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Andrei Sakharov at 100: Nobel Laureate, Dissident, and Human Rights Champion

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Andrei Sakharov, born 21st May, 1921 in Moscow (Credit: Vladimir Fedorenko/License: CC BY-SA 3.0 license)

The 21st of May 2021 marked one hundred years since the birth of Andrei Sakharov. A Nobel Laureate, scientist, weapons designer, dissident, and human rights campaigner, the numerous labels one can use to describe him pay testament to the size of the legacy Sakharov left behind upon his death in 1989. Many events celebrating Sakharov have been held in his honour, with one hosted and recorded by the Davis Centre for Russian and Eurasian Studies at Harvard University.

In Moscow, however, Sakharov’s place of birth, a planned exhibition celebrating the dissident’s life and achievements, organised by the Sakharov Centre, was disrupted by the state authorities. Though the official reasons cited were conflicts in the provision of necessary equipment with commemorations of the Second World War (usually referred to as the Great Patriotic War in Russia) taking place at the same time, representatives of the Sakharov Centre say they were informed by officials that it was the content of the planned exhibition which meant it could not be permitted to go ahead.

The Russian state would naturally be anxious about allowing a dissident to be celebrated when it is still trying to side-line Alexei Navalny, a contemporary Russian dissident and one of the President Vladimir Putin’s fiercest critics. Though there are differences between their views, like Navalny, Sakharov was a perennial thorn in the side of the Kremlin and the Nobel Laureate’s message on the primacy of human rights is as equally resonant today as it was in the 1960s and 1970s, when Sakharov rose to prominence.

Sakharov’s path to becoming a dissident and human rights champion was in some senses an unlikely one. A member of the Soviet scientific elite and one of the chief architects of the hydrogen bomb, Sakharov could have enjoyed a life of privilege and comfort had he opted to remain uncritical of the Soviet government’s abuses, as did so many of his colleagues. This is the only aspect of Sakharov’s biography, that is his achievements in nuclear physics, that the Russian state is prepared to honour, with Putin issuing a statement celebrating the scientist’s contribution to ‘defence capability and national security’ through the hydrogen bomb’s creation. Not once, however, did the Russian President mention Sakharov’s human rights activism. Though it may be obliged to acknowledge Sakharov’s importance, the Russian state will not encourage celebrating dissidence.

Sakharov’s ideas are actively dangerous to the Putin regime, most famously articulated in a 1968 pamphlet Thoughts on Progress, Peaceful Coexistence, and Intellectual Freedom in which the dissident offered a compelling and original vision of global cooperation. Sakharov turned against the arms race his own work had helped accelerate and argued that respect for the individual’s views and rights by governments provided the sole basis for any chance of a peaceful and progressive future that averted the threat of war. Notably, Sakharov called for internationally binding laws that guaranteed freedom of speech, the protection of the environment, and the rationalisation of international relations through the introduction of scientific methods. Most of all, for Sakharov, respect for human rights had to form the basis of the social contract between the citizen and their government. His pamphlet sold millions and turned him into a figurehead of human rights and opposition to the Soviet state’s abuses.

The Soviet leadership, of course, took a dim view of Sakharov’s activities and gradually intensified their persecution of the scientist until 1980, at which point, following comments critical of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the increasingly reactionary Kremlin decided to place the dissident in internal exile in the closed Soviet city of Gorky. Deprived of all but the most modest means of communication, the Soviet state hoped that the dissident and his wife, Elena Bonner, could be isolated. Bonner was an equally key figure of Soviet dissent and campaigned for freedom in the Soviet Union and beyond. She passed away in 2011 and continues to be celebrated as a champion of human rights.

Despite his persecution, Sakharov’s ideas had a resonance which the Soviet state could not contain. Having already received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1975, Sakharov, even while in exile, continued to resist the Kremlin’s attempts to suppress freedom of speech, and the dissident served as a symbol of hope for those seeking reform in the USSR.

