AMAC Exclusive – By Daniel Roman
For months, we have heard warnings that Vladimir Putin might or would invade Ukraine. Now he has done so. History has numerous turning points, and plenty of roads not taken. But you cannot go back, only forward. Regardless of whether Ukraine joining NATO served American interests, or whether coming to an accommodation with Russia beforehand would not have harmed our interests, Russia has attacked Ukraine. At this point, it looks as though the Russians may win, potentially quickly and relatively easily. If so, the defeat of the Ukrainian army on the battlefield is a decisive defeat for the United States, NATO, and the end of the post-Cold War world order. Not because that “order” was based on any sort of norms, but it was based on a simple fact, or rather, a perception: only the United States could obliterate a conventional military almost effortlessly when it chose, for whatever reason it chose. Now that era is over.
The post-Cold War era did not in fact begin in December of 1991 with the dissolution of the Soviet Union. The USSR was already a shadow of its former self by that time. That process had been finalized not in December of 1991 but in January 1991. At the end of that month, U.S.-led Coalition forces launched Operation Desert Storm against the Iraqi forces of Saddam Hussein in Kuwait. Iraq had the fourth largest army in the world at the time, with nearly a decade of experience fighting Iran, and the most modern Soviet weapons. Despite nearly a million men, thousands of tanks, and hundreds of modern aircraft, the Iraqi army was routed in less than one hundred hours with the loss of less than 200 Americans.
It was not the Iraqi army which was defeated on that battlefield, but the Soviets. For forty years, the Soviet Union had spent more than 50% of its budget on its military. Every other failure – low living standards, poor economic performance, lack of freedoms – was justified on the basis that at least the Soviet Union was a superpower, equal to the United States on the battlefield. The revelation that Soviet weapons were useless and could be destroyed from afar by modern American hardware was demoralizing. It revealed that the Soviet military was just as much of a joke as the Soviet economy, prompting a decade of jabs about Russian technical incompetence. For Soviet “patriots” like Putin, for whom strength was the one thing that made up for all other failings, it was the last straw. What good was a Soviet Union which spent that much to so little result?
At the same time, the American victory paved the way for a new international order. George Bush had hoped the Persian Gulf War would construct a “New World Order” around American ideals. Iraq had violated the sovereignty of another nation, the U.N. had condemned it, and a coalition of nations regardless of political ideology had united to oppose it. Syria under Hafez Assad sent troops to the coalition, and the Soviet Union and China joined the chorus.
Instead, the new era became defined by the extent of the American victory. If America could effortlessly destroy the world’s fourth largest military, it could destroy anyone it chose. If it could do so, it did not matter why it did, only whether or not it chose to. The new international system therefore revolved around the caprices of succeeding U.S. administrations. This is not to say that individually they did not have visions. But they were the personal visions of each administration. Bill Clinton intervened in Kosovo and expanded NATO because he felt like it and bought into the “end of history” dogma. George W. Bush acted as he did because he believed the U.S. could remake the world. Obama never rationed U.S. resources because he did not need to. Donald Trump, a businessman, spotted the flaws of this approach but failed to impose his alternative on the American establishment.
There is no choice now. What matters about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is not why Russia did it. Just as with Bush’s liberation of Kuwait in 1991, the very fact that Russia pulled off this military operation, if successful, will have much greater relevance than why Putin decided to give the go-ahead. Ukraine has a substantial conventional military. It is smaller than Russia’s, but it still has more than 200,000 personnel under arms, armored forces, and has received over $2 billion in Western aid. Even if this money has not been utilized as well as it may have been, Ukraine is the largest country in Europe with a larger military than any NATO member other than the United States.
Russia’s attack mirrors Desert Storm. It opened with an extensive aerial and missile assault, designed to take out Ukraine’s air and naval assets in the opening hour of the conflict. This was followed by airborne and special forces assaults, cyberattacks on communications, and a general effort to isolate Ukrainian units. (In the Gulf War, Iraqi units which lacked communications received no orders, and ultimately melted away while coalition forces simply sat in place.)
If, and it is early, Russia wins not just a victory but a quick one in a matter of days, perhaps even matching the hundred hours of January 1991, Putin will have not just “avenged” Ukraine’s departure from the Soviet Union. He will also have avenged the Gulf War. He will have, using Russian weapon systems and Russian personnel, carried out a successful high-tech war against an enemy trained by the United States which received Western weapons. That the vast majority of Ukraine’s arsenal is still aging post-Soviet weapons will be glossed over in this propaganda. Putin will have restored Russian pride in the Russian Army and in the technical abilities of the Russian people. Just as the Gulf War erased “Vietnam Syndrome” the malaise in which Americans believed that foreign challenges were risky and often not worth the cost following the loss of South Vietnam, victory in the Ukraine will erase “Chechnya Syndrome”, the belief that Russian tech is defective, Russian officers incompetent, and Russian soldiers drunks.
On a more worrying level, if the 1990s and 2000s were defined by the belief that “only” the United States could carry out a Desert Storm, the 2020s will open with the proof that Russia can execute Desert Storms of its own – but not just Russia. China has a vastly larger and more sophisticated military. If Russia can carry out an operation on this scale, it would be safe to assume that what China could deploy in the Taiwan Strait is vastly more impressive.
The time for psychoanalyzing Putin or theorizing about the international order is over. The West needs to be able to figure out how to help a country resist the sort of assault Putin unleashed on Ukraine. Because if Putin can do this to Ukraine with impunity, what other country will risk aligning with the West against Russia or China in the future? Most are smaller than Ukraine, with vastly inferior military resources.
The challenge we face in the new order is a military one. If Putin succeeds in showing force can succeed, we cannot rely on economic pressure to make alignment with the West attractive, as it will serve little purpose if countries fear invasion for doing so. We are in a new world, and the sooner our leaders recognize it the better.
Daniel Roman is the pen name of a frequent commentator and lecturer on foreign policy and political affairs, both nationally and internationally. He holds a Ph.D. in International Relations from the London School of Economics.