The publication writes that the Russian attempt to conquer a neighboring country completely ignores the lessons of history.
Over the past 200 years, wars between states have claimed the lives of more than 30 million people on the battlefields. But they are becoming less common and less deadly. After the Napoleonic Wars, muskets and cannons in Europe began to rumble more quietly, but did not stop completely. From 1823 to 1860, almost 500,000 soldiers died in battle.
The peak of the wars came in the first half of the 20th century. An estimated 25 million soldiers and tens of millions of civilians died as a result of the two world wars. The Cold War brought an uneasy peace to Europe, but in other parts of the world, conflicts such as the Korean and Vietnam wars continued to claim human lives en masse. In recent decades, the number of victims of interstate wars on the planet has fallen sharply. Although civil wars and violence still continued.
“With his war against Ukraine, Vladimir Putin is dragging the world back to bloodier times,” writes The Economist, recalling that the Russian autocrat passionately is fond of history.
Some say that during the long months of isolation at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, he spent a lot of time in the Kremlin archives, reflecting on his country's past as one of the great powers and dreaming of regaining that status. He admires the early members of the Romanov dynasty, which established its rule in the 17th century after a dynastic crisis that was accompanied by lawlessness and violence in Russia. And then the conquest of new territories began, which expanded the borders to the Pacific Ocean. In particular, Putin compared himself to Peter I, who turned Russia into a dominant power in the Baltics by conquering territories controlled by Sweden.
In 2014, Putin's army occupied the Ukrainian Crimea. In the end, the inhabitants of the peninsula were given Russian passports. At the time, this act seemed opportunistic. The occupation of Crimea was popular among Russians, many of whom believed that the decision of the leaders of the USSR to transfer this territory to the Ukrainian SSR in 1954 was illegitimate. But now the annexation of Crimea and the instigation of the war in Donbas seem more like steps in a grand plan to occupy all of Ukraine.
In a controversial speech three days before Russian missiles began raining down on Ukrainian cities in February, Putin lamented the loss of “the territory of the former Russian Empire.” In 8 months after the start of the invasion, his army was able to occupy approximately 15% of Ukrainian territory. But everything did not go according to plan. The Ukrainian counteroffensive continues to displace the Russian army. On September 30, after fake “referendums”, Russia announced the annexation of four regions of Ukraine in the east and south, although it did not even fully control each of them.
“Announcing this move, Putin criticized the West's “false rules”, including the inviolability of borders. But his invasion weakened Russia, not made it stronger. Trying to conquer a neighboring sovereign country, he tried to go against history. He will fail,” the publication writes.
Wars between countries for various reasons became rare after the Second World War. It cannot be said that they have disappeared altogether. And reducing the number of interstate wars is not the same as peace. Civil wars (such as the one currently underway in Ethiopia), state repression and other forms of mass violence continue to cause extreme human suffering.
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Wars for independence from colonial oppression were also often extremely deadly. But cases of one country sending an army beyond its borders to engage another country's army have become less common.
“But Putin is trying to do something even more rare, a war between countries. This is an imperialist conquest or invasion of a country to make its territory one's own,” explains The Economist.
Historian and author Yuval Noah Harari noted earlier this year that “most governments have stopped viewing aggressive wars as an acceptable tool to advance their interests, and most countries have stopped fantasizing about conquering and annexing their neighbors.” Saddam Hussein believed, and was very wrong, that other powers would allow Iraq to swallow Kuwait in 1990. Most other examples of similar behavior, such as India's decision to absorb Goa in 1961 and Sikkim in 1975, are even older. China may try to do something similar with Taiwan. But aside from Putin's efforts, battles over uninhabited border regions or small islands have become a phenomenon that has all but disappeared.
These changes did not happen by chance. The reasons behind them can explain how countries now interact with each other. And they also indicate why Putin's war against Ukraine is unique and unlikely to end in success. Evidence of a reduction in the number of wars is not hard to find. The Correlates of War International Academic Project has collected data on every conflict since 1816, when the Napoleonic Wars ended. They confirmed that wars, that is, conflicts between countries, during which more than a thousand people died on the battlefield in a year, have become a rarer phenomenon.
And there are many reasons. When economies rely on international trade, which war can disrupt, the cost of confrontation is greatly increased. Instead, lower trade barriers help reduce potential conflicts. After all, invading to impose terms of trade or to gain access to new markets is not that useful if the markets are already open. This is not a sufficient condition for peace, as the First World War proved. But the factor of trade still reduces the reasons for the conflict. War is rare among democracies. And over the past 200 years, there have been more democratic countries. Perhaps this is because voters do not like to pay for bloodshed and go to the front for their militant leaders. And finally, strategic nuclear weapons have made total war of annihilation unthinkable.
