Russia’s invasion of Ukraine sent shockwaves across the world. Immediately pledges of support for Ukraine and its people began to flood the news and social media. In response the United States and its allies in NATO have pledged hundreds of millions of dollars in “military aid” (most likely ranging from actual cash deposits to military hardware and equipment) and leveled crippling sanctions against Russia (much to the harm of non-Russians as well), but has repeatedly said that it will not commit troops to fight in the Ukraine nor directly engage Russian troops directly.
And while ignorant and dangerous propagandists try and whip up war furor by comparing Russia’s invasion of Ukraine to Hitler’s invasion of Czechoslovakia in an effort to drum up support for World War III (conveniently ignoring that Hitler never had to face drones, ICBMs, or atomic bombs but Putin does), it seems like at least most Americans have had the intelligence to not fall such obvious stupidities and manipulations. And while war and the rumors of wars are everywhere, not enough people are really pointing out the obvious – the Ukraine could be Putin’s tombstone and the graveyard of his rule. It could destroy him.
How, you ask?
To answer that question we need to step back into history and look at one of the most often overlooked but most important reasons the Soviet Union disintegrated. We need to look at why one of the most powerful empires in all of history, why a world superpower straddling Europe and Asia like a planet wide colossus, simply dissolved.
We need to look at the Soviet-Afghan War
The Soviet Graveyard
(Note: This article is my main source for the following info on the war.)
In April 1978, Afghanistan’s government was overthrown by Socialist military officers. These military officers then formed a new government made from an alliance of two Afghani Socialist political parties, the People’s Party and the Banner Party. They declared that Afghanistan was a new Socialist nation, the People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan. This new government had little support from the people of Afghanistan, so in order to keep power its leaders forged close ties with the Soviet Union. Soon after taking power, the new Socialist government launched ruthless purges of all their political opposition and began persecuting religious people. Tens of thousands were imprisoned, tortured, and killed by the Socialist rulers.
All of this was bitterly resented by the devoutly Muslim and largely anti-communist population. Rebellions against the government arose among both the tribal people of the countryside and among those living in the cities. Though there were many different groups with different goals, they were known collectively as the mujahedeen. They fought to overthrow the new Socialist government, because its Socialist atheism was antithetical to the deeply held religious beliefs of most Afghans and because most Afghanis rightly understood that it was merely a puppet government controlled by the Soviet Union.
These uprisings gave the Soviets a justification to invade the country on the night of December 24, 1979. The aim of the Soviet operation was to prop up their new but failing client state whose leaders had no mass support from their own people. Backed by the United States, the mujahedeen rebellion grew, spreading to all parts of the country. The Soviets initially left the suppression of the rebellion to the Afghan army, but it suffered from mass desertions and remained weak throughout the war.
The Soviet-Afghan War quickly settled down into a stalemate, with more than 100,000 Soviet troops controlling the cities, larger towns, and major garrisons and the mujahedeen moving with relative freedom throughout the countryside. Soviet troops tried to crush the rebellions in many different, often brutal, ways, but the fighters generally escaped Soviet attacks. The Soviets then attempted to eliminate the mujahedeen’s civilian support by wiping out entire villages, both by bombing them and by forcing the people to leave their homes and move into new areas. This caused people to flee the country. By 1982 some 2.8 million Afghans had fled to Pakistan, and another 1.5 million had fled to Iran. The war was a disaster for the country as many more either died or faced the threats of starvation and disease brought on by the war.
The mujahedeen were not all a single group led by one leader. They were a bunch of independent groups working towards the same cause of driving the Soviets out of Afghanistan. Though they started off poorly trained and armed, the quality of their weapons and combat organization improved over the course of the war. This was due to the experience gained from fighting and to the large quantity of weapons, money (around $3 billion worth), and resources shipped to the rebels by the United States secretly through its ally Pakistan. The CIA, the spy agency for the USA, was also involved in giving many of the different groups combat training in order to help them be more effective in fighting the Soviets.
