 Yeah, where does Ukraine stand in history? John David and history professor at HPU will help us understand. Welcome to history lens here in a given Monday morning and welcome to you John for joining us. Thanks, Jay, happy to be here as always. So yeah, so terrible crisis in the Ukraine right now. Of course, this awful attack by the Russian government upon Ukraine. And there's all kinds of questions that are raised and so we'll examine all of this. But just a note, my family and I actually went to the Ukraine in 2008. We traveled to Odessa, we flew into Odessa and then we actually have family ancestors about 40 miles north of Odessa, small village called Celts, which was a German village. Still today, there are Germans living in the village and looked for my father's ancestors, great big Catholic church right in the middle of the village which had actually been bombed by the Soviets in the post-war period, post-World War II period. But the thing is I found the Ukrainian people to be so friendly and enthusiastic and wanting to learn about new things, learn about other cultures. So I was very impressed actually. And the one thing I would say is that the peasants in the countryside are their peasants. They're very poor. The farmers and people who live in the countryside are incredibly poor. And from what I could tell in the Ukraine, it's a lot of corporate agriculture. So small farms have pretty much been done away with. Of course, during the Soviet era, there was a collective agriculture. So collectivized agriculture. And so small farmers lost their land and then had to essentially work for the state under these collectivized farms. So I think that's probably why corporate farming is so big today. But it was a great experience and really my heart goes out to the Ukrainian people. I mean, I met some great people there and they're probably suffering right now. So yeah. On the early 20th century, there were a lot of pogroms in Ukraine. My family is from the Ukraine, from a city, a town, it's a town called Kamenetspadosk. Both sides of my family actually came from there. And back in the day, they left. They had to leave Ukraine in the early 20th century. And I think, well, maybe that's built into Ukraine. But the answer is no, it's not really built into Ukraine. Ukraine is many generations ahead of that. And it's very different than that, expressed by your experience. And if you look today, you may find some remnants of the economics that existed at the time, but the politics that existed at the time really are gone and covered by time. So can you describe what the environment was at the time that Mr. Putin decided he was gonna take it over? Right, so Ukraine is a republic. It's got a democratically elected government. It's a political system that's been somewhat divisive in recent years. And quite honestly, it's almost always, the divisiveness has almost always been connected to how much influence Russia gets to exert or seeks to exert over the politics of the Ukraine. But, and this has actually been a long standing issue with the Ukraine. And I think we could benefit from some historical context about the influence of Russia within the Ukraine. So when my ancestors came to the Ukraine back in the early 19th century, then they migrated to the Ukraine because Russia had conquered the Ukraine militarily. And then there was open land. And of course, Russia had a German princess, Catherine the Great, when they conquered the Ukraine. And Catherine the Great knew German farmers and invited German farmers into essentially offered free land to these German farmers. No conscription could learn their own language, keep their own culture. It was quite a kind of, it was a very attractive proposal for German farmers. But by the end of the 19th century, then the Russian government seeks to crack down on those who are not Russian in the Ukraine. And there's lots, there's lots of Jews and lots of Germans in the Ukraine. And so they ban German language schools. They initiate pogroms against Jews. And then conscription has become universal. The Germans can no longer avoid conscription. So my family actually came to the United States because of that, because they had young boys who were of conscription age. And they knew that, if you get conscripted into the Russian army, it's a death sentence. So not all the Jews, not all the Jews left after those pogroms. And they stayed in what Russia had done in allowing or fomenting those pogroms. So it was just a ramp up for the death of all the millions of Jews from Ukraine 20 years later in the Holocaust. So it was very tragic that the environment that existed in the early 20th century led to this extraordinary number of murders that took place under Hitler. Yeah, I mean, the Ukraine had more, a larger part of the genocide, the Holocaust than any other country in the world. But before that happened, of course, Russia has a problem. Their problem is their decrepit empire, they get involved in World War I and then they get into political trouble. Back home people are starving, the economy's not working right, the soldiers don't wanna fight this war anymore. And so the government collapses in 1917, the Tsarist government. And then for a few months, they have a Republican government. And this is when you have a new government in Ukraine called the Central Rada. They're connected to that Republican government. And then in the fall of 1917, you have a Bolshevik revolution. The Bolsheviks take control in Moscow and in St. Petersburg. And