“This will not stand, this aggression against Kuwait.”
President George H.W. Bush made this statement 35 years ago, on Aug. 5, 1990, a mere three days after Saddam Hussein had unleashed his massive army on Kuwait. The premeditated lightning strike by Baghdad’s forces quickly engulfed the small Persian Gulf state, sending oil prices skyward and threatening control of the much-more-bountiful energy deposits just to the south in Saudi Arabia.
On a strategic level, however, Saddam’s military gambit posed a direct challenge to the inviolability of borders, a sacrosanct pillar of the international system since the end of World War II. To his credit, the elder Bush did not shrink from the Iraqi provocation, decisively ordering the deployment of U.S. troops to the Persian Gulf region on Aug. 7, 1990, as part of the Desert Shield operation.
The president then called Saddam’s bluff in early 1991, as U.S. troops led a broad, multinational military coalition to vanquish the Iraqi army, sending it scurrying back north after only 100 hours of ground combat. Bush clearly understood the criticality of defending the sanctity of international boundaries.
Turn the clock back even further, 40 years prior to 1990, for another instance of the United States facing down an expansionist aggressor hell-bent on changing borders by force. On June 25, 1950, North Korean dictator Kim Il Sung dispatched his military forces south across the 38th parallel, quickly occupying much of South Korea. Like Bush in 1990, President Harry Truman resolutely countered the communist attack, leading a UN-sanctioned military response that ultimately restored the pre-war borders, leading to an uneasy but lasting armistice.
While the recent 75th anniversary of the start of the Korean War passed with nary a mention — this observer was stunned by our apparent historical amnesia — in the national press, the conflict, so soon after the global trauma of World War II and the rise of communism in east Asia, proved to be a watershed in U.S. post-war foreign policy.
In addition to defending the inviolability of borders, the effort saved South Korea from annihilation, putting it on the path to becoming one of Asia’s economic success stories. The fact that America has backstopped Seoul’s accomplishments with 30,000 U.S. troops for the past 70-plus years is a testament to the shared commitment by successive denizens of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. to the sanctity of the frontiers dividing the Korean Peninsula.
What lessons do these honorable examples of American determination to thwart tyrants’ previous attempts at territorial expansion provide for the present conflict in Ukraine? Firstly, regardless of Tsar Vladimir (I want to be) the Great’s drivel about Ukraine not being a real country, the Kremlin is unambiguously trying to change internationally recognized borders by force. Consequently, Washington and its European allies are right to strongly support Kyiv in this existential battle for the future of Ukraine.
A major difference, however, between the White House’s response to the 1950 and 1990 attacks and Moscow’s 2022 assault is the lack of direct U.S. military involvement in the latter. While the arguments against American “boots on the ground” are quite compelling– not worth starting World War III, America’s war fatigue from Afghanistan and Iraq and a growing affinity for isolationism among a significant portion of the American citizenry, the prospects of a Russian victory in Ukraine present equally ominous risks for the globe.
From the Taiwan Strait to the jungles of Central Africa to the mountains of the southern Caucasus, would-be aggressors are following the developments on the battlefields of Eastern Europe to inform their respective malign designs on geographic expansion. Furthermore, should Moscow succeed in its blatant land grab, smaller states located in the shadows of regional hegemons will be forced with the choice of accommodating their powerful neighbors or arming themselves to the teeth — potentially to include nuclear weapons — to sustain their independence. A dangerous scenario indeed.
As of this writing (Aug. 10), President Donald Trump is scheduled to meet his Russian counterpart—sans Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky—on Aug. 15 to discuss plans for a ceasefire to the bloody strife. Trump will be tested by a Kremlin autocrat fixated with restoring Russian imperial glory through military conquest. How Trump squares that reality with a (hoped-for) principled defense of Ukraine’s pre-2022 territorial sovereignty will send a clear signal to the rest of the world whether America still views the inviolability of borders as an inalienable right of independent nations.
Stay tuned for the next act in this geopolitical tragedy.
Robert Beck of Peterborough is a non-resident Senior Fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute. After serving for 30 years in U.S embassies in Europe, the Middle East, and Asia, he now teaches foreign policy classes at lifelong learning programs at both Keene State College and Rivier University.