In a recent interview, the French president Emmanuel Macron claimed that it is important to avoid humiliating the Russians over the war in Ukraine. It was a remark that caused annoyance in some quarters, particularly in the Baltic states, whose citizens—with their memories of forced incorporation into the Soviet Union, deportations to Siberia and suppression of their national identity—hardly view “not humiliating Russia” as a strategic priority.
It is also unclear what he meant by humiliation. The victors of a war do sometimes deliberately seek to humiliate their opponents. After the defeat of France in 1940, Hitler insisted that the instruments of surrender be signed at Compiègne in the same railway carriage as had been used for the armistice in 1918. But humiliation is usually something that arises from a genuine sense of national shame, rather than any deliberately-inflicted outside act; this sense of shame also tends to be accompanied by an acknowledgement of guilt or failure. There is no sign that Vladimir Putin feels any sense of shame about invading Ukraine, or indeed about anything else; guilt or failure are not part of his vocabulary.
Britain suffered many humiliations in the Second World War before the eventual allied victory. The Norway campaign, the sinking of the Prince of Wales and Repulse battleships, the fall of Singapore and the surrender of its garrison were all military setbacks caused by poor leadership and planning. But they didn’t much affect the national mood or the country’s determination to, in Churchill's phrase, “keep buggering on.”
What did have an impact was the humiliation which Britain and France suffered as a result of the failure of their Suez operation in 1956-1957. Having colluded with the Israelis in occupying the Canal Zone, they were forced to withdraw after only a few weeks following massive international condemnation, particularly from the United States. The lessons the two countries drew from the fiasco were, however, different. For France it was confirmation that the United States could not be trusted and that France needed to be able to maintain its national security independently. For Britain it meant an acceptance of American leadership and a recognition that American support, or at least tolerance, was crucial to any foreign policy initiative.
Humiliation in the form of total military defeat is, for Russia, an unlikely scenario. Putin may well fail to achieve his original aim of occupying the bulk of Ukrainian territory and changing the government in Kyiv. But Russian control of Crimea is not currently at risk; and even if Ukraine manages to hold the present Russian advance in Donbas or even succeeds in counter-attacking, retaking the whole of the Luhansk and Donetsk oblasts looks to be beyond its grasp.
Macron has subsequently explained that he wants Ukraine to win and that he supports the nation’s territorial integrity. It may be that his earlier reference to humiliation was just clumsily expressed. But he has also suggested that once the war is over, France (and by implication Macron himself) will have a role in rebuilding Russia’s relationship with European democracies.
Maybe this was what lay behind his reference to humiliation. The Napoleonic Wars culminated in France’s defeat at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815. At the Conference of Vienna, which succeeded in establishing a durable settlement among the major European powers, France was treated as a respected interlocutor. Along with Metternich and Castlereagh, the French statesman Talleyrand was one of the key actors. After Germany’s surrender at the end of the First World War, its treatment by the victorious powers was different. Its representatives at the Versailles Conference were given almost pariah status, with little opportunity to influence the punitive terms imposed on them largely at French behest.
What might be called the Congress of Vienna approach has already been tried with Russia. After the collapse of the Soviet Union and its initial steps towards what looked like democracy, Russia was included in the G8, the Council of Europe and the World Trade Organisation. It was hoped that the country would develop values both in its domestic affairs and its international behaviour that would make it a partner, not an adversary. Sadly things didn’t work out that way. So long as Putin remains in power, it is hard to imagine anything other than an adversarial relationship with Russia. Whether this is a temporary phenomenon, or reflects the Russian elite’s tendency towards imperialism and authoritarianism, is hard to assess.
Finland is the European democracy which over the centuries has had the closest relationship with its eastern neighbour. There is an old Finnish proverb—Ryssä on Ryssä vaikka voissa paistaisi—according to which a Russian is a Russian, even if fried in butter. Macron may need to spend a lot of time at the stove.
