Helen's Trap in Russia-Ukraine Conflict? The Case of Societal Security Dilemma

The Russo-Ukrainian conflict, which is currently culminating in a full-scale military operation, has invited responses, one of which is through analyzing the situation. There are at least two major analogical points of view that have emerged. First, the view that Russia will likely resemble Germany which annexed the Sudentenland (part of Czechoslovakia) on September 30, 1938, on the grounds that the region was inhabited by citizens of German descent. Whereas the day before, Germany together with Britain, France and Italy had agreed to the Munich Agreement on the peaceful surrender of the territory; this maneuver then sparked World War II. Second, the view that analogized Russia's current position with the United States when it clashed with the Soviet Union back in 1962. The Soviet sent nuclear missiles to Cuba in order to defend it from the US attack on Fidel Castro. This crisis then ended with the US approval not to invade Cuba in exchange for the Soviet withdrawing their nuclear missiles.

Both arguments can be said to be an attempt to persuade the public to show who is right and wrong, who is responsible, who is the aggressor and who is the victim. According to Segell (2022) the aim is none other than to overcome psychological attacks to gain certain public opinion on the issues that develop. In the simplest language, it would not be wrong to call this argument the scapegoat; an argument whose purpose is to blame one of the parties. This kind of argument will eventually develop into conspiracy theories: where the world is controlled by one person/supergroup that moves in a clandestine manner.

Trying to avoid this, I put forward an allegorical argument with the aim of describing the situation on the basis of the study of international politics. I describe the Russo-Ukrainian conflict as a 'Hellen’s Trap' situation. As an allegory, Helen’s Trap describes a security dilemma situation, namely a condition where the defensive efforts of one country will paradoxically tend to have an offensive effect on other countries. If Graham T. Allison refers to the "Thucydides Trap" to explain the security dilemma (traditionally a la Cold War) between the United States and China which is predicted to go to war soon because of conditions that resemble both Athens and Sparta shortly before the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War, then the "Helen Trap" is an allegory that the Russian-Ukrainian situation as one of the mutations resulting from a more complex security dilemma, which Paul Roe (2008) calls the social security dilemma.

Before explaining the societal security dilemma, Helen's Trap itself is adapted from one of Homer's ancient Greek epics entitled Iliad. This work, written in the 18th century BC, depicts Helen as the most beautiful woman in the world from the Kingdom of Sparta who was married to King Menelaus. Her beauty was so alluring, that on the occasion of a state visit, the Prince of Troy, Paris, was desperate to kidnap Helen to be brought and married in the Trojan Kingdom. Actions that are easily categorized as insults to the honor, then trigger a massive Greek military siege for approximately 10 years, which ends with the fall of Troy and the return of Helen to Menelaus. Of course, the current Russian-Ukrainian situation does not literally resemble the epic because the context of the times is much different. However, as an allegory, the story in the epic can explain a situation known as the societal security dilemma.

The security dilemma in its traditional sense is the concept proposed by John Herz and Herbert Butterfield (1950s), explaining that a country in order to increase security, instead of creating a conducive situation, instead of reacting from other countries, which ultimately reduces the security of each other. The insecurity of one country is a "requirement" for the security of another country. This situation is not desirable or undesirable but occurs because increased security tends to be misinterpreted as offensive by other countries. The arms race is the most concrete of the security dilemmas, where a military policy is accompanied by modernization, will be followed by an increase in the budget and modernization of other countries, by anticipating offensive actions that are sometimes carried out as a state excess of military capabilities. In the most extreme situations, the security situation finds the boundaries between defense and attack, with countries constantly doubting one another.

After the Cold War ended, the arms race among states declined. This is because the competition was increasingly turning to the economic and development sectors. The dissolution of the Soviet Union into several independent countries including Ukraine in 1991, ended the war without fighting between the main actors, namely the United States and the Soviet Union itself. Nothing can match the capacity of the US in military terms. On the other hand, the wave of democratization is growing, because communism as an ideology that is considered opposition to democracy, collapsed along with its proponent, the Soviet Union. War is becoming more and more abandoned, as the concept of security is increasingly shifting from the state to the individual.

The dissolution of the Soviet Union was followed by the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact in the same year. Warsaw Pact was the only defense pact that can compete with The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). However, the absence of a counter-power that is balanced with the United States does not make the defense pact that it carries dim. NATO is in fact increasingly in demand by many countries, especially in Eastern Europe, which previously joined the Warsaw Pact. One by one the countries in the region began to join NATO.

In fact, NATO has declaratively stated that it will not expand its membership to Eastern Europe. Documents kept in the British National Archives dated March 1991 stipulate that US, UK, French and German officials discussed promises made to Moscow that NATO would not expand into Poland and beyond. The document also contains several references to the 2+4 talks on German unification. Western officials explained to Moscow that NATO would not expand into eastern Germany. The document cites Raymond Seitz, US Assistant Secretary of State for Europe and Canada.

NATO expansionism is seen by Russia as an effort to expand NATO to its borders which is worrying and threaten national security, especially in terms of the prospect of Ukraine becoming a NATO member. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, there were five waves of NATO expansion, including expansion towards Eastern Europe, including eastern European countries that had been members of the Soviet bloc, namely the Baltic States of Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Poland, Romania, and others. Since 2008, NATO has been promoting the idea of including Ukraine, which in fact has angered Russia. NATO's expansion to the east, step by step makes its operating range closer to Russia or only approximately 161 km closer to Moscow. The advantages of NATO are now not only bordering Russia but more broadly surrounding Russia.

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