venezuela.
Exactly. While Kruschev was deposed in 1964 after what on some levels appeared to be fiasco for Moscow, Russia was still able to use Cuba as base to make serious trouble. Even now, there are floppy-headed Western tourists who go to Cuba (well, before lockdowns) and say how marvelously authentic it is, with the cute 50s cars, pretty girls and all the rest of it.
Tim the Coder: “Europe CANNOT oppose Putin because it is utterly dependent upon Russian gas.”
People have warned for some time that this was stupid, and that the policies of former German chancellor, Angela Merkel, not to mention those of Gerhard Schroder (who is up to his neck in this, personally) were playing into Putin’s hands. That’s why I linked to the article the other day about Canadian gas. That is why I have noted – and got run up the flagpole here by the usual foreign policy “realists” – for saying that the Greens are playing into Putin’s hands, and stop being so beastly to Vlad, after all he’s very ant-“woke” (is he?)..etc. Go and “code” that, Tim.
Err…didn’t the USA put missiles in Poland ( allegedly against Iranian missiles…🙄🙄) and withdraw from the ABM Treaty?
Yes, I think it did…
Why “allegedly”? Also, the withdrawal from the ABM Treaty was based on the thinking that Mutually Assured Destruction was sooner or later not going to work if a nutcase got a bomb, and that it made more sense to figure out other ways to handle nuclear weapons.
Pointing this out doesn’t mean I think those making these arguments are Putin bots, or whatever. But I do find the excuse-making a bit rich. As the Tim Starr article makes clear, the parallels with Cuba are false, on their own terms.
Realist libertarian … I like that.
Except for the implied association with such “realists” as Mearsheimer & Walt.
One additional problem with the Cuba analogy is that Ukraine becoming a NATO member does not entail nuclear missiles on Ukrainian soil, any more than Cuba being a Soviet puppet implied nuclear missiles on Cuban soil.
WRT Europe being dependent on Russian gas: the other side of the coin is that Russia is dependent on oil & gas exports. Russia cannot cut off gas supplies to Europe w/o damage to its own economy.
The thing to do right now is to start fracking. In the medium term, more pipelines.
In the long term, geothermal energy might remove any dependence on Russian fuels while keeping the Greens happy for good measure.
@Snorri Godhi
Which is why Russia is building a 3rd pipeline across Siberia to China. So they can sell to them, instead of Europe.
This has been a long time in the planning while Europe and the US slept.
And Geothermal energy also needs to hydraulically fracture the rock, to capture the heat from it to the working fluid. So all the Green’s phobia about fracking still apply.
And don’t mention the radon.
Our biggest problem in the West is our own left wing, utopian questing, elites. Throughout history, nasty political strongmen emerge and will continue to do so as long as there are human beings – Putin is just the latest. To forge a future for ourselves we must find a way to replace our present elites.
Jonathan Pearce
Why allegedly? Because other NATO countries are far better places to put missiles to protect against Iranian missiles..but no…Poland was chosen.
As for the reason you give to withdraw from the ABM Treaty…I have a bridge in London you can buy…
Because other NATO countries are far better places to put missiles to protect against Iranian missiles..but no…Poland was chosen.
A missile is a missile – it can go a long way, so putting them in Warrington rather than Warsaw makes no real difference, apart from a few minutes. Poland is in NATO. Poland has good reason to be in NATO, given how it was carved up by Russia in 1939-41, its senior military and others shot in their thousands, and subsequently put under the cosh by Stalin post-1945. The Kremlin can go and do one, as they say.
According to the “realist” school, Russia seems to have a very expansive idea indeed of what its “sphere of influence” is. About time that was corrected. The country spans 8 time zones, I think. That’s plenty big enough.
No, the reason for leaving the ABM was to enable defence systems vs missiles. I remember reading a lot about this at the time. Rumsfeld argued this a lot.
The reason for having an ABM treaty in the first place is that ABM are extremly destabilising.
Suppose your ABM system is 99% effective. Wow!
So if your enemy launches a strategic strike of 20,000 warheads, only 200 get through the ABM shield. Your country is still glassed.
But if you launch a first strike, and get 99% of his strike power with your bunker-busting missiles, he has only 200 left.
Your ABM shield gets 99% of that, meaning you lose only 2 cities. Hair mussed. Perfectly acceptable to the General Turgidsons on all sides.