in the Ukraine, what happens is the Central Rada, which is not Bolshevik. And you see the picture that's up right now. This is a celebration of the declaration of independence of Ukraine that takes place in early 1918. The Central Rada declares its independence from this new Bolshevik government in the Soviet Union. And then a series of wars break out. The thing is, importantly in this time period in 1917 to about 1922, when it is when the fighting takes place, the Ukraine is not unified. There are socialists in Ukraine, there are Bolsheviks, they all declare their own kind of little independence segments or communes, the German government, the German military actually invades the Ukraine in 1918 before the end of World War I. And they take over the Western part of Ukraine and declare their own independent government. So it's kind of a mess. But nonetheless, the Ukrainian people have established at that point that they're interested in independence from Russia or by this point from the Soviet Union. Now that fails, the Bolsheviks eventually pushback, pardon me, and they're able to overcome the Central Rada's army. The German government of course collapses in an insurrection in 19, early 1919. And so then the Bolsheviks take control and the Ukraine becomes a part of the Soviet Union. Now, and so it's a kind of bitter contested part of Ukrainian history. And we should note that it's very different today because of course you have Russians again invading the Ukraine just like the Bolsheviks in 1918 through 22. But in this case, the Ukrainians are pretty much united. There's very little in the way of opposition to Ukrainian resistance to Russia. I think that's a significant difference and important for the Ukraine. The other thing. Here's a country where the borders are not only porous but they have moved. They have moved for as long as history tells us. And before the liberal world order in 1945, people took a piece of Ukraine at will and everybody on every side took a piece but somehow they were independent in 1918. So my question to you, John, is does Russia have a legitimate claim based on these events to owning Ukraine? Well, you could make an argument that because the Bolsheviks fought a war and took over the Ukraine, that it's a part of Russia and it should be a part of Russia. I don't think Putin is making that claim though. His claim is based upon something different. And this is also embedded in Ukrainian history. His claim is based upon the idea that he is seeking a greater Russia to unite all Russians. It's ethnic nationalism, pure and simple. And so there are parts of the Ukraine that have lots of Russian nationals or Russians who have moved to the Ukraine. There are other parts in which fewer. But the reason why this is the case, why there are so many Russians in the Ukraine is deliberate policy. So in 1931 through 1933, Stalin, who was the leader of Russia, sought to strangle the Ukraine and replace Ukrainians with Russians. So here's what happens is, Ukrainians had bumper harvests in those years, but Stalin forced the government of the, sorry, Stalin forced the farmers of Ukraine to export or to move all of the grain outside of the Ukraine. And the Ukrainians were left to starve. I've actually have a photo here. Here's a photo of those people laying on the sidewalk. They are near to death. They're virtual skeletons. This is because Stalin deliberately starved between 10 to 12 million people between 1931 and 1933. So, and then what Stalin did is encourage Russians to move into the Ukraine to replace these dead Ukrainians in a kind of policy of ethnic Russification. And so that's one of the bases for Putin's claim that he's just trying to put Russia back together with Russians. It's a nonsense claim. It doesn't make any sense in today's world, but then I think Putin is, unfortunately for him, I think he's taking his rhetoric a little too seriously and this claim to the greater Russia uniting all Russians together has led him into a war in which he's in big trouble right now because the rest of the world as opposed to him and the sanctions are really good at damage Russia's economy. And of course, the Germans are actually sending arms to the Ukraine right now. So this is a very serious matter. And but the basis for this conflict Putin wants to make it about a kind of Russian past in the Ukraine and there is some of that as brutal as it is. And others are saying, the Ukrainians themselves are saying, hey, we just want our independence. We want national sovereignty. The basic concept that a nation sovereignty should be respected. Well, the other concept is one I mentioned earlier and that is after World War II the advent of the United Nations and America's leadership around the world especially in Europe was all focused on developing a liberal world order where neighbors would not invade neighbors and try to take territory that way. Can you talk about that? Well, I mean, that's true. I mean, that's one of the articles of the Atlantic Charter. It's written into the United Nations Charter, national sovereignty, the basic, you know respect for a nation sovereignty. Those are very important concepts. But the problem with that is the United States itself has violated these principles as well. So we shouldn't stand in judgment completely. The concept, the principle is quite important the principle of national sovereignty. And so that's what the Ukrainians are standing on. I do think that the Ukraine of today is a very different place, of