Ukraine and the Woodrow Wilson Problem

Vladimir Putin currently uses his ideas as justification for Russian moves in the Crimea.  Although the situation is not the same, Hitler referenced the same intellect?  Whose world shaking words served to justify slicing away chunks of weaker states?  Woodrow Wilson.

The end of World War I spelled the end of three multi-national empires, Russia, Austria-Hungary, and the Ottoman Empire.  Each one of these states formed around core ethnic groups, Great Russians, Austrians, and Turks.  Each group established a powerful state that absorbed surrounding territories peopled by different ethnic, linguistic, and religious groups.  Another tie binding the three lay in their belief that they fulfilled the Roman Imperial tradition.  This, they believed, gave them the legitimate right to rule others.

The 20th Century challenged that notion and tore it down.  Long standing dynasties and loose ties to the Roman Empire no longer mattered.  Legitimacy remained a powerful word, but what made a government and its power legitimate?  The Bolsheviks substituted class warfare for czarism and kept their empire going.  The other two broke up.

Austria-Hungary challenged the West.  About 15 different ethnic groups populated the empire and many wanted free of Austro-Hungarian imperial power.  Wilson suggested that the peace treaties ending World War I reorder the world on national self-determination.  No one, however, defined what that meant.  It has remained a staple of US diplomacy ever since, but not without raising puzzling questions?.

Does it mean that each ethnic group has the right to rule itself?  Wilson certainly did not think that extended to black Americans and Indian nations.

Does self-determination require democracy?

Does every group have this right, or only groups large enough to form a viable country?

No one knows for sure and we have made it up as we went along.  This mostly resulted in good results.

But it also provides justification for National Socialists, white supremacists, and ethnic cleansing.  The logic of national self-determination carried to its logical conclusion leads to messy problems, such as Hitler demanding that Czechoslovakia hand over the Sudetenland because it had Germans there.  Of course after World War II, to prevent such a thing from happening again, Czechoslovakia, Poland, and other countries expelled every German from fear of this happening again.  Serbs and Croats later feared the influence of minority Bosnians in their countries and drove them out.

Crimea is mostly populated by Russians, but is under Ukrainian control according to international law.  Putin is, as many have done, appealing to the Wilsonian ideal of national self-determination.  The Russian implemented vote in the Crimea chose Russia (whether or not that was a fair vote is highly debatable.)

Putin has put the West in a bind by turning the ideals of Woodrow Wilson and the imposed treaties ending World War I back against it.  When addressing Putin, the West will have to deal with the hundred year old specter of the idea of national self-determination as well.  Not that it was a bad idea, but a clear definition is way overdue.

Putin, Ukraine, and an Abysmal Failure of US Foreign Policy

It did not have to be this way.

Today, Vladimir Putin's forces hold the Autonomous Republic of Crimea, part of the sovereign nation of Ukraine.  Barack Obama looks weaker than ever, his presidency's previous shambles even look good by comparison.  Pundits decry the loss of US influence.  The stark truth is that there is little that the United States can do to alter the situation.

But why?

First, Putin actually has defensible reasons to enter Ukraine.  This is not to say that he could not have achieved better results with a less dramatic move.  But a border country approaching chaos gives Russia a powerful excuse to protect Russian ethnics and Russian facilities there.  What if Mexico devolved even more into violence and instability?  At some point in the near future, US forces may have to occupy parts of that country to bring stability and protect Americans living there.  Before criticizing others, a nation must consider what it would have to do in a similar situation.

The West failed in Ukraine because the United States abdicated its role, dating back to the Treaty of Versailles, to bolster free societies and free markets around the globe.  US policy has, at times used the Franklin Roosevelt philosophy of "he's a sonofabitch, but he's our sonofabitch" in backing friendly authoritarian regimes.  But the overall goal has always been transition into free societies with economic opportunity.

That does not happen by dumping money or bombs on a nation.  It comes from a consistently articulated vision by the US foreign policy establishment that natural rights, free markets, rule of law are essential to human happiness and world peace.  Praising democratic friends, such as Britain and Israel, helps to broaden the "city on the hill" ideal articulated by Democratic and Republican presidents alike in different ways.

The vision does not just come from talking about freedom.  Diplomatic, other government, and private groups must engage fragile societies to help educate and develop faith in the essential aspects of freedom and prosperity.  Internationalize the values that Americans and others take for granted.

Instead, Obama tore apart the fabric.  He blamed the United States for the trouble in the world, never realizing that wise use of American power and influence more often puts us in the referee role.  We are keeping more conflicts apart than anyone realizes.  Until the influence and respect dissipates and the world runs riot.

We are not the world's policeman, nor should we be.  But constant engagement of rhetoric, policy, and economic influence has helped to keep the world at peace.  Obama could not see the overall benefit of US power, only the rare times that it has not turned out right.  He tore it down and now instability hits one country after another.

Power seeks a vacuum,  Obama created one.  Putin and China have been happy to step in.

And so you get what we had here last week.  Which is the way he wants it.

As for Putin, he is more Bismarck than Stalin.  He's willing to bend his own region to his economic and security goals, use social issues to rally his supporters and alienate his political opponents.  Russia's sudden worry about gays smacks of Bismarck's kulturkampf against political Catholics.  But Bismarck did not want to completely revise the international system, just strengthen Germany's position within it.  The Russian Czars acted in the same way.  Russia traditionally seeks security on its borderlands and will aggressively move to ensure it.

Had the United States remained engaged in Ukraine and kept its near century old commitment to supporting freedom, that country may have solved its own problems.  It may have remained solid enough to deter Russian fears or thoughts of aggrandizement.

China is more worrisome for a number of reasons.  As is Iran.  Both countries have more revisionist fantasies.