Jason Fields, deputy editor
Thu, February 24, 2022,
President Biden. Illustrated | Getty Images, iStock, Library of Congress
Every major war in Europe since 1914 has involved an initially reluctant United States: World War I; World War II; the Cold War; the Bosnian War. As Russia invades Ukraine and men, women, and children die, we have to ask the question: Can America avoid the fight?
The U.S. is always late for the party: appearing in the final months of the first World War after much of the carnage was done. Sitting out WWII for more than two years before being drawn in by an attack on the homeland by the Japanese. And again in Bosnia in the 1990s, when the U.S. led airstrikes against the Serbs after they slaughtered more than 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys at Srebrenica.
There's an argument to be made that both WWI and Bosnia were wars of choice, from an American perspective. Not so much with the other two.
Before WWI, the U.S. was not a major power. It had an army of fewer than 130,000 men, and the anti-war movement was fierce, if not as well remembered as Vietnam. The U.S. was ultimately dragged into World War I when the Germans, who were in a bad way, went back on a pledge not to attack American shipping with U-boats and made Mexico an offer to join the war — on their side.
WWII, of course, needs no introduction: The Nazis invaded Poland on Sept. 1, 1939; the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941. Adolf Hitler then declared war on the United States and suddenly an isolationist nation was fighting a war on two fronts, in addition to becoming the "arsenal of democracy."
Following WWII, the U.S. didn't crawl back into its shell. It was now a major world power, reconceiving Japan, rebuilding Europe, and facing off with nations living behind the Iron Curtain. If you believe in President Harry S Truman's domino theory, the hot spots in the Cold War — Korea, Japan — were wars of necessity and extensions of previous wars in Europe.
Late Wednesday evening, though, war returned to the bloodlands (as Yale's Timothy Snyder called them). Violence is engulfing Europe again.
Americans must face the fact that no one knows where Russian President Vladimir Putin will stop. Russian troops aren't leaving Belarus any time soon, and soldiers made a brief visit to another former Soviet republic, Kazakhstan, recently.
Of course, Ukraine is not a member of NATO. It wanted to be, but it isn't. The U.S. is under no obligation to fight on Kyiv's behalf. The Baltic states, on the other hand, are NATO members, since 2004, and Article 5 of the NATO treaty says that every other member of the alliance must come to their rescue in event of an invasion. Putin covets Latvia, Estonia, and Lithuania, once Soviet republics and also temptingly geographically desirable.
From a historical standpoint, the U.S. is starting the way it has in other European wars: humanitarian and military aid; tough sanctions and harsh words. American soldiers are racing to reinforce the front lines of member states, though not yet in large numbers.
The U.S. now must face up to the scariest thing about this new war in Europe. No one yet knows whether America will have to fight in it
A new Cold War, or the start of World War III? How historians see the invasion of Ukraine
Grace Hauck
Fri, February 25, 2022
Tanks rolled into Ukraine unabated. Families packed into darkened subway stations to take shelter from bombs. Others filled suitcases and fled along clogged roadways out of cities.
The images emerging from Ukraine on Thursday evoke memories of 20th-century conflicts in Europe that once seemed unimaginable in 2022, leaving many to wonder: Is this a new Cold War? Or the beginning of World War III?
"In terms of cold war, you have the vast majority of the rest of the world in total opposition to what he's doing," President Joe Biden said of Russian President Vladimir Putin at a news conference Thursday afternoon. "And so it's going to be a cold day for Russia."
USA TODAY spoke with historians across the country who offered varying opinions about the historical parallels of Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
Russia-Ukraine explained: Inside the crisis as US calls Russian movements an invasion
U.S. Army tanks, foreground, face off against Soviet tanks across the Berlin Wall at Checkpoint Charlie on the Friedrichstrasse, in a tense standoff on Oct. 27 and 28, 1961.