Though the majority of the mujahedeen were Afghanis from Afghanistan fighting for their homeland, there were a number of fighters who, at the urging of the CIA, came from all parts of the world to join the fight against the Soviet Union. One such fighter who would later become important in world history was Osama bin Laden.
Bin Laden grew up in a wealthy family that ran a construction company in Saudi Arabia. He studied business in college. His wealthy father had provided money to the mujahedeen and was happy when one of his own sons signed up to fight the Soviets directly. While he took part in some ambushes against the Soviets during the war, his most important contributions were financial. He helped build roads, training camps, and weapons depots for the mujahedeen. Most importantly of all, this influence allowed him to both get military training and leadership experience directing men in combat against larger military forces. All of these elements would become essential after the war when he, and other trained fighters, would form the group today known as al-Qaeda to continue what they saw as the struggle to force all foreign militaries from their nations.
The war in Afghanistan became a disaster for the Soviet Union as it spent money and lives in a war with a people who simply would not surrender no matter what was done to them. The Soviets were eventually forced to retreat from Afghanistan. The final Soviet troops left on February 15, 1989. The war had killed over 14,000 Soviet soldiers while 2 million Afghani civilians had died. The failure of the Soviet government to win this war combined with the other social problems the USSR already had was a major factor in the decline of the USSR all throughout the 1980s and its eventual collapse in 1992. This fantastic paper on it lists four ways in which the war undermined and helped to destroy the Soviet Union:
The war impacted Soviet politics in four reinforcing ways: (1) Perception effects: it changed the perceptions of leaders about the efficacy of using the military to hold the empire together and to intervene in foreign countries; (2) Military effects: it discredited the Red Army, created cleavage between the party and the military, and demonstrated that the Red Army was not invincible, which emboldened the non-Russian republics to push for independence; (3) Legitimacy effects: it provided non-Russians with a common cause to demand independence since they viewed this war as a Russian war fought by non-Russians against Afghans; and (4) Participation effects: it created new forms of political participation, started to transform the press/media before glasnost, initiated the first shots of glasnost, and created a significant mass of war veterans (Afghansti) who formed new civil organizations weakening the political hegemony of the communist party.
The Afghanistan war and the breakdown of the Soviet Union
With the Soviet military now weakened, the peoples of the Soviet Union rightly saw this as a chance to regain their lost independence and rightly took it. And the Soviet Union disintegrated as a result. It wasn’t overthrown by a violent revolution, it simply ceased to exist as those under Soviet rule were no longer afraid of those in power and refused to obey them.
Putin’s Graveyard
I think the application of this historical lesson to today is fairly obvious. Putin’s invasion of Ukraine puts him in a dangerous position. We know he has powerful opposition at home, which is why he feels he has to imprison them in order to protect his power. Thousands of Russians have already been arrested for protesting Putin’s invasion of Ukraine and more seem likely to follow. It is clear that this invasion has only emboldened those who oppose Putin’s regime by giving them something that so many can easily hate – war, death, and destruction. Even Putin’s own supporters do not want to see their children come back as charred corpses burned alive by a Molotov cocktail or with half their head blown away and may turn against him as a result.
At the same time, this invasion hasn’t done the Russian military any favors either. While it seems like most people expected the much larger and powerful Russian military to crush the Ukraine, the very opposite has happened:
During the first week of the war, Russian ground forces have become bogged down outside of the northern Ukrainian cities of Kharkiv and Kyiv due to their failure to establish air superiority (which has resulted in significant aircraft and helicopter losses), too few troops to execute three simultaneous thrusts (toward Kyiv and Kharkiv, and north from Crimea), poor coordination of fires and maneuver, significant logistical issues, and stronger than expected Ukrainian resistance.
…Russia’s naval superiority in the Black Sea has contributed to success in its southern area of operations, with Russian forces breaking out from the Crimean Peninsula and taking territory in southern Ukraine.
