THAT DIDN'T TURN OUT SO WELL.

Ten years ago, I was doing some housecleaning on even older posts, and found a 2007 Economist feature looking at the centenary of the European Union.  I didn't check then whether that was an early April of 2007 post, but what I called fanciful back in the day isn't funny at all now.  "[Economic] reforms produced a sharp fall in unemployment just as Europe began to enjoy a productivity spurt from the spread of information technology. The eventual result was a growing labour shortage, which was not resolved until the arrival of Turkey and Ukraine as full members in 2025. The accession soon afterwards of the first north African country, Morocco, helped to prolong Europe's boom."

We know what has happened since.  My Chicago Boyz colleague David Foster surveys the debate within the United States about how best address Russia's war on Ukraine and despairs.

We do need to be supporting Ukraine, and we should be doing so a lot more effectively than the Biden administration has chosen to do.   Biden’s initial reaction to the invasion–suggesting that it might be OK if Putin didn’t take too big a bite, and then offering Zelinsky a ticket out–didn’t exactly sound a Churchillian note of defiance. Arms supply has been too little, too late, and not nearly enough has been done to increase US defense-industrial output potential, especially of consumables such as artillery shells and missiles, and to provide better supply-chain resilience against components and materials cutoffs by other countries.   My sense is that the Biden strategy is not to achieve a Ukraine victory, or to force a negotiated settlement on favorable terms, but to drag the war out with the goal of bleeding Russia while minimizing domestic political risk…a cynical and cruel strategy, in my opinion.

The main purpose of this post, though, is not to argue for or against any particular policy, but rather to express concern and disappointment…even dismay…over the extremely poor quality of the arguments being made on both sides of the issue and the generally toxic tone of the debate.

That post is from last April, but it's an accurate observation of the debate, and the situation, from the beginning.  Perhaps the beginning of the Russo-Ukrainian war signalled the end of the Great Power Saeculum.  In The Week, Samuel Goldman wrote about something new and disturbing.

Despite the apparent success of the First Persian Gulf War, the new world order never lived up to its billing. Within just a few years, a series of wars in the former Yugoslavia demonstrated that the ghosts of Europe could not so easily be exorcised. Elsewhere in the world, ethnic, ideological, and religious clashes continued with little relief. Sept. 11 reminded us that we were not immune to those tensions. The wars of occupation that followed raised justified doubts about whether our leadership possessed the competence or wisdom to meet the grandiose standards that they set for themselves. By the 2010s, the revival of great power competition with China was conventional wisdom. And the election of Donald Trump raised serious questions about whether the American public was willing to continue paying the economic, military, and political costs of liberal hegemony.

Still, the Russian invasion of Ukraine that began on this week is different to these previous crises. Rather than a distressing violation of the post-Cold War norm, it feels like a decisive end to the era that Bush proclaimed on the White House Lawn. That feeling is partly a consequence of so-called recency bias, which makes the most proximate events seem more important than temporally distant ones. But there are at least three reasons to think something fundamental has changed — with consequences we still can't foresee.

First, the Russian attack is a paradigmatic case of interstate aggression, a form of warfare that was supposed to be relegated to the history books. As the very partial list above indicates, the last 30 years have not exactly been a paradise of peace. But there have been relatively few direct military clashes between internationally recognized sovereign states. Instead, much of the violence has been associated with civil wars, failed states, and non-state actors, albeit often proxies for neighbors or more distant states.

Mr Goldman lamented the end of the Rules Based International Order.  Common Dreams contributor Martin Winiecki might have had the Final Crisis of Capitalism in mind.

As both Russia and the West continue to pour fuel into the fire, devastating Ukraine, an international peace movement is needed to compel governments to de-escalate as soon as possible. At the same time, the new geopolitical scenario of competing empires with growing militarization and accelerating economic breakdown will compel those of us working for a world beyond capitalism, patriarchy, and nation-states to resist false polarization and relativism, and to propose an alternative vision for a world beyond any imperialism and war.

All that happy talk in The Economist about the European Union?  It didn't play so well in Moscow, nor did all the Ukrainians buy into it.