Sakharov’s ideas on freedom were in part taken up by Mikhail Gorbachev, who would attempt to reform the Soviet Union and turn it towards some measure of democracy. Gorbachev brought Sakharov out of exile in 1986 and the dissident became a crucial figure in the efforts towards democratic reform, taking up a seat in a new national legislative body. Gorbachev struggled to enact his reforms effectively and political chaos began to grip the USSR in the 1980s. There were few figures who could equal Gorbachev for stature and political standing, yet Sakharov might have been a stabilising figure for the USSR’s nascent democracy as Gorbachev’s reforms and the Soviet Union itself fell apart during 1990-91. Alas, Sakharov sadly died in 1989, having long suffered with poor health, and the Soviet Union lost one of its leading lights.

Mourners gather at Sakharov’s grave in 1990 (Credit: GeorgeLouis/License: CC BY-SA 3.0 license)

Though his argument on the importance of human rights may not seem as revolutionary as it did during the Cold War, it is partly the veracity of Sakharov, Bonner, and other campaigners that we have to thank for the wide circulation of these concepts today. His ideas also continue to have relevance. With wilting democracy across different parts of the world and growing threats to freedom of speech, Sakharov’s message on intellectual freedom ought to be remembered. Further, Sakharov rose concerns about climate change at a time when the issue was not on many politicians’ agendas. The academician called on governments to take action to reverse the effects of environmental destruction for the benefit of all humankind and his joint messages of respect for human rights, intellectual freedom, and the environment remain compelling to this day.

Sakharov’s legacy lives on the form of a prize in his name, presented by the European Union to cotemporary champions of human rights. In 2020, the prize was received by the democratic opposition in Belarus led by Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, whose ongoing struggle highlights the lingering presence of the type of authoritarianism which Sakharov himself resisted. Remembering him and his ideas this year draws attention to the need to defend those fundamental rights for which he fought, and many others fight for today.

The Old World of Arms Control is Dying

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By Bryce Farabaugh

Military.com, 2021

The future of nuclear arms control is uncertain. On February 3, Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced the 5-year extension of the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START), the agreement between the United States and Russia that limits the number of strategic nuclear warheads and launchers each state may possess. The extension was a welcome relief for those concerned about the fate of the last remaining pillar of the global arms control regime, a system intended to reduce nuclear risks by improving insight, verification, and trust between the two states with the largest nuclear arsenals in the world. As the treaty’s survival was anything but certain under the previous administration, proponents of its extension are celebrating this victory, but such celebrations are bound to be short-lived as looming arms control challenges come into focus. U.S. policymakers are increasingly wary of China’s military capabilities, including its modernizing nuclear arsenal, and both supporters and skeptics of the New START extension concede future arms control agreements will likely need to include China in some capacity. Indeed, if meaningful arms control agreements are going to continue to serve the national security interests of the United States by reducing global nuclear risks in an evolving security environment, it’s helpful to interrogate arguments that were made against the New START extension to explore whether such arguments are likely to be obstacles in future arms control dialogues.

New START is largely a product of the post-Cold War thaw in relations between the United States and Russia. In the 1990’s, as the dust settled from the collapse of the Soviet Union and the United States came to terms with “the unipolar moment,” global nuclear stockpiles were reduced while cooperation on nuclear issues generally increased between the two states.  Cooperative arms control measures between the United States, the former Soviet Union, and others were achieved during this period: the Open Skies Treaty improved confidence and security in Europe, Soviet nuclear weapons were successfully removed from Ukraine, and the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) created an international network capable of monitoring nuclear detonations (among other successes) While there have undoubtedly been setbacks including the US withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty in 2001 and the failure of the US Senate to ratify the CTBT, for a while it appeared increasingly likely that intense nuclear competition between the US and its rivals was a thing of the past. 