course than it was under the Soviet Union. So essentially what happened is the Soviet system failed in the Ukraine. By the end of the Soviet era things were such a mess there. When I visited the Ukraine in 2008 we saw this school that had been built by the Soviet Union in 1990, right? Before the Soviet Union collapsed. And when the Soviet Union collapsed the school collapsed as well before it could ever be used it for its classrooms. It just basically fell of its own weight. And so Ukraine was left impoverished and kind of without strong economic prospects. So what's happened since the end of the Soviet era is that the Ukrainians have actually built themselves up. They have the thing about Ukraine it's very good farmland. So they export a lot of grain to other parts of the world. They don't have a lot of other resources but so they've been able to make this work. Now the dynamic that we see today is this question of continued question of Russian influence. So Russia would like to have, Putin would like to have his own puppet in place at the head of the Ukrainian government. He does not seek to make the Ukraine a colony of Russia, right? That's a kind of old 19th century concept. He doesn't want that. He wants a friend in power. And he wants a guarantee that the Ukraine will not join NATO. Those are really important. And then he wants a recognition of these breakaway republics in the Eastern part of Ukraine, the Russian separatists. And so if he could have those guarantees that he would probably withdraw forces today but he's not going to get them because the Ukrainian people had their own revolution. Not in 1991 when they got their independence but actually in 2014 when they deposed a Russian puppet ruler a guy named Viktor Yanukovych who was a close ally of Russia in the Ukraine. And he was so corrupt and unpopular that in 2014 the Ukrainian people came into the streets and they protested and they stayed in the streets for months. I actually have a picture of this. That's called the Euro Maiden Revolution. And it's this remarkable event where popular protest led to the overthrow of this essentially a dictator. He fled the country. He fled to Russia. And I think Baylor was first and then Russia. So through popular protest the Russians were able to take back their country. Pardon me, the Ukrainians were able to take back their country. To me, this is really significant for Ukrainian resistance today. They've got to help you understand. It was only eight years ago. They came out in force, they stayed out, they took risks, some of them were killed. And it's within recent memory. So they're playing the same song again, right? Yeah. So for them, the idea that you fight for your independence is something that's real, it's tangible. They've done it already. So I think that's probably the most significant thing motivating Ukrainians to fight back against Russia. But was this a miscalculation by Putin? Did he understand the history that you've been talking about? Did he understand the legacy of 2014? Did he understand the nature of the Ukrainian people? Yeah, I think it is a terrible miscalculation on his part. And I think he did not. He understood a certain kind of history, the history of ethnic nationalism in the Ukraine. But he did not understand this other part where the Ukrainians actually had fought for their independence way back at the beginning of the 20th century that the Ukrainians had fought for their independence again in 2014 that they had suffered so terribly in the 1930s during World War II that this is a nation, these are people who are saying enough, we don't want any more of this. So yeah, I think he's really miscalculated. I think this could turn into a real quagmire for him because of course now we see that, as I said, the Germans are actually offering military weaponry to the Ukraine. It means that the Ukraine can call upon new forces. This is a large country. It's maybe 45 million people. So they have more than enough people to join in to irregular forces. So I think they can actually pin down the Russians for quite some time. And... I was gonna ask you about that, and through your eyes, or may I say through the lens of history, we're in a situation now where time counts. There are people back home in Russia who don't like this at all and are protesting. A huge number showed up in St. Petersburg, even at the risk of being arrested and sent to prison, which is what Putin does. And you have Western Europe is reacting. The U.S. obviously is reacting. The world is calling Putin out and treating him as a pariah in every way, not only with sanctions, but with public opinion, pretty much everywhere. And so the question is a question of timing. How long does this last? If the Ukrainians stay in the street and they keep fighting and the Russians have a kind of problem back home with public opinion, and Putin is gauging his moves as he does, it's a great big chess game sort of thing, and where he might change his mind any given day, and that's the way it is with him. How does history flow into this situation? Will we forget? Will it be just a waiting game, like a siege of Ukraine? Or will time work in favor of Ukraine? Yeah, it's really hard to know. Of course, the Ukrainian fight is encouraged by the fact that Putin's allies have almost to a country deserted him. I mean, even China has no longer or never did directly endorse this war. They're saying we want peace, which is of course, that's Chinese Communist Party line, but still they're not