Autocrats who preach irredentism usually follow words with actions
Anthony W. Holmes was special adviser for North Korea in the Office of the U.S. Secretary of Defense from 2017-2021. He is currently a senior nonresident fellow at the Project 2049 Institute. The views expressed herein are his own and do not necessarily represent the views of any organization or agency.
On Feb. 21, just three days before Russia again invaded Ukraine, and after months of telegraphed intent and undisguised military build-up, the BBC reported that "there are reasons to believe that a full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine might not happen" because "Putin has already made his point."
On Feb. 16, the Atlantic Council published a sure-to-be infamous commentary boldly titled "Why Putin won't invade Ukraine." The author confidently predicted a Russian invasion of Ukraine would be irrational and presented too many logical inconsistencies.
This title mirrored a Forbes piece from December that argued, incredibly, that Putin was risk-averse and so would not galvanize NATO and invite further international sanctions.
The quoted experts relied on the unstated premise that no rational person would choose a costly and uncertain military escalation over diplomacy. They assumed Putin's real goal was stopping NATO's eastward expansion and setting up negotiations from a position of strength.
This is only the most recent example in a long line of predictive failures by international relations scholars, journalists and think tanks.
Before the Gulf War in 1991, then U.S. Ambassador to Iraq April Glaspie famously said of Iraq's invasion of neighboring Kuwait that "obviously, I did not think, and no one else did, that the Iraqis were going to take all of Kuwait."
Not only had Saddam Hussein publicly and privately threatened to use force and weather international sanctions, but he had recited a litany of grievances against Kuwait, accused it of aggression and claimed that it was an artificial country propped up by outside powers whose people longed to return to the bosom of their true parent.
Sound familiar? Replace Saddam with Putin and Kuwait with Ukraine, and you are reading one of several of Putin's speeches over the last decade. U.S. officials, on the other hand, were apparently convinced that Iraq really wanted to negotiate a lower annual Kuwaiti oil output.
As chronicled by the Korean historian B.R. Myers, tyrants often give us two competing explanations for their behavior in international affairs. The outward-facing rhetoric will be moderate, and many observers will interpret it as a perhaps theatrical way for the state to seek reasonable ends.
To the tyrant's own people, what Myers calls "inner track" propaganda, the language leaves little room for interpretation. Myers posits that when given a choice between these two rationales for a state's actions, the West will choose the moderate explanation and dismiss the other as hyperbole. The cruel irony here is that the moderate facade is ginned up by the regime's propagandists for this very reason.
This collective tendency has profound implications for our political and thought leaders. The world has a full complement of states using the same arguments toward the same ends.
An Iraqi soldier passes by coffins as he carries a portrait of Saddam Hussein during a ceremony in September 2002: The world has a full complement of states using the same arguments toward the same ends. © ReutersIran's Twitter feed promises to annihilate Israel and drive the United States out of the region via its planned nuclear weapon. Yet liberal Western international relations school opinion-makers contend that what Iran "really wants" is sanctions relief and security guarantees. They assure us Tehran's bellicose rhetoric is how it hides its lack of confidence.
North Korea preaches "final victory" in its propaganda, which it defines as conquering Seoul and removing the U.S. strategic deterrent from Korean affairs. Again, we are told that what North Korea "really wants" is an end to hostile U.S. policies, sanctions relief, economic growth and security guarantees. Kim Jong Un's language, in other words, is just a cover for insecurity.
Chinese Communist Party policy holds almost sacrosanct the idea of overcoming the "century of humiliation," Beijing's term for the anomalous condition where China was not the center of world politics and culture. Chief among Beijing's aims is restoring territorial integrity, first with Hong Kong, then with Taiwan. The CCP is adamant that these historical grievances must be undone for China to achieve its rightful return to center stage.
China is at least the promising outlier here. Until the Trump administration, the United States was all-in on the theory that China wants what we want: economic growth, economic growth and economic growth. China, it was supposed, would never invade Taiwan because that would hurt China's middle class and its international image.
And, of course, it almost feels like cheating to bring up Nazi Germany -- how Western Europe explained away Hitler's predations on Austria and its military build-up as Germany's rather theatrical way of correcting the unfairness of the Treaty of Versailles.
Many factors contribute to a state's decision to use war over other means. One thing recent history should teach us is that irredentist and revanchist arguments are particularly potent. No mere rhetorical flourish for domestic consumption, these doctrines routinely represent the ideals of autocratic leaders, and in the case of North Korea, they are the state's raison d'etre.
Yet, no matter how many times closed states ruled by autocrats preaching irredentism and revanchism promise us they will use force to right history's wrongs and retake their "lost" territory, we in the West seem genuinely surprised when they do it.
So, when we try to predict the future of China with Taiwan, Iran with Israel, North Korea with South Korea, the judgment should be clear: when dictators tell us their plans, we should listen.
