Originally published April 3, 2022
On February 24, 2022, the attack began. After months of massing troops along the Ukrainian border, Russia fired dozens of missiles against targets within its southern neighbor’s borders and launched a three-pronged invasion.[1] The Russia-Ukraine War is now over a month in-progress. Although negotiations are taking place, there is no end to the conflict in sight yet. This report analyzes the situation in Ukraine—and Western responses—with the goal of providing American, European, and Canadian leaders with insights to bring the war to a close, ensure long-term stability, minimize casualties in Ukraine, and prevent the conflict from becoming a wider and more destructive war.
Executive Summary
Western leaders have taken vigorous steps to condemn Russia, such as stiff sanctions, closing off air space, and sending military aid to Ukraine. However, such measures can easily backfire, deepening support for President Putin within Russia, resulting in a drawn out and bloody proxy war in Ukraine, and forcing Russia firmly into China’s camp.
A careful analysis is needed to determine whether sending additional weapons to Ukraine is appropriate. Sanctions and a retreat to petty Russophobia threaten to increase Putin’s power and drive Russia further into the Chinese camp, without significantly changing the course of the war. The West is best positioned to counter Russian aggression by emphasizing its own first principles and presenting a militarily-credible show of force in Eastern Europe with the consent of NATO member states there.
A Rules Based Order?
The feverish response to the Russian invasion betrays several things. Many countries, even the incumbent superpowers the US and China regard Russia as a peer country, and a potential trendsetter for others.
Throughout the 19th century, Europeans and their settler brethren in the Americas and Oceania extended a mostly European system of diplomacy, Westphalian sovereignty, and international law throughout the world. When the European cradle of this system descended into chaos at the end of the age of empires in World War I and again during World War II, the rest of the world was drawn in as well. Simultaneously, new players outside of Europe: the US, Soviet Union, Japan—and now China and India—became involved in global balance of power gamesmanship.
It is true that a “rules-based” international order of sorts came into being after World War II, with the more enduring if somewhat toothless UN as a forum for both cooperation and airing grievances. But inasmuch as there is a rules-based system at all, it largely came into being during the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s with the expansion of international organizations, the advent of the internet, financialization, cheaper air travel, containerization, and all the familiar interconnects of the post-Cold War.
Russia’s senior leaders made a bold gambit in Ukraine that might backfire on them—and may already have backfired.[1] But comparing the opprobrium heaped on Russia with the reaction to other unilateral military actions in the 21st century reveals that there are few rules in a rules-based system. George H.W. Bush deserves credit for his efforts to create a new international system at the time of the 1991 Gulf War. Assembling a vast coalition of countries, totaling nearly a million personnel, Operation Desert Storm received UN approval and offered off-ramps to Saddam Hussein.[2] The air war and four-day ground war that followed contained its excesses—including air strikes on retreating Iraqi forces[3]--but was limited in scope to liberating Kuwait and preventing the unilateral annexation of another country.
However, the exuberance of the 1990s and early 2000s quickly strayed away from this rules-based approach. In 1999, NATO unleashed a massive air war on Yugoslavia, devastating the country’s civilian and military targets with a rain of bombs.[4] NATO forces occupied the breakaway Kosovo province, and allowed it to unilaterally declare independence in 2008. Then in 2003, the US, without seeking UN approval launched its regime change operation in Iraq with the UK, Australia, Poland, and Italy. Russia launched its invasion of Georgia in 2008 receiving only modest pushback. Turkey has intervened in Libya and most dramatically in Syria, carving out a substantial occupation zone in the north of the country. Saudi Arabia launched a unilateral invasion of Yemen in 2015. And China, flaunting the decisions of the Permanent Court of Arbitration has continued to develop its artificial islands in the South China Sea.[5]
The reciprocal nature of harm with warfare means that war—like trade and diplomacy—is one of the truest applications of international law. But to a large extent, might still makes right. The UN Security Council’s permanent membership, which overlaps one-to-one with the five “permitted” nuclear nations under the Non-Proliferation Treaty strongly indicates that although these powers ought to play nice, they are at liberty to make whatever geo-strategic decisions their leaders choose.