Indeed, the crown jewel of the post-Cold War arms control agreements, New START, entered into force in 2011 and was viewed by many as a major achievement in US-Russian relations. Set to expire in February 2021, the United States and Russia appeared unable to come to an agreement on its extension. This fact was somewhat surprising, as New START was widely popular among US nuclear experts. Arms controllers praise its limits on deployed strategic warheads, while counterforce advocates value the verification and monitoring protocols that provide visibility into Russian military capabilities. Likewise, leaders at the highest levels of the Russian Government publicly stated their desire to extend the agreement without preconditions. The reticence by the US to extend New START had been attributed to a host of explanations, but one complaint from US negotiators surfaced repeatedly: the absence of China from the treaty.

The US’s insistence on including China in New START and related strategic dialogues is puzzling for several reasons. First, China is believed to have a much smaller arsenal than either the US or Russia, meaning its number of strategic warheads is already far below the limits of the agreement. Second, China was not party to the original negotiation and had few (if any) incentives to join. And third, Chinese security concerns are very different than the decades-long nuclear rivalry between the US and Russia, etc. This begs the question then that if the US possesses nuclear superiority over China, both quantitative and qualitative, why does it continue to behave as if China is a significant and growing nuclear threat that must be controlled at all costs?

One answer may lie in how humans process information. US policymakers are often students of history and thus rely on historical analogies for interpreting new events. Additionally, behavioral scientists have shown that humans, in general, often rely on information that they believe is relevant for a situation even when the circumstances, parties involved, stakes, and other conditions are quite different, resulting in cognitive biases that can impact decision-making.  In the context of US-China cooperation/competition over nuclear weapons issues, these two facts suggest policymakers may be heavily inclined to view the current situation as a replay of the Cold War between the US and the Soviet Union. This could lead policymakers to mistakenly pursue policies that previously worked for the US despite the drastically different circumstances of the current situation.

This overreliance on the flawed Cold War analogy between the US and China can be seen in statements by senior US officials responsible for overseeing nuclear weapons policy. For example, in May 2020,  US Special Presidential Envoy for Arms Control, Marshall Billingslea, stated that the US is prepared to spend Russia and China “into oblivion” in order to win a new nuclear arms race. Billingslea had also reportedly called Chinese efforts to modernize its nuclear forces “a ‘highly alarming effort’ to gain parity with the far larger arsenals that Russia and the United States have kept for decades.” These concerns evoke memories of the infamous “missile gap” argument that plagued American political discourse beginning in the 1950’s , a myth that still echoes in comments like those of Billingslea and other former officials

In addition to these tired Cold War analogies, theoretical arguments about the structure of the international system may alternatively explain increasing nuclear competition between the United States and China. Under this framework, states are constantly competing with one another in order to achieve national goals, whether supremacy in the international system or narrower goals like regional security or relative gains vis-à-vis competitor states. Nuclear competition in this scenario is largely inevitable as states constantly strive to improve military capabilities. Recent scholars have argued why maintaining a robust nuclear arsenal is important to deter nuclear conflict with a rising power like China or, in the event of a crisis, possess the ability to terminate the conflict on terms favorable to the US. Matthew Kroenig argues maintaining “nuclear superiority” can provide significant utility for the US should such a crisis or conflict occur. Keir Lieber and Daryl Press similarly argue that states may be able to escape nuclear “stalemate,” which suggests that while the US currently maintains a significant nuclear advantage over China, technological advances may erode this advantage and thus some form of nuclear competition is inevitable. Additionally, some US Government intelligence agencies have contributed to this perceived “inevitability” by promulgating largely-unrealistic projections of the growth of the Chinese nuclear arsenal, which further reinforces the US-China nuclear competition framing.

