Opportunities for peace

“War morale forces are to physical as three to one” - Napoleon the First of France.

Putin has committed the class A war crime against peace by launching an invasion of a nation that posed no threat to him. In this, he joins the reviled company of the Japanese Imperial forces (China in the 1930s) and Nazi Germany (Czechoslovakia and then Poland in 1930s). 

Let’s consider some of the wars and invasions the world has suffered since the end of the Second World War.

There have been other aggressions in a category of border wars or invasions of “tributary states”, such as the Soviet Union’s invasions of East Germany (1953), Hungary (1956), and Czechoslovakia (1968), China’s wars against Tibet, India, and Vietnam in the 1950s through 1979, the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan (also in 1979), India’s invasion of Goa (1961), Iraq’s invasion of Iran (1980), The USA’s invasions of Grenada and Panama (1983 and 1989), Rwanda’s invasion of Zaire (1996), Eritrea’s invasion of Ethiopia (1998), and the South African Border War (incursion into Angola, 1975), and Israel’s invasion of Lebanon (1982). These were different from full-scale invasions because one or more of the following conditions applied: 

1. in some cases the invading power was responding to violent attacks from across the border; 
2. the invasions involved locally dominant powers attacking small or weak states recognized to already be in their sphere of influence; 
3. some claimants to authority invited the invasion; 
4. The invasions were only attempts to secure a buffer zone or gain control over land claimed in border disputes, and were not invasions with an intention of taking over the attacked country.

There have been other sorts of invasions that were either wars of conquest or wars for the overthrow of a hostile government.  These would include such invasions as North Vietnam’s attacks on South Vietnam, the North Korean invasion of South Korea, Indonesia’s invasion of East Timor, Iraq’s conquest of Kuwait, the Tanzanian invasion of Uganda, the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia, and various wars between Arab states and Israel.  In the case of Tanzania’s attack on Uganda and Vietnam’s attack on Cambodia, the invasions were practically humanitarian interventions, as the regimes in Uganda and Cambodia were pariah states where dictators engaged in mass murder and depravity that shocked the world.   In the cases of North Vietnam’s invasion of South Vietnam and North Korea’s invasion of South Korea, the conflict arose over disputes of how to handle political arrangements at the end of French and Japanese colonialism. The invasions were resisted in major wars; in Vietnam the North prevailed and unified the country, whereas in Korea the North failed and the country remains divided. 

In the wars between Arab states and Israel, the Arab states were defeated, and Israel continues to exist.  The Israelis captured territory from the aggressor states that attacked it; some land has been returned to Lebanon, Jordan, and Egypt, while some land that had belonged to Syria has been annexed by Israel. Under international law and treaty, Israel has a duty to eventually recognize Gaza and Palestine as an independent state, but Israeli society and governments seem to be working toward eventually incorporating these lands and the Palestinians who live there as stateless persons into Israel proper, much to the disgust of most of the planet. Indonesia’s invasion of East Timor was reversed when Indonesia became democratic and allowed citizens of East Timor to vote for independence. Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait was stopped by an international coalition that defeated Iraq in a war. 

NATO did not technically invade Afghanistan in 2001.  Instead, it assisted one claimant to legitimate authority in Afghanistan (the Northern Alliance) to achieve victory over another claimant to legitimate authority (the Taliban government) in a civil war, which works out as something nearly indistinguishable from an invasion.  

The coalition that invaded Iraq in 2003 despite widespread protests against the invasion (in which I took part) did so with the rationale that the dictator in Iraq had attempted to assassinate a former president of the United States and had acted aggressively in the past against neighbors (Iran and Kuwait), and had committed crimes against humanity within its borders (exterminating villages of Kurdish Iraqis, etc.), and was not being honest about its defense programs. Thus, the coalition claimed it was responding to threats.  The argument that there was a clandestine operation to build weapons of mass destruction in Iraq was a key part of the argument for invasion, but that particular argument was mostly a set of fabrications and lies created by figures in the United States government. The invasion of Iraq was aimed at a replacement of the government in Iraq, and not the incorporation of Iraq into an American sphere of influence, although of course the hope in George W. Bush’s government was that the resulting Iraqi government would be an American ally.  The new Iraqi government established under the protection of coalition occupation eventually asked the USA and coalition partners to remove their forces, and they did, and now Iraq is not quite an American ally.