Most people agree that Russia is in the wrong for its attack on Ukraine. But few can make out an articulable principle as to why Russia is actually wrong. Is it that Russia did not seek UN approval? The US, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and China certainly have not sought UN approval lately. Is it that Russia has attacked a democratically elected government, approved by its people? Although doubtless corrupt and tyrannical, Yugoslavia’s Slobodan Milosevic was elected by his citizens.[6]
What the preceding rhetorical questions are intended to expose is that a reevaluation of the “rules-based” international system is needed. In particular, leaders must evaluate the future of unilateral military action and articulate a principle that can be applied consistently worldwide.
The US has given the world many philosophical, legal, spiritual, and material benefits throughout its incumbency as a superpower. But it has not acted affirmatively enough to ensure a rules-based system. In Eastern Europe, the opportunity has come and gone for further peaceful land transfers or new weapons controls initiatives—at least until the present situation in Ukraine is resolved. Although Ukraine’s government sought NATO membership of its own accord, NATO's dragged out "wait and see" policy toward Ukraine was unnecessary, particularly because alternative treaties and mechanisms could bring about the same result.
The rules-based Western order is premised on control of the seas and the skies. At no time, since before the American Revolution has a non-English speaking country truly dominated the oceans. The UK and the US, with some honorable contributions by France (and others) have fended off all the challengers, particularly Germany and the Soviet fleet.
In the short-run, attempts to cripple Russia with sanctions are likely to backfire, affecting Russians with the greatest international involvement, weakening corporations and wealthy individuals with the most ability to challenge Putin, and solidifying cooperation between the two largest land-based powers—China and Russia.[7] The strengthening of this Eurasian alignment could easily threaten the open seas and skies ensured by the US, UK, France, and other Western allies.
Westphalians vs. Imperials
Europe is uniquely obsessed with the concept of the nation-state, subdivided into an often long-standing mosaic of countries. New countries are created after bouts of war, but others endure with borders virtually unchanged, even though the political realities that gave birth to those boundaries has long since vanished. Switzerland endures from the 17th century. Belgium sticks around as the remnants of the Spanish Netherlands, transformed 200 years ago into a French-led kingdom with a Dutch Catholic underclass and named after an ancient tribe in an attempt to give national spirit to what was little more than a buffer state.[8] Even the countries of the former Yugoslavia, which are the newest additions to the European map, follow exactly the old administrative boundaries of Yugoslavia and the preexisting Ottoman and Austrian territories.
Westphalianism is worldwide these days, though elsewhere it takes a very different form: the hyper-diverse but federalized and still culturally coherent Anglosphere countries, the shaky but long-lasting countries of South America, or the bizarre multi-ethnic polygons of Africa. Pure Westphalianism is intended to ensure sovereignty and in democratic instances translate the will of the people into action. But it struggles to deal with changed realities or conflicting claims of self-determination.
There appear to be three broad camps to highly diverse countries: centralized and often authoritarian “imperial” administration, democratic federalism, and some kind of shaky confederalism. Placing countries on this spectrum is challenging and inexact. The US, Brazil, Canada, and Australia are democratic and federalized. Russia and China follow a pluralistic imperial model, held together by a large super-majority ethnic group. And the Democratic Republic of Congo, Nigeria (and on a bad day, Mexico) struggle along in a more confederal model, with some centralized power in a few big cities.
“Imperial” or “civilizational” countries like Russia have plenty of traditional Westphalian characteristics, but other aspects too.[9] On one hand, Russia’s national power is highly concentrated to Moscow and it privileges a single language, religion, and ethnic group above others. But it also has a great deal of pluralism, accommodating groups like Tatars, Bashkorts, and Chechens as independent ethnic groups committed to the overall project of the Russian state, but much more self-governing in their own affairs.[10]
Outside of Europe, civilizational and democratic-federal models seem much more applicable. The European Union is in some ways an attempt to get democratic-federal or confederal benefits to share resources and foster trade.
