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Russo-
Ukrainian
War
Implications for the
Asia Pacific
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Russo-
Ukrainian
War
Implications for the
Asia Pacific

Steven Rosefielde
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, USA

World Scientific
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data


Names: Rosefielde, Steven, author.
Title: Russo-Ukrainian war : implications for the Asia Pacific /
Steven Rosefielde, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, USA.
Description: New Jersey : World Scientific, 2024. | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2023015013 | ISBN 9789811274879 (hardcover) |
ISBN 9789811274886 (ebook) | ISBN 9789811274893 (ebook other)
Subjects: LCSH: Pacific Area--Strategic aspects. | United States--Foreign relations--
Russia (Federation) | United States--Foreign relations--China. |
China--Foreign relations--United States | Russia (Federation)--Foreign relations--United States |
Ukraine--History--Russian Invasion, 2022– | Proxy war--United States.
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Preface

Winston Churchill famously declared that:

I cannot forecast to you the action of Russia. It is a riddle wrapped in a


mystery inside an enigma; but perhaps there is a key. That key is Russian
national interest. It cannot be in accordance with the interest of the
safety of Russia that Germany should plant itself upon the shores of
the Black Sea, or that it should overrun the Balkan States and subjugate
the Slavonic peoples of south eastern Europe. That would be contrary
to the historic life-interests of Russia.
—Winston Churchill, The Russian Enigma, Broadcast, October 1,
1939. http://www.churchill-society-london.org.uk/RusnEnig.html.

Eighty years ago, Winston Churchill surmised that even though Russia
was a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma, there was a key:
Russian national interest. He divined that the Soviet Kremlin was guided
more by Russian patriotism in national security affairs than communism,
and deduced that Moscow would do whatever it could to prevent a rival
power from planting itself upon the shores of the Black Sea, overrunning
the Balkan States, and subjugating the peoples of southeast Europe.
Churchill was right about the durability of the Kremlin’s mindset. His
judgment still holds. Whatever Vladimir Putin’s international ambitions
may be, he is apt to place great stock in maintaining Russia’s national
security.
Hitler admitted that he got Soviet Russia wrong in June 22, 1941. He
underestimated the Kremlin’s arsenal, its military industrial strength, its

v
vi Russo-Ukrainian War: Implications for the Asia Pacific

war-fighting capability, and tenacity (Bernd, 1993; Steury, 1998, 2008;


Murphy, 2006).1 So did American and British intelligence (Bergson, 1961,
1963; Samuelson, 1996; Kahn, 2012, 2017).
American policymakers made the same mistake in the wake of the
Soviet Union’s demise. Washington interpreted communism’s defeat as a
mandate to integrate and subordinate the Kremlin in America’s global
order under the banner of Partner for Peace. The White House knew that
Moscow was a nuclear superpower and was capable of quickly rearming
its conventional forces as Stalin had during the 1930s (Rosefielde, 2005).
It knew the Kremlin might eventually balk, but forged ahead without req-
uisite confidence-building measures, risking Putin’s annexation of Crimea
and the Russo-Crimean war (Beebe, 2021; Sachs, 2022).2
Crimea’s annexation and the Russo-Ukrainian War were avertable
had Washington managed its relations with the Kremlin more wisely
(Bergson, 1976).3 It should have been clear to Foggy Bottom that
Washington could not micro-control Russia from afar and superpowers
must find ways to avoid nation-threatening armed conflict.
Russo-Ukrainian War: Implications of the Asia-Pacific updates the
backstory to the Russo-Ukrainian War, spotlighting where the Russo-
American Partnership for Peace derailed, culminating in the second wave
of the Cold War rather than assessing the balance of legal and moral rights
and wrongs.4 It investigates obstacles impeding the prompt restoration of
Peaceful Coexistence, Cold War, and Partnership for Peace without dwell-
ing on military details, and probes the ramifications of the Russo-
American Cold War for the Asia Pacific. The analysis builds on themes
previously explored in a series of prior publications.

Endnotes
1(Steury, 2008). “Yet, there can be no doubt that Murphy is correct both in detail
and in the sum and substance of his argument: Stalin was well-served by his intel-
ligence departments. The responsibility for ignoring that intelligence was his and
his alone.”
“In closing, it is worth noting that there was another failure of judgment in
BARBAROSSA, that of Adolf Hitler. Hitler, like Stalin, was a victim of his own
preconceptions, but, in contrast to Stalin, he was ill-served by his intelligence
services. Suffering from what the Japanese, from bitter experience, would call
‘victory disease,’ the Germans overestimated their own capabilities, even as they
underestimated the Soviet capacity to resist. In July 1942, one year after the start
Preface vii

of the campaign, Hitler admitted as much to Marshal Carl Gustav Mannerheim,


the Finnish military leader, on a visit to Helsinki — Finland then being a cobel-
ligerent with Germany in its war with the Soviet Union. ‘We did not ourselves
understand — just how strong this state [the USSR] was armed,’ Hitler told him,
‘If somebody had told me a nation could start with 35,000 tanks, then I’d have
said, ‘You are crazy!’ … [Yet] … We have destroyed — right now — more than
34,000 tanks.… It was unbelievable.… I had no idea of it. If I had an idea — then
it would have been more difficult for me, but I would have taken the decision to
invade anyhow.…’”
2Sachs’s cast of villains includes Donald Kagan, Norman Podhoretz, Irving
Kristol, Paul Wolfowitz, Robert Kagan (son of Donald), Frederick Kagan (son of
Donald), Victoria Nuland (wife of Robert), Elliott Cohen, Elliott Abrams, and
Kimberley Allen Kagan (wife of Frederick).
3Many people assume that the systems they prefer on intuitive, sentimental, aes-
thetic, and ethical grounds are objectively superior unaware that the facts needed
to validate their judgments are mostly figments of, their imagination. The belief,
duty, and willfulness of some do not negate the counter-views of others. Utility,
belief, duty, and willfulness all count in assessing social welfare. Bergson argued
that critical discourse offers a useful tool for finding common ground and perhaps
consensus. Most analysts ignore his advice.
4People tend to take strong stands on the Russo-Ukraine war based on intuitions
about the motivations of key actors and feelings about justice. Intuitions are
debatable, but conflicting perceptions are difficult to resolve.

References
Beebe, George. (2021). The Russia Trap: How Our Shadow War with Russia
Could Spiral into Nuclear Catastrophe. New York: Tantor and Blackstone
Publishing.
Bergson, Abram. (1961). The Real National Income of Soviet Russia since 1928.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Bergson, Abram. (1963). National Income. In Bergson and Simon Kuznets (co-
editors), Economic Trends in the Soviet Union. Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press.
Bergson, Abram. (1976). Social Choice and Welfare Economics under
Representative Government. Journal of Public Economics, Vol. 6, No. 3:
171–190.
Bernd Wegner, Bernd. (1993). Hitlers Besuch in Finnland 1942 (Dokumentation),
Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte, Vol. 43, No. 1: 131–132.
viii Russo-Ukrainian War: Implications for the Asia Pacific

Kahn, Martin. (2012). Russia will Assuredly Be Defeated: Anglo-American


Government Assessments of Soviet War Potential before Operation
Barbarossa. The Journal of Slavic Military Studies, Vol. 25, No. 2:
220–240.
Kahn, Martin. (2017). The Western Allies and Soviet Potential in World War II:
Economy, Society and Military Power. London: Routledge.
Murphy, David. (2006). What Stalin Knew: The Enigma of Barbarossa. New
Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Rosefielde, Steven. (2005). Russia in the 21st Century: The Prodigal Superpower.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Sachs, Jeffrey. (2022). Ukraine Is the Latest Neocon Disaster. Common Dreams.
https://www.commondreams.org/views/2022/06/28/ukraine-latest-neocon-
disaster.
Samuelson, Lennart. (1996). Soviet Defence Industry Planning: Tukhachevskii
and Military-Industrial Mobilisation, 1926–1937. Stockholm: Stockholm
Institute of East European Economies.
Steury, Donald. (1998). Too Much Is Not Enough: Joseph Stalin, British
Intelligence and Strategic Surprise in 1941, Studies in Intelligence, Vol. 42,
No. 2.
Steury, Donald. (2008). What Stalin Knew: The Enigma of Barbarossa. CIA.
https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/csi-publica-
tions/csi-studies/studies/vol50no1/9_BK_What_Stalin_Knew.htm.
About the Author

Steven Rosefielde is Professor of Economics, University of North


Carolina, Chapel Hill. He received his Ph.D. from Harvard University,
and is a Member of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences (RAEN).
His books include the following: Democracy and Its Elected Enemies:
The West’s Paralysis, Crisis and Decline, Cambridge University Press,
2013; Inclusive Economic Theory (with Ralph W Pfouts), World Scientific,
2014; Global Economic Turmoil and the Public Good (with Quinn Mills),
World Scientific, 2015; Transformation and Crisis in Central and Eastern
Europe: Challenges and Prospects (with Bruno Dallago), Routledge,
2016; The Kremlin Strikes Back: Russia and the West After Crimea’s
Annexation, Cambridge University Press, 2016; The Trump Phenomenon
and Future of US Foreign Policy (with Quinn Mills), World Scientific,
2016; Trump’s Populist America, World Scientific, 2017; China’s Market
Communism: Challenges, Dilemmas, Solutions (with Jonathan Leightner),
Routledge, 2017; The Unwinding of the Globalist Dream: EU, Russia and
China (with Masaaki Kuboniwa, Kumiko Haba and Satoshi Mizobata,
eds.), World Scientific, 2017; Putin’s Russia: Economic, Political and
Military Foundations, World Scientific, 2020; Progressive and Populists:
The New Forces in American Politics (with Quinn Mills), World Scientific,
2020; and Beleaguered Superpower: Biden’s America Adrift (with Quinn
Mills), World Scientific, 2021.