The American invasion of Panama in 1989-1990 and the invasion of Grenada (1983) were justified by the USA as necessary to protect American lives, protect democracy and human rights, and stop criminal activity.  In the Grenada war of 1983, the USA’s invasion swiftly followed a violent coup in which the previous Prime Minister was executed/murdered, so that invasion had a plausible justification of stopping the rule of an illegitimate ruler and restoring a legitimate government.  

Although not an invasion, American and European involvement in the break-up of Serbia to allow the independence of Kosovo was another sort of military action with problematic aspects.  In retrospect, there is good evidence to show that this was justified on humanitarian grounds, because a massacre of Kosovar people was imminent. But, at the time, the evidence was not so clear, and the intervention was plausibly described as an illegal intervention in the sovereign nation of Yugoslavia (which was really just Serbia at that point).  The United States did not seek UN Security Council approval to intervene to protect Kosovo from the Serbian/Yugoslav government, and so the military intervention was in some sense a violation of international law.  But in effect, it prevented atrocities and massacres.  Like the American-European intervention in the Libyan revolution, there were problematic aspects, but in Libya at least there were United Nations resolutions authorizing intervention. At any rate, in Kosovo the United Nations became involved and essentially became the “occupying power” in Kosovo, so the intervention was not any sort of conquest.

So, in some of these invasions and interventions by the United States, there were humanitarian grounds justifying the interventions, or used to justify them, although their legitimacy is questioned.  Massacres of civilians were actually avoided by the American Air Force’s intervention to protect Kosovo from Serbia. The regime in Iraq was a pariah state similar to the cases of Uganda when Tanzania invaded it or Cambodia when Vietnam invaded it. Serbia (“Yugoslavia”) was also a pariah state during the liberation of Kosovo, given the genocidal behavior of the Serbian government and its proxies in the wars of independence in Croatia and Bosnia. The NATO action in Afghanistan was defensive in the sense that a terrorist group based in Afghanistan had attacked the United States and killed thousands of civilians, and Taliban authorities were not willing to arrest the terrorists, and there was another authority in Afghanistan (the Northern Alliance) engaged in a civil war with the Taliban that had a claim to authority no worse (and no better) than the Taliban.  The invasion of Grenada was made against a new government that had no legitimacy.  The invasion that seems least justifiable to me was the 1989 invasion of Panama to impose a regime change and arrest the President of Panama.  In my opinion, both the 2003 invasion of Iraq and the 1989 invasion of Panama were illegal under international law.  However, given the circumstances (of the governments in those nations being somewhat illegitimate due to the behavior of their leaders), there were extenuating circumstances.  Were I prosecuting George H.W. Bush for the invasion of Panama or George W. Bush for the invasion of Iraq, I’d hope to find them guilty, but only ask for a mild sentence.  I don’t see how those invasions were much worse than, for example, Lê Duẩn’s attack on Pol Pot’s regime in Cambodia or Julius Nyerere’s attack on Idi Amin’s regime in Uganda. Unfortunately, what came later in Iraq, with total American incompetence and the barbaric brutality of Iraqis directed against each other, resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths, and likewise the war against the Taliban in Afghanistan that NATO and the Afghan government conducted sometimes killed more innocent civilians than the Taliban terrorists did. All that is to the enduring shame of the United States.

Putin’s invasion (or perhaps I should say the Putin-Lukashenko invasion) of Ukraine is not really like any of these invasions we’ve had since the end of World War II.

It resembles North Korea’s invasion of South Korea.  In the Korean case, both sides agreed that there was a single country of Korea, but the North felt the south had no legitimacy, and tried to take over by force.  In the case of Ukraine and Russia, the feeling in Ukraine that Ukraine is part of Russia is a fringe opinion.  Almost all Ukrainians believe themselves to be Ukrainians and citizens of an independent country (as in the Republic of China / Taiwan). Already some areas that were more dominated by Russians have left control of Kyiv and exist as parts of Russia or Russian protectorates.  Since the 2014 Russian invasions of Crimea and some eastern regions of Ukraine involved the liberation/capture/conquest of areas where Ukrainian identity was weak and Russian loyalties were strong, the resulting international sanctions were not especially harsh.  Russia had a point.  It should have offered some sort of arrangement to Kyiv to get Crimea back and tried to negotiate new mutually-agreed borders, but it didn’t. Had Kyiv allowed a referendum in the Crimea and some eastern provinces, perhaps the result would have been like the voting that led to the creation of South Sudan or the independence of East Timor, and a democratic process might have given us the same result we had after Russia’s invasion. The plebiscite in Crimea after Russian occupation was probably not a fair process, but there clearly was a widespread feeling of accommodation to the situation on the ground among the population in Crimea. 