So an effective ABM shield only makes sense in the context of a 1st strike. To spend massive sums on a ABM shield therefore means…better hit ’em first Mr. President!
An ABM system makes slightly more sense in a tactical environment, against a nutter with a few nukes, and without the sense to ship them by DHL, or truck them across an undefended border, or just park the container in a container port, put on an airliner, etc.
But it’s a great feeding frenzy for the arms industries, which is why both sides like them. Just never finish the damn things.
Jonathan Pearce
But they didn’t put them in Warrington did they?
No…they chose Poland.
To come back to the Cuba analogy, why did the USA object…if a missile is a missile and basing doesn’t matter…
Mickc “To come back to the Cuba analogy, why did the USA object…if a missile is a missile and basing doesn’t matter…” That was answered already, at the time it did matter.
The thing that is really disingenuous is the idea that Ukraine NATO membership was actually happening anytime soon. It was not and Putin knew it. So it is just preposterous to pretend that Ukrainian NATO membership has anything to do with it.
He has publicly stated why he is invading Ukraine, why will no “realists” believe him?
But they didn’t put them in Warrington did they? No…they chose Poland.
Poland is a NATO member, so stationing missiles, regiments, air forces, or whatnot, is part of the deal. I know a few folk in the US Army who train there a lot.
Putin may dream of absorbing Poland into his “Greater Russia” or whatever other demented dream he has, but it is a sovereign nation, in NATO and (with increasing frictions) in the EU. Stationing missiles in Poland is hardly some dramatic change of course for anyone who is paying attention.
Indeed. The Americocentric delusion does not allow for anything of import to happen without America being the prime driver. It was NATO and/or the CIA wot dunnit, the realists nod sagely, Putin was just reacting to that.
It is the ‘right’ version of the ‘left’ who constantly attribute Islamic terrorism to social inequality, climate change, toxic masculinity, anything except the stated reasons given by actual Islamic terrorists.
Apart from noting that “realists” should have been put in scare quotes; I wish to point out that, on this issue, the Putinist “”right”” is aligned with the American “far” “”left””.
BTW there is yet another problem with the Cuba analogy: bombing Russia would mean China getting hold of its natural resources.
Unless NATO itself invades Russia, which would cost too much (for “us”, not for countries which do not care about niceties such as human life). Russian natural resources are not worth it to “us”. If Putin has a functional brain, he’ll have realized this. I do not care to guess whether he does.
The problem is Mr Putin – he is not only harming other nations, he is harming RUSSIA, the RUSSIAN people.
As for those conservatives and libertarians who are still making excuses for Mr Putin (and telling untruths about the history of the United States and other countries), I have told them that they in a hole and BEGGED them to stop digging. There is nothing more I can do.
Let it be clearly understood that the Russian is a delightful person till he tucks his shirt in. As an Oriental he is charming. It is only when he insists upon being treated as the most easterly of Western peoples, instead of the most westerly of Easterns, that he becomes a racial anomaly extremely difficult to handle. The host never knows which side of his nature is going to turn up next.
Rudyard Kipling
Mr Ed: Calling the Bay of Pigs “designed” is giving it too much credit. It was a screwup, which you should always expect from governments. The exceptions are the surprises, not the norm.
mickc: The US put a handful of missiles in Poland, and Iran was the only plausible target for them. There were nowhere near enough to stop a Russian attack, and they were on the wrong trajectory besides (since most would fly over the pole, not across Europe). And yes, Poland is a good site – the shortest route from Tehran to NYC goes almost exactly over Poland. As for Mearsheimer, “Putin’s Russia will act aggressively” is not exactly a super-impressive prediction.
Tim the Coder: Yeah, Europe has really dropped the ball on energy independence in the last month. It’s been better than I expected, tbh, but still grossly insufficient. As for the destructive radii of nukes, though, you’re off by orders of magnitude. https://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/ is a really good tool for this. A 15MT bomb has a radius of 3-4km of total destruction, 7km of destroying most buildings, and 50km of breaking windows. Drop one over downtown Manhattan, and you’d expect buildings to start surviving in useful numbers by the time you get up to Central Park. Don’t get me wrong – that’s still really nasty – but it does demand that you hit the right city.