Policymakers’ overreliance on Cold War logic and deterministic structural forces may make the future of arms control look bleak, but students of history would be wise to remember that even during the darkest days of the Cold War, the United States and Soviet Union were able to find common ground to reduce risks and avoid catastrophe. The unfolding competitive relationship between Washington and Beijing shouldn’t be viewed through a strictly zero-sum lens, and cooperation between the United States and China on security issues with global implications must be pursued when possible. With New START officially expiring on February 5, 2026, the clock is ticking; now is the time to get creative and imagine how a new world of arms control can deal with emerging nuclear risks that threaten to erase the progress previous generations worked so hard to achieve.  

 

Bryce Farabaugh is a master’s student at the University of Chicago’s Committee on International Relations and an external representative for Strife. You can follow him on Twitter @brycefarabaugh

Female Suicide Bombers: An Uncomfortable Truth

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By Anne Preesman

Black Widow ready for action (Daily Star, 2010)

In the early 2000s, Russia engaged in a violent war with its southern republic of Chechnya. During the conflict, the Chechen insurgents increasingly resorted to terrorist attacks, the hostage crisis in a Moscow theatre in 2002 being one of them. The attacks were characterised by female suicide bombers who the press named ‘Black Widows’ because many had lost their husbands during the conflict. These women are not unique; other terrorist groups, such as Al Qaeda, also employ female jihadis as suicide bombers.

There is a broad literature on how conflict is related to gender roles; Enloe, for instance, argues in her work ‘Bananas, Beaches, and Bases’ that militarisation enforces the masculine social order. At the same time, we observe that women take over traditionally ‘male’ roles during war, such as working in military factories. However, society tends to be more uncomfortable with the idea of women being active combatants. Elshtain argues that this is caused by the fact that society tends to view women as ‘life-givers’ instead of ‘life-takers’. According to Cook, this leads to women’s roles in war and terrorist organisations not being accurately recognised.
Although women historically played a more passive role during times of conflict because they were often not conscripted, we should not neglect those who were active in combat. For example, the British Special Operations Executive (SOE) sent women to occupied France to sabotage German operations during the Second World War. Female suicide bombers are, thus, not the first women to act as active combatants during times of conflict. Still, female suicide bombers are unique because of their high commitment; they are willing to sacrifice themselves for the cause. The common view of female suicide bombers is that they are from highly traditional Islamic societies where they have an inferior position. Although this piece will focus on Islamic female suicide bombers, it is essential to note that not all female suicide bombers are connected to Islam. Furthermore, the idea that women in Islamic societies have an inferior position is a Western perspective; instead, the Quran argues against female oppression in various verses. 

However, it remains interesting to study if women’s social status pushes them to suicide attacks; therefore, I ask: Does a woman’s place in society push her towards suicide bombing roles?

Although women have been active in combat for centuries, men have actively resisted the idea of using women as a weapon, let alone employing their weaponised bodies as a tactical ‘tool’. It namely conflicts with the idea of women as ‘life-givers’. Using women, however, offers a tactical advantage. Women can pass security checks with greater ease, allowing them to have better access to potential targets. This makes female suicide attacks often more lethal than male attacks. Female attacks also receive more media attention, giving the terrorist group a broader reach. The Chechens were not the only ones trying to benefit from these tactical advantages. One of the first known attacks dates back to 1985 when a teenage girl drove a bomb-laden car into an Israeli defence force in Lebanon. In the modern day, other acts of terrorism committed by women can be found in Sri Lanka, Israel and Palestine, Turkey, Nigeria, and Russia.

In the literature, views on female suicide bombers and their motivations differ enormously. There is the idea that female suicide bombers are ‘failed women’; they are divorcees, infertile, victims of rape, or they lost their husbands, meaning they cannot fulfil their designated societal roles as wives or mothers. This can have two reinforcing consequences. First, these grievances can cause women to commit to the cause and make them willing to participate in suicide attacks. Interestingly, research finds that female empowerment is only a minor motivating factor for women joining a terrorist group, let alone perpetrating a suicide bombing. Second, being more controversial, one could also argue that such ‘failed women’ feel useless in society, making them useful to terrorist groups. These women may feel that the only way to become worthy to society again is by sacrificing themselves. Additionally, because women are hardly ever found in leadership positions, they are ‘replaceable’ to the group and thus suitable suicide bombers. Of course, there are exceptions, such as Samantha Lewthwaite, the White Widow who likely orchestrated the terrorist attack on a university in Kenya. Still, terrorist organisations remain very much a man’s world. 