ix
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Executive Summary

Washington encourages people across the globe to perceive America as


the leader of the free world. Everyone knows that reality does not live up
to the dream. Nonetheless, many equate the West with democracy, free
enterprise, opportunity, and social justice, and the East with authoritarian-
ism, controlled economies, insider privilege, and oppression. This view
provides Washington with an advantage in expanding its global reach.
Many citizens of the former Soviet Union, communist Eastern Europe,
and China prefer a market to a planned economy, and democracy to
authoritarianism. They prod their leaders to westernize, affiliate with the
West’s globalization network, and are favorably disposed to regime
change in the authoritarian East.
These proclivities shaped post-Soviet East–West engagement. The
West had little difficulty enticing many former Soviet republics and all the
USSR’s East European satellites to join the European Union and NATO.
Western leaders convinced themselves that it was their moral duty to
enlist these countries and invited Russia to participate.
The United States could not treat China symmetrically because
Beijing did not lose the Cold War. The US chose instead to assist China’s
transition from a planned to a market communist economy and educate a
generation of mainland students at American universities in the virtues of
democracy, the rule of law, and civil liberties. The strategy was successful
in numerous ways but failed to persuade Xi Jinping to accept Western
dominance in the Asia Pacific and across the globe. The prosperity
achieved by substituting a market economy for a planned economy not

xi
xii Russo-Ukrainian War: Implications for the Asia Pacific

only benefited the Chinese people but also enabled the communist party
to cultivate nationalism and its own global ambitions.
Russia followed a similar path in the new millennium. After a decade
of misery caused by the USSR’s collapse, the Kremlin restored Russia’s
living standards, modernized its armed forces, and became increasingly
nationalistic. Vladimir Putin’s hostility to Western encroachment grew,
prodding him to contest Western power.
The Russo-Ukrainian War is the latest episode in the new-wave Cold
War clash of superpower titans. It is unlikely to be the war that ends all
wars. Putin and Xi’s nationalism will not win many friends, but they can
influence those in other states irked by Western badgering and progressive
values. Putin will not flip Germany, France, Italy, and Britain to his camp,
and Xi will not control India and the West. Both will wage “bloody battles
for peace and friendship” until world leaders cast the Cold War aside,
restoring Cold Peace, peaceful coexistence, and a Partnership for Peace.
The Russo-Ukrainian War is the consequence of Washington’s
flawed effort to build a Partnership for Peace between the United States
and Russia from 1992–2008. America had a once-in-a-century opportu-
nity to work cooperatively with Boris Yeltsin to transform Russia from
a communist command economy into a democratic free enterprise sys-
tem, but the Clinton administration did not fulfill its economic promises
and allay Kremlin’s concerns about NATO expansion. Cold Peace from
2008–2013 morphed into Cold War in 2014 over the issue of co-­
sovereign influence in Ukraine. The battle began in 2008 when Russia’s
conventional war-fighting capabilities were moribund and continued
after the Kremlin successfully completed its military modernization
drive in 2015. During the course of renewed struggle, the Kremlin
annexed Crimea and supported puppet regimes in Luhansk and Donetsk.
Washington and the European Union sought to reverse these territorial
losses by imposing economic sanctions coercing Russia to rescind
Crimea’s annexation and return control over Luhansk and Donetsk to
Kyiv. The conflict remained frozen within a Cold War context until
November 2021 when the Biden administration committed itself to arm-
ing Zelensky sufficiently to retake Luhansk, Donetsk, and Crimea, and
pressed assertively for Ukrainian accession to NATO. These actions
provoked the Russo-Ukrainian proxy war.
Both sides blame each other. Putin condemns America for over-
reaching in Ukraine and building a NATO coalition to subdue Russia.
Biden faults Russia for becoming a recidivist evil empire. Rights and
Executive Summary xiii

wrongs depend on analysts’ assessments of the rival narratives. There is


no consensus.
Biden administration rhetoric suggests that Ukraine is a means to a
higher end. Whatever Biden and Blinken originally intended in November
2021 when they decided to increase military assistance to Kyiv for the
reclamation of Luhansk, Donetsk, and Crimea, they now seek to defang
the Kremlin. The Russo-Ukrainian proxy war has become primarily a
means to bring the Kremlin to heel. Reversion to peaceful coexistence,
Partnership for Peace, and Cold Peace are off the table until the White
House subjugates Russia.
The immediate impact of the Russo-Ukrainian War on the Asia-
Pacific has been to confirm Xi Jinping’s perception that Washington is
committed to a low-cost Cold War with China (Ash, 2022).1 The White
House seeks regime change in Beijing and is intent on remaining the
world’s preeminent superpower. It is willing to increase hard-power
defense spending modestly, but will not compete with China in an arms
race (Eaglen, 2022)2 or curtail productivity-stifling government over-
regulation and social spending. The Biden administration intends to deter
Beijing from seizing Taiwan, building bases to support its territorial and
seabed mineral claims in the South China Sea, and scotch China’s preda-
tory state-trading practices by fostering hi-tech American military tech-
nology and imposing export controls to keep China behind the learning
curve. Washington intends to reinforce this deterrent with attitude man-
agement campaigns, moral suasion, coalitions of the willing including
NATO (Brands, 2022),3 and efforts to spark a Chinese color revolution
and regime change. Biden diplomatically calls his policy Cold Peace, but
his actions bespeak Cold War. Emboldened by what he considers
America’s successes in the Russo-Ukrainian proxy war, Biden intends to
prevent China from defying Washington’s will. He could succeed, if his
implausible daisy chain assumptions somehow stand the test of time, but
if reality bites, Xi Jinping with or without Putin’s assistance will let Biden
play out his losing hand (Balzer, 2022; Gabuev, 2022).4
Biden and Blinken’s decision to settle the Ukrainian civil war on the
battlefield and tame Russia with unrestrained economic and geopolitical
war may prove to be a colossal blunder. It appears to be a classic case of
failing to appreciate that the best is the enemy of the good. The notion that
economic transition, military pressure, and/or regime change can trans-
form Eurasian superpowers into compliant partners for peace is the tri-
umph of hope over experience (Johnson, 1791). The converse is also true.
xiv Russo-Ukrainian War: Implications for the Asia Pacific

The Kremlin and Beijing are not competent and powerful enough to make
the United States and European Union into vassal states. Superpowers
must rein their will to omnipotence and learn to coexist. It is nonsensical
to suppose that America, Russia, and China can permanently dominate
each other.

Endnotes
1“US spending of 5.6% of its defense budget to destroy nearly half of
Russia’s conventional military capability seems like an absolutely incredible
investment.”
2“Over the past nine fiscal years, budget after budget has traded away combat
power, truncated needed weapons early, and permanently closed production lines.
As a result, margins in the force are dangerously low, readiness is still recovering,
and America’s conventional and nuclear deterrents are at their nadir. Yet Pentagon
leaders continue to sacrifice capacity, as measured by fleets, inventories, and their
associated force structure, in the fervent belief that Beijing will not attempt to
forcibly reunify Taiwan in the next five years.”
3“US diplomats are reportedly telling their transatlantic counterparts that the
global economy would suffer a hit of $2.5 trillion per year from a Chinese block-
ade of the island, while a full-on invasion would cause immensely more com-
mercial carnage. These are scare tactics with a purpose: The US means to enlist
its European allies in deterring a prospective Chinese assault.”
4Neither Chinese assistance to Russia nor Russian aid to China has played a criti-
cal role in 2022. Nonetheless, their growing partnership could significantly affect
the East–West balance moving forward. Harley Balzer takes the opposite view.

References
Ash, Timothy. (2022). It’s Costing Peanuts for the US to Defeat Russia. CEPA
(Center for European Policy Analysis). https://cepa.org/article/its-costing-
peanuts-for-the-us-to-defeat-russia/.
Balzer, Harley. (2021). Axis of Collusion: The Fragile Putin-Xi Partnership.
Atlantic Council. https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/in-depth-research-reports/
report/axis-of-collusion-the-fragile-putin-xi-partnership/.
Brands, Hans. (2022). If China Invaded Taiwan, What Would Europe Do? AEI.
https://www.aei.org/op-eds/if-china-invaded-taiwan-what-would-europe-
do/?mkt_tok=NDc1LVBCUS05NzEAAAGIKV7zoYs51Gm695elUvGKC9
Executive Summary xv

jnjUx73UMUOHldBSQQR2ypE-5kixKAfK4lTzyfzeVjpMN5ufGN2IkCt
Rov49sGHqeh2s8s2_9cIv47CcRM4DTzIA.
Eaglen, Mackenzie. (2022). The Bias For Capability Over Capacity Has Created
a Brittle Force. War on the Rocks. https://warontherocks.com/2022/11/
the-bias-for-capability-over-capacity-has-created-a-brittle-force/?mkt_
tok=NDc1LVBCUS05NzEAAAGIKV7zoWHvyzuyjpCI9BQXJULgm
DiffJjbNzuFny6z_CHZnf1h_hlJ7pupyIOHtlh7bgEGZKf3QThjn5QsTjp9
WgR-2t4hooHD2xfo5DeHXDIxkA.
Gabuev, Gabuev. (2022). China’s New Vassal. Foreign Affairs. https://www.
foreignaffairs.com/china/chinas-new-vassal.
Johnson, Samuel. (1791). A second marriage is a triumph of hope over experi-
ence. Boswell’s Life of Johnson.
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Contents

Prefacev
About the Authorix
Executive Summaryxi
List of Figures, Tables, and Mapsxxi
Introductionxxiii

Part I Russo-American Partnership 1


Chapter 1 Cold War World Order 3
Chapter 2 New Thinking 15
Chapter 3 Partnership 31
Chapter 4 Economic Miracle 45

Part II Estrangement 51
Chapter 5 Rearmament 53
Chapter 6 NATO Expansion 67
Chapter 7 Revolution of Dignity 71
Chapter 8 Crimean Annexation 77

xvii
xviii Russo-Ukrainian War: Implications for the Asia Pacific

Part III Confrontation 87


Chapter 9 Minsk II Protocol 89
Chapter 10 Economic Sanctions 95
Chapter 11 Cold Peace 119

Part IV War Path 131


Chapter 12 Polarization 133
Chapter 13 Hotspots 139
Chapter 14 Flash Point 149
Chapter 15 Revealed Preference 163

Part V Russo-Ukrainian War 171


Chapter 16 Proxy War 173
Chapter 17 Cold War 179
Chapter 18 Just War 185
Chapter 19 Pristine War 189
Chapter 20 Color Revolution 193
Chapter 21 Crusade 199
Chapter 22 Nuclear War 203
Chapter 23 Next Time Will Be Different 209

Part VI Battle for the Asia Pacific 213


Chapter 24 Market Communism 215
Chapter 25 Technology Transfer 235
Chapter 26 Military Modernization 243
Chapter 27 Taiwan 251
Chapter 28 Trade 267
Contents xix

Chapter 29 Sino-American Quandary 271


Chapter 30 Prospects 277

Conclusion281
Appendix A: Bergson’s Systems Function289
Appendix B: Russian Economic Performance and Prospects295
Index299
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List of Figures, Tables, and Maps

Figure 24.1 Regional Comparison of Income Inequality Levels 222


Figure 24.2 Regional Comparison of Income Inequality Trends 222
Figure 24.3 Adult Literacy Rate in China from 1982 to 2015 223