The current assault on Ukraine is part of a historical pattern of Russian imperialist oppression. Think, for example, of Stalin's famine campaign in the 1930s that killed millions of Ukrainians to break their resistance against central Soviet rule. Many generations of Russian and Soviet leaders could never accept the Ukrainians desire for independence and considered it either a formal part of Russia or closely aligned. Given the long tradition of imperial violence by its giant neighbor, the overwhelming majority of Ukrainians have no interest in Putin's ambitions or Russian hegemony generally, and are determined to defend their country to the very end. We must stand unequivocally with the Ukrainian people against this hostile imposition.

At the same time, Ukraine isn't simply a homogenous monolith. Since the 2014 Euromaidan revolution, a Russian-speaking minority has seen itself increasingly disenfranchised by Kyiv's Western orientation and sought to make themselves more autonomous. While many of those actors may be Moscow's proxies, I'm concerned that an uninformed "solidarity with Ukraine" can ignore the legitimate concerns of people in the Donbas. The situation is nuanced and I don't pretend to know it all. I believe it's important to listen to the voices and concerns of people on the ground rather than just the pundits who are placing simplified labels on complex situations.

Beyond the geopolitical, military and especially economic power struggle, this war also epitomizes an ideological competition for which worldview and value system is to dominate the world. Both Russia and the West claim supremacy for their version of civilization. Putin's project is not only anti-democratic, authoritarian, militaristic and shamelessly promotes fossil fuels, it's also profoundly ideological. A quasi-religious mission--in his own view--to overcome the decadence of Western liberalism and to raise Russia as the rightful, moral center of a larger order shaped by the values of right-wing Christianity.

For the United States, however, expanding their circle of influence and exporting liberal democracies and its values all over the world is regarded as so natural that it isn't even considered ideological.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, a number of US administrations repeatedly assured Russia it would not expand NATO east of Germany; a promise which was broken multiple times. Many countries of the former Warsaw Pact joined NATO and oriented themselves westward. Finally, when Ukraine made moves to join NATO and the EU after the Maidan revolution, Russia became alarmed.

We take saecular orders for granted or view them as the normal order of things, until they're not.  Two years on, and it appears that nobody is interested in stopping the war.

There are little signs Western governments actually want peace in Ukraine. The West has pursued a path of sanctions and arms deliveries. Even Zelenskyy lamented that the US wasn't doing enough to try to find a diplomatic solution to the conflict. It remains questionable how successful Ukrainian-Russian ceasefire negotiations can actually be without active US engagement.

Well, yes, in the same way that people lament the absence of regular order appropriations in Washington, but that abnormal normal is better for the people in charge.  Interestingly, he concludes with a call for collective action that's a bit of going Galt.

Instead of expecting relief from any government or nation-state, the hope for a future without war is principally found in freeing ourselves from dependence on them. We can't defeat the monsters of war but we can divest from and starve them of its oxygen by no longer obeying their rules, buying their products and paying them taxes. Although existing nation-states, companies, and empires will seek to eradicate zones of autonomy, if enough of them arise, they may be able to form a mycelial web to hollow this terminal system from the inside out and compost it into soil for something new.

That's interesting, but hardly practical.  A year later, with the war dragging on, another Common Dreams column said the quiet part out loud.  "Pushing for Regime Change in Russia Implies an Embrace of Endless War in Ukraine."  All that happy talk about expanding the European Union?  It didn't look so cheerful from Moscow.

Each round of NATO expansion since the fall of the Berlin Wall (NATO grew from 16 countries at the peak of the Cold War to 30 today, several of which were part of the Warsaw Pact) was followed by loud complaints from Russia that such moves posed a threat to Russia’s national security. Moreover, the prospect of Georgia and Ukraine becoming members of the trans-Atlantic military alliance constituted a red line for Moscow. Yet pledges were made by NATO leaders at the Budapest Summit in April 2008 that Georgia and Ukraine would eventually become NATO member states. In fact, relations between NATO and Ukraine go back to the early 1990s and, after 2014, the level of military cooperation between the two intensified in critical areas.

