By Neville J. Bissember
With a deteriorating economic situation, starvation and low troop morale (sounds familiar?), a mutiny by sailors in Kiel in November 1918 spread to other cities in Germany. Kaiser Wilhelm’s attempt to confront the rebellious troops was met with a declaration of the Generals that he had lost the loyalty of the military. Thus Germany capitulated and surrendered in November 1918, thereby bringing World War I to an end and Wilhelm was forced to abdicate on 9 November.
In neighbouring Austro-Hungary, the death of Emperor Franz Joseph in November 1916 saw the installation of Charles I as his successor, who was against the continuation of the war. An attempt to negotiate peace with the Allies was scuttled but two years later, an armistice was signed in November 1918 and Charles abdicated the throne.
In the second Great War in the Twentieth Century, it is well documented that Hitler faced opposition from some sections of the military, even surviving an assassination attempt. Germany found itself caught in 1945 in a pincer movement by the Soviet Union advancing from the East and Western Allies bearing down from the West. The continuing advances from the Allies and, as in the previous war, the deterioration of the economy, drove Adolf Hitler to suicide. Within days, Hitler’s successor Admiral Donitz opened peace negotiations and an armistice was signed on 7 May, thereby ending the European War.
Over in the Pacific, with war still raging, US Presi-dent Harry Truman authorized the use of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, killing 80,000 (thousands more were to die from exposure to radiation). Incredulously, in the face of such wanton death and destruction, the Japanese persisted in the fight, leading to use by the US of a second atomic bomb three days later in Nagasaki: result, 35000 dead (50000 subsequently succumbed). Even after the Soviets declared war and invaded Manchuria, the Japanese Imperial Council remained deadlocked on whether or not to exit the conflict. It took the vote of the Emperor Hirohito of Japan to break the tie and announce the surrender, which he did within days.
Next in the history of major military confrontations, as the Cold war raged on, was the Cuban missile crisis of 1962, which started when it was discovered, and then subsequently announced publicly, that the Russians had stationed nuclear missiles in Cuba, with strike capability to the US East coast. It is often lost on many that the Russian action in Cuba was in response to the US deploying its own nuclear missiles in Italy and Turkey, thereby posing a threat to the USSR.
After a high stakes game of cat and mouse and skillful and delicate negotiation, including resort to back-channel communication and crucial and timely mediation by then UNSG U Thant, the crisis was averted: Russia decided not to breach the quarantine (blockade) of US ships around Cuba and agreed to remove their missiles; the US agreed not to invade Cuba, nor to support such an invasion; a hotline communication link was set up at the highest level to avoid such future occurrences (is it still working in 2022?); and the US agreed secretly to remove their missiles from Europe, all leading to an extended period of détente between the two countries. Characterising Russian President Khrushchev’s decision to withdraw the missiles from Cuba, then US Secretary of State Dean Rusk famously put it, “We went eyeball to eyeball with the Russians, and the other guy blinked”.
So who will be the first to blink in the current Russia-Ukraine war, President Putin, President Zelensky, or President Biden? Before that question is answered, it is important to identify some comparators. Morale on the Russian front lines is low, and troops are hungry, frustrated and under-supplied. The generals are not all on the same page as the maximum leader, some because they think he should be more aggressive but others, including some retirees, are criticising the war effort – this in a country where it has been made illegal to voice such criticism. And, oh yes, winter cometh, bringing with it hypothermia and frostbite on the battlefield.
It was French President Emmanuel Macron on 22 September in an exclusive interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper who drew a distinction between any motive on the part of President Putin to undertake the “special military operation” (read “invasion”) in Ukraine in February as a response to NATO aggression and a threat to Russia’s security, and the subsequent unprovoked unilateral actions to escalate the conflict. Which brings us to President Putin’s less than veiled threat to “use all available means” (read “nuclear weapons”) and the obvious follow-on questions: use against who, or what? Ukraine? The so-called “annexed” parts of Ukraine (but wouldn’t that then be as if Russia was attacking itself?) And if the effects of the nuclear attack were to spread across the borders into NATO territory, would that trigger the Article 5 collective responsibility response by all other NATO members?