Sancti, we support Russia, which has to be concerning to Putin. And of course, Hungary, which was an ally of Putin, has said, no, we're gonna go with the EU and we're gonna support sanctions and everything against Russia. Turkey is considering blockading the Straits of Dardanelles, blocking the Black Sea, exit into the Mediterranean. Russia is friendless right now. So they've put themselves, and then along with the sanctions, they've really put themselves in a fix. The Russians, I don't know how long they can hold out economically in terms of what that looks like. That's, you have to ask any economist about that, but the sanctions are clearly going to hurt. I mean, already the value of the ruble has dropped precipitously, so people are losing wealth right away. But the other thing, so Putin, and Putin's strategist, well, okay, maybe he's a strategist, maybe he's not as smart as we thought he was, that's part of what's going on here. And the thing that, Jay, to your question that you asked earlier, why have people, why have nations reacted the way they have to this invasion, why haven't they just kind of, well, this is just like Georgia, the invasion of Georgia or the invasion of Crimea. Well, just if you're Putin's bad, oh well. I think the reason why is because of Euro-Maidan, because of those protests in 2014, and the rest of Europe identifying with the Ukraine and its independence aspirations. And so I think when Europeans, who by the way were incredibly shocked by this, they never believed Putin would be capable of such a barbaric act. I think when they look at the Ukraine, they see themselves now. They see a nation with aspirations with a history of conflict, but the willingness to fight for their independence, a kind of post-Cold War, post-Berlin wall Europe, which actually reached its aspirations. I think this is why Europe especially has gone completely in a direction which opposes Putin. And there's all kinds of, of course, risks for them. But I just think that's why I think they identified very strongly. German tourists will go to Kiev for their vacations. It's close by and it's inexpensive. So that's very common. So other nations have stronger connections to the Ukraine now. So I think that's the answer. Is it when the Germans or the, you know, the Hungarians or the Romanian see this invasion, they see Putin invading them. And I think that's why they've reacted so strongly. We have to stop this guy before he goes any further. Also, I think the memory of World War II, the memory of not stopping Hitler, of kind of saying, okay, you can, you know, the Munich agreement in 1939, you can have what you've got just don't take anymore, but no way to actually punish Hitler if he did take more. Well, now we've got NATO and we've got a way to punish Putin if for trying to take more. And I think that's a very important difference. It's an essential difference. Well, will the sanctions and all the approbation really work? Because can't Putin just keep on doing what he's doing? And so I don't care if you guys think I'm a pariah, I'm taking territory, this is good for me. And it's a great bread basket. It's an economic benefit for me to have, to control Ukraine. Wouldn't that be an acceptable result for him? Does he care? Will this wreck Russia if he just ignores all the sanctions and ignores the approbation? Well, this is I think an open question. We don't really know the answer to this, but I think there is a big risk for Putin now, the gun of the international isolation and the sanctions together mean that the Russian economy is gonna take a big hit. And this war is clearly not very popular in Russia. I mean, even on television, the head of the Union of Industrialists said to Putin, hey, this cannot be a long war, otherwise we're gonna be really damaged by this. And so I think there's a real risk for Putin. I mean, he rules, yes, through a democratic election, sort of, but he rules as a kind of democratic dictator and dictators always have to be careful about how far they reach because they don't have the mandate of their public. Is he at risk of being overthrown? Well, not at this point, but yeah, I think if this thing went on and on and the sanctions take a grip and one of the prompts for Putin is a lot of the reserves, the central bank reserves are actually dollar denominated and therefore the United States and the allies can lock down those reserves. They're not in Russia, they're elsewhere. So the Russia could run short of cash as well if this extends for months and months. Yeah, I think that would be kind of, well, like maybe nine out of 10 that Putin stays in power, I would say, but there is a slight chance that he could run this thing so badly that his chief of staff or somebody else decides to just get rid of him. I don't know. Yeah, well, that was an attempt, at least on one occasion in Germany. So one interesting point that you mentioned that I think is worth dwelling on is this. This isn't like he has control over these other countries and it isn't like Russia hasn't been doing business on a regular basis with all of these other countries. So it gives him a really special exposure because arguably what he's doing to the Ukrainian people, the atrocities are, he's attacking civilians, he's blowing up residential buildings and that's war crimes. Now, in France, for example, just one example, in France, if you make a charge, and this has happened with European organizations doing business in Central Africa, an NGO can file a lawsuit against