Bringing Russia and China in from the Cold: Lessons from The Great War

It is ironic that, during the centenary of the First World War and a period of declining violence worldwide, as documented comprehensively by Harvard's Steven Pinker (2011) and others (see Goldstein, 2011; Morris, 2014), the possibility of war between major powers is once again rearing its head and in two volatile regions:  The dispute between China and Japan over the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea and the near-war standoff between Russia and the West over Crimea and Eastern Ukraine.  

Early last year, Britain’s Financial Times (FT, 2014) commented that, "While there is no reason to fear that the world in 2014 is on the edge of such an epochal disaster, there are some disquieting similarities between then [1914]  and now." Alliance commitments (The U.S. security treaty with Japan; NATO's Article 5, "all for one and one for all" collective defense guarantee); a nearly deterministic action-reaction escalatory dynamic that renders rational human agency all but inoperable, and the impact of threat-based stress on the complex relationship between the limbic (emotional) and neocortical (thinking) parts of the human brain that, at some critical tipping point, allows the emotional to trump the rational. The insidious result is a self-stimulating, self-perpetuating violent conflict system where it no longer matters who threw the first punch because "conflict-as-process" will have overwhelmed and overtaken "conflict-as-startup condition" as the main driver (see Sandole, 1999, Ch. 6).

These conflict dynamics converge with the results of the classic work conducted on the arms race that preceded the outbreak of WWI by British physicist and peace studies pioneer, Lewis Fry Richardson (1939, 1960). Beyond some critical point of "no return" in the escalation of a dynamic conflict system, a stable equilibrium in the form of a balance of power can shift to an unstable equilibrium which tips over to either -- through positive feedback -- a runaway arms race and the outbreak of war or -- through negative feedback -- a condition of total disarmament, which Richardson likened to "falling in love".

In addition, crisis decisionmaking research tells us that highly stressed participants in a rapidly escalating crisis tend to overperceive threat and, worse, to overreact to it (see Holsti, 1968; Zinnes, 1968). This dynamic appears to have overwhelmed Kaiser Wilhelm when, following Russia's mobilization during the summer of 1914, he panicked over the realization that Germany would likely be forced to fight a two-front war. By contrast, thanks to John F. Kennedy’s reading of Barbara Tuchman’s (1962) classic, The Guns of August, the president was able, in 1962, to deal deftly with his crisis team and Soviet Secretary Nikita Khrushchev and, as a consequence, prevent the Cuban Missile Crisis from spinning out of control into World War III.

 To effectively manage these and other factors as the world gets further into the centenary of  WW1, Gideon Rachman, the Financial Times’ chief foreign affairs commentator,  argued that national policymakers should avoid being impacted by the "Munich mindset" which, in summer 1914, resulted in the macho, nationalistic posturing that helped precipitate the catastrophic war. Rachman’s continuing challenge is that, in some cases, the dominant approach to international affairs is still governed by the "Munich" instead of the "Sarajevo mindset;" for example, the provocative saber-rattling between China and Japan over the disputed islands -- a crisis compounded by the US treaty-based obligation to defend Japan should any of its territory, including the disputed islands, come under attack. Given China's declaration of an "air defense identification zone" over the islands, which clashes with Japan's long-standing similar declaration, plus the potentially disastrous "near miss" in December 2013 between Chinese and US naval vessels in the South China Sea, the possibility of an accidental collision or miscalculation in the East China Sea between Chinese, American,  Japanese, and/or South Korean naval ships or aircraft, leading to runaway escalation, still cannot be ruled out.

Mr. Rachman lamented that the Munich mindset remains so entrenched that a real intellectual shift would be required to change it.  Indeed, as Russia continues to escalate the crisis over Ukraine and its economy deteriorates further, some observers wonder if, through accident, miscalculation or overreaction, NATO policymakers will feel compelled to invoke their Article 5, "all-for-one-and-one-for-all" defense commitment, resulting in an East-West war.  Two former UK ambassadors to Russia, Sir Tony Brenton (2014) and Rodric Braithwaite (2014), expressed their concerns in the editorial pages of the FT by joining with John Thornhill (2014) in declaring that "A settlement with Russia is the only option." 

What would a settlement with Russia look like?  Here, we must consider that since the end of the Cold War, NATO has expanded right up to Russia's borders, absorbing non-Soviet Warsaw Pact states (Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Romania, and Slovak Republic), threatening to embrace Soviet successor states Georgia and Ukraine as well. In the process, Russia has been pushed further to the periphery.  The progressive exclusion of Russia from post-Cold War European security architecture converges with developments in conflict resolution theory informed by research in neuroscience; i.e., a major driver of violent conflict is exclusion from structures that privilege others at ones expense (see Taffel, 2012; Fitzduff, 2014).

A potential solution to the Ukraine crisis, therefore, is that NATO members should negotiate with Mr. Putin a Euro-Atlantic security structure that includes Russia. This is not far-fetched: In December 1991, then Russian President Boris Yeltsin said that Russia's membership in NATO was "a long-term political aim", which was very compatible with Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev’s (1987) concept of a “Common European Home” and U.S. President George H. W. Bush's vision of a new world order with "Europe whole and free." Later, even Russian President Vladimir Putin saw no reason why Russia should not be in NATO.  The implication is, if Russia were inside the house – even as framed nearly twenty-five years ago by Richard Ullman (1991, Ch. 4) as the new European Security Organization --  Russia would have a stake in preserving it, and not what it is doing at present: destabilizing it.

 In addition, building upon recommendations I outlined at the outset of Barack Obama’s first year in office (Sandole, 2010, Ch. 5), the president could embark on a strategic course of action by convening, within the context of the G20, a series of meetings to start the process of establishing more effective global governance.  A global problemsolving regime whose objective would be to tackle the interconnected, intractable elements of the “Global Problematique” (Sandole, 2010) -- prevent or manage crises and address conflicts that, if left unaddressed or dealt with simplistically,  could escalate into global catastrophes. Such a regime would comprise the "best and the brightest" from around the world, including Russia and China: Social and natural scientists, humanities scholars, policy experts, retired military officers and diplomats, former officials, and others would publicize widely and share with political leaders their evidence-based research findings on the etiology and optimal handling of select complex conflicts and other global challenges that no one state or international actor can address adequately on its own (e.g., climate change, environmental degradation, pollution, Ebola, poverty, state failure), but only by “communicating, cooperating, coordinating, and collaborating” among themselves (see Nan, 2003).

 At this point, we have nothing of the kind. We have only traditional, one-dimensional politics and policies, all stuck in Thucydides' (1951) box which continues to reflect the cross-cultural, cross-temporal, near dominance of the core “take-away” from the Melian Debate of 416 BC: "The strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must!" But surely, we now know that that simple but compelling Realpolitik logic has been serially upended by the attacks perpetrated by marginalized and alienated young men and women on the World Trade Center, Pentagon, Bali, Madrid, London, Boston, Montreal, Ottawa, New York, Sydney, and Paris!

One hundred years after the outbreak of the Great War, and more than fifty years into the development of the European Union – despite its manifold challenges, the closest thing on the planet to Immanuel Kant’s (1983) “perpetual peace” – we can surely do better than "sleepwalk" into a replay of the 1914 catastrophic exercise in global carnage and assault to the commons (see Clark, 2012).

NOTE: The author gratefully acknowledges Dr. Ingrid Sandole-Staroste who read and commented on an earlier version of this article.

References

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### Photo - Pro Russian Activists examining an armoured vehicle they claim they captured from the Ukrainian army. Photo: Flickr user Александр Лысенко.