There are similarities between Russia’s portrayal of its invasion of Ukraine with the USA’s justifications for its invasion of Panama, Iraq, and Grenada.  In those cases, the USA argued that the governments of the nation it was invading were either:
a) illegitimate;
b) threatening the USA or world peace; or
c) monstrous governments that were committing atrocities and should be stopped. Russia has made all these claims against Ukraine.  However, Ukraine held an election in 2019, and it was widely observed by independent outside observers, who described it as reasonably fair, and the current leader won a victory by a wide margin.  There are no serious or significant human rights abuses in Ukraine, and certainly far fewer than in Russia or Belarus. Ukraine is not threatening its neighbors. Putin’s claim that the war he has launched on Ukraine is defensive doesn’t have much merit.  The best point he can make is that someday Ukraine may join NATO, as it clearly wants to do, and NATO poses a threat to Russia.  But, NATO is a defensive alliance, and has only been engaged in two wars, and these were the Afghanistan civil war where it took the side against the Taliban because the Taliban nurtured and protected a terrorist group that attacked a NATO member, and the civil war in the former Yugoslavia, where the government in Belgrade had recently committed or supported war crimes, and was preparing to commit more atrocities in Kosovo. NATO would not attack Russia, as such an attack would trigger World War III and a possible nuclear holocaust, but also because NATO is not interested in conquering other countries; it’s a defensive treaty organization.  Russians who are fair-minded and rational and have read news and analysis from outside the government-sponsored Putin-controlled media within Russia are not at all threatened by NATO. 

What especially disgusts me are Russia’s useful idiots who explain how America is at fault.  They present many truthful and accurate accounts of America’s stupid foreign policy and lack of creativity and various horrible things America has done, which is all well and good, but they mix into this some of the lies that Putin uses to justify his war crimes. For example, some stupid leftists and greens claim that the 2014 revolution of dignity in Ukraine was a “coup” led by “neo-nazis” and funded by the United States.  It’s a typical lie with a germ of truth to it.  The Revolution of Dignity involved protestors being massacred by police who defended the Ukrainian political leadership, and the massacre was a key moment in mobilizing opposition to the leadership. The massacre was sparked by (probably) some shooting initiated by far-right nationalist militants.  And, far-right nationalist militants did take part in the revolution.  But, the revolution was a mass movement and the far right was only a fringe element of it (despite maybe being critical in sparking the massacre that catalyzed the opposition).  In recent elections in Ukraine, the far right nationalists and neo-Nazis had a party, and they received about 2% of the vote, which is significantly less than similar parties receive in Germany, Denmark, France, the UK, and so forth. Ukraine has been found to be among the least anti-semitic nation in Europe.  The 2019 election was legitimate. Neo-nazis aren’t running Ukraine.  When people mix in lies and half-truths to mislead, they undermine everything else they say.  So, when someone I know (Jill Stein, I’m talking about you) mixes in these lies with her many valid criticisms of American foreign policy and how American actions have led us to this point, they undermine the credibility of the left, the greens, and give people an excuse to reject all the valid and true things said about American failure in its diplomacy. 

Putin has pointed out that NATO and the USA have done several stupid things. As is clear now, America and Europe failed to set up a new system of peace and global security in which Russia could participate. We had an opportunity to create such a system to more vigorously prevent war and assure security, and we didn’t do it  But, complaining that democratic countries have failed to set up a global security system that can allow all nations to feel unthreatened by war cannot be a justification for demonstrating this blunder by threatening war and then invading a neighbor that was not threatening Russia. And, Russia could have taken the lead in creating a new global security order. 

The United Nations can’t prevent this sort of thing, mainly because five aggressor countries including a few of the most aggressive and violent (USA, Russia, and China) have veto power.  The United Nations needs a supplemental organization that can enforce peace.  There are already some proposals for mass alliances dedicated to democracy and peace.  These include the Copenhagen Charter for an Alliance of Democracies, The Coalition for a World Security Community of Democratic Nations, and the Alliance of Free Nations proposed by the Atlantic Council (not the right-wing Israeli so-called “Alliance of Free Nations”, which is something entirely different).  I won’t say anything against these ideas, because they are good in general. However, I am suggesting we need something with wider participation; something open to non-democratic countries, since it is they we most badly need to constrain, and assuring them of their security is one good way to constrain them.