In Russia and China, a highly centralized state may need to demonstrate that it is generating benefits for its citizens and demonstrate its strength in highly visible and nationalistic ways. Therefore, Putin’s shows of strengths are self-serving, benefiting his continued leadership as Russia’s president, and ideally glorifying the state in the process. Civilizational pluralism is much less democratic in a Western sense and appears to place a great deal of emphasis on preventing instability within its own country. Thus, it pursues majoritarian desires that might also offend its plural member groups: rejecting same-sex marriage, rallying around the state, blending conservative and social democratic social policy, and cracking down on dissenters of all kinds ranging from reformist democracy advocates to those more racialist and nationalist than the state itself.[11]
Russia and Geopolitics
Geopolitics is a thrilling pseudoscience. A strange blend of practical and speculative, it is not clear that geopolitical outlooks are universally held in the leadership of every (or even many) countries. But among great powers, geopolitics is part and parcel of politics, diplomacy, military planning, and intelligence operations.
The famous “Heartland” theory with Russia astride the “world island” of Eurasia is probably over-hyped.[12] But it is true that in Central Asia and North Africa, extensive land trade met its demise by the 19th century, displaced by European sea trade. Sea trade and to some extent air trade dominate our current globalized world, due in part to non-interchangeable rail gauges and terrible road systems in many parts of the world.
Regardless of the outcome of the Russia-Ukraine War, Russia has been shoved firmly in the direction of China’s camp. This combination of traditionally tellurocratic, land-based empires is significant, and poses a possible counterweight to Western maritime trade inter-dependence not seen since the early days of the Cold War.
The Kremlin is deeply flawed, but pushing Russia toward the Chinese camp is likely a mistake. Russia has a culture much more Western in character than China and has the potential to be a long-run strategic partner in something resembling a rules-based order—or if nothing else than as a geopolitical counterweight to China.
World War II: A problematic founding mythos
World War II is an important element of the modern mythos of both the West and Russia. Indeed, political strategists from the Yeltsin and Putin administrations in Russia placed heightened emphasis on Russia’s Great Patriotic War as a rallying point between the corruption of the tsarist regime and the repression of communism. In spite of lively research and extensive documentary footage of World War II, the truth is we are all separated from that war by a yawning gap of time—and what the war means has taken on new shadings.[13]
In the West, World War II is a tale of democratic struggle, expeditionary “just war” intervention, and above all a caution to be on guard against strongmen, nationalists, and reactionaries. By contrast, the Russian narrative appears to be much more one of pride, strength, and a nationalistic rally to fend off a violent invader. These divergent views of World War II play out in unusual ways, such as the mutual claims on both sides of Nazism in the current war.
Unfortunately, the framing of the current conflict through the lens of World War II also impairs clear thinking about the conflict. Westerners have portrayed Putin as a Hitler analogue—much as they did Slobodan Milosevic or Saddam Hussein—and use the late British prime minister Neville Chamberlain’s concessions to Hitler in Czechoslovakia in 1938 as a touchstone for a militarized response.[14] Meanwhile, Putin’s claims of a fascist Ukrainian government are dismissed in the West a priori because “Zelensky is Jewish.”[15] President Putin’s claim fails on the grounds that Zelensky’s policies are anything but fascist. Although he has rallied to the nationalist cause in the short-run, Zelensky has previously aligned himself with European internationalism and socially liberal policies. Western media have largely ignored some uncomfortable ultranationalist leanings by the Azov Battalion and other groups in Ukraine, but because no groups which are distinctly ultranationalist so much as hold a seat in Ukraine’s parliament, the claim is far-fetched.
Western Response
Western leaders threatened significant sanctions for weeks leading up to the invasion, but Germany in particular was hesitant to take dramatic steps to crackdown on Russia. That changed within days of the invasion, with Germany and other Western powers supporting an initiative to block Russia from the SWIFT system, committing to a NATO two percent of GDP defense spending objective[16], and agreeing to arm Ukraine.