"It's very likely that we're going to be entering another prolonged standoff with Russia," said David Szakonyi, an associate professor of political science at George Washington University. "And the last time that we were in such a state of confrontation with Russia, it was formerly the Soviet Union – the Cold War. So I don't think it's necessarily the wrong term to be tossing around."
Historians largely pinpoint the Cold War as starting with the Truman Doctrine in 1947 and ending with the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. Since then, the U.S. has continued to fight Russian election interference and misinformation campaigns and oppose Russia through cyber, economic and proxy ground wars.
But the invasion of Ukraine marks a turning point in U.S.-Russia relations, Szakonyi said.
"There's been a line that's been crossed. The West is going to consider this to be a much more flagrant violation of international law, and it's going to be more united in the way that it tries to sanction Russia," Szakonyi said. "That distinguishes it from the way Russia has been able to walk a fine line and get away with a lot of other types of hybrid attacks and interventions without necessarily feeling the brunt Western anger."
'Our world is crumbling': Ukrainians try to flee homes with food, belongings
Is this a new Cold War?
"In short, yes and no," John Gaddis, a leading Cold War historian based at Yale University, told USA TODAY.
The world has entered a new cold war in the sense that there is a "protracted international rivalry," Gaddis wrote in an article in Foreign Affairs in December.
But the Cold War refers to a struggle at a particular time, among particular adversaries and over particular issues, he wrote. "The context is quite different," Gaddis wrote.
East German border guards look through a hole in the Berlin wall after demonstrators pulled down one segment of the wall at Brandenburg gate on Nov. 11, 1989.
Faith Hillis, a historian of modern Russia at the University of Chicago, argued the term doesn't quite apply.
"First of all, it's hot," Hillis said. "The other difference between the Cold War and the contemporary context is that the world is very global and the world is very interconnected."
LATEST: Biden details new Russian sanctions, says 'aggression cannot go unanswered'
Unlike during the Cold War, the world is no longer bipolar, meaning there are more than two superpowers holding the majority of global economic, military and cultural influence, said Yoshiko Herrera, former director of the Center for Russia, East Europe and Central Asia at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
"There's China. There's Europe. So we're not in the same post-World War II environment which is dominated by the United States and the Soviet Union," Herrera said.
Arne Westad, a historian at Yale University, noted Cold War analogies don't emphasize the severity of the situation. Neither the U.S. nor the Soviet Union invaded an independent European country during the Cold War.
"The Soviets did send troops into Hungary and into Czechoslovakia, but those were already members of the Soviet Bloc. So what we're seeing now goes beyond that Cold War dynamic, and in many ways, it's more dangerous," Westad said.
The invasion also renews Cold War-era anxieties about nuclear weapons, said John Randolph, director of the Russian, East European and Eurasian Center at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
"During the Cold War, we had this notion of nuclear deterrence," Randolph said. "What we have here is the ground invasion of a major European country that borders NATO members with whom we have guarantees of nuclear security. The potential for the spillover of this conflict into NATO and then into some sort of nuclear exchange is frighteningly high."
Sixth grade students crouch under or beside their desks along with their teacher, Vincent M. Bohan, left, as they act out a scene from the Federal Civil Defense administration film
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization is an intergovernmental military alliance between 28 European countries, the U.S. and Canada. In a speech Thursday, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg characterized the invasion as "a serious threat to Euro-Atlantic security."
"We now have war in Europe, on a scale and of a type we thought belonged to history," Stoltenberg said.
Will US help Ukraine in war vs. Russia? American troops bolster NATO in Europe
'The helplessness is overwhelming': Ukrainian Americans react to invasion from afar
World War III? Putin's actions evoke Hitler's invasion of Poland
Many historians said Russia's invasion of Ukraine was most reminiscent of a different period in history: the beginning of World War II.
"Ukraine has done nothing to Russia in this case, except try to have its own independent domestic and foreign policy, which it's entitled to do as a sovereign country," Hillis said. "So I think the closest analogy I can draw here is to other completely unprovoked invasions, including Hitler's invasion of Poland in 1939."