you in France and seek compensation for the victims of your atrocities. Well, in France, there are a lot of deposits by Russian banks, individuals and the government that are sitting there frozen, waiting for action. And if I believe that there are atrocities happening in Ukraine, in France under the law of France, I could go against those funds. And once this gets started, Russia will not only have its funds frozen, but it will lose its funds to these compensation claims. This changes the calculus, doesn't it? I think it does. The thing is, Putin wants to dip into ethnic nationalism, but we live in a world that is so globalized, so intensely globalized, the economies of the world are so linked together. And even Russia is a part of this. And so, yeah, I think, you know, Putin has put himself in a fix with this, you know, with this invasion, there's no doubt about it. Yeah, so here, there are three logical possibilities. One, of course, is that these talks at the border with Belarus will pay off somehow and result in a settlement. I'm not optimistic, but that's a possibility. The next possibility is that for one reason or another, including, you know, internal pressures from the younger generations, if you will, in Russia, well, maybe all the generations in Russia will force him to back off, force him to take his troops out. And the third possibility is that he will, you know, continue to push west, continue to take every city and kill everyone in his path. That's the third possibility. So I really don't know which one would prevail. You may have ideas about which ones are more likely, but at the end of the day, it seems to me that all of those possibilities will change the face of Europe. What do you think? Yeah, I don't think that's, my guess is that Putin's gonna, he's gonna look for an off-ramp for this thing and he's gonna look for it fairly soon. And he might not be willing to take that off-ramp directly with the Ukrainians, but he is in contact with the president of France. Of course, the United States has offered diplomacy as well. And I would, I mean, I don't know how long he's gonna let this go on and hope that he can, you know, overwhelm Kiev and install a new government there. But the thing is, the problem for him is that urban guerrilla warfare is clearly something that the Ukrainians are going to engage in. They're doing it already. So we know that this will take place. And this means that even a short kind of stint of occupation by the Russian military is going to be really unpleasant and, you know- It'll get out. It'll get out. Reuters will be there. The Associated Press will be there. All those telephone videos, the phone videos will be coming back. We will see everything. Yes. Yes. So I think that Putin, I think is, unless he's gone completely out of his mind, he definitely needs an off-ramp. I think off-ramp, I think the West should in the next, you know, week or so be talking amongst themselves about offering Putin some sort of SAV for this, some way of, you know, stepping back from it without, you know, without, of course allowing Putin all of his objectives in Ukraine. And by the way, I don't see this war expanding into the rest of Europe. The problem Putin has is NATO. And now the United States and Europe is going to take NATO very seriously. And Putin is certainly not going to risk that kind of a wider war. So it's shocking, but I do think Putin is going to try to find an off-ramp here. So that would be my guess. What about my point about whatever option, whatever option is selected or takes place, Europe will not be the same. Yeah, I think Europe has decided that it's not going to be the same. I'm not so sure that Putin is going to make that decision, but I think Europeans themselves, so this is the first time since the 2008 economic crisis that the European Union has spoken with one voice very clearly. It's been a lot of division. There's been actually a lot of calls for ethnic nationalism and, you know, get out of the EU and then, you know, you want my own little enclave of kind of ethnic purity and everything. These are frightening things. And of course, anti-Semitism in Europe has gone up dramatically since that time. So this could be a moment where the EU comes back together and is more unified, at least against this threat. Certainly that's been true in the short term. So I'm not so sure that Putin is going to change Europe's mind. I think Europe is changing its mind about Putin. And maybe this leads to more unity on other issues in the European Union. I'm just not sure about that. This could be a short-term thing. And then they go back to squabbling after. He's going to want to divide them. You know, that's his larger mission. And he may do that again in the passage of time. Who knows? Let me ask you one last question is the U.S., which isolated itself during the Trump administration and maybe was ramping up to that earlier, isolating itself from Europe and from participating in NATO and the EU and having a moral leadership there. The U.S. is definitely affected by this. And to some extent, Joe Biden has re-established a moral leadership, I would say. But how does this all affect? How does this, what are these events? How do they affect the U.S.? Because a lot of people, especially in CPAC, don't feel it means anything to us. And we're going to turn our backs on the whole thing and go isolationist again. But in reality though, in the larger sense, through the lens of history, what does this mean for America's