From the perspective of the Kremlin, what NATO (i.e., the US) was up to amounted to an “encirclement” of Russia. Indeed, it shouldn’t be difficult to understand why Russian leaders felt this way, and there is no doubt that US officials knew all along that they were crossing Russia’s red lines on NATO expansion.

As 2023 wound down, Anatol Lieven, who has long been a skeptic of Western hard power, attempted to put a positive spin on "Finlandization," only with the eastern oblasts of Ukraine being this era's eastern Karelia.

Kyiv might learn from the Finnish example that surrendering some territory, though deeply painful, is still worth it if the greater part of the country thereby secures its independence and capacity for economic and political development. Hopefully, the strength of Ukrainian nationalism and the tough and united resistance of Ukrainians to Russia’s invasion have also persuaded Putin, as Stalin was persuaded by Finnish resistance, that his goal of turning the whole of Ukraine into a Russian client state is impossible.

This is already a great victory for Ukraine, not just in terms of Russia’s initial goals but the history of the past 300 years during which Russia has dominated Ukraine.

I keep referring to a Tom Clancy novel, Command Authority, in which that sort of division took place with much less loss of life and Mariupol and Charkow not ruined and no replay of the Kursk Offensive of 1943.  At about the same time, Lionel Shriver, with Britain's Spectator, looked for a similar sort of resolution, out of boredom or frustration as much as anything else.

I observed glumly that the war’s probable resolution is an ugly moral compromise that sacrifices a goodly chunk of a sovereign nation to a monomaniacal bully — who will doubtless spin Ukrainian concessions as a dazzling military success, one that redeems for the Russian people his unprovoked aggression and the many deaths of their sons, brothers and fathers.

This endgame is more likely than ever. I’m not happy about that. In fact, it makes me sick. But the average age of the Ukrainian army is now forty-three, a statistic that makes me even sicker. They’re running out of young men, not because the young men won’t serve but because they’re dead. Ukrainian women are being sent to the front lines. Russia had nearly four times the population of Ukraine before the war; given the reduced population in Kyiv-controlled areas, the countries are now mismatched in manpower by a factor of five. With his legacy and political future on the line, Putin is clearly all-in for the long haul. The easily manipulated Russian public have not rebelled. Putin’s inner sanctum hasn’t staged a coup. Russian GDP has increased since last year. The rouble started rising against the dollar. Western sanctions have failed.

I don’t share the view of many Republicans that Ukraine should be thrown under a bus because the country is none of our business and America should spend taxpayers’ money on solutions to its own problems. But just because the conflict’s resolution has major geopolitical ramifications doesn’t mean we can write our own happy ending. No matter how much ordnance the US and NATO ship to Zelensky, we’re not providing the soldiers obliged to wield it. I say this with a heavy heart: if the writing is on the wall — if a negotiated settlement that cedes captured territory to Putin looks inevitable — maybe it’s time to urge the Zelensky government to enter talks to bring this depressing war to its depressing conclusion. Dragging out an entrenched stalemate merely racks up a higher body count and destroys more Ukrainian homes and infrastructure to no purpose. Sitting back and giving Ukrainians just enough weaponry to keep fighting to the last man and woman, only for the country to finally end up where we always knew it would, is not just immoral. It’s murder.

Not to mention that the rules-based international order is turning China and Russia into partners of convenience for as long as this standoff continues.  By February of this year, we saw the pacifists Medea Benjamin and Nicolas Davies taking a position that Donald Trump might offer.

"While it is the Ukrainians and Russians fighting and dying in this war of attrition with over half a million casualties, it is the United States, with some of its Western allies, that has stood in the way of peace talks," Benjamin and Davies argued. "This was true of talks between Russia and Ukraine that took place in March 2022, one month after the Russian invasion, and it is true of talks that Russia tried to initiate with the United States as recently as January 2024."

The authors wryly noted that "U.S. and NATO leaders have repeated ad nauseam that they are arming Ukraine to put it in a stronger position at the 'negotiating table,' even as they keep rejecting negotiations."