Table 28.1 2000–2020: U.S. Trade in Goods with China 268

Map 9.1 (Color Map available online) Donbas Conflict Zone 90


Map 11.1 (Color Map available online) Zapad-2021 Training
Grounds125
Map 16.1 (Color Map available online) Russian Invasion
on February 24, 2022 174
Map 16.2 (Color Map available online) Russian and
Ukrainian Lines of Control in September 2022 175
Map 16.3 (Color Map available online) Russian and
Ukrainian Lines of Control in December 2022 176

xxi
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Introduction

Russia and the West


The Russo-Ukrainian War is neither an accident nor an unfortunate mis-
understanding. It is a superpower conflict over Ukraine’s territorial integ-
rity traceable to the start of Boris Yeltsin’s presidency,1 sparked in the
current phase by a color revolution in Kyiv, instigated and abetted by the
United States.2 Washington may have presumed when it assisted Ukraine’s
“Revolution of Dignity” in 2014 that President Yanukovych’s ouster
would anchor Ukraine in the West without adverse repercussions, but the
Kremlin responded by clawing Luhansk, Donetsk, and Crimea into
Russia’s sphere with the possibility of further Ukrainian dismemberment.
The United States and European Union cried foul. They eschewed war,
imposed economic sanctions, and demanded that the Kremlin return full
sovereign control over Luhansk, Donetsk, and Crimea to Kyiv, knowing
that Putin did not accept Washington’s rules and if the Biden administra-
tion opted for proxy war, the Kremlin might conquer and annex additional
land.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022 transformed this
possibility into reality. What began as an American-assisted color revolu-
tion under the Obama administration ended in a Ukrainian civil conflict
and renewed Cold War. The Biden administration committed itself in
November 2021 to providing sufficient military assistance for Kyiv to
restore full control over Luhansk, Donetsk, and Crimea, switching from a
Cold Peace to an intense Cold War framework.3 Washington says it

xxiii
xxiv Russo-Ukrainian War: Implications for the Asia Pacific

expects to win in Ukraine and is preparing Moscow to accept further color


revolutionary losses in its sphere of influence docilely when they occur.
Putin’s initial intentions for the Kremlin’s special military operation
are debatable (Luttwak, 2022),4 but as the Russo-Ukrainian War unfolds,
it seems that Kyiv may suffer additional territorial losses and that the
Biden administration may have to revise its Cold War game plan in the
Russian sphere of influence. America and NATO reject thermonuclear
war with the Kremlin and may wish to reconsider the wisdom of assisting
color revolutionary wars in hotspots like Georgia.
There are four distinct sets of players in the Russo-Ukrainian War:
two Ukrainian blocks, the West, and Russia. One Ukrainian group is pro-
Western, the other pro-Russian, further divisible along complex ethnic
and political (Petro, 2022) lines, partly as a consequence of the August 23,
1939 Molotov–Ribbentrop “Non-Aggression” Pact between Hitler and
Stalin partitioning Poland.5 The factional intra-Ukrainian struggle is pri-
marily political, but there is also a military dimension in Luhansk,
Donetsk, and Southeastern Ukraine. The superpowers have larger geopo-
litical agendas. They seek to defend and expand their spheres of interest.
The Russo-Ukrainian War is fundamentally a superpower contest between
the West and Russia, even though Ukraine is the battlefield. Russia claims
that the Kremlin launched its special military operation attacking Ukraine
because America and NATO were preparing military assaults on Luhansk,
Donetsk, and Crimea. Russia is not fighting American and NATO troops
seeking to annul the Revolution of Dignity. It is battling Kyiv’s forces
armed, financed, equipped, trained, and guided by America and NATO.
This makes the Russo-Ukrainian War a dual-purpose proxy war
(Aslund and McFaul, 2006; Leonard, 2022).6 Pro-West Ukrainian soldiers
are fighting to complete the 2014 color revolution by regaining political
control over Luhansk, Donetsk, and Crimea from anti-Kyiv Ukrainian and
Russian forces. Washington is using pro-West Ukrainian soldiers to
coerce Putin into accepting American co-sovereignty over Kremlin’s for-
eign and domestic policy. Viewed from Moscow’s perspective, Russian
soldiers are fighting Ukrainian forces to undo the political consequences
of the American-assisted color revolution that ousted Yanukovych and
rebuff Washington’s co-sovereign ambitions over Russia. They may
annex additional Ukrainian territory in the process or America may reduce
Russia to a vassal state.
The superpower conflict began six years before the Revolution of
Dignity at the Bucharest NATO Meetings in April 2008, which brought to
Introduction xxv

a head a long-simmering tussle over Washington’s sponsorship of


Ukraine’s NATO membership (Carpenter, 2022).7 Putin viewed the Bush
administration’s stance as hostile and a sign that the West was abandoning
the Russo-American partnership for Cold War (Brussels, 2021).8 He con-
cluded that the United States was more interested in dominating the
Kremlin than building a cooperative global order (Baroud, 2022;
Mearsheimer, 2022).9 NATO and the Biden administration’s decision to
arm Kyiv sufficiently to recapture Luhansk, Donetsk, and Crimea is the
proximate cause of the Kremlin’s February 24, 2022 Ukrainian invasion
(special military operation). The deeper issue is Washington’s unwilling-
ness to tolerate limited Kremlin co-sovereignty in Russian traditional
sphere of influence, and Russia’s insistence on controlling some aspects
of Ukraine’s domestic and foreign policy.10
The Russo-Ukrainian War is an important post-Soviet milestone in
two senses. First, it reflects Putin’s decision to teach Washington a lesson
about reining in its ambitions across Russia’s internal and external zones
of interest. The casus belli in Putin’s mind is the U.S.–Ukraine Charter on
Strategic Partnership signed on November 10, 2021 (U.S. Department of
State, 2021), and rapidly increasing American and NATO military
assistance to Ukraine (United States Department of State, 2022; see
­
Chapter 14). The Kremlin’s special military operation demonstrated its
resolve to defend what Putin deems Russia’s inviolable preserves, includ-
ing the Luhansk and Donetsk People’s Republics and Crimea, against
Washington’s aspirations (Episkopos, 2022).11
Second, the invasion revealed that renewed Cold War between Russia
and the West might not be confined to color revolutions, economic sanc-
tions, saber-rattling, and sporadic reprisals as it had been prior to February 24,
2022, but could morph into proxy and open hot wars between nuclear
superpowers. The Russo-Ukrainian War moved Russo-American relations
toward the brink of hot war between superpower principals, a risk that
will linger regardless of the outcome in Ukraine unless Russia and the
West agree to restrain their respective ambitions within prudent limits.
Neither Washington nor the Kremlin appears inclined to accommodate
one another. Biden continues pressing NATO global reach and expansion
beyond Ukraine (Wales Summit, 2014),12 reinforcing Putin’s resistance
and making a return to the East–West partnership of 1991–2008 improb-
able (McFall, 2022; US, 2022). The most likely prospect is frosty lethal
Cold War in Europe (Sachs, 2022),13 an outcome that hobbles American-
led globalization and mostly benefits China.
xxvi Russo-Ukrainian War: Implications for the Asia Pacific

Asia Pacific
The West has its hands full coping with Russia. It will have even greater
difficulty deterring two rival superpowers simultaneously. The threat
posed by Beijing in the Asia Pacific was challenging before the Russo-
Ukrainian War and will intensify unless NATO decisively repels Putin’s
special military operation and retakes Luhansk, Donetsk, and Crimea.
Beijing will interpret any other outcome as a license to increase pressure
in the Asia Pacific, inferring that the United States lacks resolve to restore
Ukraine’s territorial integrity circa 2014, and to prioritize credible military
deterrence at the expense of competing domestic political objectives
(Wolfowitz, 2022). Failure to rout Putin will confirm Xi Jinping’s convic-
tion that America is a paper tiger.
Washington frames the Russo-Ukrainian War differently, treating it as
unprovoked Kremlin aggression (White House, 2022). The Biden admin-
istration insists that Putin’s actions are unjustified and a pretext because
America’s intentions are benign and laudable. It contends furthermore that
Putin intended to resurrect as much of the Soviet empire as he could long
before NATO expansion became a contentious issue. The Revolution of
Dignity merely provided Putin with an excuse for what he intended
anyway. Perhaps Biden is right, but it is impossible to tell because
­
Washington did not actively pursue confidence building (Russian
Federation, 2022),14 doing nothing substantive to allay Putin’s concerns
beyond making unsupported claims of beneficent intent, ensnaring the
West in a dangerous Cold War that Washington appears reluctant to exit
(Ashford, 2022; Russia Matters Staff, 2022).15

How did the United States stumble into this morass?


Russo-Ukrainian War: Implications for the Asia-Pacific tells the story of
how Washington seized defeat from the jaws of Cold War victory by
botching Russia’s post-Soviet transition (Fukuyama, 1992).16 For nearly
two decades, Mikhail Gorbachev, Boris Yeltsin, and Vladimir Putin were
amenable to experimenting with the Russo-American partnership (gradual
westernization) in return for economic and political assistance. They set
their suspicions aside (or played possum) while assessing prospects for
restoring Russia’s superpower status and America’s willingness to respect
Kremlin sensibilities (Keynes, 1919).17 Moscow tolerated the inclusion of
the Soviet East European satellites and some former Soviet republics into
Introduction xxvii

the European Union and NATO before 2008, but Washington continued
pushing the envelope, assuming that Moscow would gradually acquiesce
to American rule of law as the foundation for global order through
friendly persuasion or pressure.18
The Biden administration had ample grounds for caution after 2013.
Vladimir Putin annexed Crimea in tit-for-tat retaliation for American
complicity in the 2014 the Revolution of Dignity (Maidan coup d’état)
(Dubrovskiy et al., 2022; Risch, 2022).19 Washington countered by pun-
ishing the Kremlin with American and European Union economic sanc-
tions, moral condemnation, and NATO coalition building rather than by
negotiating an agreement limiting political and economic rivalry in the
former Soviet space.
Washington and NATO also signaled weakness in 2014–2022 by
neglecting to deploy adequate military forces adjacent to the conflict
zone. The policy of shunning confidence building and inadequate deploy-
ment was maladroit. It failed to foster trust and cooperation if Putin’s
intentions were benign, and it failed to deter Moscow if Kremlin’s inten-
tions were malign (Bondarev, 2022).20 Western realpolitik masquerading
as internationalist idealism backfired with global consequences (United
States Department of State, 2022).21
Sino-American relations unlike Russo-American relations until
recently operate under the principles of Cold Peace. Washington
and Beijing sparred with each other, but their superpower rivalry was
restricted to non-lethal economic, geopolitical, and diplomatic jousting.
The status quo however has been tattered by China’s successful military
modernization, Beijing’s demands for Taiwan’s prompt reunification, and
Biden’s prohibition of high-tech computer chips to the People’s Republic.
Xi Jinping denies Taiwan’s sovereignty and demands that the United
States withdraw its support for and protection from Taipei.22 Washington
refuses, setting the stage for a proxy war with America as the principal
and Taiwan as the proxy fighting Chinese invaders (Lee and Wu, 2022).
The risk of lethal Cold War depends significantly on the lessons
Washington and Beijing draw from the Russo-Ukrainian War. Anything is
possible.
Good results are conceivable in the final analysis, if Biden and Xi
realize that they do not have an omnipotent superpower option. America
is not powerful enough to make China a vassal state, and vice versa. It is
senseless for either to try. The West cannot prevent China from building a
formidable war machine or severely damage its civilian production with
xxviii Russo-Ukrainian War: Implications for the Asia Pacific

economic sanctions and soft power. If Beijing improves market efficiency


as quid pro quo for globalizing, this will only increase China’s military
potential. The notion that economic transition, military pressure, or
regime change can transform Eurasian superpowers into Washington’s
virtuous partners for peace is foolish. The converse also is true.
Superpowers must check their will to omnipotence and learn to coexist.
If they do not, they will discover that the best is the enemy of the good.