…Although Ukraine has fought well and disrupted plans for a quick and decisive Russian victory, the situation is still perilous. Russia is moving to encircle Kyiv and Kharkiv and appears to have switched to indiscriminate long-range fires—resulting in significant collateral damage in residential areas—and is making significant progress in the south.
More detail here.
Instead of looking powerful and mighty, the Russian military has ended up looking “disorganized, uncoordinated and sluggish to observers.” (ibid)
Just as the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan revealed the weaknesses of the Soviet military and weakened its power to terrorize those it had previously controlled, likewise this war is revealing that Russia’s military is a lot less capable than originally believed. Instead of ensuring Putin’s rule through a demonstration of military might this will reveal to all those back home just how weak he is and just how powerful they are. And that military weakness will give his opposition an opportunity they’ve never had before – the chance to act.
The Ukrainians have managed to inflict serious casualties on the Russians while the Russian military seems to only be bungling its way towards victory. Perhaps the Russian capture of Kyiv is inevitable, but all of this indicates that such a victory would be meaningless to the Ukrainians. They, like the Afghani mujahideen, cannot be defeated because they will refuse to surrender. Russians may take the major cities, but the Russian military will never be large enough to control the countryside and it will also belong to the Ukrainians. If the civilians keep resisting as they are now, if they keep fighting for as long as the Russian military occupies their lands, and as long as they have the means to resist, then the Russian government will only continue to pour men, material, and wealth into a black hole that will return it nothing but infamy.
And the United States and its allies have ensured that Ukrainians will have the means to resist.
And we aren’t just talking token amounts either. The United States alone has given almost $2 billion dollars to the Ukraine before and during the invasion and is sending it serious war materials such as Javelin anti-tank weapons, shoulder mounted Stinger missiles to destroy enemy aircraft, body armor, and anti-body armor ammunition. The European Union has sent money and fighter jets. The Netherlands and Germany are preparing to send a Patriot Long Range Air-Defence System, “a long-range, all-altitude, all-weather air defence system to counter tactical ballistic missiles, cruise missiles and advanced aircraft.” Finland is sending, “1,500 rocket launchers, 2,500 assault rifles, 150,000 rounds of ammunition, and 70,000 servings of field rations.” And the list continues with all these things being just the beginning of long term support for Ukraine from all these countries. (Makes you wonder who benefits more from this conflict, Ukraine or defense contractors, doesn’t it? Warfare, corporate welfare by any other name would still kill just as many people.)
Add on top of all this the fact that the rouble is collapsing and economic disaster looms for Russia. And the longer this goes on, the steeper the sanctions become, the hire the costs of the war rise, the more the people of Russia suffer as jobs dry up and prices rise, the more it seems likely that something will break. Sooner rather than later. And it will not be in Putin’s favor when the desperate and starving masses come for him and his government. Don’t believe me, just ask Nicholas II.
It seems clear that the Ukrainians, as long as they have the will to bleed and die will also have the means to resist, kill, and ultimately drive out the Russian invaders. All it will cost the Ukrainians is their homes, their history, their historical sites, their treasure, their families, their children, and their own lives. Wars, even victorious ones, are brutal and destructive on a level unimaginable.
It seems pretty clear that instead of bring Putin a triumph this could be the thing that destroys him. Instead of a scene of military glory, Ukraine could will be Putin’s graveyard, the scene of his final downfall and destruction. If so, then as with the fall of the Soviet Union, it’ll be because his own people, no longer afraid of him, will simply refuse to follow him.
The Better Way
Which really begs the question, “Why don’t they just do that already?”
There is one thing that the proponents of democracy have correct. The power of the state relies upon the will of the people. Governments only exist for as long as those who it claims it rules actually obey it. As long as they submit to its edicts and obey its orders or, at the very least, allow it to act as it wishes, those in government positions will be able to do whatever they want. Almost everything the state does is meant either to cajole this obedience or ambivalence from the masses or to terrorize them into subservience. Government social programs do the former while the police and military do the latter. But it all depend son the willingness of individuals, communities, and societies to obey – to do what they’re told, to follow the rules dictated to them, to kill who they’re told to kill, and to die when they’re told to die.