"And so the war grinds on," they wrote, prolonging not only the death and suffering of civilians and troops alike, but also continuing the risk of miscalculations and escalations that pose an existential threat to humanity in the form of nuclear war.

This "will not change unless and until our leaders take a radically different approach," Benjamin and Davies concluded. "That would involve serious diplomacy to end the war on terms on which Russia and Ukraine can agree."

Recall, dear reader, this tale began with the court intellectuals of that rules-based international order seeking to include Ukraine in the European Union.  Meanwhile, George Will scolded those Members of Congress who were as weary of the standoff as Lionel Shriver was, for daring to question that Washington Consensus.

George Will, a conservative columnist for The Washington Post, went after House Republicans who recently voted against more aid to Ukraine in a Wednesday opinion piece in the Post.

In the opinion, highlighted by Mediaite, Will said the 112 Republicans House Republicans who voted against Ukraine aid “voted last Saturday to endanger civilization,” calling them “ignoble.”

“Hoping to enhance their political security in their mostly safe seats, and for the infantile satisfaction of populist naughtiness (insulting a mostly fictitious ‘establishment’), they voted to assure [Russian President Vladimir Putin’s] attempt to erase a European nation,” Will wrote in his column.

Opponents of more aid to Ukraine included far-right hard-liners such as Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), who went after House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) for his support of the bill, calling him a “traitor” after the lower chamber passed it.

At about the same time, though, Economist columnist Charlemagne was also recognizing that the Tom Clancy outcome might well be the best outcome.

To ask “what if Ukraine loses?” was once a tactic favoured by those looking to berate its Western allies into sending more money and weapons. Increasingly the question feels less like a thought experiment and more like the first stage of contingency planning. After a gruelling few months on the battlefield, gone are last year’s hopes of a Ukrainian counter-offensive that would push Russia back to its borders and humble Vladimir Putin. These days it is fear that dominates: that an existing stalemate might crumble in favour of the invader, or of Donald Trump coming back to power in America and delivering victory to Russia on a silver platter. Although a vanquished Ukraine has become a less far-fetched prospect, it is no less frightening. Sobering as the return of war on the continent has been, a successful invasion reaping geopolitical rewards for Mr Putin would be much worse.

A defeat of Ukraine would be a humbling episode for the West, a modern Suez moment. Having provided moral, military and financial succour to its ally for two years now, America and Europe have—perhaps inadvertently—put their own credibility on the line. That they have sometimes dithered in delivering this support would make things worse, not better: further confirmation, among sceptics of liberal polities, that democracies lack what it takes to stand up for their interests. In Russia but also China, India and across the global south, Ukraine’s backers would be dismissed as good at tabling UN resolutions and haggling over wording at EU and NATO summits but not much else. The colouring by atlas-makers of Ukrainian land into Russian territory would cement the idea that might makes right, to the benefit of strongmen far and wide. George Robertson, a former boss of NATO, has warned that “If Ukraine loses, our enemies will decide the world order.” Unfortunately for the Taiwanese, among others, he is probably right.

Again, to return to the argument that opened this post, perhaps that rules-based international order is past its sell-by date, undone by the correlation of forces outside, and contradictions inside.  Ukraine "must not lose" is a sentiment.  It's not a policy goal.

At Outside the Beltway, James Joyner, who has war college experience, also acknowledges that reality.  "The war is a humanitarian disaster and Ukraine is pushing for unachievable, maximalist goals. As much as I would love to see Ukrainian troops push out of its pre-2014 borders, it’s not going to happen. Accepting hard realities works both ways."  His post continues, noting the two indecisive wars that have occurred on the Jarrett regency's watch, neither of which are likely to be settled decisively.

This phase of the Russo-Ukraine was is more than two years old now. We’re seven months into the Gaza war. In both cases, it’s rather apparent that the good guys have no plausible theory of victory. Even if the West were to accede to Ukrainian demands for materiel fully, it’s hard to see how they totally defeat the vastly larger Russian army. Nor is it obvious what Israel’s vision for a post-war better state of peace looks like; indeed, it’s not obvious they have given it much thought.