Endnotes
1Bill Clinton and Boris Yeltsin signed a Partnership for Peace Accord in 1994.
Both sides claimed to trust each other’s good intentions and cooperate. Latent
Soviet-era distrust however lingered. Russia and the United States gradually
shifted from partnership to Cold Peace and then to Cold War, each believing with
increasing certainty that the other side was an implacable enemy. Confidence
building might have alleviated the problem, but if diplomats tried, they failed.
2The term color revolution refers to regime change triggered by a Western-
supported popular insurrection. From Washington’s perspective, color revolu-
tions are progressive. Most color revolutions do not topple regimes aligned with
opposing superpowers. This was not the case in Ukraine. Russia retaliated when
America toppled Yanukovych’s pro-Russian presidency and Moscow struck back
by annexing Crimea, initiating a slow-motion superpower proxy war between
Moscow and Washington, with the Ukrainian army fighting America’s battle and
Russia directly opposing Ukrainian armed forces with its own troops and militia
loyal to the Luhansk and Donetsk People’s Republics. There are no exact analogs
to the Ukraine case, although a repeat performance is possible if Washington suc-
ceeds in toppling Lukashenko’s Belarusian regime.
3Biden and Blinken counter-argue that they did not commit America and NATO
to intense Cold War. Putin, they can claim, exaggerated the hostile nature of their
intent.
4Putin’s declared intention was to surgically destroy forces imperiling Luhansk,
Donetsk, and Crimea, including Banderite neo-Nazis influencing Kyiv’s policies
and the Azov brigade (Lauria, 2022).
5The former Polish territories incorporated into Ukraine by the Molotov–
Ribbentrop Pact are most of Galicia, and Northern Bessarabia, Northern
Bukovina, and Hertsa regions (the Chernivtsi Oblast). Southern Bessarabia is
now part of the Odessa Oblast.
6Proxy wars are third-party armed engagements permitting principals to use
agents to fight their battles. Agents receive assistance from principals and share
Introduction xxix

common goals in local battlefields, but are minor players in other conflict zones.
Proxy wars arise when a principal attacks another’s agent as was the case in
Ukraine, or agents are engaged in civil conflicts. The Republic of China served
as America’s agent against Soviet-sponsored international communism in 1945–
1949. The United States assisted Chiang Kaishek, but did not send troops or
attack the USSR. Contemporary Taiwan is a legacy relationship. The Korean and
Vietnamese conflicts were Sino-Soviet proxy wars fought by their agents against
America and its allies. The Korean proxy war left Korea partitioned. America lost
the Vietnamese War.
7“Russian leaders and several Western policy experts were warning more than
two decades ago that NATO expansion would turn out badly — ending in a new
cold war with Russia at best, and a hot one at worst. Obviously, they were not
“echoing” Putin or anyone else. George Kennan, the intellectual architect of
America’s containment policy during the Cold War, perceptively warned in a
May 2, 1998 New York Times interview what NATO’s move eastward would set
in motion. “I think it is the beginning of a new cold war,” he stated. ‘I think the
Russians will gradually react quite adversely and it will affect their policies.
I think it is a tragic mistake.’” “George W. Bush began to treat Georgia and
Ukraine as valued U.S. political and military allies, and in 2008, he pressed
NATO to admit Ukraine and Georgia as members.” “In his 2014 memoir, Duty,
Robert M. Gates, who served as secretary of defense in both Bush’s administra-
tion and Barack Obama’s, conceded that ‘trying to bring Georgia and Ukraine
into NATO was truly overreaching.’ That initiative, he concluded, was a case of
‘recklessly ignoring what the Russians considered their own vital national
interests’.”
8At the June 2021 Brussels summit, NATO leaders reiterated the decision taken
at the 2008 Bucharest summit that Ukraine would become a member of the
Alliance with the MAP as an integral part of the process and Ukraine’s right to
determine its future and foreign policy. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg
stressed that Russia will not be able to veto Ukraine’s accession to NATO “as we
will not return to the era of spheres of interest, when large countries decide what
smaller ones should do.”
9Mearsheimer, John. (2022). The partnership phase of America’s relationship
began under Boris Yeltsin in 1991 and continued under Vladimir Putin until 2008.
“First, the United States is principally responsible for causing the Ukraine crisis.
This is not to deny that Putin started the war and that he is responsible for
Russia’s conduct of the war. Nor is it to deny that America’s allies bear some
responsibility, but they largely follow Washington’s lead on Ukraine. My central
claim is that the United States has pushed forward policies toward Ukraine that
Putin and other Russian leaders see as an existential threat, a point they have
made repeatedly for many years. Specifically, I am talking about America’s
xxx Russo-Ukrainian War: Implications for the Asia Pacific

obsession with bringing Ukraine into NATO and making it a Western bulwark on
Russia’s border. The Biden administration was unwilling to eliminate that threat
through diplomacy and indeed in 2021 recommitted the United States to bringing
Ukraine into NATO. Putin responded by invading Ukraine on February 24th of
this year. Second, the Biden administration has reacted to the outbreak of war by
doubling down against Russia. Washington and its Western allies are committed
to decisively defeating Russia in Ukraine and employing comprehensive sanc-
tions to greatly weaken Russian power. The United States is not seriously inter-
ested in finding a diplomatic solution to the war, which means the war is likely
to drag on for months if not years. In the process, Ukraine, which has already
suffered grievously, is going to experience even greater harm. In essence, the
United States is helping lead Ukraine down the primrose path. Furthermore, there
is a danger that the war will escalate, as NATO might get dragged into the fight-
ing and nuclear weapons might be used. We are living in perilous times.”
Baroud, Ramzy. (2022). “Noam Chomsky said ‘it is the opinion of every
high-level US official in the diplomatic services who has any familiarity with
Russia and Eastern Europe. This goes back to George Kennan and, in the 1990s,
Reagan’s ambassador Jack Matlock, including the current director of the CIA; in
fact, just everybody who knows anything has been warning Washington that it is
reckless and provocative to ignore Russia’s very clear and explicit red lines. That
goes way before (Vladimir) Putin, it has nothing to do with him; (Mikhail)
Gorbachev, all said the same thing. Ukraine and Georgia cannot join NATO, this
is the geostrategic heartland of Russia.’”
10No country is entitled to have spheres of influence in a world where all nations
are fully sovereign. Nonetheless, spheres of influence are commonplace in inter-
national relations. For example, the Monroe Doctrine formulated by President
James Monroe on December 2, 1823 opposed European colonialism in the
Western Hemisphere. The doctrine was central to U.S. foreign policy for much of
the 19th and early 20th centuries.
“Putin somewhat revised the uncompromising approach communicated in his
11

September speech recognizing the annexation of four Ukrainian regions, where


he all but laid out a program for existential confrontation between Russia and the
West.”
The military operations of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) are
12

not confined to the United States, Canada, and Europe. NATO is an arm of
America’s military and political global presence conducting operations in the
Middle East, Afghanistan, and Africa.
“The Western narrative about the Ukraine war is that it is an unprovoked attack
13

by Putin in the quest to recreate the Russian empire. Yet the real history starts
with the Western promise to Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev that NATO
would not enlarge to the East, followed by four waves of NATO aggrandizement:
Introduction xxxi

in 1999, incorporating three Central European countries; in 2004, incorporating


7 more, including in the Black Sea and Baltic States; in 2008, committing to
enlarge to Ukraine and Georgia; and in 2022, inviting four Asia-Pacific leaders to
NATO to take aim at China. Of course, NATO says that is purely defensive, so
that Putin should have nothing to fear. In other words, Putin should take no notice
of the CIA operations in Afghanistan and Syria; the NATO bombing of Serbia in
1999; the NATO overthrow of Moammar Qaddafi in 2011; the NATO occupation
of Afghanistan for 15 years; nor Biden’s “gaffe” calling for Putin’s ouster (which
of course was no gaffe at all); nor US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin stating that
the US war aim in Ukraine is the weakening of Russia.
At the core of all of this is the US attempt to remain the world’s hegemonic
power, by augmenting military alliances around the world to contain or defeat
China and Russia. It’s a dangerous, delusional, and outmoded idea. The US has a
mere 4.2% of the world population, and now a mere 16% of world GDP (mea-
sured at international prices). In fact, the combined GDP of the G7 is now less
than that of the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa), while the
G7 population is just 6 percent of the world compared with 41 percent in the
BRICS.”
14Russia applied for GATT membership in 1993. The Obama administration per-
mitted its accession to the WTO in August 2012. Some may argue that this was a
confidence-building gesture.
15(Ashford, 2022). “IN DECEMBER 2021, Secretary of State Antony Blinken
addressed negotiations over Russia’s formidable military buildup around Ukraine.
He reiterated that the United States would not discuss Russian concerns over
Ukrainian membership in NATO, arguing that ‘one country does not have the
right to exert a sphere of influence.’”
(Russia Matters Staff, 2022). CIA Director William Burns makes the follow-
ing points: (1) “Putin really does believe his [own] rhetoric and I have heard him
say this privately over the years — that Ukraine is not a real country.” (2) “He
believes the key to doing that is to recreate a sphere of influence in Russia’s neigh-
borhood.” (3) “We had building from at least October of 2021 a very troubling
picture of what were quite detailed plans on Putin’s part for a major new invasion
of Ukraine…. So the president asked me to go to Moscow [in November 2021]
and lay those concerns out in an unusual amount of detail to President Putin and
some of his closest advisors and then to lay out the serious consequences that
would unfold if he chose to execute that plan. I must admit I came away from
these conversations even more troubled than when I arrived…. Putin himself
made no effort to deny the planning…. My impression, which I conveyed to the
president when I got home, was that Putin had not yet made an irreversible deci-
sion to launch that invasion; he was clearly leaning hard in that direction at that
point, too. My further impression was that he had convinced himself strategically
that the window was closing for his ability to control Ukraine and its choices,
xxxii Russo-Ukrainian War: Implications for the Asia Pacific

[and] that it was not so much a function of Ukraine and NATO — because he was
smart enough to understand that formal Ukrainian membership in NATO at that
time was at best a distant aspiration. It was more in a way about NATO in Ukraine.”
“A Russian military modernized to a point where they could win, in his view, a
quick and decisive victory at minimal cost”; “European leaders whom he saw to
be distracted by their own political transitions”; “And he believed he had built a
sanctions-proofed economy with a big war chest of hard-currency reserves.”
16Washington botched the post-Soviet transition, whether its goal was transform-
ing Russia from authoritarian planning to a democratic free enterprise in a
benevolent trans-Atlantic community or manipulating the Kremlin into obedi-
ently relinquishing its great power status.
17The story here is similar to Britain and France’s attitude toward the Weimar
Republic. It should have been obvious at Versailles that Germany would someday
reemerge as a great power, and that it would be best for all parties if this were
accomplished without reigniting old animosities.
18The concept is attractive from an idealistic perspective, but is not fail-safe. Rule
of law can easily degenerate into rule of unscrupulous lawyers.
19Some counter-argue that Putin was plotting to seize Luhansk, Donetsk, and
Crimea if Russia’s influence in Kyiv weakened. The Revolution of Dignity is
alternatively called the Maidan events or Maidan coup d’état. Washington openly
advocated and aided Ukrainian regime change. Putin reciprocated in Crimea.
Russia did not overtly invade Crimea as some now claim.
Washington provided provocative military assistance to Ukraine itself, but did
20

not adequately bolster military forces adjacent to the conflict zone. As the Russo-
Ukrainian War unfolded, the Biden administration gradually portrayed Putin as a
purblind despot. Russia must be subdued and prevented from ever threatening the
West again. Boris Bondarev, a former Russia diplomat, supports Washington’s
position.
21Realpolitik means using international power even when benefits conflict with
international ideals.
22Putin sides with Xi. See Yimou Lee and Sarah Wu, “Chinese Warplanes Take
to Skies, US Warships on Move before Expected Pelosi Visit to Taiwan,” Reuters,
August 2, 2022. https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/pelosi-expected-
arrive-taiwan-tuesday-sources-say-2022-08-02/.