German tanks advance on Poland in September 1939.
For Imma Vysotskiy, who migrated from Belarus to California more than 20 years ago, the invasion reminds her of "the last world war," she said Thursday in a Ukrainian deli in Santa Monica.
"I simply cannot believe this is really happening," said Vysotskiy, 82, as she wiped her eyes. "Some people are calling (Putin) smart, but he's crazy."
In New York, Iryna Kurowyckyj, 83, said the invasion reminds her of when she fled Ukraine as a child with her family, arriving in the U.S. at the end of 1949. At the time, she didn't speak English and had just survived periods of living in labor camps.
Decades later, she's afraid of what will become of her home country, where friends still live and her pride remains.
"I feel terrible," Kurowyckyj said Thursday as she gathered with friends and her sister inside Selfreliance Association of Ukrainian Americans, a cultural organization in the East Village.
Kurowyckyj said she spoke with a friend early Thursday who lives outside Kyiv who was worried she'd have to flee through the woods, just as Kurowyckyj's family did when she was a child.
Randolph said the conflict, broadly speaking, resembles World War II in that democratic, self-governing nations under the rule of law are facing off against a dictatorship seeking to dominate other countries militarily.
"I do think that the stakes of the conflicts are similar and that there's a profound question about the future of the world," Randolph said.
British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt and Soviet Premier Josef Stalin in, Yalta, Crimea, on Feb. 4, 1945. Initially hailed as a major success, the conference later came to be viewed by some as the moment that the U.S. ceded too much influence to the Soviets and the trigger for the Cold War.
The comparison to 1939 is "helpful in some sense," Szakonyi said. He said the period is also similar to the preemptive attacks by Germany in the run-up to Word War I.
Germany "felt like its security was being threatened by moves by its adversaries. And I think in many respects, this current invasion, completely unjustified, is an attempt for Russia to beef up its own security," Szakonyi said.
Other historians drew connections with tensions in Europe at the end of the 19th century and pointed to the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962.
Timothy Naftali, a historian based at NYU who has written extensively on the Cold War, urged caution in making analogies. "You always have to be careful about parallels because they're not perfect," he said.
Despite the similarities to the lead-up to world wars, historians largely rejected the notion that the conflict in Ukraine will lead to a third world war.
"It's a huge shock to European security and to international order, but we're not in a multi-country, World War III, thankfully," Herrera said. "And while there are threats of expansion, at the moment, I think this is mainly a problem, in terms of actual warfare, in Ukraine."
U.S. officials on Thursday ordered the deployment of 7,000 more troops to Europe, but Biden said the troops would not be fighting in Ukraine.
Szakonyi noted that Putin attacked a non-NATO member state, making it "highly unlikely" the West will get militarily involved in Ukraine.
"Thankfully, the risk of World War III, although it has increased it, it's not inevitable that this is going to descend to that point," Szakonyi said.
Even if not a full-blown world war, the fighting has dangerous implications across the globe, Naftali said
"Putin is threatening the very nature of our international system," Naftali said. "Putin is challenging us. And he's saying 'What I want, I want, and I will take it, and it doesn't matter what the human consequences are.' And if we allow dictators to get away with that, when does it stop and where does it stop?"
Contributing: Ryan Miller from New York City and Christal Hayes from Los Angeles. Grace Hauck reported from Chicago.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Cold War or WWIII? Russian invasion of Ukraine draws comparisons
Grace Hauck
Fri, February 25, 2022
Tanks rolled into Ukraine unabated. Families packed into darkened subway stations to take shelter from bombs. Others filled suitcases and fled along clogged roadways out of cities.
The images emerging from Ukraine on Thursday evoke memories of 20th-century conflicts in Europe that once seemed unimaginable in 2022, leaving many to wonder: Is this a new Cold War? Or the beginning of World War III?
"In terms of cold war, you have the vast majority of the rest of the world in total opposition to what he's doing," President Joe Biden said of Russian President Vladimir Putin at a news conference Thursday afternoon. "And so it's going to be a cold day for Russia."