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Smaller conflicts remain common. But even if you count all interstate clashes that have resulted in the deaths of more than 25 people, the number of global residents killed in combat is still greatly reduced. This is due in part to the fact that soldiers are better trained and their protective equipment protects their lives better than ever before. Medicine has also improved. Researchers have estimated that the ratio between wounded and killed during wars has more than doubled in the last 50 years. However, the publication notes that human losses in Ukraine are already extremely high.
The Economist writes that Putin's war against Ukraine is very unusual when compared to historical trends. But his goal to expand the territory of the already largest country in the world with the help of brute force is not just a rarity. This is an aberration. According to the Correlates of War project, from the late 1970s until the annexation of Crimea in 2014, there was no major territorial conquest. Even attempts at such conquests steadily became rarer. According to data compiled by researcher Dan Altman since World War I, violent territorial encroachments have dropped from about one per year to almost zero, excluding small islands and uninhabited areas.
During a typical decade from 1850 to 1940, about 1% of the world's population experienced a situation where a ruler changed as a result of conquest, according to Correlates of War. But over the past 40 years, if you do not count Ukraine, less than 100 thousand people (or 0.001%) experienced something similar. Almost all of them live in the territory of Nagorno-Karabakh. Many factors explain why countries have almost completely given up trying to annex foreign territories. The economic benefit of such an act has decreased, and the price has become extremely high. Modern expectations of the state make it difficult to rule people against their will. And international norms and institutions make the intervention of other countries more likely.
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Even if the destructive force of modern warfare does not completely destroy the productive potential of the region, economic activity that was previously based solely on natural resources is now more dependent on human capital. Workers will not remain in a conflict zone or under the control of an invader. They will go at the first opportunity. Also, in order to maintain control over the territory, it is often necessary to introduce restrictions on movement and trade, which undermines any economic growth.
Globalization has also reduced the meaning of conquests. Significant reductions in shipping costs over the past century have allowed countries to look far beyond their neighbors' borders in search of trade links and resources. As tariffs and other barriers to trade between countries have fallen, it no longer makes sense to integrate markets by brute force. Those trying to hold onto foreign territories face ever-increasing challenges. The US and its allies realized this when they tried to transform Afghanistan into a modern democracy after invading and toppling the Taliban regime in 2001.
Although the invaders had the military advantage, the Taliban forces ultimately won after humiliating American retreat in 2021. Motivated fighters who fought guerrilla warfare often had the support of the local population and were more willing to make sacrifices than the occupiers. Pakistan, whose army and spies supported the Taliban, greatly complicated the US task of establishing its order. It has become very difficult for American politicians to explain to voters why they should pay an extremely high price for supporting a military occupation in a faraway landlocked country in Asia. In part, this is also because the expectations of citizens from the state have increased, especially in the field of education, health care, and the creation of economic opportunities. This increases the price (as well as the need for income), and also creates tension between citizens and states.
In many countries, people now have a much clearer national identity than they once did. Education, which plays an important role in fostering identity in children, and especially language learning, often becomes a source of conflict in the occupied territories. State borders also play a big role in building national identity, fixing it for many decades. In Ukraine, even the mostly Russian-speaking regions in the east and south have become anti-Russian. In Odesa, a port city that, according to an article in The Economist, “occupies a special place in Russian history and culture” – the Ukrainian flag now hangs on every corner.
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In addition, the opportunities to maintain control over the occupied are not as many as they once were. Slavery and the divide-and-rule tactics that Great Britain used to maintain its empire are now seen as slavery and morally bankrupt methods almost everywhere. The same attitude towards genocide. Outside powers feel a responsibility and a right to protect the population from extermination, even if military force is required.
Imperial Mindset
Putin has long ignored these arguments. He doesn't care how others interpret his past.
“People with their own view of the history of our country can argue with me, but I think that Russians and Ukrainians are practically one people, and it doesn't matter what others say,” Putin declared in 2014, six months before the occupation of Crimea.
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These comments should have alarmed the West and warned much earlier about Putin's broader territorial ambitions in Ukraine. But now that they've woken up, they seem more determined to preserve the norms that prevent other countries from expanding their borders through brute force. Western countries did not send their troops to the battlefield in Ukraine. But they supply the most advanced weapons, train Ukrainian soldiers, finance the government and try to suppress Putin's invasion with sanctions. On September 21, addressing the UN General Assembly, President Joe Biden said bluntly: “If countries can pursue their imperialist ambitions without consequence, then we risk everything this organization stands for.”