References
Ashford, Emma. (2022). Ukraine and the Return of the Multipolar World.
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multipolar-world-203276.
Introduction xxxiii

Aslund, Anders and Michael McFaul. (2006). Revolution in Orange: The Origins
of Ukraine’s Democratic Breakthrough. New York: Carnegie Endowment for
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Baroud, Ramzy. (2022). ‘Not a Justification but a Provocation’: Chomsky on the
Root Causes of the Russia Ukraine War. Counterpunch. https://www.
counterpunch.org/2022/06/28/not-a-justification-but-a-provocation-chomsky-
on-the-root-causes-of-the-russia-ukraine-war/.
Bondarev, Boris. (2022). The Sources of Russian Misconduct: A Diplomat
Defects from the Kremlin. Foreign Affairs, November/December 2022.
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boris-bondarev.
Brussels Summit Communiqué Issued by the Heads of State and Government
participating in the meeting of the North Atlantic Council in Brussels.
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Carpenter, Ted Galen. (2022). The U.S. and NATO Helped Trigger the Ukraine
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cato.org/commentary/us-nato-helped-trigger-ukraine-war-its-not-siding-
putin-admit-it#.
Dubrovskiy, Vladimir, Kálmán Mizsei, and Kateryna Ivashchenko-Stadnik in
collaboration with Mychailo Wynnyckyj (2022). Eight Years after the
Revolution of Dignity: What Has Changed in Ukraine during 2013–2021?
New York: Columbia University Press.
Episkopos, Mark. (2022). ‘A Higher Price’: Putin Lays Out His Vision for a
Multipolar World. National Interest. https://nationalinterest.org/feature/%
E2%80%98-higher-price%E2%80%99-putin-lays-out-his-vision-multipolar-
world-205630.
Fukuyama, Francis. (1992). The End of History and the Last Man Standing, New
York: Free Press.
Keynes, John Maynard. (1919). The Economic Consequences of the Peace.
London: Macmillan & Co., Limited.
Lauria, Joe. (2022). On the Influence of Neo-Nazism in Ukraine, Consortium
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nazism-in-ukraine/.
Lee, Yimou and Sarah Wu. (2022). Chinese Warplanes Take to Skies, US
Warships on Move before Expected Pelosi Visit to Taiwan. Reuters. https://
www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/pelosi-expected-arrive-taiwan-tuesday-
sources-say-2022-08-02/.
Leonard, Mark. (2022). Ukraine’s War Viewed from China. Project Syndicate,
July 29, 2022. https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/china-view-
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03_2022&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_73bad5b7d8-f3d7e12c19-
93559677&mc_cid=f3d7e12c19&mc_eid=a749d91574.
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Luttwak, Edward. (2022). Vladimir Putin’s Failed Strategy: After 250 Days, His
Forces Are Caught in a Paradox. Unheard. https://unherd.com/2022/11/
vladimir-putins-failed-strategy/.
McFall, Caitlin. (2022). NATO Invites Sweden, Finland Become Members in
Wake of Russia’s Ukraine War. Fox. https://www.foxnews.com/world/
nato-invites-sweden-finland-become-members-wake-russia-ukraine-war.
Mearsheimer, John. (2022). The Causes and Consequences of the Ukraine Crisis:
The War in Ukraine Is a Multi-Dimensional Disaster, Which Is Likely to Get
Much Worse in the Foreseeable Future. The National Interest. https://national
interest.org/feature/causes-and-consequences-ukraine-crisis-203182.
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Rhode Island Press.
Risch, William Jay. (2022). Prelude to War? The Maidan and Its Enemies in
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175–188.
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Part I
Russo-American Partnership
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Chapter 1

Cold War World Order

Russia grew from a small 15th century principality ruled by Ivan the Great
(Ivan III), Grand Prince of Moscow and Grand Prince of all Rus’ (1440–
1505),1 into the planet’s largest nation under Catherine the Great
(1729–1796).2
During her reign, Russia crushed the Crimean Khanate, colonized the
territories of Novorossiya (Ukraine), partitioned the Polish–Lithuanian
Commonwealth, colonized Alaska, and established Russian America.3
The Secret Protocol to the Molotov–Ribbentrop Soviet–German
“non-aggression” pact in August 1939 enabled Stalin to annex large por-
tions of Eastern Europe,4 followed by further adjustments after the Red
Army defeated Hitler in 1945.5 The protocol divided Romania, Poland,
Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, and Finland into German and Soviet spheres of
influence. It assigned Finland, Estonia, and Latvia to the Soviet sphere.
The USSR received the areas east of the Pisa, Narev, Vistula, and San
Rivers. It annexed Lithuania in a second secret protocol in September
1939. The Soviet Union acquired Bessarabia from Romania, together with
the Northern Bukovina and Hertsa regions. It transformed East Germany,
Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Bulgaria, and
Yugoslavia into communist regimes under its hegemony soon thereafter.
The UN Charter endorsed by the USSR and the West in 1945 and the Yalta
and Potsdam agreements of 1945 fixed the rules and boundaries of the
postwar world order from 1945–1991. Both camps concurred that they
would not invade the other’s territories, and would honor universal prin-
ciples, but could vie ideologically to expand their global reach with other
means including propaganda, agitation, color revolutions, and proxy wars.

3
4 Russo-Ukrainian War: Implications for the Asia Pacific

The postwar world order proscribed hot wars between superpowers, but
legitimated the Cold War on both sides of the iron curtain dividing the
capitalist West and communist East: “From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste
in the Adriatic” (Churchill, 1946).
The iron curtain shattered postwar hopes for global peace and amity.
It pitted the nations of the East against those of the West, and divided the
communist from the capitalist bloc. Forty-five years of Cold War between
the USSR and the West ensued (Kennan, 1946).6 The rivalry was particu-
larly bitter from 1946–1953 (Holloway, 2022; NSA, 2022),7 prompting
the formation of NATO on April 4, 1949.8 The founding members
of NATO were United States, Canada, England, France, Belgium,
the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Portugal, Italy, Norway, Denmark, and
Iceland.9
The Cold War waned and waxed thereafter. The Soviet detonation of
an atomic bomb on August 29, 1949 and Mao Zedong’s victory over
Chiang Kaishek a month later ended a brief period of uncontested
American superpower.
Stalin’s death on March 5, 1953 triggered the 1954 “thaw,”10
Nikita Khrushchev’s secret speech “On the Cult of Personality and Its
Consequences” in February 1956 (Congressional Record, 1956),11 and
Khrushchev’s endorsement of peaceful coexistence,12 marking a softening
of the Cold War (Détente).13 The Hungarian Revolution in October 1956
and the Sino-Soviet split the same year hinted at the fragility of Soviet
power.14 The Cold War simmered thereafter for thirty years influenced by
the Soviet acquisition of the hydrogen bomb in November 1955, the
Vietnam War from 1955–1975, Khrushchev’s 1956 “We will bury you”
speech,15 the Cuban Missile and Berlin Crises in 1961,16 Prague Spring in
1968,17 the Brezhnev Doctrine in 1968,18 the Solidarność rebellion in
1980,19 the Russo-Afghan war from 1979–1989,20 and a multitude of
Soviet third-world forays. Although it was murky at the time, Mikhail
Gorbachev discarded the Cold War paradigm and the “iron curtain” in
1987 for an untested radical communist program of his own devices
that swiftly destroyed the Soviet Union in 1991 (Gorbachev, 1987).
Communist power proved surprisingly brittle. Russia’s leaders discarded
Marxism in the blink of an eye.
Gorbachev’s perestroika (radical market reform) wrecked Soviet cen-
tral planning. His demokratizatsia (democratization) subverted central-
ized communist party control and novoe myslenie (new thinking)
green-lighted republican secession, the dissolution of the USSR, and the
Cold War World Order 5

disbanding of the Warsaw Pact21 and CMEA (Lavigne, 1983).22 In the


span of four brief years, Gorbachev’s reforms demolished the Soviet
Union, killed communism in all the former Soviet republics, dismem-
bered the Soviet empire, and crippled Russia’s armed forces. Former East
European members and satellites of the USSR became frenemies of
Russia, aligned with America and the EU. Most joined NATO,23 and par-
ticipated in American-led efforts promoting democratic market regimes in
Ukraine, Belarus, non-European former Soviet republics, and Russia itself
(McFaul, 2001, 2018; US Ambassador, 2012).24
The Cold War ended in Moscow’s total defeat, creating an opportunity
to build a post-Soviet world order on a liberal institutionalist basis
unmarred by ideological and latent nationalist enmities. Liberal Kremlin
leaders were not scheming for a prompt ideological or nationalist East–
West rematch. They did not move the iron curtain westward or seek resto-
ration of the postwar World War II global order established at Yalta25 and
Potsdam in 1945.26 Although Moscow remained the hegemon of the
Commonwealth of Independent States,27 including Russia, Belarus,
Kazakhstan, Kirghizstan, and Uzbekistan, it avoided reigniting the Cold
War. Instead, Russian President Boris Yeltsin strove to integrate Russia
into the post-Soviet G-8 order, navigating toward democracy and liberal
markets with the assistance of the World Bank and the International
Monetary Fund to increase economic efficiency and foster national pros-
perity. President Bill Clinton offered Russia and the Commonwealth of
Independent States a niche in an America-led global order, and the Kremlin
accepted it on a trial basis with the proviso that Washington would accom-
modate various Russian sensibilities. Yeltsin and later Vladimir Putin
engaged the West on these terms until 2008 when the Kremlin grew dis-
satisfied with the West’s “Grand Bargain” (Allison, 1991; Allison and
Blackwill, 1991), paving the road to the 2022 Russo-Ukrainian War.
Ukraine held a special place in the Kremlin’s concept of East and
West (Hedlund, 2023).28 It had been an integral part of Russia for two
centuries,29 and had a large Russian-speaking, Eastern Orthodox Christian
minority population. It served as a buffer with the West and a strategic
asset on the Black Sea. Ukraine in Moscow’s eyes was and is an integral
part of Russia’s sphere of influence. Putin declared in 2022 that he did not
object to its accession to the EU, but considered its NATO membership a
provocation. United States Secretary of State Antony Blinken acknowl-
edged this, but did not feel bound by Putin’s concern (Ashford, 2022),30
an attitude Putin construed as a casus belli (Motyl, 2022).31
6 Russo-Ukrainian War: Implications for the Asia Pacific