American self-defense law contains a useful proposition about the nature of conflict. If one person punches another, the person who is attacked may respond proportionately landing a punch of their own. The attacker has lost the right self-defense. But if the person attacked were to draw a gun and thus escalate the conflict, the attacker regains the right of self-defense.
Russia merits a forceful response, but Western powers risk playing their whole hand. Isolating Russia from the rest of the world may offer leverage in the short run, but Russia is better poised for autarky than almost any other nation. It risks alienating the Russian people and rallying public support behind Putin.
Ukraine has every right to defend itself and safeguard its territory. However, Western leaders must remember that they owe no specific treaty obligation to Ukraine—and previously signaled an unwillingness to defend its sovereignty or 1990s security guarantees when they tacitly tolerated Russia’s annexation of Crimea eight years ago.
Just war theory instructs us that it may be unethical to support a party that is sure to lose a war. Lacking in-depth situational analysis informed by satellite imagery and signals intelligence, the analytical and public policy community is left to weigh in with best practices.
If Western countries continue to supply weapons, they must ensure that these weapons are given to government forces that are able to terminate the war diplomatically, and as much as possible prevent the use of these weapons by gangs and militias.
Western media love an underdog story and see it in the heroism of Ukrainians rising to the defense of their country. The response of average Ukrainian citizens is likely organic and genuine, but Western leaders must be cautious that this pivotal event in modern Ukrainian nationalism does not turn into revenge seeking against Russian-speaking Ukrainians on the ground.
American media in particular spent little time covering the drawn out conflict in the Donbass. Therefore, Americans have little sense of the nuances of the situation. They will not have heard that Zelensky ran as a peacemaker only to orient more closely with the West and relaunch fighting in the Donbass. Nor will they hear about Zelensky’s funds stowed in overseas bank accounts[17] or his ties to the Dnipro-based anti-Russian oligarch, Igor Kolomoisky (subject to US sanctions).[18]
Russia is no longer as closed to the outside world as it was during the Cold War, which to some extent may make its domestic information control more effective. Rather than rattle off crude Stalinist propaganda, it is able to rely on just enough control of its citizens, and may be able to pit the majority of its population against anti-war Russians perceived as insufficiently nationalistic, or too “yuppy” and Western in their orientation.
Concerningly, Western media has so far readily repeated Ukrainian government talking points without carefully assessing the validity of these statements. Although Ukraine is the major media story of the day, Western media has also honed in more on pathos than the course of events, creating risks that policymakers pushed on by a mobilized public will misgauge the situation.
Western media has repeatedly emphasized Russia’s combat losses and alleged poor performance in the conflict to-date. Russia seems to have advanced more slowly in the north and east than its leaders wished and it has lost a number of armored vehicles, helicopters, and fighter planes by most accounts, as well as perhaps thousands of soldiers. But it also continues to inflict significant and likely unsustainable losses on Ukraine. Western citizens and even many in the leadership are not privy to key details. How many Ukrainian planes survive? What about armored vehicles? Is Russia merely waiting for the weather to moderate before it encircles Kiev and shells the city into submission—or will it regroup and attack to consolidate gains east of the Dnieper River?
Unfortunately, many governments and private organizations in the West have responded to events with nothing more than petty Russophobia. Alcohol boards in Canada have launched a boycott of Russian spirits, and most shameful of all symphonies are demanding public statements from their Russian members condemning Putin[19]—the exact kind of discriminatory bluster leveled against Germans in the world wars. Organizations need to check this shameful activity and focus any condemnation on the Russian government itself and not individuals.
With the same totalizing ferocity as the response to Covid-19, Western countries have closed their airspace to Russia and isolated it. War and perceived periods of crisis are commonly used as a chance to consolidate power and retaliate against rivals. Efforts to tie Western conservatives to Russia are concerning and misleading. Even more concerning are the efforts to suppress information about the war, even if it is biased like the total takedown of RT and Sputnik throughout the EU and the shutdown (and deletion) of RT content on YouTube.[20] Censorship is not how a free society responds to a proxy war.
