The Wilkinson College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences hosted a March 14 panel discussion to give students an opportunity to ask the experts about the ongoing conflict between Russia and Ukraine. The panel consisted of professors specializing in political science, history and peace studies as well as Kyle Longley, the director of the university’s War and Society Program and a fellow professor of history.

Longley opened the discussion by addressing a question he said he had been frequently asked by students in the weeks ensuing the Russian invasion: “Am I going to get drafted?” 

His response to the question was a firm “no,” which he supported by pointing out that the  military draft has not existed since 1974. Under this logic, Longely said, it would take a long time to even put a bureaucracy in place to begin conscription again. 

"It would take an act of Congress signed into law by the president for the Selective Service Administration to go back in action and call people involuntarily to military service," Davis Winkie, a human resources officer in the Army National Guard and military historian, affirmed in a January 2020 interview with USA Today.

Longley then discussed a presentation he gave in August 2020 on three areas where he saw it likely for a global nuclear war to break out: Taiwan, Kashmir and Ukraine. However, Longley remains optimistic that nuclear war can still be avoided. 

“I think the West has organized in a very capable way of trying to address this without that tripwire of driving it into a nuclear war,” Longley said. 

Panlelist Mateo Jarquín, an associate professor in Chapman’s history department, brought up his interest in analyzing today’s conflict in the context of the Cold War. 

“We can only productively and responsibly invoke the Cold War analogy so long as we recognize the substantial differences between our contemporary context and that of the second half of the 20th century,” Jarquín told audience members. 

Jarquín distinguished the Cold War as a unique phenomenon relative to other geopolitical conflicts in that the two sparring nations — the U.S. and the Soviet Union — were primarily competing over ideological end-goals rather than physical territory.

“It wasn't just a geopolitical contest between two miliary and economic superpowers,” Jarquín said at the event. “It was (a) more (broad) and ideological competition between two visions on how to organize society and bring about the betterment of humanity, and those were capitalism and communism.”

Jarquín stated that the U.S. represented capitalism while the Soviet Union represented communism. He continued on to describe how today’s conflict today doesn’t quite match that criteria. 

“The conflict today is evidently not bipolar; clearly, western Europe and China are important pulls in their own right,” Jarquín said in an interview with The Panther. “And while the United States remains the world’s predominant superpower,  Russia is not the Soviet Union. You may be surprised to learn that Russia hardly scratches the world’s top ten when we talk about the size of an economy.”  

He went on to say that today’s events don’t have a clear ideological dimension. While U.S. President Joe Biden has framed this conflict as a competition between cosmopolitan, liberal democracy and national atrocities, Jarquín believes that these systems are not as clear as those seen during the Cold War. Jarquín attributes this ambiguity to the fact that most countries, including Russia, fall under some form of capitalism. 

Despite these differences, Jarquín stressed the importance of looking at this conflict and studying its connections to the Cold War. He talked about how, while the ending of the Cold War was a massive event, there is not a name for the period of time that came after other than “post-Cold War.”

“We all still live in the shadow of the Cold War and its collapse,” Jarquín told The Panther. 

Though Chapman assistant peace studies professor Hilmi Ulas said he believes the Russo-Ukrainian conflict will eventually end in compromise rather than persisting for over four decades like the Cold War.

“Either there is going to be a military defeat of one side over the other or a negotiation which will include a compromise,” Ulas toldThe Panther. “People are talking about Eastern Ukraine seceding as a republic.”

Panelist Paul Wolansky, an associate  professor in the Dodge College of Film and Media Arts who is also a screenwriter, stressed the importance of shedding light on the individual stories of those in Ukraine. Wolansky added that Dodge College is planning a screening of  the documentary “Breaking Point: The War for Democracy in Ukraine,” which Wolansky wrote and produced.

“(This film) will give students a chance to experience this war through the eyes of the Ukrainian people,” Wolansky told The Panther. 

The Russian government has reported that it carried out multiple strikes on Ukrainian military facilities using long-range hypersonic and cruise missiles. Civilian casualties have continued to grow as a March 20 strike by the Russian military demolished an art school in the city of Mariupol. The art school was being used as a shelter by hundreds of Ukrainian civilians. 

As the conflict continues to unfold, understanding the historical context of these events could prove to be key in finding peace in the conflict.