V.D. Hanson Spouts Nonsense on Ukraine War

Neocons' favorite historian again backs warmongering

Except for occasional glances, I stopped reading V.D. Hanson when he became the main booster of Bush’s Iraq War now almost 20 years ago. Originally a professor of classics, he became the Neocons’ favorite pseudo-historian. Around 2016 he switched a little and became a big Trump backer, even though early on Trump oppose the Iraq War.

Now Hanson is back in the pro-war camp, writing ahistorical nonsense about the Ukraine War. A recent column is, “History should be our guide in Ukraine.” He writes: “The Russian army is historically unbeatable on its home soil. Charles XII of Sweden, Napoleon Bonaparte and Adolf Hitler all wrecked their once indomitable militaries once they crossed into Russia. But the expeditionary armies of a multi-ethnic, disparate Russia have never done well abroad in major foreign invasions against determined enemies.”

Huh? How did Russia expand so fast to become the largest country by landmass in the world except through “major foreign invasinos against determined enemies,” including the Turks at their peak and the Tatars.

First off, after defeating Napoleon, the Czar’s troops advanced all the way to Paris. And Stalin’s Operation Bagratian pushed the once formidable Wehrmacht back to Berlin.

“Moscow faced a series of embarrassing and utter defeats in the Russo-Japanese war of 1904-1905.” Yeah — at the far end of their empire. And Russia/USSR defeated the Japanese Army at the Khalkhin Gol in 1939. Then at the end of the war, in 1945, it defeated the Japanese again while conquering most of China, or helping Chinese forces oust the Japanese.

“The czar’s 1914 invasion of German East Prussia ended in catastrophe.” But the Brusilov Offense of 1916 was a stunning success against Austria and Germany, albeit it bankrupted the Czar and led to the revolutions of 1917.

“Russia invaded Poland and lost the Polish war of 1919-1921.” But that was a war too far as Lenin consolidated Bolshevik tyranny back home.

“Stalin’s attack on tiny Finland in 1939 soon turned into a bloody quagmire.” Now this one is really dumb from an historian who wrote several books on World War II, including a history of the entire war. Stalin first used a broad-based attack. When that didn’t work, his generals convinced him to concentrate his forces in one area, adopting the tactic of the executed Marshal Tuchachevsky. That worked. Finland lost much territory and signed a treaty.

“The decadelong invasion and occupation of Afghanistan ended in defeat.” OK. Give him that one. But even the United States failed in the “graveyard of empires.”

“Given these past realities, Ukraine can defeat Putin’s expeditionary army if the United States and its NATO allies increase aid, do not embrace no-fly zones or other provocative trajectories to World War III, cease crazy talk of killing or removing Putin, stop whipping up hatred of all things Russian and remember that history was never on Putin’s side when he invaded Ukraine.” What a mishmash of nonsense.

Like Marxists, he anthropomorphizes “history.” That fact is, Russia inevitably was going to win from the beginning of the Ukraine War — or cease to be Russia. They have said this is an “existential” war for them — meaning they will fight it to the end, no matter what. VDH acknowledges that when he says NATO won’t use nukes, nor “embrace no-fly zones,” etc. For the US/NATO, it’s not an “existential” war.

I read a great deal of history and admire historians. But the problem with them is they have a professional temptation to view everything through the particular lens of their specialty, which in VDH’s case is war in classical times. That’s aside from other, personal delusions, such as those VDH has from his disastrous embrace of the Iraq War.

VDH headlines another article, “Can Ukraine Win?” He writes, “Admittedly, Putin is no longer fighting to win over Ukraine and force it back intact into the Russian federation. He is no longer wary of eradicating infrastructure that he once felt would once again become valuable Russian assets. Instead, Russia is going full Carthaginian peace in eastern Ukraine — leveling cities, murdering civilians and destroying an entire modern society for generations.”

A Carthagenian Peace is one like where the Romans utterly destroyed than ancient rival city. But Russia is not doing that. It only is destroying cities, such as Mariupol, where the resistance refuses to surrender and fights to the last man. It hardly has touched Kyiv or Kharkiv. Instead, Russia currently is encircling and will destroy the large Ukrainian force in Eastern Ukraine. That’s the Donbas area where the Nazi Azov Battalion killed at least 14,000 Russian speakers over the past eight years.

VDH: “So the war has become more complex precisely because Putin failed in his initial shock-and-awe effort to decapitate the Ukrainian government, storm the cities and install a puppet government.” But “shock and awe” is an American strategy, as used in VDH’s beloved Iraq War against Baghdad, not a Russian one. The Russian strategy is to preserve cities and civilians as much as possible, albeit only if resistance doesn’t last long.

After the Ukrainian forces in the East are destroyed or surrender over the next few weeks, Kiev and Kharkov will be surrounded, and their remaining residents, without a chance of victory as their army had been destroyed, likely will surrender. The only thing let to be decided is whether the Russians keep going all the way to Lviv in the West. And whether the US/NATO starts a nuclear war, which seems unlikely.

VDH also should have written this whole murderous war, which I hate, never would have happened if Ukraine agreed, solidly, never to join NATO, and to protect the Russians in the Donbas.