“Might makes right” has been described as the credo of totalitarian regimes.1 The doctrine was first developed by the Ancient Greeks, “justice is nothing else than the interest of the stronger”….”2
The Russian invasion of Crimea was an audacious example of ‘might is right’. Democratic politicians were paralysed into collusion as they didn’t understand the logic of annexation. They deluded themselves into believing war was history. The lessons of the ferocious 1990s Balkan wars were forgotten.3 Presumably they thought that was an aberration, which could be safely ignored.
Putin paid attention and his invasion of the Crimea was predicated on western flabbiness. It was a triumph for Realpolitik.4
On 27 February [2014], Russian armed forces without insignias seized the building of the Supreme Council of Crimea and the building of the Council of Ministers in Simferopol. Crimea belonged to Russia again.5
The annexation took two days. Britain’s William Hague said
‘This action is a potentially grave threat to the sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity of Ukraine. We condemn any act of aggression against Ukraine’. (my emphasis)
Hague’s ‘potentially grave’ remark is supine. It mirrors Hitler’s contempt for Chamberlain who he described as a ‘worm’ in 1938,
He [Hitler] told me [Chamberlain] privately….. that after this Sudeten German question is settled, that is the end of Germany’s territorial claims in Europe. 6
Hague’s ‘potentially grave’ remark was Britain’s response to the invasion of a European country. Hague didn’t advise against British participation in the Olympic Games in Sochi even as the invasion was taking place in Crimea. Presumably he didn’t want to inconvenience athletes who’d trained hard. Britain, Europe and the USA imposed sanctions, which are notoriously ineffective. Putin had called the West’s bluff.
Although this wasn’t 1930s appeasement, it was close. Putin concluded the West would think that the Russo-Ukraine conflict was a, “….quarrel in a far away country between people of whom we know nothing.7 A few months later Putin’s campaign to annex eastern Ukraine began leading with inexorable military and political logic to the 2022 invasion.8
Notes
1 Might makes right – Wikipedia
2 loc.cit.
3 Balkans war: a brief guide – BBC News
5 Russia’s 2014 invasion of Crimea – a short history | Sky HISTORY TV Channel
6 Neville Chamberlain – Wikiquote
7 loc .cit
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