Questioning the New Cold War narrative on the Russia-Ukraine War

Anatol Lieven takes on the New Cold War hawk narrative about the Russia-Ukraine War in a critique of a recent piece by Anne Applebaum and Jeffrey Goldberg. The Applebaum-Goldberg essay¹ is from The Atlantic, which has generally promoted hawkish views on the war, and the essay is currently behind subscription. The Democracy Digest of the National Endowment of Democracy (NED) that enthusiastically promotes “color revolutions” appears to be enthusiastic about the Applebaum-Goldberg piece.²

Lieven notes:

Much of the essay is based on an interview by the authors with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. Nobody should blame President Zelensky for exaggerations and evasions. They are his duty. As Winston Churchill famously said, “In wartime, the truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies.” One can however blame U.S. journalists for publicizing such statements with no attempt at checking.³

It’s grim to think that heads of governments have a duty to lie. But sometimes they do, especially in the case of espionage operations and military secrets. Many of their lies, of course, are not done with such high-minded motives.

Lieven summarizes their arguments as having three parts:

1. It’s a war of Good vs. Evil, the familiar litany of which many American foreign policy wonks are far too fond. Lieven notes pointedly, “And as a former Israeli guard in a prison camp for Palestinians, Goldberg himself should certainly know that when it comes to counter-insurgency, the lines between democracies and dictatorships can be very blurred indeed.”

2. Ukraine is a “domino” just like Vietnam was supposed to be decades ago. The fact that a theory like the Domino Theory - or, really, a metaphor - has been discredited doesn’t disqualify it from being recycled in support of new wars. Or in support of threat inflation.

3. Ukraine and the West have to reconquer Crimea as part of the current conflict.

It’s worth noting on the good-vs.-evil position that the lead article in the current issue of the NED’s publication Journal of Democracy declares, “If Ukraine has become the beachhead for global democracy, then Russia is the vanguard of modern autocracy.”⁴

In the Democracies vs. Autocracies framing that even the Biden Administration is unfortunately using, that means Ukraine is unambiguously Our Side and Russia is undoubtedly the head of the Evil Empire. Or whichever other tired cliches we want to use. Unless such formulations are carefully questioned and defined, they are almost by definition threat inflation. What New Cold War zealots mean by phrases like “beachhead for global democracy” and “ vanguard of modern autocracy” may be something very different than what ordinary voters may assume.

Also, isn’t Russia’s senior partner China supposed to be the Vanguard of Modern Autocracy for the US in the Democracies-vs.-Autocracies outlook?

Lieven cites a quote they provide from Ukrainian President Zelenskyy himself in support of the Ukrainian Domino Theory:

If we will not have enough weapons, that means we will be weak. If we will be weak, they will occupy us. If they occupy us, they will be on the borders of Moldova and they will occupy Moldova. When they have occupied Moldova, they will [travel through] Belarus and they will occupy Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia… [T]hey will be attacked by Russians because that is the policy of Russia, to take back all the countries which have been previously part of the Soviet Union… When they will occupy NATO countries, and also be on the borders of Poland and maybe fight with Poland, the question is: Will you send all your soldiers with weapons, all your pilots, all your ships?… Because if you will not do it, you will have no NATO.

This is why it really is important to understand the national-interest motives from which leaders are proceeding. Because, in fact, this statement of Zelenskyy’s is over-the-top threat inflation. As Lieven notes:

Russia has shown no desire whatsoever to invade NATO, and in any case quite clearly does not have an army that could dream of doing so. Russia desires influence over its neighbors, but there is no evidence at all of a plan to “take back” the Baltic States, Moldova, the Caucasus [Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia,] or Central Asian republics [that were previously part of the USSR].

It’s important also to remember that the US and all other NATO allies do have a mutual-defense commitment to Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland. The Presidential administrations that expanded NATO after 1991 viewed adding those nations as almost “freebies,” in that they didn’t seriously think there was any near-term danger of Russian intervention.

But since the conflict in Georgia in 2008, it has been obvious that the expansion of NATO wasn’t a freebie, after all. Ukraine is not a NATO member, even though NATO is supporting it very actively in this war. Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland are NATO members, so an invasion of those countries would put Russia into direct and immediate conflict with the NATO countries including the US. It’s one thing to say that NATO put itself in a position basically requiring them to go to war in that situation.⁵ It’s something else to say that if Ukraine falls, Russia will just proceed to gobble up all these other countries.

When it comes to retaking Crimea, Lieven notes:

Applebaum and Goldberg might have done better to omit the build-up [to this point], because having created an image of the Russian government as insanely reckless, brutal and megalomaniac, they then display a charming insouciance about the danger that faced with the possible loss of Crimea and the fall of his regime, Putin would begin a spiral of escalation towards nuclear war. [my emphasis]

Lieven also doesn’t buy their argument that, in their words, “A Ukrainian victory would immediately inspire people fighting for human rights and the rule of law, wherever they are.”

This is just the same tired old neocon argument used to justify the criminal and disastrous invasion of Iraq, a reverse domino theory. Lieven mocks it: “Oh really? In Palestine, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, Azerbaijan, Kashmir?”

The most optimistic scenario at the moment would seem to be one in which Ukraine militarily retakes all the Russian-occupied territory except for Crimea. And then an agreement is reached to establish a ceasefire and a formal diplomatic process for resolving the status of Crimea. (Both the Ukrainian and the US governments have recently floated just such a scenario.)

Map: Crimea of 2014⁶

But the New Cold War position like that taken by Applebaum and Goldberg sets up a stab-in-the-back narrative. So in case of such a ceasefire arrangement, they can immediately start claiming that it is a disaster. And that Our Side was on the verge of total victory before the wimps and Putin fans backed down out of foolishness and cowardice. Ukraine was on the verge of Total Triumph and the wimpy Biden Administration sold them down the river!

1. Applebaum, Anne & Goldberg, Jeffrey (2023): The Counteroffensive. The Atlantic 05/01/2023. <https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2023/06/counteroffensive-ukraine-zelensky-crimea/673781/> (Accessed: 2023-06-05).

2. Ukraine’s counteroffensive: ‘The choice is between freedom and fear’. Democracy Digest 05/01/2023. <https://www.demdigest.org/ukraines-counteroffensive-the-choice-is-between-freedom-and-fear/> (Accessed: 2023-06-05).

3. Lieven, Anatol (2023): Applebaum & Goldberg: Truth attended by a bodyguard of lies. Responsible Statecraft 05/05/2023. <https://responsiblestatecraft.org/2023/05/05/applebaum-goldberg-truth-attended-by-a-bodyguard-of-lies/> (Accessed: 2023-06-05).

4. Stoner, Kathryn (2023): The Putin Myth. Journal of Democracy 34:2, 5. Stoner’s description of the evolution of Russian governance after 1991 seems more nuanced than the “vanguard of modern autocracy” might imply. But it focuses on the internal changes in governance without describing relevant international developments like NATO englargement, the Bush-Cheney Administration and the threat that Putin by most accounts saw in the “color revolutions” and the fate of Russian allies like Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gaddafi.

5. The NATO treaty does qualify the mutual-defense obligation to be subject to the constitutional requirements of each country. In its wording, the European Union treaty’s mutual-defense provision reads like a more direct requirement to go to war in that case. Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland are all EU and NATO members.

6. Map of the Crimea, 2014. Wikipedia 03/22/2014. <https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Map_of_the_Crimea.png> (Accessed: 2023-07-05).