Rather than just an alliance of many countries, I propose a compact of nearly all countries.  The principles would be simple and basic: the compact stands for:

1. No invasions of legitimate states
2. Even if a state is illegitimate, military interventions require broad global support and should have limited missions of preserving peace and allowing the establishment of a legitimate government
3. No threats of invasion or military action against legitimate states
4. All members of the compact will act as one, inflicting total economic, financial, and cultural isolation of any state, whether a member of the compact or not, that violates the principle of no invasions.
5. All members of the compact will also cease all economic, financial, or cultural exchange with any nation that breaks the embargo on a state that has invaded another.
6. All such embargoes will only end when an invasion or occupation has ended and government and military leaders who conducted the invasion or occupation have resigned or otherwise been replaced.
7. All military and government employees in states that are members of the compact promise or swear to uphold the two critical principles of the compact: 1) no invasions unless authorized on humanitarian or self-defensive grounds by the compact members states, and 2) no trading, financial exchanges, or cultural exchanges with any state that violates the “no invasions” principle or any state that defies the embargo on a state that has violated the “no invasions” principle.  These commitments command higher loyalty than any other claim on loyalty or obedience to legitimate authority.  In other words, loyalty to peace and obedience to the Peace Compact is the highest loyalty and authority in humanity.
8. the compact is only created to prevent war and invasions and attacks.  The compact cannot be expanded into other realms, promoting particular types of government, or anything outside its duties of determining whether a state has invaded another state, whether a state has a legitimate government, whether a state may be allowed to invade on humanitarian or self-defense grounds, whether a state is obeying the total embargo on trade, financial dealings, and cultural exchanges, whether a state has met criteria for no longer being identified as violating the principle of no invasion or the principle of obeying the total embargo against states that invade or states that continue exchanges with an invading state.

Such a compact would be open to even governments as odious as Russia, China (provided it gave up the threat to conquer Taiwan with military force), Nicaragua, Syria, Iran, North Korea (provided it explicitly rejected the idea of reunifying with South Korea through military force), and Afghanistan. It would offer security to all. 

The compact would be a supranational authority to which individuals owed allegiance in just two realms of activity: 1) don’t participate in invasions; and 2) don’t participate or allow participation in any trade with states that invade. In all other respects, nations and their citizens would retain full sovereignty.  

This compact has an advantage in that it is a nonviolent alliance.  No nation is obligated to come to the military assistance of a state that is attacked.  But, every nation must completely cut off and reject all trade with any nation that does attack. 

If such a compact had been created after the collapse of the Soviet Union, and had Russia been invited to participate, perhaps NATO would not have needed to expand, and perhaps the American defense budget would not need to have increased to $700+ billion.  After Putin is replaced, I hope something like this compact will be instituted.  It could even be created now. 

I believe most citizens of most nations, aside from the small fringe of absolute nationalistic warmongering types and ultra xenophobes, are already prepared for such a compact. The whole world was disgusted with the American-led invasion of Iraq.  The whole world is even more disgusted now with the invasion of Ukraine, which is orders of magnitude worse. People are angry, and they want the war stopped.  People are also upset that so many resources are devoted to warfare, and insufficient resources are allocated to better uses, such as achievement of the 17 Sustainable Development goals of Agenda 2030.

And, with this in mind, I wonder if Russia will ever really be able to conquer Ukraine and control it.  The United States and NATO were able to assist in the overthrow of the Taliban authorities in Afghanistan, and the American-led coalition was able to invade Iraq.  But, in both those countries, the governments were widely despised, and the systems of power and control were frequently corrupt.  In anti-democratic societies, loyalty is valued over merit, and so organizations, including the military, tend to be led by persons who are not especially talented or brilliant.  They may be brilliant and talented in sycophancy or how to conduct social manipulation to get into good graces of their superiors, but in actual pragmatic problem-solving, they will only get promoted if they can at least charm their superiors.  In democracies where citizens are still critical thinkers and are able to critique government performance and campaign for different governments if an administration is lackluster, merit will tend to be rewarded. 

