BY PETER HARRIS

Henry Kissinger, the startlingly energetic centenarian, is dead. For those not acquainted with his career, he was the US Secretary of State under Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford and continued to play a key role in foreign policy formulation as a consultant after his departure from high office. Whatever one thinks of his approach to diplomacy during his exceptionally lengthy career, Kissinger was one of the most important influences on American foreign policy and international relations of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

Last year, Kissinger authored an article for The Spectator titled, ‘How to avoid another world war.’ The Spectator republished it recently at the news of his death. The inspiration for it was the Russo-Ukrainian War. As one would expect, it is the mature writing of a man who spent nearly seventy years advising on and directing US foreign policy and is a significant read. His analysis of the causes of the First World War is enlightening and is an ideal springboard into a discussion of whether the conflict in Ukraine is a prelude to World War Three. Rightly, Kissinger argues against the collapse of Russia as a war aim because it would damage the global equilibrium and balance of power. His discussion of the changing relationship between technology and the possibility of global conflict is the crowning piece of his article, though profoundly disquieting. However, his solutions to the Russo-Ukrainian War are impractical in the light of the traditions of Russo-Soviet foreign policy.

When the possibility of World War Three is raised, it is customary for analysts to turn to the First World War and its causes, as Kissinger has done. The parallel is indeed there: no one in his or her right mind would want another world war and no one in that fateful month of August 1914 would have declared war if a prophet, touched by the divine, had sat down with each leader of the great powers and described to them the kind of war they would get. Yet, the Great War exploded across Europe and then around the world as alliances and imperial obligations were invoked and the combatants entered a blood-soaked war of attrition. The fear therefore is that a world war that no one wants might also, through some concatenation of circumstances, erupt with nuclear consequences. Whether or not it helped him with nerve-wracking, hour-to-hour decisions, the fact that JFK chose to read historian Barbara Tuchman’s prize-winning The Guns of August during the Cuban Missile Crisis reveals the strength of the perception that the First World War can function as a stabilising reference point during international crises. That the Cuban Missile Crisis was resolved peacefully suggests that it is more than a perception.

If the Great Powers and their allies blundered into world war, the metaphor that Kissinger turns to as a means of understanding this is historian Christopher Clarke’s image of sleepwalkers. It is important not to press this metaphor too far, however. It is true, as noted above, that no policy maker envisaged the kind of war that the First World War proved to be, but there were national policies that regarded localised and continental wars as desirable. Austria sought the defeat of Serbia whose countryman Gavrilo Princip had pulled off the Sarajevo assassinations in June 1914 in protest at Serbian nationals living under Habsburg rule. Serbia’s defeat would also solve the threat posed to Austrian hegemony in the Balkans by Serbia’s vision of a Greater Serbia. Germany’s ‘blank cheque’ of support to the Austrians in their demarche against Serbia was calculated at preserving its ally from Russian aggression on behalf of Slavic Serbia. But if Russia did declare war, that for Germany was not an unwelcome development. German strategists warned of Russia’s growing military strength made possible by industrialisation. Combined with its enormous manpower reserves, Russia’s rapidly increasing productivity would eventually make it impossible for Germany to defeat it. A war sooner than later with Russia was therefore more than desirable-it was imperative. That decision risked war with France, Russia’s ally since 1894 and the prime source of foreign investment in Russian industry and railways. For that eventuality, the Germans had the Von Schlieffen Plan which had two parts: a holding war in the east against the Russians whilst gaining a quick victory over France and then a counterattack to expel the Russians from Eastern Europe. Germany anticipated that Britain would remain neutral as it had no formal treaty obligations with either France or Russia. In response to Austro-German machinations, France assured Russia that it would honour its treaty obligations in the event of war with Austria over Serbia. Russia had already climbed down in the face of Austrian aggression in the Bosnian Crisis of 1910 and was determined not to do so again. Continental leaders therefore were like sleepwalkers: conscious enough to engineer a war that at worst would be a continental one, but of limited duration, yet unconscious of the fact that the war they would in reality unleash would be four years of unprecedented lethality and destruction.          

Kissinger raises the important question as to whether, now that winter has obligated a suspension of military operations in the Russo-Ukrainian War, a peaceful resolution might be achieved through negotiation. Kissinger is right: if there is any moment during a war when peace feelers might be extended by one or both sides, it is during a temporary cessation of fire. But the settlement he envisages seems impractical when judged within the historical context of traditional Russian and Soviet attitudes to captured territory in the West.

Kissinger’s recommendation is of a ceasefire along the border that existed at the point when the War, which has been going on since August 2014, entered its present phase on 24 February 2022. Russia would then evacuate what it has conquered since, but not the territory that it gained ten years ago, including Crimea. The future of that territory could be settled by negotiation and self-determination through internationally managed referenda. The result of this process, according to Kissinger, would be freedom for Ukraine, albeit at the cost of the loss of some territory and a new international equilibrium for eastern Europe in which Russia would play its part.

The problem with Kissinger’s peace vision is that it fails to account for Russia’s entrenched desire for territory to its west which intensified during the 19^th and 20^th centuries and continues unabatedly today. It is from the west that Tsarist Russia and the Soviet Union experienced powerful incursions that left many casualties and destruction of property in their wake. Since 1240, there have been twelve western invasions, the most serious being the German offensives during the First and Second World War. Twice Moscow has been razed by powers coming from the west: first during the Russo-Turkish War (1570-1572) and second during Napoleon’s conquest in 1812. It came close to being razed a third time by Hitler’s divisions in 1941 and 1942. Russian and Soviet foreign policy has been guided therefore by the need to conquer historically hostile, neighbouring powers such as Poland and to create a series of buffer and client states between the West and Russia’s western border as happened through the creation of the Warsaw Pact after the Second World War and Russia’s domination of Belarus today. With the enlargement of NATO westwards, this need for buffer territory has become of even greater critical importance to Moscow. The absorption of Ukraine into Russia therefore would provide a buffer-zone against NATO on Russia’s southwestern flank. With Belarus securing Russia’s central western flank, the continuing threat to Russia’s security is its northwestern border with Poland, a nation of implacable hostility to its former Tsarist and Soviet masters and a member of NATO with a powerful economy and armed forces. This gap in Russia’s protective shield makes Belarus’ subservience and Ukraine’s subjugation imperative.         