However, it should also be pointed out that not all female suicide terrorists are necessarily ‘failed women’. We also see highly educated, politically engaged, and/or married women committing suicide terrorism acts. Furthermore, female suicide bombers are not only from non-Western states; Western women have committed suicide bombings too, Muriel Degauque being a notorious example.

In short, it would be incorrect to argue that there is one specific ‘type’ of female suicide bomber. At the same time, however, the attacks also affect women’s roles after they have occurred. Female participation does not necessarily lead to emancipation; instead, suicide attacks can reinforce women’s inferior positions. Although some female suicide bombers have been romanticised, like Palestinian Wafa Idris, most of them are perceived as ‘failed women’ after being involved in terrorism. Palestinian terrorism especially, elevates men but shames women. Thus, women who were unsuccessful in perpetrating their suicide attacks are not only forced back into their traditional roles; their positions are even worse than before they joined the fighting. Finally, it should also be noted that not all female suicide bombers are voluntary perpetrators. Boko Haram, for example, is known to coerce women into committing suicide attacks, although it denies these allegations. For these women, suicide bombings are not a process of female liberation but a method of female oppression and a sign of male domination.

The presence of female suicide bombers shows that women are not only passive actors in times of conflict. However, there is no exact ‘type’ of woman that commits such attacks; different female suicide bombers can come from different societal positions. These women do have in common that their attacks do not elevate the positions of women in their societies. Although some women become martyrs, most societies look down on their terrorist acts. If women were to survive their time in a terrorist group, their positions are more likely to deteriorate instead of improve.

 

Anne Preesman is an MA student taking Intelligence and International Security. She is interested in the role of women in terrorist groups and conflict in the Post-Soviet space.

Capturing the humanity of the Cold War

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By James Brown

A picture taken by renowned Czech photographer Viktor Kolar; his work captured the everyday experience in Ostrava, an important industrial town in communist Czechoslovakia. (Image: Viktor Kolar/Monovisions)

The history of the Cold War has a rich scholarship. The field encompasses International Relations studies, economic history, and, increasingly, cultural approaches, exploring the imprint of the conflict on art, film, and everyday life. Interest in books on the Cold War will likely increase this year as we approach the thirtieth anniversary of the collapse of the Soviet Union. And while narrative histories of high politics and culture no doubt assist in improving our understanding of the Cold War, the works which will be most important as we reflect on the conflict’s legacy are those dealing explicitly with the psychology and human impact of the Cold War. With the rise of China and continuing instability following the COVID-19 pandemic leading to repeated suggestions of the potential for a Second Cold War, most important in our engagement with the Cold War is appreciating the human mindsets which created that conflict, and those which it created amongst people in turn. We need to ask ourselves what led the world to be so divided for nearly half a century, and then how to avoid the same happening again.

Interrogating this aspect of Cold War history is indeed difficult and few authors truly succeed in illustrating the psychology of the era without resorting to cliche. The Cold War was a conflict defined by high politics and domineering ideologies of capitalism versus communism. Writers, especially academics, have found it hard to move beyond these abstractions to capture the human experience of the Cold War.

In this regard, it has been authors of fiction who have often been more successful. The works of the late great John le Carré endure in the popular imagination as among the most defining portraits of the moral compromises forced on individuals by the ideological restraints of the Cold War. Meanwhile, Francis Spufford’s fact-based novel, Red Plenty, gives insight into how Soviet citizens genuinely began to believe that communism’s material promises would be realised under the leadership of Nikita Khrushchev (1956-64). In writing Red Plenty, Spufford, himself acknowledged the difficulties non-fiction authors face in trying to capture the essence of the Cold War’s ideas and their impact on people. He explains how his initial attempts to tell the tale of Red Plenty as a piece of non-fiction fell short and demanded he shift the book to the ‘border between fiction and non-fiction.’

