Insights, analysis and must reads from CNN's Fareed Zakaria and the Global Public Square team, compiled by Global Briefing editor Chris Good Seeing this newsletter as a forward? Subscribe here. February 27, 2022 On GPS, at 10 a.m. and 1 p.m. ET: First, Fareed gives his take on what many analysts have said about Russian President Vladimir Putin's war on Ukraine: that it signals the end of the post-Cold War era in which liberal democracy has dominated the global order.
Times may seem dark, Fareed says, but it's worth remembering what caused this crisis. "It's very simple," Fareed says: "the overwhelming desire of Ukrainians to live in an open, democratic society."
Even if they haven't achieved it perfectly, Fareed notes, former Soviet countries have lined up to pursue liberal democracy. To those who see it on the wane globally, "I say, 'Let them go to Ukraine,'" Fareed concludes. "The people of Ukraine are showing us that those values –of an open society and a free world—can be worth fighting for and even dying for. The question for all of us is, what will we do to help them?"
Next: Fareed hears the latest from CNN's reporters covering the war as it unfolds and from Ukrainians on the ground.
After that: What should we think about the big questions surrounding this war? Fareed talks with former US Defense Secretary Robert Gates about why this is happening, what strategy the West should adopt, and what kind of world order we're entering into.
Finally: If this war is about post-Cold War borders, Fareed hears from Kenyan Ambassador to the UN Martin Kimani, who delivered a speech explaining how his continent has handled the legacy of borders it easily could've fought over. Zelensky—and Ukrainians—Meet the Moment With Resolve Ukrainians have earned praise for their resilience in the face of Russia's assault, as citizens line up to be given small arms. So, too, has President Volodymyr Zelensky.
In resolute video messages from Kyiv, Zelensky has risen to the moment stoically, embodying Ukrainians' sense that their freedom and national identity are worth fighting for, Jeremy Cliffe writes for The New Statesman, approving of comparisons to Winston Churchill and Charles de Gaulle. If Russia succeeds in taking Kyiv, it will face a protracted, deadly insurgency backed by countries friendly to Ukraine, Douglas London predicts at Foreign Affairs.
"Putin has badly miscalculated by invading Ukraine," Melinda Haring writes for the same magazine. "He may find it easy to pull off a swift invasion, but then comes the hard part. The Ukrainian people will never allow Moscow to chart their course or pick their president. The desire for freedom is ineffable, and Ukrainians have proved that they are willing to die for it." (On Ukrainian sentiments, Russian-American writer Sasha Vasilyuk notes in a New York Times essay that her family in eastern Ukraine "has never asked to be rescued by Russia.")
Though some have suggested Russian casualties will damage Putin's standing domestically, Haring reminds us that it's not so simple, as Putin has successfully "choked off" political dissent at home over his two decades in power. Still, The Economist writes that Russians do not seem at all enthusiastic: "The sombre, shamed mood in Moscow could hardly be more different from the euphoria that gripped it in 2014 when Mr Putin seized and annexed Crimea," the magazine observes. Many analysts have delved into post-Cold War history, asking if Western triumphalism and NATO expansion didn't make the current war more likely, regardless of Putin's ultimate responsibility for invading. At Foreign Policy, Michael Hirsh laments that the post-Cold War settlement may have repeated the mistakes of the Treaty of Versailles after World War I—a victor's peace seen, in retrospect, as sowing seeds of German resentment and Hitler's rise. Whereas World War II productively concluded with investment in Germany and Japan, which turned them into staunch allies of the Allies, Hirsh writes that Russia's nascent post-Cold War market economy collapsed into kleptocracy, fostering conditions for Putin's revisionism and enmity. Perhaps most important to ask is how seriously—and how widely—the war could escalate.
Some see Putin's goals as clearly limited to Ukraine: At Responsible Statecraft, Anatol Lieven makes that case, writing that "Russian domination of Eastern Europe beyond the borders of the former USSR … is vastly beyond Russia's ambitions and capability."
Is it? Since Russia's incursions into Ukraine in 2014, analysis from the RAND Corporation has suggested Russian forces could reach a capital in the NATO-member Baltic countries—Estonia, Latvia, or Lithuania—within about 60 hours, with NATO able to do little about it.
More chillingly, Russia has enjoyed a massive advantage in low-yield nuclear weapons—the kind meant to be fired at short or intermediate range, as opposed to the huge, intercontinental missiles that raised fears of global nuclear annihilation during the Cold War. (Last year, Brookings noted that Russia has some 1,900 such low-yield warheads, to the US's 230; America's arsenal is largely designed to be dropped from warplanes, whereas at least some of Russia's can be mounted on shorter-range ballistic missiles.) When RAND wargamers pitted NATO against Russia in the Baltics, Russia clearly achieved "escalation dominance" once such lower-yield nuclear weapons entered the fray; NATO, the researchers found, would be more likely than Moscow to sue for peace.
(More chillingly, the RAND authors warned that any Russian use of nuclear weapons may not stop with the low-yield, intermediate-range variety. In his speech announcing Russia's invasion of Ukraine, Putin threatened any country assisting the latter with "consequences that you have never experienced in history"—which many heard as a nuclear threat.)
It is in this context that some analysts warn Putin may not stop in Ukraine. "Putin's words go further," the France-based Desk Russie writes. "He clearly implies that through Ukraine it is the Western countries that he is targeting. ... Putin's catalog of ambitions does not stop at the conquest of Kyiv. The Baltic States and Central and Eastern Europe are also on the menu. ... It is the whole European security order that Putin wants to upset in order to ensure a preponderant place for Russia on the continent and to eradicate the freedom of the European peoples, applying the methods that have succeeded him in Russia: intimidation, demoralization and terror."
Putin's ambitions aside, Charlie Peters writes for The Spectator that Russia's war has exposed an uncomfortable fact: Military weakness has reduced European leaders to sanctions and strong words. "Europe can't fight its way out of a crisp packet," Peters writes, "let alone take on Russia's dominant military." |