As for your claims on ABMs, you’re asusming that it is aimed at Russia. Against Russia, they’d never buy enough missiles to stop even 9% of the launches, never mind 99%. But against Iran, who might only have a few missiles? 99% on the first ten that get fired(after which you’re out of counter-missiles) sounds like a very good investment to me. And yes, they can put them on a container ship, but that gives your border security a chance to stop it, and gets them to use less damaging groundburst attacks. A 100kt groundburst in Manhattan would kill just over 400k people, but an airburst would be closer to 600k. So it still does harden you a bit.
Jonathan Pearce
You make my point precisely…become a member of NATO and the USA will put missiles in your country…exactly what Russia doesn’t want in the Ukraine, as the USA didn’t want in Cuba…
Alsadius
And you think Russia would believe that? Or the USA couldn’t put more missiles there?
And Mearsheimer’s not super impressive prediction obviously wasn’t shared by the policy makers in the USA…or was it but they didn’t care?
mickc, but as I pointed out Ukraine was not going to be admited to NATO and everyone including Putin knew it.
The US is physically capable of placing more missiles there, but the costs to deal with Russia’s arsenal would be prohibitive even for the US – these are not cheap systems. And again, the location makes no sense. They’d mostly be in northern Canada if the target was Russian missiles that were aimed at the US.
As for Mearsheimer, everyone and their dog knew that Russian attack was a possibility. The CIA was basically live-streaming the preparations and schedule to the world – someone who watched CNN last month knew more about the impending attack than the actual soldiers tasked with carrying it out. That was the most blatant example in the short term, but even in the longer term, this is why giving Javelins to Ukraine was such a huge issue several years ago. An attack was a very real risk, and helping them to defend themselves was an obvious consideration.
I haven’t read all the comments, so I apologise if others have pointed this out already. But this statement is untrue:
Not only did the Soviets have ICBMs, they used modified versions to put first Sputnik, then a dog, then a man into space while the Americans were struggling to get their rockets off the ground. Yuri Gargarin’s launcher would undoubtedly qualify as a delivery system for an ICBM.
As I understand the Cuban problem, it was the shorter warning time of IRBMs from launch to target which provoked President John F Kennedy.
Now this error may not detract from the overall reasoning, but it does make me worry about the accuracy of things I haven’t checked. And an attempt to downplay Soviet rocketry achievements in the 1955-1962 period is poor propaganda!
Stephen William Houghton
At the 2008 Bucharest NATO Summit it was stated “Georgia and Ukraine will become members”….
It really doesn’t get much clearer than that, does it?
It is the ‘right’ version of the ‘left’ who constantly attribute Islamic terrorism to social inequality, climate change, toxic masculinity, anything except the stated reasons given by actual Islamic terrorists.
Writes Perry. Yup. I’ve noted before that between Candace Owens, and Jeremy Corbyn, there’s not all that much difference on certain issues.
The US put a handful of missiles in Poland, and Iran was the only plausible target for them. There were nowhere near enough to stop a Russian attack, and they were on the wrong trajectory besides (since most would fly over the pole, not across Europe). And yes, Poland is a good site – the shortest route from Tehran to NYC goes almost exactly over Poland.
Indeed.
MickC, your reasoning remains off. The West already had lots of missiles that could hit Russia; it had Polaris subs, Trident subs, B-52 bombers, Vulcans, god knows what else. What would a few added ones in Poland make in terms of a difference to the security of the Kremlin? By contrast, when Russia surreptitiously (and that is important, although it was later blown by the U2 photos) put missiles in Cuba, it was designed to radically alter the equation, and it did so.
The Russian invasion of Ukraine can hardly be excused because Putin is scared. Russia has faced Western nuclear deterrence for decades; the prospect of a new NATO member being able to come under that umbrella simply means fewer countries for Putin to mess with. I call that a win.
Jonathan Pearce
I am not excusing Putin’s actions…far from!
I am explaining them and particularly how they could have been avoided. Ukraine should have been encouraged to accept neutrality…it hasn’t done Sweden any harm. And things change…even Russia would have changed…no chance of that now!
Except that Mearsheimer was predicting this years ago, watching the relentless boneheadedness of the West.
As I wrote earlier:
This is not about Ukraine being ‘neutral’, it is about Ukraine at the very least becoming a repressive client-state of Moscow like Belarus. And how do we know? Vlad Putin has repeatedly told us over the years, that is how we know. NATO & EU membership was a second order issue in that it would have precluded that.
