Many in the West see Putin’s second invasion of Ukraine in eight years as an act of madness, the ultimate gamble of an aging and increasingly irrational dictator. Throwing the fires of hell on Ukrainian cities will lead him nowhere, except to his own ruin and that of Russia. The war is already having the effect of uniting the West as it has not been for decades. Putin’s aggression backfires and turns Russia into a pariah state, fallen on the wrong side of history.
It’s a fact, Western countries are visibly acting in a much more coordinated way. They provide Ukraine with ammunition and weapons, anti-tank and anti-aircraft devices, and medical aid. Leaders hitherto favorable to Putin, such as Viktor Orbán in Hungary, have positioned themselves against him. However, in this camp there is no clear strategy or realistic outcome in sight.
The idea is that Putin will be overthrown, but escalating sanctions could prove ineffective or even counterproductive. The most coherent objective discernible in the Western response, namely a return to the pre-invasion status quo, is simply unattainable. History is already in motion.
Whatever the evolution of this conflict, it marks a rupture of the international order comparable to that of 1914, which had ended the first globalization. Particularly instructive, the abstention of China, a much more powerful autocracy, in the UN vote to condemn the invasion was hailed as a victory for the West. India and the United Arab Emirates also abstained. The liberal order is dead and buried.
Operational nuclear power
Again taken up in June 2021 by Joe Biden on his arrival in Geneva to discuss with Putin, the old expression [datant de la guerre froide] presenting Russia as “Upper Volta with rockets” [la diplomatie occidentale avait ainsi surnommé l’Union soviétique, pour décrire un État du tiers-monde mais qui possède des armes nucléaires] shows how underestimated the Russian ability to wreak havoc is.
As Putin has just reminded us, Russia remains a fully operational nuclear power. And he has many other less apocalyptic weapons at his disposal. In addition to its grip on Europe’s energy supply, Russia is also the world’s largest exporter of wheat and a key supplier of strategic metals. It thus has a formidable margin of retaliation against the sanctions. If Putin decided to cut off gas to Europe, the continent and the whole world would be plunged into a recession and inflation that was completely out of control.
Isolating Russia will accelerate the fragmentation of world markets. In late February, the EU, US, UK and others agreed to exclude certain banks from Swift, the interbank messaging network that enables international transactions. […] It is significant that they chose to make this measure selective. A total financial embargo would push Russia towards other regional systems, such as China’s. This would amount de facto for the West to actively encourage a process of de-globalization.
Many did not imagine Putin launching such a brazenly barbaric offensive. They have probably forgotten the murder of Alexander Litvinenko in London, the attempted murders and the death of a Briton in Salisbury [l’affaire Skripal]the poisoning of Alexei Navalny and the methodical repression which made Belarus a Russian colony.
They cannot fail to notice the parallels between the Russian attack on the