When Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24 this year, it was the second time it had done so since Ukraine gained independence in 1991. In 2014, Russia annexed Crimea and a war thereupon in the Donbas claimed some 13,000 lives. The attack on Ukraine this year, however, took aim at the whole country – a full-scale invasion such as Europe has not seen since the Second World War.It is in this context that Prem Shankar Jha, in The Wire on April 8 this year, argued that sanctions against Russia – and against those who trade with Russia – should be avoided. Sanctions lead, Jha contends, to polarisation and conflict of a kind which the world today “can no longer afford”. And then it comes: Jha claims that the decision of the Japanese government to bomb Pearl Harbor in 1941 was essentially caused by President Roosevelt’s signing of the US Export Control Act, “which authorised an American president to license or prohibit the export of ‘essential defence materials'”. “[T]he freezing of Japanese assets,” Jha explains, “left the Emperor with no option but to sanction the invasion of Indonesia and Indo-China in pursuit of oil. The embargo also led to Japan joining Germany’s Tripartite alliance in 1941, and thence to the attack on Pearl Harbour in December 1941.” Thus the Americans, although they tried not to be drawn into the Second World War, essentially brought this involvement upon themselves. Jha seems to imply that a better path forward for the Americans – and for anyone else threatened by the expansion of fascist and Nazi regimes – would have been to try to persuade their adversaries to pursue other political goals. Before February 24, it was not uncommon in Western media to hear commentators make arguments of a similar sort about Russia and Vladimir Putin. Russia, they predicted, would not make a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, and the conflicts (often downplayed as ‘tensions’) in the region should be seen as resulting from the aggressive expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) to the East – encircling an exposed and vulnerable Russia. Essentially (and in line with Jha’s argument), it was Western powers that had created a hazardous situation, by intruding into an area where they had no business in the first place.Several objections are in order here. I shall not dwell long on the analogy with Pearl Harbor. It needs pointing out, however, that Roosevelt signed the US Export Control Act in August 1940. At that point, Japan had already been at war with China for three years, and it had been pursuing a ‘Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere’ since the early 1930s. After Germany occupied France in May 1940, moreover, Japan saw an opportunity to increase its control over French Indochina, and thereby to cut off supplies to its Chinese enemy. In September, Japan invaded French Indochina and joined the Tripartite pact – not in 1941 as Jha claims – with the specific aim of making the US a military target. Naturally, the Japanese Empire needed oil. But this was only a ‘necessity’ for the expansion of an empire backed by Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy. Claiming the Japanese emperor had ‘no option’ but to take the decisions which led to the bombing of Pearl Harbor builds on a false view of history. Indeed, it amounts to apologetics for the actions of Germany, Italy, and Japan during the Second World War. The burden of proof is on those who, like Jha, claim the US had better options on hand than economic sanctions to persuade Japan to become a peace-loving country. Besides which, the analogy – even if it had some truth in it – is misplaced today.Also read: Putin Claims Russia Has Taken Over Mariupol, Ukrainian Troops Fight OnThe long list of countries which had formerly been Soviet satellites or part of the USSR itself – Bulgaria, Czechia, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia, and so on – joined NATO as soon as they regained their sovereignty. They wished, namely, never again to be under the control of Moscow’s authoritarian (and in some periods, totalitarian) regime. They did so of their own free will. This was the path on which Ukraine was heading when Putin rejected the principle that the will of sovereign states bears respecting. No one forced Russia to invade Ukraine. Of course, Putin saw NATO membership for Ukraine as a provocation; but Russia was not under threat, and it was not being encircled by NATO forces. Only 6% of Russia’s borders touch on a NATO country. A large proportion of Ukraine’s borders, on the other hand, touch on Belarus and Russia. After February 24, most of the Western commentators who had more or less defended Russia, fell silent. It had become evident even to them that Russia was the aggressor, and that none of the brutalities that Putin’s war was visiting on Ukrainian civilians could be justified by Russian perceptions of any threat from NATO. All the more striking, therefore, is that it is after February 24 that Jha decides to present the argument that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine cannot be blamed solely on Russia; that economic sanctions against Russia will only make matters worse; and that the West has been ‘blocking every media channel emanating from Russia except its own’. Again, there is much to object to here. It has long been Putin’s authoritarian regime itself which has blocked the media in Russia – by means of violence, intimidation, and the murder of journalists and dissenting voices within the country and even outside it. Yet this may not be the most provocative part of Jha’s position. The part of his argument which, putting it diplomatically, is very hard to accept is the idea that anything which might upset Putin, such as sanctions, should be avoided – even at the cost of Ukraine’s sovereignty. Try the same argument on India. Should India simply cede Arunachal Pradesh to China, since that would appease Xi Jinping and persuade him to stop making threats? Should India relinquish all claims on territories which had formed part of Kashmir before Independence in 1947 – and which have been controlled by China and Pakistan ever since – to those two rivals? Analogies of a yet more provocative kind, it bears adding, would not be difficult to devise.Any such suggestions, it need hardly be said, would be unacceptable to India – and probably to Jha as well. Putting the shoe on the other foot can be instructive. It points up what Ukraine is facing, as well as what NATO confronts in Putin’s attempt to expand Russia’s sphere of influence. Moreover, it is Russian aggression which is now calling forth an expansion in NATO’s membership. Both Finland and Sweden have long been reluctant to join the alliance. The war in Ukraine, however, is pushing them both to do so. Such a move is widely seen here as a necessity for survival. Not that Sweden’s professed neutrality in the Second World War or during the Cold War fooled anyone. Nevertheless, joining NATO is a huge step to take. It means joining in a common defence, which in turns means that we (Finns and Swedes) will have to be prepared to fight in someone else’s war in other parts of the world. It was more than two hundred years ago (though the precise date depends on how one counts) since Sweden was last in a situation like this one. In both Finland and Sweden, however, this is what a large portion of the public now thinks is necessary. To protect our sovereignty, we may have to give up some. Such is the consequence of Putin’s war, which Jha has just downplayed as a ‘mistake’. Sten Widmalm is professor in political science at Uppsala University, Sweden, and the author of Political Tolerance in the Global South – Images of India, Pakistan and Uganda (Routledge, 2017) and Kashmir in Comparative Perspective (Oxford University Press, 2006).