It is this foreign policy tradition that makes Kissinger’s notion that Russia will give up Ukrainian territory it has taken since 2014 extremely unlikely. Territory acquired, no matter how small, is better than nothing to Russian foreign policy makers. Furthermore, this territory has been taken through the shedding of much Russian blood. Putin is content to talk of his people making glorious sacrifices for their country. He is mimicking the language of Stalin who said the same thing about the deaths of twenty-seven million Soviet combatants and civilians during the Great Patriotic War. Stalin remains very popular in Russia for that victory and Putin, who likes to compare himself to the dictator, cannot therefore come away from the bloodletting, albeit on a far smaller scale, with nothing.  

The likelihood of Russia voluntarily ceding gained territory is zero also because Putin does not subscribe to what he calls the rules of the West’s international system dominated by the US and underpinned by the Wilsonian principle of self-determination. For Putin, it is to Russia’s advantage to have what is called a multi-polar world in which great powers have control of their spheres of influence. Ukraine is in Russia’s backyard, is seen historically and religiously as part of Russia and what Russia does to Ukraine is in Putin’s eyes really no one else’s business. This policy does not stop Russia from extending its reach beyond its sphere of influence such as its intervention in the Syrian civil war. But unchallenged influence in its sphere is Russia’s bottom line. Negotiations and self-determining referenda for what is now Russian territory would be rejected outright.

How then might the Russo-Ukrainian War end? Putin is confident of two things: one, a waning of interest in the Western powers to supply Ukraine and two, that Russian resources, both in terms of people and materiel, will in the end overwhelm Ukrainian resistance. Russia will therefore absorb Ukraine. Of course, such a game cannot be played indefinitely without the victory Putin has promised. As has been amply demonstrated by the Soviet Union’s withdrawal from Afghanistan after ten years of occupation, if the occupied nation continues to mount a credible resistance, there are only so many casualties a nation can sustain before the conflict is eventually deemed too costly by the regime that began it. The US had a similar experience of this in the Vietnam War. Even if Putin’s forces capture Ukraine in toto, his troops undoubtedly would face a guerrilla-style warfare from Ukrainian partisans. It is unlikely therefore that Russia will annex and hold the whole of Ukraine.

Ukraine’s Zelensky hopes for the complete expulsion of Russian troops from all Ukrainian territory. That is unlikely to happen without a full commitment of NATO forces needed to penetrate Russian defences, which would become the world war no one wants. As supplies of NATO-standard artillery shells and long-range rocket artillery have dried up due to supplies being diverted to Israel, dwindling reserves in the West and the stalling of America’s $61 billion aid package destined for Ukraine by some Republican senators angry at poor border security, Ukraine’s leaders now speak, not of a sweeping counter-offensive, but of preventing the loss of more territory. An appetite for compromise with the Russians is growing among Ukraine’s population. Forty-four percent of Ukrainians, according to opinion polls, favour negotiations in contrast to the 48% who wish to continue fighting for victory.

The broader context points to a compromise peace also. Russia has gained 18% of Ukrainian territory which is enough for Putin to sell the war as a victory to his people. In other ways, the war has been a disaster for him. NATO has expanded by 1,000 km on Russia’s border with Finland. Europe’s military pending has greatly increased. Europe is no longer reliant on Gazprom for its gas supplies. Ukraine now has the most powerful armed forces in Europe and has demonstrated its effectiveness in striking targets in Russian territory. It makes sense for both sides to hold peace-talks as Ukraine can do so from a position of strength but with Russia holding on to all its annexations since 2014. Like Finland, which despite losing the province of Karelia to the Soviets in the Winter War of 1939-40 brought the Red Army’s offensive to a halt and preserved its independence, so too can Ukraine look forward to an independent future and long-term security albeit at the cost of territory. The border between Russia and Ukraine will remain a hostile one, but that is nothing new in the world of diplomacy. The two Koreas have managed a contested border for seven decades.           

According to Kissinger, some argue that it would be desirable if Russia were rendered impotent by the war in Ukraine. It is unlikely that the war in Ukraine would decisively enervate Russia. The war has ground to a stalemate with no threat to Russian sovereignty, sanctions have hurt but have not crippled the Russian economy and Russia’s gargantuan nuclear arsenal remains intact. Popular opinion within Russia remains by a majority in favour of the war, although there is evidence of division between those who seek the union of Ukraine with Russia and those who seek more moderate war aims. However, Kissinger rightly rejects this option on the grounds that for half a millennium Russia has contributed to the balance of power and global equilibrium. That is true when one considers the role of Nicholas I and Stalin in resisting Bonaparte and Hitler respectively. If Russia were to dissolve into competing territories, such a vacuum of power would enable bordering nations such as China to augment their power through territorial and resources acquisition and upset global equilibrium in its favour. There is the added question that Kissinger darkly notes of into whose hands Russia’s nuclear arsenal would fall.   

Part II is available here.

Peter Harris is the author of two books, The Rage Against the Light: Why Christopher Hitchens Was Wrong (2019) and Do You Believe It? A Guide to a Reasonable Christian Faith (2020).