Other Cold War authors, meanwhile, have successfully managed to bridge this gap between storytelling and fact while remaining truer to the latter. Among the most significant are Anna Funder, principally for her renowned book Stasiland, and the 2015 Nobel Literature Laureate, Svetlana Alexievich. These two authors are already widely acclaimed but it feels necessary to revisit their work as we approach the thirtieth anniversary of the end of the USSR, as they capture better than most the human impact of the Cold War, especially east of the Iron Curtain.

Funder’s brilliant Stasiland has been described variously as a personal history and a ‘journalist’s first-person narrative’ that can ‘read like a novel’. The book, through a series interviews intertwined with Funder’s own narrative, captures how the state ideology of the German Democratic Republic created an alternate, corrupt moral reality for its subjects and those who defended it: the notorious Ministry for State Security or Stasi. Funder, however, is not exclusively condemnatory of the former watchmen of state socialism. Her interviews are occasionally sympathetic with former Stasi employees, though without ever failing to address the violations they committed. On the other hand, Funder gives voice to those who resisted the regime and put themselves in extreme danger in desperate attempts to escape to the West. Funder’s main achievement is to shine a light on a society where ideology reigned supreme in a way it rarely does now, while still keeping the human experience firmly at the forefront of her prose.

Alexievich’s works, meanwhile, are less about how people were driven to extremes by ideology, and more about the everyday lives continuing in spite of or in accommodation with ideology. Alexievich’s method sees her conduct interviews with hundreds of witnesses to life in the USSR, focusing on formative events like the Great Patriotic War (1941-45), the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan (1979-89), the Chernobyl Disaster (1986), and the collapse of the Soviet Union (1991). Her excellent Secondhand Time tells the story of the end of communism in the USSR and the responses of its citizens. Alexievich lets her subjects speak for themselves, sympathising with them. What emerges is a portrait of how the Soviet people inhabited a distinct culture of their own in the USSR and that while the political reality of the Soviet Union may have ended in 1991, left behind were millions of Homo-Sovieticus traumatised by the sudden collapse of their generations-old everyday reality.   

If history is about authentically recreating the unique conditions of an era or culture, both Funder’s and Alexievich’s books stand as among the most accomplished studies of the Cold War, even though neither author may be exclusively considered a historian; two other worthy examples are Donald J. Raleigh’s Soviet Baby Boomers and Bridgett Kendall’s The Cold War. Furthermore, both women’s books hold relevance in understanding pertinent contemporary issues in international politics, especially Putin’s Russia and the historical factors which drive Russian foreign policy. 

Modern Russia cannot be understood without an appreciation of the impact on Russian leaders of the loss of superpower status conferred by the USSR’s collapse. Nor can the contemporary rise of the far-right in the east of Germany be understood without knowledge of East German history. Throughout the 2010s, and now in the first years of the 2020s, observers have continued to speculate whether we have entered a new Cold War-style period of international relations. Understanding the human experience of the original Cold War seems a more important exercise than ever as we prepare ourselves for the new era, whatever it brings, and Funder and Alexievich offer the best place to start.

 

James Brown is a PhD candidate in history at Northumbria University. His focus is on Soviet dissidents and their use in the politics and international relations of the Cold War. He previously studied at Glasgow University, doing a Master’s in East European, Russian, and Eurasian studies. During this time he studied Russian and wrote his thesis, ‘Returning to Machiavelli: Giving Belarus-Russia relations the Original Realist Treatment’, which received the prize for best dissertation from the Centre for East European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies at Glasgow.