Gorbachev, Yeltsin, and Putin held disparate views about the post-
Soviet world order. All accepted the United Nations charter and none
insisted on preserving the Yalta and Potsdam agreements after 1991. The
West found little reason to negotiate with Russia’s leaders. Gorbachev
discarded the Yalta and Potsdam agreements of his own free will, believ-
ing Soviet republics and satellites would embrace his vision of libertarian
communism and inspire Western converts. The title of his 1987 new com-
munist manifesto “Perestroika: New Thinking for my Country and the
World” proclaimed his message (Gorbachev, 1987). Western leaders did
not bother disputing Gorbachev’s end of history. They were content with
his endorsing German reunification, Soviet disunion, and the dissolution
of the Warsaw Pact and Comecon. Yeltsin was also cooperative. He some-
times balked over issues like Serbia (Parks, 1992), but always knuckled
under Western persuasion.
Gorbachev and Yeltsin were liberalizing politicians, not siloviki
(power service men). Putin is different. He is a tough-minded, security-
focused, modernizing silovik with liberal Andropov school inclinations,32
who gradually pressed for a negotiated post-Soviet world order dividing
the East and West into separate camps, explicitly rejecting Washington’s
version of globalization. He was content to follow Yeltsin’s liberal foot-
steps in East–West relations from 2000–2008 while rebuilding Russia’s
national economy and preparing a military modernization drive, but
reversed course thereafter. Yalta and Potsdam were back on the table and
up for renegotiation from Putin’s perspective in 2008, but the Obama–
Biden team was dismissive. Washington believed that it did not have to
accommodate Russia and staying the course was wisest whether Putin
acquiesced or launched a special military operation (Sakwa, 2023).33
This is the crux of the polarized attitudes toward the origin of the
Russo-Ukrainian war and its resolution. Those who believe Putin plotted
to restore some of the Soviet empire the moment he came to power blame
the Kremlin for the renewed East–West Cold War (Blank, 2022). They
press for Russia’s military defeat. Those who judge that the United States
mismanaged Russia’s post-Soviet transition (United States Department of
State, 2022)34 and should have accommodated Putin on Ukraine’s NATO
accession, at least on a trial basis, believe that the Biden administration’s
ambitions pushed Putin over the edge. They favor negotiation and
compromise.
If Washington wins the Russo-Ukrainian War, it can impose
stern discipline on Muscovy for many years. If it does not, the Biden
Cold War World Order 7

administration will have to reassess whether it is wiser to formally negoti-


ate a living arrangement with the East, modify its objective, or pursue a
cold or hot war. The issue warrants careful consideration (Perry, 2022).35

Endnotes
1Ivan III Vasilyevich (1440–1505), also known as Ivan the Great, was a Grand
Prince of Moscow and Grand Prince of all Rus’. He ended the dominance of the
Tatars over Russia, renovated the Kremlin in Moscow, introduced a new legal
codex, and laid the foundations of the Russian state. His 1480 victory over the
Great Horde is cited as the restoration of Russian independence 240 years after
the fall of Kyiv during the Mongol invasion. Ivan was the first Russian ruler to
style himself “tsar.”
2Catherine II, known as Catherine the Great, ruled Russia from 1762 until 1796.
Under her reign, Russia experienced a renaissance of culture and sciences with
many new cities, universities, and theaters being founded, a large number of
European immigrants moving to Russia, and Russia being recognized as one of
the great powers of Europe. She expanded the Russian empire. In the south, the
Crimean Khanate was crushed in the Russo-Turkish War from 1768–1774.
Russia colonized the territories of Novorossiya along the coasts of the Black and
Azov Seas. In the west, the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth was partitioned,
with the Russian Empire gaining the largest share. In the east, she colonized
Alaska, establishing Russian America.
3Russian America refers to the Russian Empire’s colonial possessions in North
America from 1799 to 1867. It consisted mostly of present-day Alaska in the
United States, but also included small outposts in California, including Fort Ross,
and three forts in Hawaii, including Russian Fort Elizabeth.
4The Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact was a non-aggression pact between Nazi
Germany and the Soviet Union that enabled those two powers to partition Poland
between them. German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop and Soviet
Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov signed the pact on August 23, 1939. It was
officially known as the Treaty of Non-Aggression between Germany and the
Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.
5The secret protocol divided Romania, Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, and
Finland into German and Soviet “spheres of influence.” It assigned Finland,
Estonia, and Latvia to the Soviet sphere and partitioned Poland in the event of its
“political rearrangement.” The USSR would receive Pisa, Narev, Vistula, and San
Rivers, and Germany would occupy the west. Lithuania, which was adjacent to
East Prussia, was assigned to the German sphere of influence, but a second secret
8 Russo-Ukrainian War: Implications for the Asia Pacific

protocol, agreed to in September 1939, reassigned Lithuania to the Soviet Union.


According to the protocol, Lithuania was to receive the historical capital, Vilnius,
controlled by Poland during the interwar period. Another clause stipulated that
Germany would not interfere with the Soviet Union’s actions toward Bessarabia,
which was then part of Romania. As a result, the Soviets occupied Bessarabia as
well as the Northern Bukovina and Hertsa regions and integrated them into the
Soviet Union.
6George Kennan reached the same conclusion two weeks earlier on February 22,
1946.
7Declassified “top secret” NSA document.
8Talks for a wider military alliance, which could include North America, also
began that month in the United States, where US foreign policy under the Truman
Doctrine promoted international solidarity against actions viewed as communist
aggression, such as the February 1948 coup d’état in Czechoslovakia. These talks
resulted in the signature of the North Atlantic Treaty on April 4, 1949 by the
member states of the Western Union plus the United States, Canada, Portugal,
Italy, Norway, Denmark, and Iceland.
9NATO soon began enlarging. Greece and Turkey joined in 1952. West Germany
followed shortly thereafter in 1955. Spain became a member in 1982. United
Germany joined immediately after Gorbachev gave his blessing in 1990. The
Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland acceded in 1999. Bulgaria, Romania,
Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Slovakia, and Slovenia were added in 2004.
Albania and Croatia became members in 2009, Montenegro in 2017, and North
Macedonia in 2020, bringing the total membership to 30. The net result of NATO
expansion in 2022 in the context of the new Cold War is a new iron curtain
redrawn on the USSR pre-1939 borders north–south from Saint Petersburg to
Mariupol, with Ukraine and Georgia in dispute. Belorussia, Transnistria,
Azerbaijan, Armenia, Kazakhstan, Kirgizia, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, and
Chechnya are in Russia’s sphere of influence.
The Thaw (Оттепель) is a short novel by Ilya Ehrenburg first published in the
10

spring 1954 issue of Novy Mir. It coined the name the Khrushchev Thaw, a period
of liberalization following the 1953 death of Stalin.
In a secret speech before a closed plenum of the 20th Congress of the CPSU,
11

Khrushchev denounced Stalin’s cult of personality. In addition, he revealed that


Stalin had rounded up thousands of people and sent them to political work camps
(Gulags).
Peaceful coexistence (Mirnoye sosushchestvovaniye) was a theory that Marxist–
12

Leninist communist states could peacefully coexist with the capitalist bloc,
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described as standing south on land of the said Hospital and north
on the king’s highway. This description certainly does not warrant
the statement of Parton that the inn must “have been situate
somewhat eastward from Drury Lane end, and on the south side of
Holborn.”[538]
Immediately to the west of The Swan came The Greyhound.
Unfortunately no description of the inn or the property connected
with it has come down from Elizabethan times. In 1679, however,
Thomas Short, son and heir of Dudley Short, sold the whole to John
Pery, and the indenture[539] embodying the transaction gave a
description of the property as it then existed. It included two houses
in the main thoroughfare, both extending southward to Greyhound
Court and one of them being “commonly called ... or knowne by the
name or signe of The Crowne.” It would seem therefore that The
Greyhound had by now been renamed The Crown, although the
court still retained the old name. By 1704 the court had also been
renamed Crown Court.[540] Included in the sale was a quantity of land
in the rear, with buildings, garden ground and other ground,
including the house in Greyhound Court where Thomas Short had
himself lived. The details given, though full, are not sufficient to
enable a plan to be drawn of the property. It certainly included the
eastern portion of the site of St. Giles’s Workhouse,[541] and did not
extend as far south as Short’s Gardens, as it is said to be bounded in
that direction by a “peice of ground commonly called the mulberry
garden, late in the possession of Robert Clifton.”
To the west of The Greyhound, were a number of houses,
which in 1567 were sold[542] by Lord and Lady Mountjoy to Henry
Ampthill.[543] They are described as in eleven occupations, adjoining
The Greyhound on the east, the highway on the north, and a close
(probably Greyhound Close) on the south. The western boundary,
unfortunately, is not given. The property was subsequently split up,
about half coming into the hands of a family named Hawkins,[544]
and this in 1726 certainly included property on either side of Lamb
Alley,[545] probably as far as the site of the present No. 45, Broad
Street. How much further the Ampthill property extended is not
known.
In 1631 Ann Barber, widow, and her son Thomas, sold[546] to
Henry Lambe a tenement and two acres of land, the said two acres
being garden ground and adjoining on the west “a parcell of ground
called Masslings,” on the south “a parcell of ground in the occupation
of one Master Smith,” on the east a “parcell of ground in the
occupation of Mistris Margarett Hamlyn,” and on the north certain
tenements and garden plots in the occupation of Robert Johnson and
others. In 1654 John Lambe sold the property to Henry Stratton,
who in the following year parted with it to Thomas Blythe.[547] In the
indenture accompanying the latter sale, the two acres are stated to be
“a garden or ground late in the occupation of Samuel Bennet,” and
the remainder of the property is described as 10 messuages late in
the tenure of Edmund Lawrence, 4 small messuages also late in
Lawrence’s occupation, a chamber commonly called the Gate House,
a messuage called The Bowl, and a messuage called The Black Lamb.
The property had formerly belonged to William Barber,[548] Ann’s
husband. There is nothing to show how he became possessed of it,
but it is possible that the property is identical with the “one
messuage, one garden and two acres of land with appurtenances”
sold by John Vavasour in 1590 to Thomas Young.[549]
The eastern limits of the property above described may be
fixed within a little, as it is known that a portion of it was utilised in
the 18th century for the building of the original workhouse, and is
described in a deed quoted by Parton[550] as bounded on the east by
the backs of houses in Crown Court. It may be regarded therefore as
including the site of the central portion of the present workhouse.
The “parcel of ground in the occupation of one Master Smith”
described as the southern boundary, and referred to in a deed of
1680[551] as the garden and grounds of William Short, is obviously the
strip of ground on the north side of Short’s Gardens, leased by Short
to Edward Smith.[552] The western boundary, “Masslings,” has been
strangely misconstrued. Parton read it as “Noselings,”[553] which he
regarded as a corruption of “Newlands,”[554] and located the ground
on the east side of Neal Street. Blott copied the error and, in a highly
imaginative paragraph, connected it with Noseley, in Leicestershire.
[555]
As a matter of fact, there is not the slightest doubt that
“Masslings”[556] is “Marshlands,” between which the form
“Marshlins” appearing in a deed of 1615[557] is evidently a connecting
link.
The boundary between Marshland and The Bowl property is
shown on Plate 39.
By 1680[558] a considerable portion of The Bowl property had
been built on and Bowl Yard had been formed. In the first instance,
the latter led by a narrow passage into Short’s Gardens, but
afterwards the entrance was widened, and the southern part of the
thoroughfare was named New Belton Street, Belton Street proper
being distinguished as Old Belton Street. About 1846 both were
widened on the east side to form Endell Street, and the still
remaining portion of Bowl Yard at the northern end was swept away.
Bowl Yard obviously derived its name from The Bowl inn, which,
together with The Black Lamb, is mentioned in the deed of 1655,
above referred to. The sign had no doubt reference to the custom
mentioned by Stow[559] that criminals on their way to execution at
Tyburn were, at St. Giles’s Hospital, presented with a great bowl of
ale “thereof to drinke at theyr pleasure, as to be theyr last refreshing
in this life.” The inn itself probably fronted Broad Street, and the
brewhouse attached to it was situated behind, on the west side of
Bowl Yard.
Plate 38 shows the west front of The Bowl Brewery in 1846,
and the houses at the northern end of Belton Street.
In the Council’s collection are:—
[560]
The Bowl Brewery in 1846 (photograph).
Nos. 7 and 9, Broad Street. Exterior (photograph).
LI.—SITE OF MARSHLAND (SEVEN DIALS.)