moral leadership, America's connection, not only with Europe, but with other parts of the world, in terms of avoiding this kind of invasion and violation of sovereignty elsewhere? I think it's really quite significant. And I think it has in some sense brought more unity to the United States, which of course, is very divided. It's, I think, damaged the prospects of, even further the prospects of Trump and the Trumpists, because they look like there's even more out of touch with reality than before. And I think it might exacerbate splits within the Republican Party because you're going to have Hawks who are going to say, well, Hawks who might have leaned towards Trump now are going to say, well, we can't tolerate this. And there's a lot of Hawks in the Republican Party. And so on the Democratic side, the Biden administration, I think, has handled this extremely well. I think that's part of the reason why Putin is in trouble now as the Biden administration was very clear and open about its intelligence. But Putin did not expect this. And so this became a kind of cyber weapon that the Biden administration used against Putin very effectively. The effects on the United States are, this could also have some deleterious effects on the American economy, of course, which is suffering some inflation right now and probably will suffer a little bit more inflation because of this invasion and because certain resources that Russia has, which are going to be, it's going to be more difficult to get those resources out of the country. So I think on balance, actually, this has been good for the Democrats and bad for the Republicans in terms of politics. In terms of the country itself, I don't think this is going to create a political unity out of division. I think that has to happen over time and honestly through political battles within the United States. I was going to ask you, John, here at the end of our program, how we should think about this because Hawaii is half a world away. And most places in the US are very distant and don't think much about Europe, haven't thought much about Europe. And I was going to ask you, what should we be thinking now? But I'd like to turn that question as, is this going to affect United States over a long period of time? That doesn't this raise public awareness about our, what did you call it before, an interdependent world? We have before we could have ignored it, we did ignore it. Now it seems to me that most right thinking, people are gonna say, right or wrong, we really are part of an international community, we must have awareness over what is happening in far away places. Do you think that is happening? Certainly it should happen, but is it happening? Well, I think you have different Americas, right? You have some people poorly educated, lower income people who don't give a rip about this who think very kind of narrow terms about all of this. And then of course you have the policy elites well educated people who are reading newspapers and who are watching the news and watching things online. Those folks are going to recognize, it's pretty easy to draw that conclusion that we are terribly interconnected in our economies, that we are so globalized that in this of course gives the lie to Trump's argument that we should de-link, that we can be our own kind of little island here in the United States. So I think it's reaffirmation in some ways for those who are more invested in their own wealth in American success. I think this kind of re-emphasizes that the United States is so connected to the world economy that if you wanna create wealth, you might need goods from Russia or from China. You might wanna trade with China. You might wanna sell goods there. And so therefore you have to pay more attention to this. So I think Jay what you're asking is the competition between the return to nationalism or in Putin's case a kind of ethnic nationalism over the move towards a globally integrated economy and society. This is a moment I think where globalization wins. But it doesn't, I don't know if it is a long term if it changes trends or if trends ever really were seriously moving towards kind of ethnic divisions and nationalism. But this makes it very clear that our economies are linked together and it's it'd be very difficult to de-link them. The other thing it does is it I think it encourages Americans to understand that we need to be more energy independent. That's maybe the big question because Russia is the second largest or the largest producer of oil in the world, oil and natural gas. And the United States actually buys oil from Russia. And therefore we need to become more energy independent. And we've been kind of trying to do this for decades probably since Jimmy Carter was president. We have not succeeded, but we can succeed. We have much greater means of becoming energy independent now with the rise of renewables and electric vehicles and all of the rest of it. So this might provide more impetus to that. It might force Congress to make an investment in renewables in terms of considering its national security now. So I don't know. Yeah, but it raises issues. Maybe we weren't focused on before. And that's that's a good thing. Thank you, John. John, David, and history professor and chair Hawaii Pacific University, HBU. Thank you so much for coming on. Really appreciate this discussion. I hope you realize we're gonna be calling you again. Okay, Jay, call away. All right, take care. Thank you, John. Take care. Bye-bye, best of all.