One’s view of the war in Ukraine depends largely on which historical precedent—World War I, World War II, the Cold War, or Iraq and Afghanistan—you think applies.
Michael Brendan Dougherty argues in National Review that American intervention in Ukraine is a “nearly utopian project with obvious, foreseeable risks and potentially ruinous costs.”
Dougherty’s analysis wildly misses the mark. Among his errors: he doesn’t believe the United States has a strategic rationale for seeking to cripple the Russian military in Ukraine, and he believes that by helping Ukraine, we are weakening our position in Taiwan vis-à-vis China.
In truth, of course, Russia has proven, by its actions over the past two decades, that it is an enemy of the United States. So crippling its military in Ukraine absolutely serves the American national interest.
And of course, by aiding Ukraine, militarily, we are exposing—and resolving—problems with our weapons production and supply chain bottlenecks that will redound, ultimately, to the benefit of Taiwan.
We are also learning valuable lessons about what types of weapons systems and tactical approaches might prove most effective at deterring a potential Chinese invasion.
Nonetheless, despite misfiring, Dougherty inadvertently shows how the misapplication of historical precedent has distorted our understanding of Russia’s war on Ukraine.
Iraq and Afghanistan. Although he himself does not explicitly say so, Dougherty, I think, sees the war through the prism of recent history, and specifically, the unsatisfactory American experience in Iraq and Afghanistan. Thus he calls American intervention in Ukraine “a nearly utopian project” that is “peripheral to U.S. interests.”
Of course, that’s how many critics saw and see the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan—as quixotic and costly diversions from core American interests. And the fact that these wars dragged on interminably gives these critics standing in the minds of many Americans who now worry about U.S. involvement in Ukraine.
I do not believe this recent historical precedent is very applicable and for myriad reasons:
Europe is not the Middle East or Central Asia; one sovereign state (Russia) invading another sovereign state (Ukraine) is very different from a civil conflict within one state (Iraq and Afghanistan, respectively); and Ukrainians have demonstrated a fervent sense of nationalism and will to win that was often absent in both Iraq and Afghanistan.
For these and other reasons, the American experience in Iraq and Afghanistan is, I think, an utterly inapt and unhelpful historical precedent—though, to be sure, there are lessons to be learned there.
For example, small numbers of American military advisers and battlefield intelligence can be dramatic force multipliers. That was true in Iraq and Afghanistan, and it is true in Ukraine as well.
(The U.S. military advises Ukrainian soldiers via Zoom or Microsoft Teams; and it trains Ukrainian soldiers at American and NATO military bases in the United States and Europe, but outside of Ukraine.)
Cold War. Another historical precedent that people, including Dougherty, fall back upon is the Cold War. Thus whenever Putin engages in nuclear saber rattling, many Western analysts talk about the importance of learning lessons from the Cuban Missile Crisis and providing Putin with an “off-ramp.”
But during the Cold War, Ukraine was part and parcel of the Soviet Union. Today, by contrast, it is a free, sovereign, and independent country.
The Cuban Missile Crisis, likewise, involved a country (Cuba) that was firmly ensconced in the Soviet orbit. Ukraine, by contrast, is a Western democracy (or aspiring Western democracy) valiantly and heroically seeking to free itself of Russian domination or attempted Russian domination.
For these and other reasons, the strategic and military calculus has radically and necessarily changed from the Cold War to the present day.
Maintaining the balance of power between two superpowers is no longer at issue, as it was during the Cold War. Instead, what matters most is protecting the territorial integrity of independent nation-states like Ukraine.
World War I is another inapt historic precedent. There, competing alliances involving multiple countries led to an unforeseen escalatory spiral that soon engulfed all of Europe, Japan and the United States.
Today, by contrast, Russia fights alone, albeit with the help of Iranian drones. Thus any conceivable world war involving multiple countries would mean only one thing: NATO’s intervention and Russia’s swift and decisive defeat in Ukraine.
Russia knows this, which is why there will no World War I-like escalatory spiral in Ukraine.
World War II. That leaves World War II, which is arguably the most apt and helpful historical precedent for understanding Russia’s war on Ukraine.
Then as now, you had a country hellbent on imperialist conquest and domination. Hitler was determined to establish the Third Reich; Putin is determined to establish a new Russian empire. Then as now the only thing that might stop the dictator is timely Western aid and resolve.
In the 1930s, the West failed and the result was World War II. Today, thanks to the heroic resistance of Ukraine, the West is doing much better; and so, a larger-scale war might yet be averted. Time will tell and we will see.
The bottom line: history can both distort and clarify our understanding of Russia’s war on Ukraine. Not all historical precedent, after all, is equally valid and equally relevant.
Seeing the war through the prism of inapposite conflicts that are fundamentally different leads to misunderstanding and bad analysis. However, similar wartime dynamics from previous eras can be telling and instructive.
Anti-interventionists like Dougherty misfire because they are like old generals who fight the last war. They don’t realize that the conflict has fundamentally changed. The Cold War is over and Ukraine is neither Iraq nor Afghanistan.
Instead, Ukraine is more like Poland or Czechoslovakia in the late 1930s, but with more of a fighting chance if only the West will act with a greater sense of dispatch, or what Martin Luther King, Jr. called “the fierce urgency of now.”
Feature photo credit: Poland 1939, courtesy of Amazon.com.