Europe

It is now a matter of consensus that Vladimir Putin never intended to fight the type of war that now faces him in Ukraine. What was plainly meant to be a blitzkrieg-style assault has devolved into a war of attrition, with death, destruction and violence on a scale unseen in Europe since the disasters of the last century. It is quite plain that the Kremlin, despite its bluster, is aware of this. The Kyiv government's claims of Putin dismissing his generals and raving in fury at his security services are consistent with events on the battlefield; indeed, after two weeks of fighting, Russia has only managed to decisively claim one Ukrainian city.

The End of History has ended. It officially ended with Vladimir Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine. Francis Fukuyama wrote The End of History in the early Nineties. It's a book that captures the optimistic zeitgeist of that decade — born of the fall of the Berlin Wall and the implosion of communism. The basic idea was that once communism faded away — the reality, not the ideal, which will forever exist in the minds of many intellectuals — the world would become a more liberal, democratic and commercial place. It was an argument with real legs. East Germany was digested by the West without a burp. The Baltic states prospered. Asia took off. A rising commercial tide lifted all boats.

In the wake of Russia’s aggression in Ukraine, President Volodymyr Zelensky has renewed his country’s wish to join the European Union. This week, the European Parliament approved Ukraine’s application to join the EU with an overwhelming majority. But Ukraine will not join the European Union this year, and possibly not even in the next five years to come. The reasons for that lie within the structure of the EU. The closening ties between Brussels and Kyiv had been the reason for Ukraine’s revolution back in 2014. Then Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych had rejected the EU-Ukraine association agreement, which tied both partners closer together, politically and economically.

Of the war in Ukraine, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman writes, “Our world is not going to be the same again because this war has no historical parallel.” In the very next sentence, he describes the Russian invasion of Ukraine as “a raw, eighteenth-century-style land grab by a superpower,” thereby acknowledging that the episode actually has innumerable historical parallels — just not ones that Friedman cares to acknowledge as legitimate. Friedman figures prominently among those claiming to have divined the essential character of the present age. His key finding: tech-driven globalization has rendered old-fashioned power politics obsolete. The rules of the game have changed irrevocably. Practically speaking, nations have no choice but to submit.

The Europeans have been jolted awake from their deep Pax Americana slumber, when the continent was largely content to eat the spoils of economic prosperity and allow the United States to do the heavy lifting on all things security. And we have Vladimir Putin to thank for it. Russia’s nearly week-long invasion of Ukraine has shocked the conscience of many who believed Europe would never return to the dark days of large-scale land warfare.

The abrupt eruption of the worst military conflict in Europe since World War Two has naturally left the world in a state of shock, perhaps only comparable in living memory to that felt on 9/11. But as responses are considered and argued over, there will be more blows to come — as well as recriminations over how this could have been avoided. Naturally, much depends on which side emerges victorious, and at the time of writing the end result has yet to be determined. Certainly any assumption that the might of Russia's military machine would roll into Ukraine and quickly overwhelm the defenders has been categorically proven wrong; Russia's Blitzkrieg-style offensive failed to achieve its first-day objectives in the face of fierce Ukrainian defense.

Germany’s “halt” on the certification of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline on Tuesday is a classic case of too little, too late — a fact made all the more painfully clear in light of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Oil and gas still flow through Nord Stream 1 and many other Russian pipelines to Europe, and the continent has no choice but to keep importing the fossil fuels that finance Vladimir Putin’s offensive. We all saw this coming. Europe’s supposed “green” energy transition disregarded energy security and common sense, and Ukraine is now paying the price. The world will never tackle climate change if it's in a constant state of geopolitical energy insecurity, relying on authoritarian regimes like Russia and China to meet its basic needs.

Any analysis of the Ukraine situation risks lagging behind the news. As of the time this article was published, Russia had conquered the former Chernobyl nuclear power plant. Its forces are only about sixty miles away from Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, which has already experienced shelling. Russians have also attempted to capture Antonov International Airport, just fifteen minutes away from the capital’s ring road. Meanwhile, European leaders are resorting to the usual responses: “concerned,” “strongly condemning." There is even a Twitter account mocking the EU’s approach to all major crises, called “Is EU Concerned?” The response to the invasion of Ukraine is not spared from similar mockery. Here in Europe, it feels like 1938 all over again.

Amid a pile of Russian disinformation, a mass evacuation of civilians from the self-proclaimed separatist republic and reports that Russian commanders are preparing to execute an invasion order, diplomacy (or at least the hope of it) reared its beautiful head late Sunday night. After a frantic series of calls orchestrated by French president Emmanuel Macron, the White House released a statement confirming President Biden’s openness to a direct meeting with Russian president Vladimir Putin. Whether or not the leader-to-leader discussions happen, however, won’t be fully up to Biden or Macron. It takes two to tango, as the hackneyed phrase goes. And right now, Moscow has been habitually cryptic about its intentions.

Ask three different people whether Russian President Vladimir Putin will approve an invasion of Ukraine, and you are likely to get three different answers. Yes, a Russian land, air, and sea blitz is inevitable and will come in fairly short order, likely without warning. Yes, a Russian invasion is possible, but could still be averted with some shrewd diplomacy. Or, no, surely Putin understands an invasion would be a disaster for his legacy and his country’s economy. In the midst of all of this comes wild speculation about what Putin is thinking at any given moment, how the weather may factor into his calculations, and what the Russian government’s end goal really is. What can be said for certain, however, is that diplomacy has picked up significantly over the past week.

When it is 1938 in Washington, it is already past midnight in Moscow. The clock is ticking and the map of Europe is being redrawn, but this is not a Munich moment. We are now past that, and past the time when the leader of a Western democracy might have the honesty to admit to his public, as Neville Chamberlain did in 1938, that he doesn’t want to fight a war over “a quarrel in a faraway country between people of which we know little.” The shadow of Munich shames and intimidates the leaders of the Western democracies, and not without reason. But if there is a Munich moment in the latest Ukraine crisis, then it happened nearly seven years ago — in 2015, when the Obama administration backed the Minsk II accords and the dismemberment of Ukraine.

In the coming days, if intelligence assessments are accurate, the world will watch the unfolding of a bloody war between Russia and Ukraine. It will make history for all the wrong reasons, as the largest armed conflict since World War Two. And while Moscow would almost certainly defeat Kyiv on the battlefield, the real story will be the horror unleashed by the first modern war fought between nations of real consequence in decades. Such a war would showcase military modernizations that, while well-known, will still shock most Americans and change our perception that war in the twenty-first century is anything but cost-free. Worst of all, there's chance that a Russia-Ukraine war might not be contained to just those two countries, sucking in America in the process.

Landing in Moscow on February 7, French President Emmanuel Macron had a twinkle in his eye and a spring in his step. There he was, taking it upon himself to be the first European head-of-state to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin since over 130,000 Russian troops massed on Ukraine’s border from three sides. Macron's mission was to explore whether a de-escalation with Russia was possible. “I believe that our continent is today in an eminently critical situation, which requires us all to be extremely responsible,” he told reporters before his five-hour session with Putin began. The other option, what could be the largest land war in Europe since World War II, would be far worse.