Crimea: Then I'll Fight You For It
Writing about web page http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-26606097
In an old English story, a tramp was asleep in the grass by a lane. The landowner woke him roughly:
Get off my land!
The tramp replied:
How come it's your land?
The landowner:
My ancestors fought for it!
The tramp:
Then I'll fight you for it.
This story offers a dubious principle and an excellent moral. The dubious principle is that property is theft: no one's claim on property is more legitimate than anyone else's. The excellent moral is that if we lived by that principle our's would be a world of chronic insecurity and unremitting threats in which no one could sleep peacefully.
In that light, here are some facts about Russia.
- Russia's territory covers more of the globe than any other country: more than 17 million square kilometres.
- Russia's land border is the second longest in the world: more than 20,000 kilometres, shared with 16 sovereign neighbours.
- Between 1870 and 2001, the Correlates of War dataset on Militarized Interstate Disputes counts 3,168 bilateral conflicts involving the show or use of force. Every dispute involves a country pair, and the same dataset also registers the country that originated the dispute. Over thirteen decades Russia (the USSR from 1917 to 1991) originated 219 disputes, more than any other country. Note, by the way, that this is not about capitalism and communism; Russia's pole position is the same both before and after the Revolution. Also-rans include the United States (in second place with 161 conflicts) China (third with 151), the UK (fourth with 119), and Iran (fifth with 112). (My more patriotic readers will want to know where Germany stands: lagging behind at sixth with 102). These results are reported by Harrison and Wolf (2012, p. 1064, footnote 29).
Why has Russia achieved this preeminent position in the history of conflict? Here are three reasons.
- Russia is large, and small countries have little weight to throw around.
- Russia has many neighbours, and therefore many opportunities to engage in bilateral disputes.
- Russia's regime has always been authoritarian, with the exception of the few years either side of the collapse of communism, when Russia's borders were able to change relatively peacefully. It is an established empirical regularity that authoritarianism predisposes a state to engage in conflict (the literature is surveyed and also qualified by Harrison and Wolf).
In most of European history, borders have changed through violence. The Eurasian landmass is for the most part a vast plain, with mountains only on the margins, and without natural frontiers. The absence of natural defences other than a few rivers and wetlands has allowed armies to roam freely back and forth across vast distances, killing as they go. European sovereignty was based on possession, and sovereignty changed hands when rivals fought for it.
The stability of borders is a tremendously important condition for economic development. Unstable borders engender conflict, raiding, and killing. Stable borders can be opened for trade and the movement of merchandise and merchants. The goods, cultural values, skills, and talents that flow across stable borders enrich both sides. Stable borders also allow the development of democracy, as argued by Douglas M. Gibler (2007), whereas territorial disputes prevent it.
Russia has suffered terribly from the territorial disputes of past centuries. When the Soviet Union broke up, Russia's new borders were drawn for the most part peacefully. This was a tremendously hopeful omen for Russia's future. Particularly important were the assurances given to Ukraine in 1994: Ukraine gave up its nuclear weapons and in return the US, UK, and Russia guaranteed Ukraine's territorial integrity. It is all the more shocking that Russia has created an opportunity, which it is now seizing, to revise its border with Ukraine unilaterally and by force.
That some Russian nationalists now regret the 1994 agreement is completely irrelevant: Russia gave its word, and so did we.
In the present crisis the issue that should take precedence over all others is the integrity of European borders and the process of adjusting them lawfully and without violence. That should come before everything else, including rights of self-determination and the political composition of this or that government. No good will come of Russia's violation. We all stand to lose by it. But anyone with knowledge of Russia's history knows that Russia, of all countries, has most to lose by returning Europe to the poisoned era of conflicted borders and perpetual insecurity.
References
Gibler, Douglas M. 2007. Bordering on Peace: Democracy, Territorial Issues, and Conflict. International Studies Quarterly 51:3, pp. 509-532.
Harrison, Mark, and Nikolaus Wolf. 2012. The Frequency of Wars. Economic History Review 65:3, pp. 1055-1076. Repec handle: http://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/ehsrev/v65y2012i3p1055-1076.html.
Mark Harrison
17 Mar 2014 12:06
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Tags: History Russia War
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[Skip to the latest comment]Sue
“Russia, of all countries”. Let’s not forget Poland or “God’s Playground” as Norman Davies so accurately refers to it. Perhaps people should look to Poland for inspiration.