At Northumbria, he is a member of several research groups, including the Conflict & Society and Histories of Activism groups. James also has a keen interest in literature, especially Czech writers, and had a poem on Jan Palach published in Edge Magazine. Additionally, he remains interested in the Chernobyl disaster, on which he wrote his undergraduate thesis, ‘A Long Half-Life: Responses to Chernobyl in Soviet and Post-Soviet Society’.

The Overextension of Sovereignty: How states have dampened opposition to annexation

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by Andrew Scanlon

Kremlin Dome of Senate. Photo Credit: iStockPhoto.

In the twenty-first century the calculation that war is too costly to pursue in the conventional manner has kept large scale inter-state conflict from occurring. States are no longer willing to send tanks rolling across borders to invade neighboring countries. The military, economic, and political cost/benefit analyses simply do not justify those actions in the present state of international relations. Yet, this does not cure a state’s appetite to expand its control in favor of pursuing its national interest. However, it does shift the strategy used to expand its presence. The use of proxies to engage on behalf of a state has been documented in conflicts such as the ongoing war in Yemen. A number of states utilize this strategy to pursue plausible deniability. An alternative method to mollify the international community over aggressive actions has been increasing in prevalence – extending sovereignty over peoples or structures outside of their present jurisdiction in order to more forcefully justify the aggressor’s presence. By over-extending their claim of sovereignty, these states attempt to shift the perception of their actions from aggressors to defenders and dampen any possibility of a united front willing to confront their activities. We have seen this strategy play out in Crimea and eastern Ukraine under President Vladimir Putin in 2014, and more recently in the South China Sea and the Himalayas by President Xi Jinping.

The Russian case in Ukraine

The Russian Black Sea Fleet’s continued access to naval bases in warm-water ports in Crimea and Russia’s support for the fiercely pro-Russian Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych were national interests, but a traditional military incursion into Ukraine would have triggered costly consequences. Instead, Vladimir Putin began using rhetoric related to the protection of ethnic Russians in Crimea and eastern Ukraine. Following violence in Kiev, Putin declared that “We understand what worries the citizens of Ukraine, both Russian and Ukrainian, and the Russian-speaking population in the eastern and southern regions of Ukraine… we retain the right to use all available means to protect those people. We believe this would be absolutely legitimate.” After mass protests in Kiev and the formation of pro-Russian separatist militias in Ukraine, Putin used the doctrine of Protecting Nationals Abroad (PNA) as justification for sending military supplies to separatists and deploying “little green men” into Crimea and eastern Ukraine. But many of these people Putin claimed to protect were not citizens, but merely ethnic Russians or Russian-speaking peoples. Whether the doctrine of PNA is lawful or simply tolerated, its traditional application has been to citizens, not foreign nationals with ancestry to the state utilizing the doctrine. Nevertheless, in 2019, Putin issued a decree allowing close to 3.5 million people living in the eastern Ukrainian regions of Donbass and Luhansk to obtain Russian passports and brings Putin’s actions closer to those previously allowed by the international community.

Putin did not stop at protecting ethnic Russians. He also used historical claims to justify retaking territory. In a speech to a joint session of parliament asking for the formal annexation of Crimea, Putin professed “All these years, citizens and many public figures came back to this issue, saying that Crimea is historically Russian land and Sevastopol is a Russian city. Yes, we all knew this in our hearts and minds”. Russia’s relinquishing of Crimea to Ukraine, in the process suffering a ‘historical wronging’, and its subsequent use as a rationalization to retake territory followed the framework of previous annexations. A number of international leaders compared the move to Hitler’s annexation of Sudetenland in 1938. The UN General Assembly has adopted resolutions urging Russia to withdraw military forces from Crimea and supplies from going to eastern Ukraine. A certain amount of backlash was inevitable following the annexation of territory, but Putin would have been naïve to believe that there would have been silence after such a move. However, other than remarks by world leaders and a number of U.S. and EU economic sanctions, Putin has been relatively free to pursue his interests in Crimea and eastern Ukraine. His use of the PNA doctrine and historical sovereignty over territory allowed him to keep the conflict, and ensuing fallout, below a level of escalation consistent with traditional military invasions.

