No End In Sight...

As the wretched anniversary of the war in Ukraine looms, one thing is clear: there is no end in sight. Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin has staked his all on this “special military operation”; it is his pièce de résistance. In a televised address this week — in a masterclass of Soviet-style inversionism — the Czar cast the all-out assault on Ukraine as an inexorable act of defending the Motherland; it was the godless, amoral West that prompted the Russian Federation to condemn its neighbour into a hellscape.

Mr Putin also hailed the resilience of the Russian economy in the face of crippling international sanctions; truth be told, the labyrinthine restrictions imposed by the US, EU and the UK have not broken the “Evil Empire’s” economy. Whilst supply-chains have been snapped, highly-skilled workers have fled en masse and many industrial sectors have been decimated, the Russian economy is expected to grow in 2023, according to the IMF. Sure, the prospects for the average Russian may have dimmed, but that is of little concern to the President, as long as he can keep the Volk in check with boot-choking repression. As things stand, a year on from the invasion, Putin still has enough gas in the tank to continue his infernal operation. There are still many nations that are more than eager to purchase Russia’s plentiful oil and gas at favourable prices. Since time immemorial, wars have presented lucrative opportunities for those unperturbed by the moral implications of trading with the aggressor; as Michael Corleone put it in The Godfather, “It’s nothing personal, Sonny — it’s strictly business.”

It bears repeating: the war in Ukraine represents the apotheosis of Putin’s revanchism project; he believes that Ukraine is a sham state that must be re-coupled to the Motherland. His entire legacy (and survival) depends on showing some success in this project; he is too invested to pull back now, no matter how many thousands of Russian mothers lose their sons to the cause. If it takes emptying all the penitentiaries from Sochi to Vladivostok and enlisting every member of every paramilitary organisation, then so be it: the meat-grinder needs new blood to keep churning out. 

This war has also presented a fortuitous moment for China in its geopolitical chess-game. Since Ukraine has inevitably become a proxy war for the United States, a Russian victory, which would include a “peace agreement” that rewards the aggressor with new territory, would trumpet Xi Jinping’s message of an Uncle Sam in decline. A few days ago, Antony Blinken, the US Secretary of State, warned the Chinese delegation at the Munich Security Conference of “grave consequences” if China were to supply Putin with armaments. Such a scenario would be a frightful escalation of the conflict and a new iteration of a muscular and unconstrained Chinese foreign policy; it would also be a bad omen for the future of autonomous administration in Taipei. 

Alas, the new Cold War may well be finding a confluence on European shores, between a virulent Russo-Sino alliance and the United States (and its allies). To those military hawks in Congress that holler about a misplaced focus on Russia—Ukraine, and a need for greater urgency against an imperious China: the two are becoming inseparable. A failure to secure the European continent — which necessitated America’s indispensable intervention in 1917 and 1941 — would be a catastrophic error. 

Joe Biden, during his maiden trip to Kyiv, pledged America’s unconditional support “for as long as it takes.” With nearly $50b of US support come-and-gone, there is no resolution, and even if the war were to end today, the work would only be just beginning. Even if Ukraine were to emerge victorious in this conflict (whatever that “victory” may look like), it would require years of oversight and financial aid from the debt-laden economies of the West; any other route would be like turning off the life-support machinery simply because the comatose patient started opening their eyes once in a while. A country made of rubble, with endemic problems of corruption and democratic accountability, could easily collapse from within and transmute into a fascist satellite-state of Moscow. While Joe Biden has done a remarkable job in rallying the dormant NATO-alliance together against Russia’s existential threat, he is not a King. There is a Presidential Election next November and it bears reminding that his predecessor (who is running again) is a great fan of the Russian President and not-so-much of NATO…