Included in the property transferred to Henry VIII. in 1537


was “one close called Marshland.”[561] In 1594, Queen Elizabeth
farmed the close to Thomas Stydolph, his wife, and his son, Francis,
for the life of the longest liver, and in 1598 she farmed it for the sixty
years following the death of the longest lived of the three to Nicholas
Morgan and Thomas Horne. The latter immediately conveyed their
interest to James White, and subsequently it came into the hands of
Sir Francis Stydolph, who thus held a lease for the length of his own
life and for sixty years afterwards. In 1650, while he was still in
possession of the close, it was surveyed by Commissioners appointed
by Parliament[562]. In their report, the close is described as “all yt
peice or parcell of pasture ground comonly called ... Marsh close
alias Marshland ... on the north side of Longe Acre,[563] and ...
betwene a way leadinge from Drury Lane to St. Martin’s Lane on the
north;[564] and a way leadinge from St. Gyles to Knightsbridge, and a
way leadinge from Hogg Lane into St. Martin’s Lane on the west;[565]
and Bennet’s Garden[566] and Sir John Bromley[567] and Mr. Short on
the east.” These boundaries are in accord with the plan showing the
design for laying out (Plate 39), and with Faithorne’s Map of 1658
(Plate 4). The extension of Marshland to the east of Neal Street
(formerly King Street) has never been noticed, but the fact is quite
clear. One proof will suffice. On 23rd September, 1728, James Joye
sold to trustees of the charity schools of St. Giles, Cripplegate,
property specified as “part of the Marshlands in St. Giles-in-the-
Fields,”[568] and situated on the east side of King Street. Part of the
property has since been thrown into the public way, but part can still
be identified as No. 82, Neal Street,[569] on the east side.
In 1650 the buildings on the Close were:—
(i.) The Cock and Pye inn, a brick building of two storeys and
a garret, standing on ground 117 feet from north to south, with a
breadth of 48 feet at the north end. This is probably the building
shown on Hollar’s Plan of 1658 (Plate 3), at the southern angle of the
close. From it the close was sometimes known as Cock and Pye
Fields.
(ii.) A house with wheelwright’s shop and shed attached,
covering with yards, gardens, etc., 3 roods.
(iii.) A shed of timber and Flemish wall, with tiled roof,
containing two small dwelling rooms, occupying, with a garden, half
an acre.
(iv.) A piece of ground, half an acre in extent, “late converted
into a garden, beinge very well planted wth rootes.”
(v.) Three tenements of timber and Flemish wall, with
thatched roof, on the north side of what was afterwards Castle Street,
occupying, with gardens, etc., half an acre.
(vi.) “All that conduit scituate and adjoyninge to the aforesaid
3 tenements, and standeth on the southest corner of the aforesaid
Marsh Close, consistinge of one roome heirtofore used to convey
water to the Excheqr. Office, but of late not used.”
Sir Francis Stydolph died on 12th March, 1655–6, and his
successor, Sir Richard, at once entered on the remaining 60 years’
term and in 1672 obtained an extension of this for 15 years.[570]
Morden and Lea’s Map of 1682 shows that by that date a
considerable amount of building had taken place on the close,
though the details are not clear.[571] This is probably to be connected
with the lease which James Kendricke obtained for 31 years as from
Michaelmas, 1660.[572] In 1693 Thomas Neale, “intending to improve
the said premisses by building”[573], obtained a lease of the close until
10th March, 1731–2, undertaking to build within two years sufficient
houses to form ground rents amounting to £1,200, the ground rents
to be calculated at from 5s. to 8s. a foot frontage, except in the case of
houses fronting King Street (now Neal Street), Monmouth Street
(now Shaftesbury Avenue), St. Andrew Street and Earl Street, where
the amount was to be from 8s. to 12s. a foot. Building operations
were apparently started immediately,[574] but do not seem to have
been completed until well into the 18th century.[575]
Neale’s plan was one which excited considerable notice at the
time, the streets all radiating from a common centre. Evelyn records
in his Diary under date of 5th October, 1694: “I went to see the
building neere St. Giles’s, where 7 streets make a star from a Doric
pillar plac’d in the middle of a circular area.” From the fact that on
the summit of the column were dials, each facing one of the streets,
the district obtained the name of Seven Dials. The top part of the
pillar, however, has only six faces, a fact which has worried
antiquaries. In explanation Mr. W. A. Taylor, the Holborn Librarian,
has pointed out[576] that the plan (Plate 39) now at the Holborn
Public Library, of the proposed laying out shows only six streets,
Little White Lion Street not being provided for.[577]
The pillar was taken down in July, 1773, on the supposition
that a considerable sum of money was lodged at the base. “But the
search was ineffectual, and the pillar was removed to Sayes Court,
Addlestone, with a view to its erection in the park. This, however,
was not done, and it lay there neglected until the death of Frederica,
Duchess of York, in 1820, when the inhabitants of Weybridge,
desiring to commemorate her thirty years’ residence at Oatlands and
her active benevolence to the poor of the neighbourhood, bethought
them of the prostrate column, purchased it, placed a coronet instead
of the dials on the summit, and a suitable inscription on the base,
and erected it, August, 1822, on the green. The stone on which were
the dials, not being required, was utilised as the horseblock at a
neighbouring inn, but has been removed and now reposes on the
edge of the green, opposite the column.”[578] Plate 40 shows the
column as at present.
Little of architectural interest now remains in the district of
Seven Dials. Plate 41 is a view of Little Earl Street at the present day.
Suspended from No. 56, Castle Street is a wooden key used as a
street sign and trade mark, probably dating from the reign of George
III., at which time the predecessors of the present firm carried on a
locksmith’s business at the premises. The exterior retains an 18th-
century appearance, and a small Georgian coat of arms remains over
the doorway. The interior has been many times reconstructed, and
does not now contain anything of architectural interest.
In the Council’s collection are:—
No. 54, Neal Street. Exterior (photograph).
No. 54, Neal Street. Detail of staircase (measured drawing).
Nos. 54, 56 and 58, Castle Street. Exterior (photograph).
[579]No. 56, Castle Street. Street sign (photograph).

No. 50, Castle Street. Exterior (photograph).


Nos. 1–6, Little White Lion Street. General view (photograph).
No. 10, Lumber Court. Exterior of ground floor (photograph).
[579]LittleEarl Street. General view looking east (photograph).
Little Earl Street. General view and No. 15 (photograph).
No. 15, Little Earl Street. Exterior (photograph).
Nos. 12–16, Great White Lion Street. General view of exteriors
(photograph).
LII.—THE CHURCH OF ALL SAINTS, WEST
STREET.
General description and date of
structure.
On 20th February, 1699–1700, John Ardowin obtained a lease
of a plot of Marshland, 73 feet long, by 46 feet deep, abutting south
on West Street and north on Tower Street, “as the same was laid out
and designed for a chapel.”[580] The chapel in question, which was for
the use of the little colony of Huguenots lately settled in the district,
was duly built, and received the title of “La Pyramide de la
Tremblade.” The following inscription, however, which occurs on
two chalices in the possession of the West London Mission, shows
that the congregation had for more than two years had a temporary
place of worship on this spot. “Hi duo Calices dono dati sunt ab
Honesto Viro Petro Fenowillet die octavo Julii MDCIIIC in usum
Congregationis Gallicae quae habetur in via vulgo dicta West Street
de Parochia S. Ægidii. Si vero dissolvitur Congregatio in usum
Pauperum venundabuntur.” In 1742 the congregation removed
elsewhere, and in the following year John Wesley took a seven years’
lease of the building, holding his first service there on Trinity
Sunday, 1743. His house, which stood immediately to the west of the
chapel, was demolished in 1902. The lease of the chapel was renewed
from time to time until Wesley’s death in 1791, after which the
premises were used for various religious purposes until 1888, when
they were purchased for the use of the Seven Dials Mission.[581]
The exterior is of stock brick with large semi-circular headed
windows, as shown on the previous page.
The interior has three large galleries supported on panelled
square wood pillars. The ceiling and roof are carried by Ionic
columns. Over the bay of the nave next to the chancel is a large
square lantern with flat ceiling; in each side of the lantern are three
light windows.
The chancel is the full width of the nave between the galleries.
The end wall had a window, known in Wesley’s time as the
“Nicodemus Window.” It connected with Wesley’s house, and by its
means many of his secret admirers could take part in the service
without being observed by the congregation. It was filled in after
Wesley’s death and was not found again until 1901, when the wall
was pulled down and rebuilt. Vestries with rooms over now occupy
the sides of the chancel, but formerly these were a portion of the
church.