Russia may have five or six times more soldiers who can participate in the invasion of Ukraine than there are Ukrainian soldiers to defend, but how good are Russian officers?  How talented is Russia’s general staff?  And, most importantly, what is the morale of the Russian army?  A large number of Russians, perhaps even a majority, do not want an invasion of the Ukraine.  A significant portion of the Russian military must have similar thoughts.  Let us suppose Russia can send half a million soldiers into Ukraine to conquer or occupy it, and 200,000 of those soldiers will be carrying guns or operating machinery that can destroy lives and property, and another 300,000 are in supporting roles, providing logistical support, transport, food, sanitation, intelligence, and so forth.  That is half a million Russian soldiers in Ukraine, and maybe 200,000 of those ready to kill Ukrainians.   As they occupy Ukraine, they find that the Ukrainians are not oppressed, and there has been no genocide.  Russian-speaking Ukrainians are almost as angry about the invasion as the Ukrainian-speaking Ukrainians.  Russian soldiers who notice this will perhaps experience cognitive dissonance.  “We were told that the Ukrainian government was committing genocide and was corrupt, but we find this isn’t true,” they will think.  When American soldiers were in Iraq and Afghanistan, they found that people really were oppressed by the governments of Saddam Hussain and the Taliban.  The Americans were not warmly welcomed, but they were attempting to help local people build up new infrastructure, and some people were willing to work with them.  What will Russian occupiers find in Ukraine?  Will anyone be glad or relieved that they are there?  Will they be trying to set up institutions that could possibly make life better for Ukrainians?  

No, the situations will be different. 

You cannot govern occupied territory from inside a tank or armored vehicle, or hiding in your military base. 

There are probably at least five million Ukrainian men, and probably over a million Ukrainian women, willing and ready to use weapons to kill occupying forces that intend to to impose a corrupt dictatorship on them.  The forces sent by Putin and Lukashenko will never be more than a million, and probably less than half a million, and only a fraction of those are the “front line” soldiers with guns.  They face five or six armed hostile Ukrainians per Russian occupier.  

The Ukrainians are surrounded by family and friends.  They know the land.  They can go to homes and shelters, surrounded by old friends and objects that convey reassurance.  The Russians are away from home.  They were told they were conducting exercises, and now they are invading a land toward which they have no animosity or hatred.  They have Ukrainian friends.  Now, they are participating in a war, and they can see around them the Ukrainians they are killing, and the damage of the bombs their military has dropped on Ukrainian homes.  What sort of morale will they have?

The Ukrainians can emphasize this.  They can try to recruit defections from the Russian military.  They can remind Russian soldiers that this invasion is a war crime, and soldiers have a duty to disobey illegal orders. In addition to the six million or so Ukrainian adults wiling to use weapons to kill occupying troops, most of the rest are ready to verbally insult the occupying forces.  They are ready at every moment to tell the Russian soldiers to go home.  “Fight Putin instead of us.  We were no threat to you; it is Putin who has committed the war crime and sent you here as murderers to kill innocent people before you yourself are killed.”  If every interaction the Russian soldiers have with Ukrainians is either harsh verbal abuse or else gunfire, how long will Russian units maintain their morale and fighting will? 

I opened this essay with Napoleon’s observation that morale counts three times as much as physical force.  The Russian forces have an advantage in weapons and soldiers more than three times over what the Ukrainians have, but once they are in Ukraine and occupying it and trying to maintain logistical lines and supplies, they are outnumbered three-to-one already by hostile and armed Ukrainians, and on top of that, their morale will surely be low, compared to the defiant spirit of the Ukrainians.

So, I do not expect the Russian invasion of Ukraine to be a success.  If Ukraine does not surrender and order all forces to give up and cease hostilities—if they continue to fight, they will win.  The Russians may take the major cities and try to install a government, or they might not even accomplish that.  But if they do win that sort of victory, their occupation is likely to be a disaster for them.  

A better outcome would be for Putin to agree to a cease-fire, and negotiate some sort of an agreement with Ukraine. After the first week of fighting, I expect Russia to have lost more lives of combat troops than the USA did in twenty years of conflict in Iraq and Afghanistan.  As Russians advance, I expect Ukrainians to cut off supply lines, isolate Russian advance units, and when those units run out of ammunition and fuel to run their equipment, they will disappear; surrendering, defecting, or dying.  Russia’s military is not as corrupt as the rest of its society, but it is still corrupt, and I do not think they will be nearly as effective or resourceful as Americans were in Iraq or Afghanistan (and I’m not at all impressed by American tactics or strategies in either place). If the rest of the world completely isolates Russia and uses sanctions harsher than any seen before (because this is an aggression unlike any seen since 1950), and Russia faces the military situation I’ve outlined here, I think someone might get rid of Putin.  

So, we need to think of what will happen in the post-Putin Russia, and what we can do to prevent this sort of thing from happening again.  That is why I think we should consider the sort of International compact I’ve described.