USA TODAY spoke with historians across the country who offered varying opinions about the historical parallels of Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
Russia-Ukraine explained: Inside the crisis as US calls Russian movements an invasion
U.S. Army tanks, foreground, face off against Soviet tanks across the Berlin Wall at Checkpoint Charlie on the Friedrichstrasse, in a tense standoff on Oct. 27 and 28, 1961.
"It's very likely that we're going to be entering another prolonged standoff with Russia," said David Szakonyi, an associate professor of political science at George Washington University. "And the last time that we were in such a state of confrontation with Russia, it was formerly the Soviet Union – the Cold War. So I don't think it's necessarily the wrong term to be tossing around."
Historians largely pinpoint the Cold War as starting with the Truman Doctrine in 1947 and ending with the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. Since then, the U.S. has continued to fight Russian election interference and misinformation campaigns and oppose Russia through cyber, economic and proxy ground wars.
But the invasion of Ukraine marks a turning point in U.S.-Russia relations, Szakonyi said.
"There's been a line that's been crossed. The West is going to consider this to be a much more flagrant violation of international law, and it's going to be more united in the way that it tries to sanction Russia," Szakonyi said. "That distinguishes it from the way Russia has been able to walk a fine line and get away with a lot of other types of hybrid attacks and interventions without necessarily feeling the brunt Western anger."
'Our world is crumbling': Ukrainians try to flee homes with food, belongings
Is this a new Cold War?
"In short, yes and no," John Gaddis, a leading Cold War historian based at Yale University, told USA TODAY.
The world has entered a new cold war in the sense that there is a "protracted international rivalry," Gaddis wrote in an article in Foreign Affairs in December.
But the Cold War refers to a struggle at a particular time, among particular adversaries and over particular issues, he wrote. "The context is quite different," Gaddis wrote.
East German border guards look through a hole in the Berlin wall after demonstrators pulled down one segment of the wall at Brandenburg gate on Nov. 11, 1989.
Faith Hillis, a historian of modern Russia at the University of Chicago, argued the term doesn't quite apply.
"First of all, it's hot," Hillis said. "The other difference between the Cold War and the contemporary context is that the world is very global and the world is very interconnected."
LATEST: Biden details new Russian sanctions, says 'aggression cannot go unanswered'
Unlike during the Cold War, the world is no longer bipolar, meaning there are more than two superpowers holding the majority of global economic, military and cultural influence, said Yoshiko Herrera, former director of the Center for Russia, East Europe and Central Asia at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
"There's China. There's Europe. So we're not in the same post-World War II environment which is dominated by the United States and the Soviet Union," Herrera said.
Arne Westad, a historian at Yale University, noted Cold War analogies don't emphasize the severity of the situation. Neither the U.S. nor the Soviet Union invaded an independent European country during the Cold War.
"The Soviets did send troops into Hungary and into Czechoslovakia, but those were already members of the Soviet Bloc. So what we're seeing now goes beyond that Cold War dynamic, and in many ways, it's more dangerous," Westad said.
The invasion also renews Cold War-era anxieties about nuclear weapons, said John Randolph, director of the Russian, East European and Eurasian Center at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
"During the Cold War, we had this notion of nuclear deterrence," Randolph said. "What we have here is the ground invasion of a major European country that borders NATO members with whom we have guarantees of nuclear security. The potential for the spillover of this conflict into NATO and then into some sort of nuclear exchange is frighteningly high."
Sixth grade students crouch under or beside their desks along with their teacher, Vincent M. Bohan, left, as they act out a scene from the Federal Civil Defense administration film
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization is an intergovernmental military alliance between 28 European countries, the U.S. and Canada. In a speech Thursday, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg characterized the invasion as "a serious threat to Euro-Atlantic security."
"We now have war in Europe, on a scale and of a type we thought belonged to history," Stoltenberg said.
