Early in November, Bishop Borys Gudziak spoke at the University of Notre Dame’s Nanovic Institute about Ukraine and its three democratic revolutions in the past quarter century. To explain why they were necessary, he outlined the country’s tragic 20th century history – wars, a genocidal famine, terror, mass emigration, enormous population losses, entrenched corruption.
Based as he is in Paris, where he serves as spiritual leader to Ukrainian Catholics in France and surrounding countries, the bishop noted how he routinely takes visitors to the World War I Battlefield of Verdun 150 miles to the east to illustrate the folly of war. There 100 years ago, French and German armies clashed along a 25-mile front.
I could relate: I was 19 and in Europe for my sophomore year abroad, when I visited the battlefield 50 years ago. It was one of the most sobering experiences of my life. The land was scarred with craters, half-buried trenches and ruined forts. Signs warned visitors to avoid certain zones because of the danger of unexploded ordnance.
The battlefield today is a vast unmarked graveyard where 100,000 soldiers lie. The French Forest Service routinely comes across human bones, which are reverently transferred to the ossuary at Douaumont where you can look through windows to see intermingled remains of over 150,000 soldiers, their identity, their nationality no longer recognizable or relevant. More than a million men were killed or maimed over the course of 303 days. And the frontline barely moved. Verdun was one of several similarly epic and equally insane battles of that war.
Russia, Austria, Turkey, Great Britain and a dozen other countries were also engaged. Indeed, in 1917 the United States was drawn in, which tipped the outcome toward the Allies. By the time the war ended in 1918, revolutions had toppled four empires. A year later, at the Versailles Peace Conference, the Allies redrew the map of Europe and imposed crippling reparations on a vanquished Germany.
Russia was one of the fallen empires and an independent Ukraine emerged from the war’s ashes, only to have its people endure four years of conflict and anarchy before the greater part of the country succumbed to Lenin’s Bolsheviks with all those ghastly consequences.
Twenty years later, the world was again at war – it was even more horrific than the previous. By the time it ended in 1945, tens of millions men, women and children had died in combat, as civilian casualties, as victims of industrial-scale murder in death camps and killing grounds; cities were leveled; millions of displaced persons ended up in refugee camps.
Confronted by the devastation of two world wars, the United States and other countries set about creating institutions to insure a lasting peace: the Marshall Fund, United Nations, International Monetary Fund, World Bank, etc. And an economic, political and social miracle followed.
In 1949, 10 Western European countries founded the Council of Europe dedicated to democracy, human rights and the rule of law. Two years later, France and Germany created the European Coal and Steel Community, designed to neutralize competition between European nations over the two commodities most necessary to wage war. Further steps led to the European Common Market and today the European Union.
And when it came to security, the countries restructuring Europe-led by the U.S. – were not naïve. Stalin, who was offered assistance through the Marshall Plan, rebuffed that overture and instead pushed his armies into Central and Eastern Europe, where he applied political violence and propaganda to expand the Soviet Empire, now armed with nuclear weapons. And so in 1949, following the previous year’s Soviet blockade of Berlin, the United States, Canada and 10 Western European countries founded the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the mutual defense organization based on the principle that an attack on one is considered an attack on all (Article 5). It’s been invoked just once: after the 9/11 attacks on the U.S. in 2001.
Now it’s 2016. A century ago, thousands were dying every day at Verdun, at the Battle of the Somme on the French-Belgian border and elsewhere. In western Ukraine during the same period, Russia and Austria clashed in the four-month-long Brusilov Offensive, the battle reaching the outskirts of Lviv. Largely forgotten today, it also cost a combined million killed and wounded. Ukrainians were on either side of the front, brothers killing brothers, with no stake in the outcome. That was true of Poles and other nationalities, as well. And that war only set the stage for the next.
Today, Europe and America continue to have a vital interest in maintaining the institutions that have kept the peace for the past three generations – call it Pax Americana. It’s under dire threat and has been for the past several years – above all by Russia’s aggression against Ukraine, its threats to the Baltic states and Poland and the bombing of Syria, all in Vladimir Putin’s spurious pursuit of Russian glory. Tens of thousands have died in that ill-gotten campaign. Sadly, Russia could be great without assaulting its neighbors, killing dissidents and journalists or cheating to win Olympic medals.
Europe and the United States have responded to Mr. Putin’s challenge – you can argue whether it’s been adequate or not, but there’s been proper condemnation with economic, military and diplomatic responses and, thus far, a united European-American-Canadian coalition.
During his campaign, Donald Trump argued for a change in America’s policy. He said he’d consider U.S. recognition of Russia’s seizure of Crimea; indeed, even withdrawing from our NATO commitment. Now that he’s about to become president, will the gravity of the responsibility Mr. Trump now bears bring him to a new appreciation of how essential international cooperation is? We can only hope. In the meantime, those who value an international order based on the rule of law can take comfort that the U.S. is a democracy with checks and balances. Outgoing President Barack Obama, members of Congress from both parties, knowledgeable commentators and, yes, millions of American citizens, all advise President-elect Trump to confront Russian aggression, remain steadfast in defense of Ukraine and continue to be a leader in global security.
Andrew Fedynsky’s e-mail address is [email protected]