China’s Mountain and Sea Strategy

While Russia has used the PNA doctrine as justification for interference into neighboring countries, China has used infrastructure. In the South China Sea, the Nine Dash Line asserted by China encompasses vast majorities of the sea that extend far beyond the usual exclusive-economic zones given to each state as a result of the United Nation’s Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). Chinese explanations for this broad claim are based on historical use of the sea by China dating back thousands of years. In modern times, the Chinese People’s Liberation Army’s Navy (PLAN) has been constructing artificial islands in the South China Sea since 2013, allowing them to issue claims of sovereignty over disputed territory. In April, China created two new administrative districts in the South China Sea. This month, China drafted a new law that would expand the Chinese Coast Guard’s ability to enforce its sovereignty over the islands, permitting them to destroy foreign construction on islands claimed by Beijing and fire weapons on foreign ships.

China has now duplicated this strategy on land. In recent weeks, China completed the initial construction of a new village where the borders of India, Bhutan, and China meet in the Himalayan Mountains. This came after a June border clash in the Ladakh region of the Himalayas, near Kashmir, that resulted in the deaths of 20 Indian soldiers and an unknown number of Chinese casualties. The new Chinese village is reported to be constructed within the territory of Bhutan, just south of the Doklam Plateau. Bhutan and China have been engaged in territorial disputes for nearly 35 years, much of which is focused on the western regions of Bhutan. The Doklam plateau is strategically significant for India’s continued access to its eight northeastern states, as well as their land borders with Bhutan and Myanmar. Under Chinese control, they would have the ability to block this access. The new Chinese village may only be the first in a series, much like the artificial islands, that would give China anchor points to protect the ‘sovereignty’ of Chinese territory or peoples.

These anchor points are core components to the strategy of Chinese expansion. States, including Australia, Japan, Vietnam, and Malaysia, are concerned with a resurgent China, its brazen aggression, and the potential of forceful annexation of territory. These fears present a major diplomatic challenge to China’s longer-term strategy. [[i]] Therefore, China has attached rhetoric to provocative actions in an attempt to alleviate concerns over their rise, engaging in a “rhetorical trap”. China has used rhetoric such as ‘China’s peaceful rise’ to assuage fears over actions that would otherwise seem more hostile. The rhetoric emphasizes the protection of sovereign entities, instead of engaging in military conflict on existing territory of sovereign states. This rhetoric has typically been utilized around actions in the South China Sea, but Beijing may begin using similar terminology regarding its efforts in the Himalayas.

Both the Russian and Chinese strategies are aimed at expanding territorial control without the stigma or risk of conventional conflict over existing territory, structures, or peoples. This shifts the conflict from a conventional military one to a more hybrid model that incorporates higher levels of rhetoric and international public opinion. Both the Russian and Chinese approaches try to build a framework that give them a defensive right to use force instead of an aggressive seizure of territory. While these strategies have allowed Russia and China to extend their ambitions over neighboring territories, how long will it take for their neighbors, and world leaders, to effectively respond to these enigmatic strategies… if ever?

 

[i] For more on the diplomatic challenges facing China in Asia over their renewed presence as a great power, Anisa Heritage and Pak K. Lee (2020) use an international order perspective to analyze the tension in the South China Sea, available here.

Andrew Scanlon is a MSc candidate in International Relations at the University of Edinburgh and an External Representative at Strife. Prior to postgraduate studies, he completed is B.A. in Political Science from the University of Dayton. During his undergraduate, Andrew worked for the Ohio Attorney General’s office and in the United States House of Representatives. His areas of research interest includes blockchain and its use as a tool for diplomacy, the impacts of the conflict in the South China Sea on the current international order, and international political economy.