Bob Beck's Foreign Policy Blog

“This will not stand, this aggression against Kuwait.”  President George H.W. Bush made this statement 35 years ago, on August 5, 1990, a mere three days after Saddam Hussein had unleashed his massive army on Kuwait. The predmediated lightning strike by Baghdad’s forces quickly engulfed the small, Persian gulf state, sending oil prices skyward and threatening control of the much more bountiful energy deposits just to the south in Saudi Arabia. 

On a strategic level, however, Saddam’s military gambit posed a direct challenge to the inviolability of borders, a sacrosanct pillar of the international system since the end of World War II. To his credit, the elder Bush did not shrink from the Iraqi provocation, decisively ordering the deployment of US troops to the Persian Gulf region on August 7, 1990, as part of the Desert Shield operation. 

The President then called Saddam’s bluff in early 1991 as US troops led a broad, multinational military coalition to vanquish the Iraqi army, sending it scurrying back north after only one hundred hours of ground combat. Bush the senior clearly understood the criticality of defending the sanctity of international boundries.

Turn the clock back even further, 40 years prior to 1990, for another instance of the United States facing down an expansionist aggressor hell-bent on changing borders by force. On June 25, 1950, North Korean dictator Kim Il Sung dispatched his military forces south across the 38th parallel, quickly occupying much of South Korea. Like President Bush in 1990, Harry Truman resolutely countered the communist attack, leading a UN-sanctioned military response that, ultimately, restored the pre-war borders, leading to an uneasy but lasting armistice.

While the recent 75th anniversary of the start of the Korean War passed with nary a mention—this observer was stunned by our apparent historical amnesia— in the national press, the conflict, so soon after the global trauma of World War II and the rise of communism in east Asia, proved to be a watershed in US post-war foreign policy.  In addition to defending the inviolability of borders, the effort saved South Korea from annihilation, putting it on the path to becoming one of Asia’s economic success stories. The fact that America has backstopped Seoul’s accomplishments with 30,000 US troops for the past 70 plus years is a testament to the shared commitment by successive denizens of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue to the sanctity of the frontiers dividing the Korean peninsula.

What lessons do these honorable examples of American determination to thwart tyrants’ previous attempts at territorial expansion provide for the present conflict in Ukraine? Firstly, regardless of Tsar Vladimir (I want to be) the great’s drivel about Ukraine not being a real country, the Kremlin is unambiguously trying to change internationally recognized borders by force. Consequently, Washington and its European allies are right to strongly support Kyiv in this existential battle for the future of Ukraine.

A major difference, however, between the White House’s response to the 1950 and 1990 attacks and Moscow’s 2022 assault is the lack of direct US military involvement in the latter. While the arguments against American “boots on the ground” are quite compelling—not worth starting World War III; America’s war fatigue from Afghanistan and Iraq; and a growing affinity for isolationism among a significant portion of the American citizenry, the prospects of a Russian victory in Ukraine present equally ominous risks for the globe.

From the Taiwan strait to the jungles of Central Africa to the mountains of the southern Caucasus, would be agressors are following the developments on the battlefields of Eastern Europe to inform their respective malign designs on geographic expansion. Furthermore, should Moscow succeed in its blatant land grab, smaller states located in the shadows of regional hegemons will be forced with the choice of accomodating their powerful neighbors or arming themselves to the teeth—potentially to include nuclear weapon— to sustain their independence.  A dangerous scenario indeed.  

As of this writing (August 10), President Trump is scheduled to meet his Russian counterpart—sans Ukrainian President Zelensky—on 15 August to discuss plans for a ceasefire to the bloody strife. Trump will be tested by a Kremlin autocrat fixated with restoring Russian imperial glory through military conquest. How Trump squares that reality with a (hoped for) principled defense of Ukraine’s pre-2022 territorial sovereignty will send a clear signal to the rest of the world whether America still views the inviolability of borders as an inalienable right of independent nations. 

Stay tuned for the next act in this geopolitical tragedy.

Note: This article was submitted on August 10 to both the Brattleboro Reformer and the Monadnock Ledger-Transcript for consideration.