Western leaders opted for too little too late and failed to articulate clear standards in the years leading up to the war, or take steps to stabilize the territorial situation in Ukraine through diplomatic means.
A minority of progressive voices in the Western left have raised charges of racism in the coverage of the war. Certainly, the responses are extremely uneven. Wars of equivalent human tolls rage right now in Yemen, Myanmar, Ethiopia, and Mexico without so much as a fraction of the same news coverage. Ironically, many of the same outlets that proclaimed death to “white supremacy” and an end to systemic racism less than two years ago, in the aftermath of the George Floyd protests, now lavish attention on Ukraine.
The West must approach the conflict through first principles. If there is little hope of a Ukrainian victory, Western leaders should learn from the mistakes of Syria, Yemen, Angola, and Afghanistan, and withhold weapons from Ukraine to protect Ukrainian civilians from unnecessary destruction and loss of life.
Apart from the risk that Ukraine will be totally devastated, with little hope of near-term recovery, the war poses serious risks of escalation. The possibility for mistakes are as great as they ever were doing the Cold War, particularly because the frontier of today’s confrontation is right on the Russian border.
An Alternative Western Response
In the 1980s, NATO routinely rehearsed for a full-scale Soviet invasion of Western Europe with the immense REFORGER (Return Forces to Germany) exercise. Today, Russian aggression is a challenge for the US, Canada, and European nations alike, and can be met with a credible show of force in vulnerable areas akin to REFORGER.
Western leaders should emphasize withdrawal of sanctions in exchange for meaningful changes in Ukraine. The war in Ukraine presents a valuable opportunity to articulate new international norms about resort to force. The West could agree to Ukrainian neutrality in exchange for Russian withdrawal and broker changes to the Ukrainian constitution to allow a federal state with respect for linguistic rights. A settlement should seek to reintegrate the breakaway Donetsk republics with Ukraine. This could be achieved through amnesty for leaders—and rank and file soldiers—of the two breakaway republics in exchange for reintegration with Ukraine. To smooth reintegration, an agreement could explicitly prohibit the deployment of the armed forces of either Ukraine or Russia in the Donetsk region and focus on disarmament in the region apart from regional police. Northern Ireland’s Good Friday Agreement might also serve as a model. To smooth tensions, residents of Northern Ireland could choose Irish or British citizenship—or both. Similarly, Donetsk citizens could be granted special dispensation to choose their citizenship status.
Recognition of Crimea is a key goal for the Russian Federation and Western leaders could emphasize a return to the heritage of arbitration, calling on Ukraine to recognize Crimea as part of Russia in exchange for open access to Crimean ports.
Above all, Western leaders should articulate the circumstances under which unilateral resort to force are appropriate. Additionally, the war presents a chance to recognize that balance of power and spheres of influence still exist in the modern world. Apart from its current return to prominence in opposition to Russia, NATO’s purpose is unclear in the 21st century. The alliance could agree that it will not expand further into Eastern Europe, the Caucasus, and Central Asia, but work on different mechanisms to improve security with countries in those regions.
Conclusion
The Russian invasion of Ukraine is a major escalation of a war that has dragged on since 2014. Western leaders must push back again Russia’s further violation of Ukraine’s sovereignty without broadening the war, worsening the refugee crisis, or resulting in the unnecessary deaths of Ukrainians. A careful analysis is needed to determine whether sending additional weapons to Ukraine is appropriate. Sanctions and a retreat to petty Russophobia threaten to increase Putin’s power and drive Russia further into the Chinese camp, without significantly changing the course of the war. The West is best positioned to counter Russian aggression by emphasizing its own first principles and presenting a militarily-credible show of force in Eastern Europe with the consent of NATO member states there.
