[Peace-discuss] Ukraine-Crimea note

[Ricky Baldwin]

Given the warmongering talk from such as NPR anchor Steve Inskeep this morning, over and beyond that of the military spokesman General Breedlove, over the US-Russian game in and around Ukraine, Crimea, Latvia, etc., I was thinking about how an infamously ugly conflict began in the region 160 years ago:

The Crimean War (1853-1856), when France and Britain
declared war on Russia, also erupted in a context of competing imperial ambitions.  Usually in the West "the cause" is said to be Russian expansionism.  They did take over Ukraine just before this, and they were after a port that wouldn't freeze over in winter.  But there was also a proto-fascist ambition on the
part of the farcical but impactful Napoleon III of France (as in the 18th Brumaire of Louis Napoleon), who needed to pick a fight, first, to become dictator in the aftermath of the 1848 revolutions, and then to restore France under him to imperial grandeur and maybe take revenge for the French retreat from Russia in 1812.  Plus, British world power had spiked at the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815, and Britain not only saw its future ambitions threatened by Russian expansion but also no longer saw the need for working with Russia in the cause of keeping peace in Europe among the monarchies and preventing further revolutions.  Friend today, embodiment of evil tomorrow.


The conflict was rationalized at the time as defense of various ethnic minorities in Ottoman-controlled territories (I guess they hadn't yet perfected the strategy of organizing and supplying local allies) and lingering Crusadism (not unlike the original Crusades in that there appear to have been powerful ulterior motives besides religion).  The marquis Charles de la Valette was a
leader of the Clerical Party in France, which agitated over alleged
abuses of the rights of Catholics in Palestine and elsewhere.  Russia had treaties with the Ottoman Empire granting it a protectorate status for Orthodox Christians living in various Ottoman territories in Europe and control of certain "holy" sites in the Middle East.  The multilateral Straits Convention of 1841 was supposed to be keeping warships out of the Black Sea in an attempt to preserve the Ottoman Empire as one of those bulwark-thingies between East and West, prevent war
among the European powers, and keep Russia from expanding south.   But the Ottoman Empire was
weakening and its hold on parts of the southeast of Europe loosening.  The hyenas began to circle.
 
Napoleon III, seeing an opportunity to poke the Orthodox bear
with potential support from the Catholic West (as in at least one of the Crusades), appointed la Valette ambassador
to the Ottoman Empire and pressured the Ottoman Sultan into recognizing
France as the new protector over the Christian population there.  Russia objected, unsurprisingly.  Under heavy complaining from Russia the Ottomans renegged on their renegging, and France actually sent a warship to the Black Sea (in direct
violation of the Straits Convention).  It just goes to show how valuable these
scribbled-on pieces of paper are when the signatories find new
motivations.  The Convention was
ignored.  France gained control of the
“holy places” including the Church of the Nativity previous controlled by
Russia on behalf of the Orthodox wing of Christianity.  And this was enough for the overblown Russian Tsar to march on the Ottoman
Sultan.  For the Tsar this was an
opportunity to seize land around the Danube River, where Orthodox Christians
lived, and gain a warm water port.  (He supposedly assumed Austria would support him, since he helped them put down the Hungarian revolt in 1848, and possibly Prussia and Britain due to past alliances.)  For
Protestant Britain, also not excited about Orthodox control of Ottoman Christians but apparently not too worried about Catholic control there, Russian expansionism was
a threat to growing British world power gained at the end of the Napoleonic
Wars in 1815.

France and Britain must have started to suspect that Russia, the defeater of Napoleon, was not as tough as its reputation.

 
The Crimean War was nasty, brutish, and not short enough, often referred to as one of the
first “modern” wars along with the American Civil War a decade later, because
of early use of new technologies, including armored warships, underwater mines, and rifles.  Fewer than half the 80,000 Russian troops who
crossed the Pruth into the Danube area at the start survived to the end.  War deaths included 25,000 British, 100,000 French and up to a million Russians in total, most
dying of cholera and other diseases.  This war was the advent of
Florence Nightingale amid a horrific lack of battlefield medicine
on all sides plus equally horrific advances of killing and maiming power.  It was the setting for the “Thin Red
Line” of British Highlanders standing their ground under repeated deadly
assaults and the reckless “Charge of the Light Brigade."  The war marked the end of the previous Russian-dominated system in favor of a British-dominated system of alliances and other structures that eventually fell apart in 1914.

 
And interestingly enough, one side had complied with all the initial demands of the other before it really began.  (This ought to remind us of recent US tactics.)  When Britain,
France and (to Russia’s surprise) Austria teamed up and
demanded Russian withdrawal from the Danube area, the Tsar backed down and
pulled out.  Feeling their oats, however,
the Western allies that had picked the fight decided to press for more and demanded
that Russia give up its (treaty-guaranteed) claim of protection of Orthodox
folks in the Ottoman Danube areas, too, promise to stay out of Ottoman
territory for good, and agree to changes in the Straits Convention (the
one France had violated anyway by sending in a warship).  Russia refused and war was on.

I'm sure somebody who knows more about the Crimean War could argue some of the details, and its not a real close match, I admit, but still too close.

 
Ricky 



"Speak your mind, even if your voice shakes." - Maggie Kuhn
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