As the war in Ukraine has escalated, the Western media has added layer upon layer of commentary opining that we must accommodate Russia’s aggression in Ukraine, lest we trigger World War III, a global economic collapse, or perhaps even Moscow’s turn to Beijing’s warm embrace. Others have drawn parallels between the present situation in Ukraine and the Balkans circa 1914, warning that the West should not allow itself to be drawn in to a deeper conflict with Russia over, presumably, yet another “chunk of third-rate eastern European real estate.” Most of the published commentary gives an implicit nod to a spheres-of-influence argument that would make 19th-century strategists proud, as though in 2014 we were once again debating a map of Zwischeneuropa.
We also hear a great deal these days about World War I, as though the aftermath of that European spasm could enlighten us about the escalating war in Ukraine. It is undeniable that the implosion of Europe’s power began with its lurch toward collective suicide in 1914. However, Eastern Europe was the place where the fuse was lit—not the reason the powder kegs were stacked so high. For this, we can lay the blame at the feet of the leaders in the grand imperial capitals. Likewise, the emergence of the successor states in the region was a consequence of the Great War, not its driver, regardless of how dramatic a figure Gavrilo Princip and his pistol make today. Likewise, though World War II originated in Eastern Europe, and though the Cold War was joined over the region, with Germany torn apart for decades and drawn to the political East, local nationalisms in Eastern Europe were not the drivers of these events; it was great power imperialism that subjected the region—and ultimately all of Europe—to the trauma of an all-out war. Those wars erupted not because the West did not appease an aggressor, but precisely because it did. So rather than meandering through another World War I narrative, perhaps we should look at more recent history.
If we do so, we quickly see parallels to the dangers of Putinism not in the convoluted alliances of the Great War but in the appeasement of the mid-1930s and mid-1940s. In the 1930s a small scale effort by France and Great Britain when Hitler remilitarized the Rhineland would have unraveled the entire Nazi imperial project before it started. Likewise, it was FDR’s strategic misjudgment about our Soviet ally, displayed already over the course of World War II, that allowed Stalin not only to hold on to territories gained through his pact with Hitler, but also to subvert the negotiated agreements shortly after the war, in the process imprisoning part of the Continent and igniting a Cold War that for half a century threatened nuclear holocaust and consumed massive resources for containment.
Today Putinism is on the march in Eastern Europe, undermining the post-Cold War order faster than many had anticipated only a decade ago. If unchecked, it will eventually reach the Baltic States, where NATO will not have the luxury of claiming that this is someone else’s fight. Will the Alliance then hold or fold? And do we even want to get to the point at which we are forced to answer that question? The war in Ukraine is a geopolitical game changer for European security—yes, Europe as a whole. Ukraine is fighting for its sovereignty, but for more than that as well. It has confronted a newly expansionist Russian power in an uneven struggle, the outcome of which will alter European security for decades. In that most fundamental sense, Eastern Europe is Europe.
Ukraine (“Ukrayina” or the “borderland”) is the quintessential gateway from Eurasia to Europe. A Ukraine controlled by Russia guarantees the restoration of the Great Russian imperial narrative, with Moscow once again defining itself in opposition to the decadent West, abandoning once and for all the modern nation-state-building project that was to be Russia after communism. Russian control of Ukraine would open a yawning fault line running across Europe’s north-central periphery, with a new arms race all but promising to cleave what remains of the Western consensus on defense and security. For the United States, the end of Ukraine’s independence will deepen divisions within NATO: With Russian missiles and planes on their borders, the Balts and the Poles will never accept a return to the status quo ante, while the Germans and the French will never concede the need to fundamentally redraw NATO’s strategy and deployments posture.
Let’s draw the truly relevant lessons from Europe’s history—not those dating back to the Great War, but from World War II and the Cold War, which have shaped most directly the international environment we live in today. The war in Ukraine is about the fundamentals of the post-Cold War order in Europe, both in terms of territory and power distribution. If Russia is allowed to overthrow it, Europe will never be—to invoke a mantra of the past decade—“whole and free and at peace.” In security terms, Eastern Europe is an integral part of Europe and the place where the structure of Europe’s security order will be defined. If Putinism prevails in Eastern Europe, the price to pay down the line will be much higher. And again, the present action needed is small in scale: supplying weapons, intelligence, training, and economic support to the legitimate, democratically elected Kiev government, which is fighting to preserve Ukrainian sovereignty and territorial integrity. The reactive policies the West is currently pursuing, centered on economic sanctions and offering little military support, will do no more than raise the prospects that a new “frozen conflict” will take hold. This will guarantee not just the creation of a new permanent fault line across Europe; the cracks will spread elsewhere across the globe as well.
