Opinion | Forget compromise. Ukrainians won’t tolerate subservience to Russia
- Just like in Japan’s invasion of North China in the years leading up to WWII, if Russia were to launch a war, it will find an opponent that won’t be easily subdued
- Putin must back down or risk getting bogged down in a grinding conflict that will sap its economy, if not its military
The Russian threat of force and the non-committal response of Western nations have led to comparisons of the current crisis to Hitler’s demand of the Sudetenland from Czechoslovakia in 1938. However, the situation bears much closer resemblance to another conflict around that time – not in Europe but in Asia, between China and Japan.
On its part, Russia claims it is owed a sphere of influence as a great power and that, from a civilisational perspective, Ukraine should subordinate itself to be a junior partner within a Slavic brotherhood led by Russia.
Before World War II broke out in Asia, China had lost Manchuria to Japanese annexation in 1931 and ceded control of parts of North China between 1931 and 1937. Japan saw China as belonging to its sphere of influence. It also justified its imperialism through calls for Asian solidarity, portraying its subjugation of China as the act of a benevolent neighbour leading its more backward cousin into modernity.
Despite the gap in geography and time, the military and diplomatic dispositions of the Ukraine crisis and China-Japan conflict in 1937 are strikingly alike. Ukraine has a numerical advantage over the potential Russian invasion force: it has more than 250,000 regulars and 900,000 reservists against the 150,000 Russians on its border. However, overwhelming advantages in firepower and technology mean Russia holds the clear advantage.