Russian President Vladimir Putin’s vicious mauling of Ukraine is shattering quite a few grand illusions about the post-post-Cold War world.
For starters, Russia’s failure to defeat its much smaller and poorer neighbor has demolished its image as a military juggernaut. Instead of confirming its status as a great power and pillar of a new, multipolar world order, Putin’s war has exposed Russia as a declining power — at best a junior partner in the new league of autocracies directed from Beijing.
Plagued by old equipment, bad logistics and poor leadership, Russian troops have been outfought by determined Ukrainian defenders. In just under a year, the war has cost Russia “significantly” more than 100,000 casualties, says General Mark Milley, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff. That’s more in one year than Russia suffered in a decade of war in Afghanistan.
To replace its losses, Moscow is throwing Wagner Group mercenaries, ill-trained draftees and convicts into the breach. Officials hint at a spring offensive, but with a steady supply of advanced weapons from the West – soon to include heavy U.S., German and British tanks – Ukraine has a qualitative military edge and may seize the initiative itself.
In the meantime, Russia’s vengeful atrocities – missile and drone attacks on apartment buildings, hospitals and other civilian targets – has stiffened Western resolve to stand by Ukraine and set in motion a new international court to try Putin and his cronies for war crimes.
As the Kremlin warlords keep reminding us, Russia has a big nuclear arsenal and won’t hesitate to use it to defend itself. But its claims that America and NATO are out to “destroy Russia” rather than help Ukraine defend itself have not gained much traction around the world.
Russia’s economy, smaller than Italy’s, lacks the capacity to support Putin’s imperial ambitions. It’s heavily dependent on oil and gas exports and dominated by corrupt oligarchs who are permitted to amass vast wealth in return for leaving politics and statecraft to Putin. Plus, it’s shrinking under pressure from unusually stringent international sanctions.
A second casualty of Putin’s Ukraine debacle is realpolitik, arguably the reigning foreign policy doctrine of the past 15 years.
Academic theorists of the so-called “realist” school, notably John Mearsheimer, contend that how nations behave internationally is dictated by immutable realities of geography and hunger for power. In their view, naïve U.S. efforts to spread democracy and human rights ignore the way the world really works and embroils us in endless wars.
By realist logic, America, not Russia, is to blame for what’s happened to Ukraine. “It’s very important to understand that we invented this story that Putin is highly aggressive and he’s principally responsible for this crisis in Ukraine,” Mearsheimer insisted before the invasion.
Realists contend that U.S. support for NATO’s expansion after the Soviet Union’s collapse threatened Russia’s security and provoked its preemptive attack on Ukraine. It’s a theme echoed by leftwing critics of U.S. imperialism, the “America First” right and Kremlin propagandists.
Yet Putin himself has punctured that myth. In history-distorting articles and speeches, he’s made clear that his aim isn’t simply to keep Kiev out of NATO, but to restore Russian greatness through a forcible union with Ukraine, which he believes has no right to an independent existence.
Invoking realpolitik to rationalize Putin’s motives underscores the essential unreality of the doctrine. It assigns no role to the beliefs, psychology or sheer stupidity of rulers. Nor does it recognize the strong relationship between how countries are ruled internally and how they act abroad.
It’s not the lack of American “restraint” that threatens global peace and stability. The real dangers come from dictators like Putin who, unconstrainted by political and legal checks on their power at home, launch aggressive wars to restore lost greatness, “protect” their ethnic counterparts abroad and redraw national boundaries by force.
But despots’ revanchist delusions are not dreamt of in the realists’ philosophy.
Finally, the fallout from Putin’s war belies two other pervasive myths about the state of international affairs today: the demise of collective security and U.S. global leadership.
President Trump wanted out of NATO, which he saw as an anachronism that lets Europeans free ride on U.S. defense spending. French President Emmanuel Macron a few years back called NATO “brain dead” and championed a new European Security Force.
But NATO has rallied with remarkable unity and resolve behind Ukraine’s fight for self-determination. Our European allies are providing a steady flow of military and economic aid, taking in millions of Ukrainian refugees and preparing another round of economic sanctions. They’re also reducing (at considerable cost and political risk) their heavy dependence on Russian energy.
Now longtime neutrals Finland and Sweden are knocking on NATO’s door. Most strategically consequential is German Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s new policy of Zeitenwende — an historic turn from the quasi-pacifistic outlook his country adopted after World War II. In addition to aiding Kiev, Germany just ramped up its defense spending by $100 billion.
Since alerting the world just over a year ago that Russia’s invasion was imminent, President Biden has skillfully orchestrated a forceful global response to Putin’s belligerence. Last year he won congressional approval for $113 billion for Ukraine, including $67 billion in military aid. He’s cajoled our allies to step up with arms and sanctions, and has pressed other democratic nations in the “global south” to join the international boycott of Russia.
By exerting strong leadership grounded in our national interests and liberal values, Biden is dispelling the biggest myth of all — that America and the democratic world are in terminal decline.
Will Marshall is president and founder of the Progressive Policy Institute (PPI).