References
[1] “Russia Invades Ukraine.” Country report. Russia (2022). [1] James Lacey, et al., The Wargame Before the War: Russia Attacks Ukraine, War on the Rocks, (March 2, 2022), https://warontherocks.com/2022/03/the-wargame-before-the-war-russia-attacks-ukraine/. [2] See U.N. Security Council Resolution 678, S/RES/678. [3] See Peter Mansbridge, “The Highway of Death: The Road That Links Kuwait City with Iraq is a Vivid Reminder of Past Conflict,” Maclean’s (Toronto), (2003). [4] Cordesman, Anthony H. Lessons & Non-Lessons of the Air & Missile Campaign in Kosovo. Westport: Greenwood Publishing Group, Incorporated, 2001. [5] See PCA Case No. 2013-19. [6] Erlanger, Steven. “MILOSEVIC SEEKING A RUNOFF ELECTION AFTER HIS SETBACK.” The New York Times. New York, N.Y: The New York Times Company, 2000, Late Edition (East Coast) edition. [7] As of late March, 2022, the value of the ruble recovered to approximate levels at the start of the war. Kate Davidson, “Biden turned the ruble into rubble. Then it quickly came back,” Politico, (March 31, 2022), https://www.politico.com/news/2022/03/31/ruble-recovery-russia-biden-sanctions-00021850. [8] Partem, Michael Greenfield. “The Buffer System in International Relations.” The Journal of conflict resolution 27, no. 1 (1983): 3–26. [9] See generally, Pabst, Adrian, “China, Russia and the return of the civilisational state,” New Statesman, May 8, 2019, https://www.newstatesman.com/world/2019/05/china-russia-and-the-return-of-the-civilisational-state. [10] Sakwa, Richard. Chechnya: From Past to Future. London: NBN International, 2005, p. 44-66. [11] “‘He Said to the Border Guards, “You Must Have Been Missing Me”’--Navalny Arrested on Return to Russia; The Intelligence.” The Economist (London) (2021); See Horvath, Robert. Putin’s Fascists: Russkii Obraz and the Politics of Managed Nationalism in Russia. Milton: Taylor & Francis Group, 2020, at p. 1-12. [12] “Heartland Theory,” American Geopolitical Society, https://americangeopoliticalsociety.com/heartland. [13] Roediger, Magdalena Abel, Sharda Umanath, Ruth A Shaffer, Beth Fairfield, Masanobu Takahashi, and James V Wertsch. “Competing National Memories of World War II.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences - PNAS 116, no. 34 (2019): 16678–16686. [14] “Lindsey Graham: Putin sees Neville Chamberlain when he looks at Joe Biden,” Fox News, (Feb. 22, 2022), https://www.foxnews.com/media/graham-biden-neville-chamberlain-vladimir-putin-ukraine. [15] Tara John & Tim Lister, “A far-right battalion has a key role in Ukraine's resistance. Its neo-Nazi history has been exploited by Putin,” CNN, (March 30, 2022), https://www.cnn.com/2022/03/29/europe/ukraine-azov-movement-far-right-intl-cmd/index.html. [16] Sheahan, Maria & Marsh, Susan, “Germany to increase defence spending in response to 'Putin's war' – Scholz,” Reuters, Feb. 27, 2022, https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/germany-hike-defense-spending-scholz-says-further-policy-shift-2022-02-27/. [17] “Pandora Papers: Ukraine leader seeks to justify offshore accounts,” Al Jazeera, Oct. 4, 2021, https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/10/4/pandora-papers-ukraine-leader-seeks-to-justify-offshore-accounts. [18] David Clark, “Will Zelenskyy target all Ukrainian oligarchs equally?” Atlantic Council, Jul. 10, 2021, https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/ukrainealert/will-zelenskyy-target-all-ukrainian-oligarchs-equally/. [19] Valery Gergiev, “Denounce Putin or lose your job: Russian conductor Valery Gergiev given public ultimatum,” The Guardian, https://www.theguardian.com/music/2022/feb/28/denounce-putin-or-lose-your-job-russian-conductor-valery-gergiev-given-public-ultimatum. [20] “YouTube blocks Russian state-funded media, including RT and Sputnik, around the world,” France24, March 12, 2022, https://www.france24.com/en/europe/20220312-youtube-blocks-russian-state-funded-media-including-rt-and-sputnik-around-the-world.
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