The Russian invasion of Ukraine has begun in a blitzkrieg with untold ramifications for the two countries and the world. While Russia is bombing its neighbor, it is actually targeting its strategic enemy, the United States.
This is just the latest and most serious in a series of projections of Russian strength over the past two decades that are not unlike some of America’s own military adventures around the world.
But the scale and scope of the Ukrainian invasion more closely resemble Moscow’s menacing projections of power during the Cold War, when the Soviet Union intervened in Hungary in 1956, Czechoslovakia in 1968 and Afghanistan in 1979.
And judging by President Vladimir Putin’s rhetoric, Russia is just getting started.
In his recent speeches, Putin has challenged Ukraine’s right to sovereignty and independence, paving the way for further Russian intervention in the country’s affairs.
After recognizing the two breakaway republics of Donetsk and Luhansk earlier this week, the Russian president ordered the army to be deployed to eastern Ukraine as “peacekeepers”. He then launched a “special military operation” that has extended military action to all of Ukraine, including the capital Kiev.
In response, Western powers condemned Russia’s transgression as a gross violation of international law and imposed swift and crippling sanctions against Russia. That may just be the beginning, as the West moves to totally break with Russia and isolate it.
But the Kremlin seems prepared and quite unfazed. If history is any guide, great powers like Russia are not deterred by sanctions, no matter how severe, when it comes to pursuing their core national security interests.
By way of comparison, Iran, a far less significant power than Russia, has shown that Western punitive measures can do a lot of damage, but change very little, except when used as leverage in negotiations.
If sanctions start to kick in and Russia begins to suffer, expect Moscow to react radically, even erratically in Ukraine and beyond.
Much will depend on China and its willingness to help Russia circumvent Western sanctions, as it did with Iran. During a visit to Beijing earlier this month, the Russian president and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping issued a joint statement against NATO expansion. After Russia launched the invasion, a Chinese government spokesman declined to name it as such, calling for “restraint” on both sides.
The ramifications of the Russian invasion of Ukraine will inform future moves by China to annex Taiwan. Putin’s reference to Ukraine as an artificial state echoes China’s own denunciation of Taiwan’s statehood.
Intentionally, and perhaps as a form of geopolitical trolling, Putin has echoed Washington’s own arguments from the past to justify his continued violations of Ukrainian sovereignty.
By recognizing the breakaway regions, the Kremlin claimed that it was supporting their right to self-determination, just as the West did for Croats, Slovenians, Macedonians and Bosnians during the breakup of Yugoslavia in the 1990s.
And just as the US and its European allies used the UN-mandated “Responsibility to Protect” (R2P) principle to justify their “humanitarian” interventions in other states, such as Libya, Russia refers to it to justify its intervention. in Ukraine. which supposedly aims to stop a “genocide”.
Russia supporters used to claim that the Americans invented R2P to launch wars, but Russia uses it to prevent one.
Well not yet. Russia’s incursions into Ukraine in 2014 were just the beginning of what appears to be a broader invasion and more devastating war.
But even Putin’s most outrageous claim about Ukraine’s ability to develop nuclear weapons and threaten Russia is no more ridiculous than Washington’s claim that Saddam Hussein was developing weapons of mass destruction as a pretext for invading faraway Iraq, which Biden, then a senator, endorsed.
His recognition of the two breakaway republics in eastern Ukraine is also reminiscent of US President Donald Trump’s illegal recognition of Israeli sovereignty over the occupied Syrian Golan Heights and occupied Palestinian East Jerusalem, which Biden continues defending.
And last but not least, Russia’s potential regime change attempt in Ukraine follows in the footsteps of US attempts in more than a few countries, including most recently Venezuela.
Clearly, Russia has mastered Washington’s methodical forgery and deception. But she doesn’t seem to have learned the lessons of her follies and failures.
In fact, neither power has learned from its miserable mistakes in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria.
Old habits die hard.
As long as these powerful veto members of the UN Security Council can block any action by this “world government” against them, there is no incentive for soul-searching.
In fact, both Russia and the United States are like soulless casinos, willing to gamble and take risk and loss, as long as they control the game or are able to play the international system to their advantage.
Some argue that equating American democracy with Russian autocracy creates a false equivalence. As a liberal Democrat, I agree: There is more accountability in a democracy than in an autocracy.
But historically, when it comes to foreign affairs, the behavior of major powers on the world stage is primarily driven by the nature of geopolitical and strategic ambitions and needs, not by the nature of their system of government.
Indeed, it could be argued that Western democracies have behaved particularly poorly as colonial and imperial powers over the past century or two.
But, again, the Soviet Union and its successor, the Russian Federation, have also been violent towards their neighbors.
When asked what it means that Russia is perceived as an “aggressor”, a government spokesman recently said that it was a Western invention whose reputation is “covered in blood”.
Unfortunately, since the end of the Cold War, both Russia and the US have led mostly by the example of their power and rarely by the power of their example, undermining international peace and security in the process.
They have deployed the wrong means to the right ends and the right means to the wrong ends, launching devastating wars to establish peace and stability, and providing economic and security assistance to poor nations just to prop up dictators.
They have wasted three decades, primarily focusing on promoting their own narrow interests just as they did during the Cold War, and in the process only paving the way for, well, another Cold War.
This will be a dark period for Europe and indeed for the world.