The top part of the pulpit, formerly a “three decker,” occupied


by Wesley, is still in use as the reading desk. The present pulpit, of
18th-century oak, was a gift from the church of St. George,
Bloomsbury, and the white marble font, dated 1810, came from the
parish church of St. Giles.
In the Council’s collection are:—
[582]Church of All Saints, West Street. Exterior in 1901 (photograph).
General view of interior (photograph).
[582]Top part of Wesley’s pulpit (photograph).
LIII.—SITE OF THE HOSPITAL OF ST. GILES.

The Hospital of St. Giles-in-the-Fields was founded by Maud,


[583]
Henry I.’s Queen, probably in 1117 or 1118.[584] Stow[585] giving, on
unknown authority, the date as “about the yeare 1117,” and the
Cottonian MS. Nero C.V.[586] placing the event in 1118. The number of
lepers to be maintained in the Hospital was stated, in the course of
the suit between the Abbot of St. Mary Graces and the Master of
Burton Lazars in the fourth year of Henry IV.’s reign, to be fourteen,
[587]
and this is to a certain extent confirmed by a petition[588] from
the brethren of the Hospital, dating from the end of Edward I.’s
reign, which gives the number as “xiij,” apparently a clerical error.
On the other hand, the jury who were sworn to give evidence at the
above-mentioned suit, declared that from time immemorial it had
not been the custom to maintain fourteen, but that sometimes there
had been only three, four or five.
Maud had assigned 60s. rent, issuing from Queenhithe, for
the support of the lepers, and had afterwards granted the ward of the
Hospital to the citizens of London,[589] who appointed two persons to
supervise the Hospital. Certain of the citizens had given rents, etc.,
amounting to upwards of £80 a year towards the maintenance of
lepers of the City and suburbs,[590] and an arrangement come to[591] in
the reign of Edward III. between the City and the Warden of the
Hospital provided that, apparently in accordance with the ancient
custom, the whole of the fourteen lepers should be taken from the
City and suburbs and presented by the Mayor and Commonalty, or
that if there were not so many within those limits, the County of
Middlesex should be included, and that in the event of further gifts to
the Hospital by good men of the City, the number of lepers should be
increased in proportion. It will be seen, therefore, that the Hospital
of St. Giles was, in early times, a peculiarly London institution, and
very closely connected with the governing body of the City.
On 4th April, 1299,[592] it was granted to the Hospital of
Burton Lazars in Leicestershire. It thus became a cell to that house,
and a member of the order of St. Lazarus of Jerusalem. Except for a
short intermission, it remained under the control of the house of
Burton Lazars until the dissolution in 1539, but it must long before
have ceased to serve its original purpose. Its constitution during the
later period of its existence is obscure, but the place of the lepers was
probably taken by infirm persons, when leprosy became extinct. The
hospital appears to have been governed by a Warden, who was
subordinate to the Master of Burton Lazars.
The Precinct of the Hospital probably included the whole of
the island site now bounded by High Street, Charing Cross Road[593]
and Shaftesbury Avenue; it was entered by a Gatehouse in High
Street. The Hospital church is sufficiently represented by the present
parish church, while the other buildings of the hospital included the
Master’s House (subsequently called the Mansion House) to the west
of the church, and the Spittle Houses, which probably stood in the
High Street to the east of the church. There is no evidence of the
internal arrangement of these buildings, with the exception of the
church, which survived till 1623, and will be described below.
The Gatehouse.
The position of The Gatehouse may be roughly gathered from
a deed of 1618[594], which refers to “all that old decayed building or
house commonly called the Gatehouse, adjoyning next unto one
small old tenement or building set and being att or neare unto or
uppon the north-west corner of the brickwall inclosing the north and
west parte of the churchyard.”
Mansion House and Adjacent Buildings.
A few years after the dissolution in 1539, the property of the
Hospital was divided between Lord Lisle and Katherine Legh[595],
when there fell to the share of the former the mansion place or
capital house of the Hospital; a messuage, part of the Hospital, with
orchards and gardens, in the tenure of Doctor Borde; and a
messuage, part of the Hospital, with orchard and garden, in the
tenure of Master Densyle, formerly of Master Wynter. Lisle
transferred the property to Sir Wymonde Carew, who at his death
was found to be seized of and in “the capital mansion of the Hospital
of St. Giles-in-the-Fields and of and in certain parcels of land with
appurtenances in the parish of St. Giles-in-the-Fields.”[596] Thomas
Carew, his son, seems to have disposed of the whole of the property,
and in 1563 the above-mentioned, described as four messuages, were
in the possession of Francis Downes.
On 10th April, 1566, Robert and Edward Downes sold[597] to
John Graunge “all those messuages, tenements, houses, edyfices,
barns, stables, gardens, orchards, meadows, etc., with the
appurtenances, now or late in the several occupations of the Right
Hon. Sir Willyam Herbert, knyght, now Erell of Pembroke, ——
Byrcke, Esq., Johan Wyse, wydowe, Anthony Vuidele, Thomas More,
Henrye Hye, and —— Troughton, —— Wylson, lyng and being in St.
Gyles in the Fieldes.”
There are no records by which the history of these several
houses may be traced, but at the beginning of the 17th century the
property, having then passed into the hands of Robert Lloyd[598]
(Floyd, or Flood), seems chiefly to have comprised five large houses.
[599]

On 19th March, 1617–8, Robert Lloyd[600] sold to Isaac


Bringhurst the reversion of a house, formerly in the occupation of
Jas. Bristowe and then in that of Thomas Whitesaunder, situated
“nere unto the west end of the ... parish church” and to the south of
Sir Edward Cope’s residence, having an enclosure on its east side 45
feet wide by 17½ and 18 feet, and gardens and ground on the west
side, extending 288½ feet to Hog Lane. Assuming a depth of from
30 to 40 feet for the house itself, it will be seen that the premises
stretched between the church and Hog Lane for a distance of about
340 feet, and after making due allowance for the fact that Hog Lane
was much narrower than Charing Cross Road, its modern
representative, it will be apparent that the only possible course taken
by the above mentioned property was along the line of Little
Denmark Street, formerly Lloyd’s Court. Unfortunately the history of
the house in question cannot be definitely traced after 1629[601], but if
the site suggested above is correct, the premises subsequently came
into the possession of Elizabeth Saywell (née Lloyd) who, by will
dated 5th January, 1712–3, gave all her real estate in St. Giles, after
several estates for life, to Benjamin Carter for his life, and devised a
fourth part of her estate to trustees for charitable purposes.
Benjamin Carter on 12th March, 1727, accordingly granted to
trustees all that old capital messuage or tenement wherein Mrs.
Saywell had resided, “which said capital messuage had been pulled
down and several messuages, houses or tenements, had been erected
on the ground whereon the said capital messuage stood situated in a
certain place, commonly called Lloyd’s Court.”[602]
Immediately to the north of the last mentioned house was the
mansion of Sir Edward Cope, described in 1612[603] as “with twoe litle
gardens before on the north side thereof impalled, and a large garden
with a pumpe and a banquetting house on the south side of the same
tenement, walled about with bricke, and a stable and the stable yard
adjoyning to the same garden.”
If the site ascribed to the previous house is correct, Sir
Edward Cope’s mansion must have been identical with that shown in
the map in Strype’s edition of Stow (Plate 5) as “Ld. Wharton’s,”
situated between the houses on the north side of Lloyd’s Court and
on the south side of Denmark Street. In 1652, the house was in the
tenure of John Barkstead or his assigns.[604] Philip, 4th Lord
Wharton, was resident in St. Giles in 1677,[605] probably at this house,
and the “garden of Lord Wharton” is in 1687 mentioned[606] as the
southern boundary of premises in Denmark Street. It seems a
reasonable suggestion that this house was originally the capitalis
mansio, or master’s house.
The same deed of 1612 mentions(i) a house in the tenure of
Tristram Gibbs, with a stable towards the street on the north side,
and a large garden on the south, “walled on the east side and toward
a lane of the south side,” abutting west on the garden of Frances
Varney’s house; and (ii) a house “now or latelie in the tenure of Alice,
the Lady Dudley,” with a paved court on the north side before the
door, a stable on the north side towards the street, another paved
court backwards towards the south, walled with brick, and a large
walled garden on the south side.
The position of Tristram Gibbs’s house can be roughly
identified by the fact that a parcel of ground abutting north on
Denmark Street and south on Lord Wharton’s garden and ground is
stated[607] to have been formerly “part of the garden belonging to the
messuage in tenure of Tristram Gibbs, Esq.” The house was therefore
to the north of Lord Wharton’s house, and its site probably extended
over part of Denmark Street.
The position of Lady Dudley’s house may be roughly
ascertained from the particulars given in the deed of 1618,[608] which
mentions the Gatehouse. Therein reference is made to the site of a
certain house formerly adjoining the north part of the Gatehouse,
“conteyninge in length from the north part to the south part, viz.,
from the end or corner of a certain stone wall, being the wall of the
house or stable there of the Lady Dudley unto the south-east corner
post or utmost lymittes of the said Gatehouse 39½ feet, and in
breadth att the north end, viz., from the uttermost side of the said
stone wall att the south east corner thereof to a certen little shed or
building there called a coach house of the said Lady Dudley, 19 feet;
and in length from south to north, viz., from the uttermost lymittes
or south-west corner post of the said Gatehouse to a certen old
foundacion of a wall lying neare unto the south side of the said
coache house 28 feet, and in breadth from east to west att the south
end and so throughe all the full length of the said 28 feet of the said
soile or ground 28½ feet.” The above is not as clear as it might be,
but it certainly shows that Lady Dudley’s stable was to the north of
the Gatehouse, which, as has been shown, was near the north-west
angle of the churchyard. Lady Dudley’s house, therefore, probably
occupied a site to the north of Denmark Street.
The most northerly of the five large houses existing here at the
beginning of the 17th century was the White House. This was, in
1618, when it was sold by Robert Lloyd to Isaac Bringhurst,[609] in the
occupation of Edmund Verney, and was then described as “all that
one messuage or tenement, with appurtenances, commonly known
by the name of the White House, and one yard, one garden and one
long walke, and one stable with a hay lofte over the same.” In 1631 it
was purchased by Lady Dudley,[610] who three years later
transferred[611] it to trustees to be used for the purposes of a
parsonage. At the time a lease of the premises for three lives was held
by Edward Smith, and this was not determined until 1681, when the
house had become “very ruinous and scarcely habitable.”[612] The
Rector at once entered into an agreement with John Boswell, a
hatmaker of St. Dunstan’s West, for rebuilding, and it was arranged
that the houses to be erected on the site should be built “with all
materials and scantlings conformable to the third rate buildings
prescribed by the Act of Parliament for rebuilding the City of
London.” The result was presumably Dudley Court, now Denmark
Place.

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