President Biden’s initial response to this threat on CBS 60 Minutes on 18 September, of “Don’t, don’t, don’t”, after reporter Scott Pelley told him that Putin’s desperation is growing in the wake of continued Ukrainian battlefield successes, was lukewarm. His latest one, invoking images of Armageddon, goes to the other extreme and has sent the White House scrambling to walk it back by saying that there is no intelligence at the moment that indicates that mobilization of special support vehicles and services is taking place in Russia. Or, in this high stakes game of poker and bluff, is this a ploy by Biden to make Putin think he is being taken seriously in the West, as a carrot to bring him back to the negotiating table?
For his part, the comedian-turned-President of Ukraine, continuing to display leadership, tenacity and resolve, drew the important distinction between Putin preparing the populace for use of such weapons and the actual preparation of the weapons for use.
It is probably accurate to argue that in 1962, there was a greater level of rational thinking and measured responses than is currently on display. There is now more the aura of a one-man show, of a self-centred maximum leader – more a Hitler of World War II than the Cold War’s Khrushchev – although there is a serious band of in-country jingoistic loyal supporters who long for the return of the Soviet-era days of an Eastern Europe dominated by the Kremlin.
Logically also, it is submitted that the invocation of the MAD principle – Mutually Assured Destruc-tion – would have created a strong enough deterrent effect against resort to first-strike nuclear wea-pons then, than now. This kind of thinking would probably work better in a structure where there is a filter, a buffer before the final decision is taken by a superior or political head – a King, President, Kaiser, Czar, Emperor. In today’s Russia, the President is omnipotent, the buck stops with him: it is the same person who harbours a vision of a return to Soviet hegemony, that holds the Russian nuclear launch codes.
The historical events listed above illustrate how much of a game changer could be the presence of one person or a group of persons – the more pragmatic WWI German generals, the new young Emperor Charles in Austro-Hungary, Hitler’s successor Admiral Domitz, or the Japanese Emperor who cast the tie-breaker.
In the context of our own domestic political situation, the then US Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs Elliott Abrams used the opportunity of his attendance at President Burnham’s funeral in 1985 to meet privately with President Hoyte and forge a change in policy orientation, bringing an end to Guyana’s eventful flirtation with socialism, and restoring equilibrium in its relations with the West and the International Financial Institutions in Washington. Similarly, it took the death of Dr. Cheddi Jagan in 1997, and later the departure from political office of his wife Mrs. Janet Jagan in 1999, for the PPP to cast off from its Marxist-Leninist moorings so revered by the party’s “old guard” and metamorphose into its current state, encouraging foreign direct investment with no spectre of nationalization and promoting private enterprise as the engine of growth.
To be clear, an argument is not being made here for suicide or the assassination of anyone. This is so notwithstanding a News-week report that a decapitation strike to kill President Putin in the heart of the Kremlin is one of the non-nuclear military options being considered by the Pentagon, in response to the President’s nuclear threat. The response to this story from the Russian government news agency RIA Novosti was to categorise the current crisis as worse than the Cuban Missile Crisis, saying that “it looks like we have long since left this crisis behind us”. Neither should this article be interpreted as fomenting internal strife within Russia.
Rather, the contention is that the search for a face-saving solution, a way out – what in diplomatic-speak is currently being referred to as an “off-ramp” – for President Putin, would still see him retain the reins of power in Moscow. By drawing on the lessons of history, that solution could include elements such as: a pause on Ukraine’s application for membership of NATO; establishment of a Working Group to make recommendations on the creation of a Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) in Eastern Europe; removal of sanctions against Russia and full resumption of its oil exports; and the resumption of the policy of détente between the US and Russia.
There should of course be key roles for the current UNSG Antonio Gutteres and the conflict resolution expertise of Norway in the quest for such a solution. A creative approach to finding a lasting solution could involve the thorny quid pro quo of Russia’s withdrawal from Ukrainian territory in exchange for immunity for war crimes committed. The latter limb of this proposition, at the risk of politicizing the work of the International Criminal Court, especially in circumstances where neither the US – nor Russia for that matter – is party to the Stature of the ICC, would best be pursued at the instance of the Prosecutor of the Court, or alternatively the UN Security Council.
In the meantime, it would do no harm if the current “Admiral Donitz” in the Russian military could make himself known.