Thread by @DrRadchenko

This op-ed by @EvelynNFarkas is making rounds: defenseone.com/ideas/2022/01/…. In a nutshell, she argues that the US must go to the United Nations to build a "coalition of the willing" and then demand that Russia withdraw from Ukraine and Georgia or face war.

This op-ed has justly been criticised as out of touch with reality. E.g. in passages like this.

The op-ed has a lot of history. Problem is, the "beginning of the end of the international order" refers to international order created in 1945, which entailed "acceptance of Russian gains," including significant territorial changes. Awful? Yes.But let's not kid ourselves.

I am surprised that Farkas does not know that the world order as it existed after 1945 precisely entailed "spheres of global influence" and "unbridled military and economic competition." There was no world war, only because sane people agreed that a "roll back" was not an option.

We find the same lack of understanding of the international order in this passage. Not only did the 1945 world order entail the division of spheres of influence (we may not like it but it happened) but both superpowers repeatedly used military force to enforce this division.

Consider Soviet invasions of Hungary in 1956, Czechoslovakia in 1968, Afghanistan in 1979, but also US operations and invasions from Iran, to Guatemala, to Grenada, to Panama. Arab-Israeli wars entailed pretty serious land grabs, without the order being necessarily undermined.

Also, before we get too excited about the UN going the way of the League of Nations, let's recall that for most of the Cold War the UN was completely paralysed due to the East-West conflict.

Or take this passage. Farkas surely knows that one of the reasons for Russia's paranoia about NATO was that it was used to violate state sovereignty in the absence of UN authorisation. There were good reasons, we know, e.g. in Kosovo in 1999.

But the point is that the principle is not absolute. International order survives precisely because there's a recognition that different situation require different approaches. You have to have flexibility in the system or it will break.

So at the risk of sounding boring, I would urge against "rallying the global community." In all fairness, the global community could not care less if Abkhazians and South Ossetians live under Georgian sovereignty or as Russia's puppet states.

The global community understand that Crimea and Donbas were unfairly annexed / invaded - but few will join the noble crusade to rescue the long-suffering ethnic Russians in these territories from Russia's monstrous grip.

Look, this is a seriously problematic op-ed. As a historian, as a fellow human being, I am appalled by some of these militant takes (on both sides of the divide). As my favourite French singer George Brassens once put it, "OK, I'll die for ideas but only a slow death."