Russia has invaded Ukraine. Seven years ago, Vladimir Putin ordered the invasion of Crimea, the part of Ukraine that projects into the Black Sea. There’s no telling how far he plans to go this time. Russian cruise missiles have struck the capital city of Kiev, and Russian troops have begun an amphibious assault on Odessa.
The best practical suggestions for the international community that I’ve seen come from Ukrainian Minister of Foreign Affairs Dmytro Kuleba, who tweeted the following “to do list”:
1. Devastating sanctions on Russia NOW, including SWIFT
2. Fully isolate Russia by all means, in all formats
3. Weapons, equipment for Ukraine
4. Financial assistance
5. Humanitarian assistance
Kuleba notably doesn’t call for the West to directly attack Russia or even Russian troops in Ukraine. He just asks for more assistance for his own government and whatever resistance it puts up. If the democratically elected Ukrainian government wants to fight the Russians or operate a resistance movement, the West should support them in all the ways Kuleba suggests. I’ll leave further immediate suggestions about Ukraine to those knowledgeable about the situation on the ground.
Ukraine's President, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, is best known to Americans from Donald Trump’s impeachment. Just after being elected, Zelenskyy asked Trump to deliver the Javelin anti-tank missiles that Congress had bought for Ukraine’s defense. Delivery of the missiles was part of a US defensive commitment in return for Ukraine agreeing to nuclear nonproliferation treaties. Trump responded by asking for a “favor”: incriminating information about Hunter Biden.
It occurred to me at the time that Putin won whether Zelenskyy agreed or not. Either his ally Trump would get political advantage, or his tanks could move across Ukraine with fewer rockets aimed their way. Now the tanks are rolling.
Over the longer term, It’s becoming increasingly clear that the great foreign policy conflicts of the 21st century will pit authoritarian empires against liberal democracies. I hope this doesn’t return international politics to its state in the Cold War, full of brutal proxy wars and danger that humanity might be annihilated with nuclear weapons. The authoritarian empires will have to grow more powerful for that to happen, but for now they’re on the rise.
My best idea for holding off the authoritarian empires is for liberal democracies around the world to band together in mutual defense alliances. NATO is a regional model for military cooperation, and the world could use some sort of new SEATO for southern and eastern Asian nations. The democracies can also give each other favored trade and immigration status, empowering their people to gain from the benefits of global coordination. The significance of national boundaries between liberal democracies should be reduced, hopefully with EU-like or US-Canada-like relations between all.
Exactly where mutual defense alliance should draw its line in the sand, beyond which a Russia can’t cross without triggering war, is not an easy question to answer. But unless a line is drawn somewhere, empires can just keep conquering small countries one by one until only the large countries are left. Ukraine borders 4 NATO member states, and if Putin conquers it, he’ll be right at the line we’ve already drawn.
A liberal democratic alliance has important structural advantages over ethnic nationalist authoritarian empires. Russia and China can’t win together at world domination. They won’t be able to agree about whether the capital of the authoritarian world government should be Moscow or Beijing, or whether its racial aristocracy will be Russian or Chinese. So there will always be dividing lines between them, with enough nuclear weapons to destroy the world on each side of the line. The world survived a similar arrangement for several decades during the Cold War; we might not be here today if that had continued.
Things are different if the liberal democracies win and create a world government to deal with global problems like pandemics and climate change. Then there won’t be a racial aristocracy (it’s liberalism, there are equal rights for all races) and people won’t really care where the capital is (it’s democracy, you get one vote wherever you are). Authoritarian empires can’t create lasting world peace because they create inequalities of rights that engender violent conflict. A global liberal democracy could institute universal human rights, and use the technology of the future to provide for all. With enough resources for everyone and no more enemies across borders, the weapons of war could be put away forever.
I don’t know whether Ukrainian democracy can be saved. But the international community should try, in part to show authoritarians that trying to take over liberal democracies doesn't go well. A resistance led by Zelenskyy should have all the support Kuleba asks for.
The future of humanity is in many more hands. In the long run, the two most likely endings for the era of independent nation-states seem to be lasting world peace through global liberal democracy, and the total destruction of humanity by people using terrifyingly powerful technology at odds with one another. For those who wish for peace, preventing the authoritarian empires from gaining strength is a central task of our geopolitical era.
