Prize-winning historian, writer and economic commentator, Adam Tooze, describes the decision to invade Ukraine as merely a «gross error» rather than one driven by historical forces, underlining surprises in ineffective military operations and a shocking resistance.
While some onlookers may view Moscow’s decision to invade Ukraine as a result of historical tendencies, such as over-ambitious aggressiveness towards the West, Columbia University professor of history Adam Tooze believes this is a misread and more a straightforward case of making a mistake.
«After all, we owe the end of the Cold War to a singular act of statesmanship on the part of a Russian leader, Mikhail Gorbachev,» Tooze explained during Credit Suisse's Asian Investment Conference 2022 this week.
«He is now, of course, disowned by his successors but that just goes to show how there is a consequential pluralism, a consequential diversity of views in Russia and in Russian politics.»
«Gross Error»
Instead of solely focusing on a fundamental tendency that admittedly exists, Tooze believes that there is a certain point at which rationalizing decisions as singularly based on such complexity is no longer adequate.
«I think in this case, we may be dealing in an instance where a regime that has simply a made a gross error,» he said.
«And rather than reading this as indicative of a fundamental tendency, the question we really have to ask is: why their decision-making processes as fragile as this; why is the information they have as bad; why do they so seriously overestimate their capacity?»
Unexpected Resistance
And more than just Russia’s «shambolic» military ineffectiveness, Tooze highlighted the Ukrainian resistance thus far as the most unexpected outcome with mobilization of civilians, public opinion and sanctions that are not only playing a punitive role but also a role that could shift the balance of the conflict itself.
«The fundamental model that was operating in the West until we got into the first week of the fighting is that Russia was going to roll Ukraine over very rapidly and then we would have as much time as we needed to figure out and to progressively ramp up sanctions,» he said.
«One of the things war does is it unleashes passions, it unleashes politics and it hurls you in the arena of a fog of wars. And, my god, have the Russians fallen into the fog of wars. They seem to have lost track of their troops half the time. Big powers with grand visions make mistakes.»
Beijing Can Prevent a Global Crisis
For Asia, China’s role – or lack thereof – in the conflict is undoubtedly the top question and Tooze notes that Washington is insistently asking Beijing if it wishes to contain this conflict, which would require them not to align with Moscow and to adopt some position of neutrality, or allow the crisis to become global.
«One shouldn’t buy into the endless Euro-centric drumroll about this being the most significant and dramatic event in the last 50 years. It doesn’t have to be that,» Tooze added. «It’s up to us to really decide whether it does get as big.»
Adam Tooze is an author and the Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Professor of History and Director of the European Institute at Columbia University. Professor Tooze has won numerous awards for his books such as Statistics and the German State, 1900-1945: The Making of Modern Economic Knowledge (2001), including the Leverhulme Prize Fellowship, the H-Soz-Kult Historisches Buch Prize, the Longman-History Today Prize, the Wolfson History Prize and the LA Times History Prize. He was also featured among Foreign Policy’s Top 100 Global Thinkers, 2019 and Prospect Magazine’s world’s top 50 thinkers, 2019.
