Abstract
In the aftermath of the 2008 Georgia-Russia War, then US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates outlined what he saw as the contemporary strategic dilemma in the US and NATO effort to deal with a more assertive Russia. To prevent the outbreak of major-power war, it was necessary to seek out policies that did not result in either the pre-World War I or pre-World War II models of confrontation or capitulation:
The goal must be to come together and take the steadfast and prudent steps now— political, economic and, when appropriate, military—to shape the inter-national environment and choices of other powers … Our policies and responses must show a mixture of resolve and restraint … To be firm, but not fall into a pattern of rhetoric or actions that create self-fulfilling prophecies … We must try to prevent situations where we have only two bleak choices: confrontation or capitulation, 1914 or 1938.1
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Notes
Vladimir Putin, Meeting of the Valdai International Discussion Club (October 24, 2014).
Hall Gardner, The Failure to Prevent World War I: The Unexpected Armageddon ( Farnham: Ashgate, 2015 ).
Jan Karski, The Great Powers and Poland ( Lanham: University Press of America, 1985 ), 316.
Samuel Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order ( New York: Simon and Shuster, 1996 ).
Hall Gardner, Surviving the Millennium ( Westport, CT: Praeger, 1994 ), 230.
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© 2015 Hall Gardner
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Gardner, H. (2015). Once, and If, the Dust Settles. In: Crimea, Global Rivalry, and the Vengeance of History. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137528179_10
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137528179_10
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, New York
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