As we approach the anniversary of Russia’s
full-scale invasion of Ukraine — and the ferocious Ukrainian response backed by
a US-led Western coalition — an urgent question must be answered. How is it
that on February 23, 2022, virtually no one in America was arguing that it was
in our core national interest to enter into an indirect war with Russia to stop
it from overrunning Ukraine, a country most Americans could not find on a map
in 10 tries? And yet now, nearly a year later, polls show solid (though
slightly shrinking) American majorities for backing Ukraine with arms and aid,
even though this risks a direct conflict with Vladimir Putin’s Russia.
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That is a head-snapping shift in US public
opinion. Surely it is partly explicable by the fact that no US combat forces
are in Ukraine, so it feels as if all that we are risking, for now, is arms and
treasure — while the full brunt of the war is borne by Ukrainians.
But there is another explanation, even if
it is one that most Americans might not be able to articulate and many might
only reluctantly agree with.
They know at some deep level that the world
we live in today is tilted the way it is because of American power. That does
not mean we have always used our power wisely, nor could we have succeeded
without allies. But to the extent that we have used our power wisely and in
concert with our allies, we have built and protected a liberal world order
since 1945, which has been hugely in our interest — economically and
geopolitically.
Upholding this liberal order is the
underlying logic that brought the US and its NATO allies to help Ukraine
reverse Putin’s “marry me or I’ll kill you” invasion — the first such onslaught
by one country in Europe against another since the end of World War II.
The world’s ‘hidden fist’Now the bad news. For the first year of
this war, the US and its allies have had it relatively easy. We could send
arms, aid, and intelligence — as well as impose sanctions on Moscow — and the
Ukrainians would do the rest, ravaging Putin’s army and pushing his forces back
into Eastern Ukraine.
Mass matters in war — even if that mass contains a large number of mercenaries, convicts, and untrained conscripts.
I do not think year two is going to be so
easy.
Putin, it is now clear, has decided to
double down, mobilizing in recent months possibly as many as 500,000 fresh soldiers
for a new push on the war’s first anniversary. Mass matters in war — even if
that mass contains a large number of mercenaries, convicts, and untrained
conscripts.
This is going to get scary. And because we
have had nearly a century without a Great Power war, a lot of people have
forgotten what made this long era of Great Power peace possible.
While I argued in my 1999 book “The Lexus
and the Olive Tree” that the massive explosion of global commerce, trade, and
connectivity played a major role in this unusually peaceful era, I also argued
that “the hidden hand of the market will never work without a hidden fist —
McDonald’s cannot flourish without McDonnell Douglas, the builder of the F-15”.
Somebody needs to keep the order and enforce the rules.
That has been the US, and I believe that
role is going to be tested now more than any time since the Cuban missile
crisis in 1962. Are we still up for it?
A historian’s perspectiveThere is an important new book that puts
this challenge in a larger historical context. In “The Ghost at the Feast:
America and the Collapse of World Order, 1900-1941”, Brookings Institution
historian Robert Kagan argues that whatever isolationist twitches Americans may
have, the fact is that, for the past century-plus, a majority of them have
supported using US power to shape a liberal world order that kept the world
tilted toward open political systems and open markets in more places in more
ways on more days — enough to keep the world from becoming a Hobbesian jungle.
This is going to get scary. And because we have had nearly a century without a Great Power war, a lot of people have forgotten what made this long era of Great Power peace possible.
I called Kagan and asked him why he sees
the
Ukraine war not as something that we have stumbled into but rather the
natural extension of this century-long arc of US foreign policy that he has
been writing about. Kagan’s answers will comfort some and discomfort others,
but it is important to have this discussion as we enter year two of this war.
“In both world wars and throughout the Cold
War, Americans acted not in immediate self-defense but to defend the liberal
world against challenges from militaristic authoritarian governments, just as
they are doing today in Ukraine,” he said.
But why is backing Ukraine in this war not
only in our strategic interest but also in line with our values?
“Americans continually struggle to
reconcile contradictory interpretations of their interests — one focused on
security of the homeland and one focused on defense of the liberal world beyond
America’s shores,” he said.
“The first conforms to Americans’
preference to be left alone and avoid the costs, responsibilities and moral
burdens of exercising power abroad. The second reflects their anxieties as a
liberal people about becoming what FDR called a ‘lone island’ in a sea of
militarist dictatorships,” Kagan explained. “The oscillation between these two
perspectives has produced the recurring whiplash in US foreign policy over the
past century.”
Putin’s long warThere are also many voices on the left who
are asking: Is it really worth risking
World War III to drive Russia all the
way out of Eastern Ukraine? Haven’t we hurt Putin so badly by now that he will
not be trying something like Ukraine again soon? Time for a dirty deal?
Since I suspect that this question will be
at the center of our foreign policy debate in 2023, I asked Kagan to kick it
off.
“Any negotiation that leaves Russian forces in place on Ukrainian soil will only be a temporary truce before Putin’s next attempt.”
“Any negotiation that leaves Russian forces
in place on Ukrainian soil will only be a temporary truce before Putin’s next
attempt,” he said. “Putin is in the process of completely militarizing Russian
society, much as Stalin did during World War II. He is in it for the long haul,
and he is counting on the US and the West to grow weary at the prospect of a
long conflict.
“That the US is flawed and uses its power
foolishly at times is not debatable. But if you cannot face squarely the
question of what would happen in the world if the US kept to itself, then you
are not engaging these difficult questions seriously.”
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