17 Mar 2014, 14:43
Mark Harrison
A good point; quite so.
17 Mar 2014, 15:03
Martin K
Mark, if one may ask about your take on the Budapest memorandum which I presume you refer to above. Is it really comparable to NATO Article V? I.e. is it a promise to use military force in case of aggresion, or is it rather a promise to respect simply the territorial integrity of Ukraine?
18 Mar 2014, 17:24
Mark Harrison
Martin, you are right that the Budapest agreement is just a promise to respect Ukraine’s territorial integrity. Unless nuclear weapons are used, iit does not commit the signatories to do anything more than “consult in the event a situation arises which raises a question concerning these commitments.” The appropriate response is not a military one. Still, Russia is in the wrong over this (and the signal that has been given to other small nuclear-weapon states that might in the future contemplate giving up their weapons on great-power assurances is a terrible one).
18 Mar 2014, 18:05
Martin
I think your posts on the current events are very helpful. The issue is what sanctions will have an effect. According to independent Russian media, the decision to invade was probably taken by Putin in a very narrow group of persons from the security services. One implication then would be that economic consequences are either discounted, or not understood properly by them, I am afraid. What are your thoughts on concrete measures?
18 Mar 2014, 19:49
Mark Harrison
I agree that the importance of economic factors in Putin’s calculations is not very clear. Most likely he is a power-builder and so he considers the state of the Russian economy as simply one factor among many in the determinants of Russia’s national power (and his own power as Russia’s leader). As others have noted he relies on the support of corrupt officials and oligarchs who have much to lose, but at the same time they are highly reliant on him for position and legitimacy, probably because he knows where they buried the bodies in the past. In these circumstances economic sanctions can have an effect but are unlikely to be decisive.
In any case, you are suggesting a paradox of game theory. In this view Putin previously calculated the West’s best response in terms of the likely diplomatic and economic sanctions (and no military action), internalized the costs to Russia, and went ahead anyway. If his calculation was correct, therefore, the West’s best response can have no effect on the situation he has created. Only unanticipated Western reactions can change the Kremlin’s view.
This makes it extremely important that the West should not under-react by doing less than Putin anticipated. By the same token it is now desirable that the West should surprise Putin by overdoing it a bit, even if the response exceeds what would have previously appeared to be the West’s best response—in other words, even if the West’s response is quite costly to us (as well as to Russia or some Russians). The reason this is now in our best interest, even if it was not so before, is that surprising the Kremlin will create uncertainty in the Kremlin as to how far the West is prepared to go next time, and will therefore make Putin more cautious.
Unfortunately, the likelihood of a strong Western response seems pretty low. The best we can hope for is that our leaders do not under-react.
There are plenty of expert recommendations as to what the West could do and I do not think I have much expertise to add to them. However, if the West is going to incur the costs of counter-action, one of the best uses of Western resources would appear to be additional support for Ukraine (and Russia’s other neighbours on the Western borderlands). The best answer to Putin is that Ukraine should eventually become a prosperous, stable democracy, even though that will take a long time.
19 Mar 2014, 09:47
Martin
I agree with your take on this, Mark. May I also suggest two other options, which are not sanctions per se (i.e. imposed by the EU/US governments).
The first would be stronger due diligence, which for too long was neglected by bankers and real estate agents in London, Vienna and Paris (to say nothing about Cyprus). This would require not sanctions against Russia, but stronger anti-corruption legislation and enforcement in the EU. For too long have we neglected the costs (undermining of institutional quality) of imported corruption from former Soviet republics and elsewhere. One should also start investigating more closely business practices by Gazprom (on the way) and representatives of Russian oligarchs with EU-country passports or residencies (meaning they can also be summoned to court).
The second option is “doing nothing” in the short run in terms of sanctions, and watch how the market automatically punishes the Putin regime. This option would also entail a new energy policy on the continent; i.e. the ridding of unreliable suppliers of oil and gas. All of this would have effects in the time frame 5-10 years, which might sound like a long time. But we should keep in mind that the current Russian president might be with us until 2024.
19 Mar 2014, 11:07
Mark Harrison
Interesting comments, Martin. Thanks.
19 Mar 2014, 12:56
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