I’ve got a few tracks of thought worth spending time on with regard to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Neither of them have anything to do with predictions or what anyone ought to do about it. I’ve got thoughts on that stuff too but they’re not grounded and it’s better for others with deeper roots in the territory to go on the record about the future. I’ve shared what those others are saying pretty heavily on Twitter over the last few days.
A full scale invasion of Ukraine by Putin’s Russia exposes a few things about motive and intent that speculation over the last few weeks, months and even years since the invasion of the Crimea couldn’t confirm.
First, there’s the internal politics of creating chaos at the doorstep that has been a regularly used playbook for Putin. Georgia, Crimea, Donbas etc. If you listen to the branded messaging coming out of Moscow, it sounds crazy to people in the west. Rescuing Russians from Nazis just over the border is the sort of thing no one that doesn’t benefit from believing it believes. But it’s the sort of thing the political engine inside can run on. And saying that Ukraine has always been Russia is more of the same. Ukraine is not Russia. But energy can be generated by making territorial claims. Though it’s hard to imagine riling up the base is worth this level of heat. So there’s more.
It’s pretty clear that Putin doesn’t want to share a border with a country that’s a NATO ally. And he doesn’t want to share a border with a country who will elect heads of state that want to push them closer to Europe and further from Russia. In 2010 Russia, Kazakhstan and Belarus entered into the Eurasian Customs Union that would exclude parallel trade agreements for its members with the European Union. Ukraine, who had been in trade negotiations for years with the EU, abandoned them under pressure from Russia to join the competing trade agreement. Then Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych backed out of the EU negotiations and quickly lost his country to an outraged Ukrainian populous. Vitaly Klitschko, former heavyweight boxing champ and Mayor of Kyiv shown earlier today in pictures suited up to fight the Russians said, back in 2013, “Today they stole our dream, our dream of living in a normal country” Yanukovych was thrown out of power and the country shortly after.
The political process in Ukraine chose Europe. Shortly after Russia annexed Crimea. That was the first time in the 21st century Russia invaded Ukraine. I asked someone I know who grew up in Russia if they were surprised over what they’ve seen the last few days. They said no. And one of the reasons they gave was because of who was elected President in the last election. Not of the United States. But of Ukraine. Volodymyr Zelenskyy was a former actor and comedian who was elected with some mandate to continue to strengthen Ukraine’s ties to NATO. The implication is that Russia didn’t take him seriously. And they saw the opportunity to reverse Ukraine’s westward drift. And so for the second time in 10 years, Russia invaded Ukraine. Because Putin can’t risk losing Ukraine to Europe.
In his paradigm shifting book The Dawn of Eurasia: On the Trail of the New World Order, Bruno Macaes plots out a path. Some points, written when Zelenskyy was just leaving his career in comedy, read like they could have come out of a talking head today with full knowledge of a second invasion:
“..the Russian leadership does not believe in neutral, universal rules. Neutrality is only a pretense aimed at deceiving others. Power is always personal, but you may find it convenient to hide your power behind supposedly neutral rules and institutions.”
“Putin believes that the world of international politics is an arena of permanent rivalry and competition. Where states compete for sovereignty share very much like companies compete for market share in the global economy.”
It’s clear that Ukraine is the prize. Macaes foreshadows the game.
“Putin does not think along national lines. He thinks in terms of larger blocs and , ultimately in terms of the world order. This is perhaps the element where he has most changed his views over time, coming slowly to the conclusion that if Russia is to preserve its own political order then that order needs to acquire some kind of global projection. You cannot resist the pressures that come from the world order. So either the world order will come to mirror some elements of the contemporary, or Russia will mirror the liberal, Western political order.”
Putin doesn’t politically survive a Russia that mirrors Fukuyama’s End of History liberal order. And the good news for him is he’s not likely to have to try. Whether or not he meets his destiny on the road he takes to avoid it by invading Ukraine and running into a Zelenskyy clearly underestimated by Putin and the world will play out sometime after I hit publish on this. But the sanctions response was not only expected. It was part of the point of the invasion. Those levying them are on one side of the new world order. And those staying out of it are on the other. And it’s hard to imagine that the latter doesn’t see the former as a group playing by the old rules. And any other nation with eyes on a longstanding contested territory can’t really sanction Russia for invading Ukraine. And then you see some part of the long game here.
Whatever happens next, it’s pretty clear the post war world order is gone. The 21st century may have begun this week. It’s a world where integrated competition drives outcomes. The idea of a one world pax infinitum is dead.
Noah Smith completes the thought yesterday.
“The Russian invasion of Ukraine is different both quantitatively and qualitatively. It represents a great power simply declaring that a weaker country has no sovereignty, and invading it based on nothing more than irredentism and dictatorial pique.
The law of the jungle has returned, and the strong will dominate the weak if they see fit.”
I grew up in war. I was part of two invasions before I was 30. It’s hard to untangle them from what we see today. And we shouldn’t try. But we should move forward with the understanding that we’ve got bigger problems beyond the expansive shores of America than the culture war we’ve near punched ourselves out over. Lincoln’s speech needs an update. We’re not back in the world where only we can be our undoing.
The Law of the Jungle
Last night, as we sat in the living room and discussed the events of the day, I said, "I hope we hear from Sean Patrick Hughes soon," and he said, "Yes, he always has a good way of approaching things."
I have come to count on hearing your thoughts over the last 6 years. Thank you.