Governments rely upon your obedience and when you refuse to obey them they dissolve.
They simply cease to exist.
This truth offers us a solution to both the problem of Vladimir Putin and a way for the Ukrainians to defeat the Russian invasion with the least amount of lives lost and the greatest potential for lasting peace.
The Russian people can be rid of Putin as soon as they decide that they will not obey him, his cronies, or his regime in any form. This doesn’t necessarily mean they have to completely overthrow their government or radically alter their constitution and body of laws, though neither of those things are absolutely bad ideas. All they have to do is engage in civil disobedience, noncompliance, and noncooperation. Choose to live freely, break unjust laws, and refuse to obey the orders of those in power. Putin’s rule, like Gorbachev’s before him, would crumble right out from under him. It would be Russia’s very own Velvet Revolution.
Notice here that I am not saying that violence would not occur. Putin would certainly lash out with whatever power remained to him, but as with Iran in 1978 and 1979, the very violence he uses to try and put down his opposition would only cause more people to oppose him and cause their numbers to increase until he can no longer rule. There are more people in Russia than there are cops and soldiers, especially if some of those are busy occupying foreign nations. Fill the prisons and jails and all the cages of Mother Russia with those who refuse to comply and there would still be too many to compel or control. And governments without control have no power. This has already begin. Take, for example, Russian state TV employee, Marina Ovsyannikov:
In a pre-recorded video, Ovskyannikova explained:
What is going on in Ukraine now is a crime, and Russia is the aggressor. The responsibility for this aggression lies only on one person and that person is Vladimir Putin.
…Unfortunately, I have been working at Channel One during recent years, working on Kremlin propaganda, and now I am very ashamed. I’m ashamed that I’ve allowed the lies to be said on TV screens. I am ashamed that I let the Russian people be zombified.
We are Russian people; we are smart and thoughtful. It is only in our power to stop this madness. Take to the streets, do not be afraid. They can’t jail us all.
She is right. Just as when nonviolent resistance brought down the Soviet Union, the Russian people have the power to rid themselves of Putin and his regime without having to fire a single gun, without having to kill a single person. There are too many Russians for the government to silence them, imprison them, or even kill them. If the Russian people refuse to comply, refuse to obey, then Putin’s regime will simply cease to exist, and with far less destruction, discord, death, and disaster than in an all-out civil war between his supporters and his opponents.
Ten million people died in the last Russian Civil War, there is no reason to have another one when nonviolent resistance, civil disobedience, and noncompliance will achieve so much more without so much blood and horror. Further, nonviolence has the added benefit of building better, freer, and more democratic societies in their wake than violent revolutions do. (PDF, pg. 9) That means that nonviolent resistance is not only more likely to overthrow Putin’s regime than a violent revolution, but it would be more successful in instituting a government that better recognizes and respects the liberty of the Russian individual.
The same is true of Ukraine. What if the Russian army marched right in and instead of guns started shooting and bombs started flying what if the Ukrainians simply ignored them? The Russians would march around, shout out orders, perhaps even beat and kill some who disobey. All in an effort to terrify the masses of Ukraine into obedience. Yet, they were not terrified. Instead of following Russian orders they simply got up and went to work every day. Instead of obeying military orders they continued to follow the orders of whatever government officials they chose or none at all. Instead of acknowledging the Russian invasion at all they simply ignored them and their demands, gave them nothing, accepted nothing from them, and disobeyed. Such a mass boycott all by itself would make Ukraine ungovernable and uncontrollable while forcing crippling spending costs on Russia to try and maintain its occupation.