Will US help Ukraine in war vs. Russia? American troops bolster NATO in Europe
'The helplessness is overwhelming': Ukrainian Americans react to invasion from afar
World War III? Putin's actions evoke Hitler's invasion of Poland
Many historians said Russia's invasion of Ukraine was most reminiscent of a different period in history: the beginning of World War II.
"Ukraine has done nothing to Russia in this case, except try to have its own independent domestic and foreign policy, which it's entitled to do as a sovereign country," Hillis said. "So I think the closest analogy I can draw here is to other completely unprovoked invasions, including Hitler's invasion of Poland in 1939."
German tanks advance on Poland in September 1939.
For Imma Vysotskiy, who migrated from Belarus to California more than 20 years ago, the invasion reminds her of "the last world war," she said Thursday in a Ukrainian deli in Santa Monica.
"I simply cannot believe this is really happening," said Vysotskiy, 82, as she wiped her eyes. "Some people are calling (Putin) smart, but he's crazy."
In New York, Iryna Kurowyckyj, 83, said the invasion reminds her of when she fled Ukraine as a child with her family, arriving in the U.S. at the end of 1949. At the time, she didn't speak English and had just survived periods of living in labor camps.
Decades later, she's afraid of what will become of her home country, where friends still live and her pride remains.
"I feel terrible," Kurowyckyj said Thursday as she gathered with friends and her sister inside Selfreliance Association of Ukrainian Americans, a cultural organization in the East Village.
Kurowyckyj said she spoke with a friend early Thursday who lives outside Kyiv who was worried she'd have to flee through the woods, just as Kurowyckyj's family did when she was a child.
Randolph said the conflict, broadly speaking, resembles World War II in that democratic, self-governing nations under the rule of law are facing off against a dictatorship seeking to dominate other countries militarily.
"I do think that the stakes of the conflicts are similar and that there's a profound question about the future of the world," Randolph said.
British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt and Soviet Premier Josef Stalin in, Yalta, Crimea, on Feb. 4, 1945. Initially hailed as a major success, the conference later came to be viewed by some as the moment that the U.S. ceded too much influence to the Soviets and the trigger for the Cold War.
The comparison to 1939 is "helpful in some sense," Szakonyi said. He said the period is also similar to the preemptive attacks by Germany in the run-up to Word War I.
Germany "felt like its security was being threatened by moves by its adversaries. And I think in many respects, this current invasion, completely unjustified, is an attempt for Russia to beef up its own security," Szakonyi said.
Other historians drew connections with tensions in Europe at the end of the 19th century and pointed to the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962.
Timothy Naftali, a historian based at NYU who has written extensively on the Cold War, urged caution in making analogies. "You always have to be careful about parallels because they're not perfect," he said.
Despite the similarities to the lead-up to world wars, historians largely rejected the notion that the conflict in Ukraine will lead to a third world war.
"It's a huge shock to European security and to international order, but we're not in a multi-country, World War III, thankfully," Herrera said. "And while there are threats of expansion, at the moment, I think this is mainly a problem, in terms of actual warfare, in Ukraine."
U.S. officials on Thursday ordered the deployment of 7,000 more troops to Europe, but Biden said the troops would not be fighting in Ukraine.
Szakonyi noted that Putin attacked a non-NATO member state, making it "highly unlikely" the West will get militarily involved in Ukraine.
"Thankfully, the risk of World War III, although it has increased it, it's not inevitable that this is going to descend to that point," Szakonyi said.
Even if not a full-blown world war, the fighting has dangerous implications across the globe, Naftali said
"Putin is threatening the very nature of our international system," Naftali said. "Putin is challenging us. And he's saying 'What I want, I want, and I will take it, and it doesn't matter what the human consequences are.' And if we allow dictators to get away with that, when does it stop and where does it stop?"
Contributing: Ryan Miller from New York City and Christal Hayes from Los Angeles. Grace Hauck reported from Chicago.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Cold War or WWIII? Russian invasion of Ukraine draws comparisons
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