Following Perry’s point, it is worth noting that a reason why Finland, for example, accepted neutrality was that when Stalin launched his “Winter War” invasion of Finland, the Finns fought bravely, beating back a Red Army whose officer corps had been wrecked by the various purges. Sheer weight of numbers forced Finland into a ceasefire, and some territory was lost. That “neutrality” was under duress. I suspect that Ukraine is likely to end up in a similar situation. Many other nations, such as the Baltics, Romania and Poland, will be even less trusting of Russia than hitherto.
The idea that Ukraine could have thwarted Putin by making big shows of being neutral, a la Switzerland, seems naive.
It really is important to judge people by their actions and explicit rhetoric. Putin was not scared of the West, nor was worried about some missiles in country A or B. He did not want various nations to have any sense at all of being independent from Russia’s orbit. He flatly denies that Ukraine is an independent state, or a country worthy of the name. I am afraid that that is what we are dealing with.
The irony, of course, is that this invasion has reinforced Ukrainians’ sense that they are an independent people, and want to get as far out of the orbit of Russia, and of the Kremlin, as is realistically possible. Who could blame them after this nightmare?
Finland’s post-war neutral status was more a consequence of the so-called Continuation War, which was the Finnish involvement in Hitler’s invasion of the USSR. The outcome for Finland during the Winter War when the Soviets invaded the country was territorial losses. I don’t think neutrality was imposed at that stage, as the Finns became allied with Germany.
Finland’s status an ally of Germany was unusual. It was the only democracy allied with Germany, and was more independent from Germany than other Axis European countries, and its involvement in the Eastern Front more limited (although around three times as many Finns got killed in the Continuation war than the winter war). The British declared war on Finland but the United States didn’t. Anyway, the Finns made a separate peace with the USSR in 1944 and expelled the Germans from their own territory, and so-called ‘Finlandisation’ was an outcome of the post-war peace treaties and Finnish governments having to abide by the terms of them and play a balancing act to keep overt Soviet interference as low as they could get away with.
Martin (March 23, 2022 at 7:40 pm), I offer some minor contributory remarks on your Finnish history.
The 1939 Nazi-Soviet pact agreed that Finland would belong to Russia. Like Putin’s invasion of the Ukraine, Stalin’s winter invasion of Finland did not result in the swift conquest he expected. At first it went very badly – and raised a threat of Allied involvement. (The possibility that British and French troops might just happen to close the Swedish ore mines to Germany while marching across northern Scandinavia into Finland enhanced their interest.) So by the time he had gained the upper hand through allocating an immense superiority in numbers, Stalin was very eager to end the war pro tem, with a view to resuming it once Germany was occupying the Allies’ full attention. So he settled temporarily for annexing Finland’s second-largest city and other territory but leaving the Finnish state still existing.
Finland remained in Stalin’s sphere according to the pact but after the Germans decided to attack Russia they changed their mind about allowing that, since they saw a revanchist Finland as a future ally at the northern end of the eastern front. The Russians became aware of this change – but failed to deduce the reason for it – in November 1940 and thereafter increasingly concerned about maintaining their alliance with Germany, so while they maintained their demand that all Finland become theirs, they did not attack Finland or demand more annexations before Germany (and Finland and Rumania and Slovakia and then Hungary and Italy) attacked them.
As the Finns completed the reconquest of the territory Stalin had taken from them, they came under intense pressure from Britain and the US to stop at that border. When they did not, Britain declared war on them and that fact, together with continued pressure from the US, influenced them (along with other issues – by late 1941 they were experiencing difficulties maintaining the strength of their front-line units from their small population) to make a de facto halt.
In 1942, the Germans planned to take Leningrad with forces shipped north after taking Sevastopol, link up with the Finns and then resume the advance, but soon after those forces reached Leningrad, they had to defeat a massive Russian de-blockading attempt, so never managed to mount their own operation. Hence the Finnish front remained pretty static till 1944, when both direct attack and the general progress of the war persuaded the Finns it was time to seek any exit from the war that let them continue existing as a nation. As you say, neutralisation was part of the terms they were offered – harsh in one sense, but mild by Stalin’s usual standards. They’re not being on any road to Berlin, and their fighting so hard in 1939/40, was probably what persuaded Stalin in 1944 that it was not worth his forcing them to resist to the uttermost.
Just my 0.02p FWIW.