Theirs not to reason why,/Theirs but to do and die:/Into the valley of Death/Rode the six hundred…from The Charge of the Light Brigade by Alfred, Lord Tennyson

In September of 1854, as the result of an incompetent chain of command, the 666 men of the British Light Brigade charged into a heavily defended valley in the Crimea, a comparatively small spit of land jutting into the Black Sea.  Of these men 110 were killed, 129 wounded and 32 wounded and taken prisoner.  It was one of the worst losses in British history and brought down the government.

The Crimean War, which pitted Russia against the waning Ottoman Empire, began in 1853.  In 1854 Great Britain, France and Sardinia joined the Ottomans.  Russia, though they defeated the Light Brigade, ultimately lost.

With Russian troops again in the Crimea, attention is returning to this long ago war.  The Crimean War is considered to be the first “modern” war because of the use of railroads and telegraphs.  It also gave rise to the pioneering medical work of Florence Nightingale which led to the development of modern nursing.  Yet despite Miss Nightingale’s best efforts, an estimated 750,000 died in this war and it is still considered one of the most bungled wars in history.

But war is nothing new in the Crimea.  The Huns, Tartars, Bulgars, Mongols, Greeks, Turks and finally the Russians have all invaded this peninsula.  And now the Russians – who first claimed this area in 1768 but who transferred it “symbolically” to Ukraine in 1954 – have come back.

I wasn’t born yet when the Russians invaded Hungary in 1956 but even though I was only 5 at the time, I do remember when the Russians invaded Czechoslovakia in 1966.  And Afghanistan in 1979.  And Georgia in 2008, where they now control the provinces of South Ossetia and Abkhazia.

As the United States and other Western powers fume and bluster about the Russian occupation of Crimea, history suggests that there is little anyone can do.  As I write this Ukraine is calling up its military reservists and preparing for possible war.  Hawks here are calling for a military response from the U.S. and NATO, and Secretary of State John Kerrey is threatening dire consequences if the Russians don’t back off.  But the Russians have an estimated 150,000 troops in the area and nothing short of launching WWIII would seem to be a viable military option.

One hopes that cooler heads prevail.  The old Soviet Union had a policy of “three steps forward and two steps back” which they always got away with during the Cold War.  I wouldn’t be at all surprised if that will be the case here – that after getting the entire world roiled up about the prospects of a full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine, diplomats will hammer out an agreement that while seeming to save Ukraine from Russian imperialism, will actually leave the Russians more firmly entrenched in Crimea than they were before all this started.  This might well be the best we can hope for.  Though it wouldn’t deter Russian aggression, it would be far better than war.

How real the pain of threatened economic sanctions would be, and how serious the Russians are about seizing eastern Ukraine will ultimately determine how this plays out.  But one thing’s for sure — military action by either Ukrainian or Western forces — would be as futile as the Charge of the Light Brigade.  Let’s just hope that this time around incompetence doesn’t guide the Western world’s response