Ukraine: The Dangers of Using Past Crises to Justify the Present

By Andrew Hammond – LSE International Affairs Research Center

For CNN

Ukraine's Foreign Mnister Andrii Deshchytsya on Monday asserted that the situation in his country "is almost like ... a war." With Russian forces effectively having taken control of Crimea, this is Europe's biggest geopolitical crisis for at least two decades.

Russia is currently drafting counter-proposals to a U.S. plan for a negotiated solution. This will seek to challenge Washington's support for the new government in Kiev that Moscow believes was installed in a coup and has plunged a significant part of the country into chaos.

From Washington's perspective, Russian troops (up to 25,000 would normally be stationed in Crimea, according to Russian state media, but it's unclear how many are in the region now. Ukrainian authorities have said more Russian soldiers have come into Crimea) must pull back from Ukraine. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry is also attempting to secure support for the placement of international monitors, and has also called for Moscow to use its influence to stop the March 16 referendum in Crimea (which was annexed into the Ukraine in 1956 by Soviet leader Nikita Khruschev) on whether it should join the Russian Federation. In seeking to frame Russia's actions in Crimea, various historical analogies with Nazi Germany have been made, including last week by former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

The use of analogies by politicians in international crises is commonplace. In the complexity and uncertainty of fast moving day-to-day events, policymakers often seek to draw what they perceive as key lessons of the past in seeking to guide and provide rationales for their actions.

For much of the...