Yes, the Russian soldiers would almost certainly lash out. Many Ukrainians would be hurt, imprisoned, perhaps even killed. But weigh that against the outcome of war. In nonviolent resistance there are no jet fighters dropping bombs from the sky, no mass destruction of cities, no millions of refugees, no shortages and famines caused by the destruction of war, and no gunfights in the middle of cities. In nonviolent resistance there are no starving children and babies burned alive by ravaging by artillery shells and Molotov cocktails. There is death, but no mass slaughter. Am I really supposed to believe that nonviolent resistance and noncompliance would cause more death and destruction than that? Than this?
Insanity.
The people of Ukraine are already organizing by the millions to violently resist the Russian invasion. But that opposition is necessarily limited to only those who can physically and violently fight back – who can shoot guns, throw bombs, and kill others. This is but a fraction of society and therefore but a fraction of the power that nonviolent resistance and noncompliance can wield. Nonviolent resistance campaigns can include men and women, the very old and the very young, homosexual or heterosexual, religious or atheist, the fully abled and those with disabilities, the rich and the poor – in short all the differing strata of society. There is always some task, large or small, that people can do which helps achieve the larger goal of independence in a campaign of nonviolent resistance.
This is one of the reasons that nonviolent resistance campaigns are more effective than violent resistance. As Dr. Erica Chenoweth explains:
Then I analyzed the data, and the results blew me away. From 1900 to 2006, nonviolent campaigns worldwide were twice as likely to succeed outright as violent insurgencies. And there’s more. This trend has been increasing over time—in the last fifty years civil resistance has become increasingly frequent and effective, whereas violent insurgencies have become increasingly rare and unsuccessful. This is true even in extremely repressive, authoritarian conditions where we might expect nonviolent resistance to fail.
So why is civil resistance so much more effective than armed struggle? The answer lies in people power itself.
Researchers used to say that no government could survive if five percent of its population mobilized against it. But our data reveal that the threshold is probably lower. In fact, no campaigns failed once they’d achieved the active and sustained participation of just 3.5% of the population—and lots of them succeeded with far less than that. Now, 3.5% is nothing to sneeze at. In the U.S. today, this means almost 11 million people.
But get this: Every single campaign that did surpass that 3.5% threshold was a nonviolent one. In fact, campaigns that relied solely on nonviolent methods were on average four times larger than the average violent campaign. And they were often much more representative in terms of gender, age, race, political party, class, and urban-rural distinctions.
Civil Resistance and the “3.5% Rule” (links in original)
Ukraine would certainly achieve that 3.5% threshold, and easily surpass it. And, importantly enough, nonviolent resistance is most effective when, “overthrowing a government or achieving territorial independence.” (PDF pg. 5) In other words, when doing exactly what the Ukrainians are striving to do now – to maintain territorial independence – is when nonviolent resistance is proven to be much more effective than violence.
Without the ability to force the Ukrainians to comply -and there simply aren’t enough Russians to always be watching to make sure the Ukrainians do obey orders, much less so the Russian military only a fraction of which can be in Ukraine as it is needed to defend the rest of Russia’s territory – Russia could get nothing from Ukraine. It cannot get its resources without Ukrainian miners, drillers, and laborers. Ukrainian disobedience to Russian orders and noncompliance with Russian needs would make Ukraine ungovernable. The Ukraine would be nothing but a money black hole, sucking in men, wealth, and material while returning nothing.
It is upon that rock the Russian invasion would eventually break against and be forced to recede from more surely than if the Ukrainians used violent resistance. In return, not only would there be fewer Ukrainian deaths, but Ukraine’s historic buildings would be preserved, people’s homes would be maintained, the economy would continue to function, and recovery would be greater and quicker than would happen with violent resistance. The process has already begun, the people in areas occupied by the Russians are already using some limited forms of nonviolent resistance and noncompliance. They simply need to go further in order to be more powerful and more successful.
In the case of this war, as in all other cases, nonviolent resistance and noncompliance are the most powerful and effective tools that men and women have to resist evil in this world, to defend their liberty, and maintain their freedom.