I don’t think any of the four combatants in these conflicts are yet at the point where a workable peace deal is possible. It’ll take more pain to get there. But I’m confident that, at some point, peace deals short of unconditional surrender will be reached in both instances.

He's reacting to Elliot Cohen raising a Fourth Turning alert, and, although he sees more fearmongering than logic in that essay, he, too, recognizes the potential obsolescence of that international order.  "Cohen’s analogy to our 1930s posture may be prescient. It may take another Pearl Harbor to create a sense of necessity."  Public officials, often grousing about apathetic citizens, often invoke Pearl Harbor.  The event that calls attention to a saecular crisis almost always comes as a surprise, foreseeable but poorly foreseen.  Taken together, though, the nation-building wars, the leverage of the financial sector, the corona tyranny, the credibility gap in Washington, don't inspire confidence in that rules-based international order.

More recently, we had presidential aspirant Kamala Harris invoking the domino theory to advocate for continued defense of Ukraine.

History has shown us if we allow aggressors like Putin to take land with impunity, they keep going.  And Putin could set his sights on Poland, the Baltic states, and other NATO Allies.  We also know that other would-be aggressors around the world are watching to see what happens in Ukraine.  If Putin is allowed to win, they will become emboldened. 

Good grief.

Anatol Lieven anticipated that argument in August.

No U.S. official has ever seriously addressed the issue of why a Russian military presence in eastern Ukraine that was of no importance whatsoever to the U.S. 40 years ago (when Soviet tank armies stood in the center of Germany, 1,200 miles to the West) should now be such a threat that combating it necessitates $61 billion of U.S. military aid per year, a significant risk of conflict with a nuclear-armed Russia, and a colossal distraction from vital U.S. interests elsewhere.

Instead, the administration, and its European allies, have relied on two arguments. The first is that if Russia is not defeated in Ukraine, it will go on to attack NATO and that this will mean American soldiers going to fight and die in Europe. In fact, there is no evidence whatsoever of any such Russian intention. Russian threats of escalation and (possibly) minor acts of sabotage have been outgrowths of the war in Ukraine, and intended to deter NATO from intervening directly in that conflict—not actions intended to lay the basis for an invasion of NATO.

Western commentators like to state Russian public ambitions beyond Ukraine as a given fact, but when asked to provide actual statements to this effect, they are unable to do so. Nor, at least judging by Putin’s latest statement, does he intend (or believe it possible) to “wipe Ukraine off the map.” The top official Russian goals include limited territorial gains, Ukrainian neutrality, and Russian language rights in Ukraine—all questions that can legitimately be explored in negotiations.

Moreover, given the acute difficulties that the Russian military has faced in Ukraine, and the Russian weaknesses revealed by that conflict, the idea of them planning to attack NATO seems utterly counter-intuitive. For Russia has been “stopped” in Ukraine. The heroic resistance of the Ukrainian army, backed with Western weapons and money, stopped the Russian army far short of President Putin’s goals when he launched the war. They have severely damaged Russian military prestige, inflicted enormous losses on the Russian military, and as of today, hold more than 80% of their country’s territory.

The Biden administration has issued partly contradictory statements about the purpose of U.S. aid to Ukraine: that it is intended to help Ukraine “win”, and that it is intended to help “strengthen Ukraine at the negotiating table.” They have not however fulfilled their legal obligation to define to Congress what “winning” means, nor why if the war will end in negotiations, these negotiations should not begin now — especially since there is very strong evidence that the Ukrainian military position, and therefore Ukraine’s position at the negotiating table, are getting worse, not better.

Put another way, take the Tom Clancy outcome.  George Will, though, advocates staying the course.  "The West, including Germany, has given Ukraine substantial succor. But absent many more weapons, with fewer restraints upon their use, the West might be purchasing protracted defeat, thereby vindicating Putin’s estimation of the West’s inability to persevere."  Persevere?  In pursuit of what?