Consequences of Putin’s war go beyond its implications for Russia

Ivo Daalder, former U.S. ambassador to NATO, is president of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs and host of the weekly podcast “World Review with Ivo Daalder.”

When world leaders last gathered at the Munich Security Conference — the annual global confab of national security policy wonks — all talk was on whether war was about to return to Europe.

Most still thought the massive Russian military buildup along Ukraine’s borders was little more than a bluff. And those convinced Russia was about to attack its neighbor believed there was little the West could do to prevent Kyiv’s swift defeat — some even urged Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to flee before Russian forces arrived at the presidential palace.

“I need ammunition,” he declared. “Not a ride.”

A year later, the Western leaders gathering in Munich this week are in a very different mood. Far from a swift defeat and subsequent life under a Moscow-controlled puppet government, Kyiv not only stands defiant but has the upper hand in the war. The West is more united than at any time since the end of the Cold War, and more committed to ensuring Russia’s defeat than at any time since the war’s start.

Ukraine’s ultimate victory is still far from certain, but Russia’s decision to go to war is now widely seen as a strategic debacle of historic proportions — and no one foresaw this outcome a year ago. Though the war itself has proven disastrous, however, the geopolitical consequences for Russia are, if anything, even worse.

Just weeks before last year’s Munich meeting, the leaders of China and Russia had signed a lengthy document outlining a grand new partnership “without limits.” Convinced the East was rising and the West declining, the two leaders were determined to grab the reigns of global leadership from a faltering United States.

And there were good reasons for Moscow and Beijing’s confidence.

The West had been deeply divided over the previous half decade — not least because its erstwhile leader, then U.S. President Donald Trump, had seemingly abandoned America’s long-standing commitment to strong alliances, open markets and defending freedom around the world in favor of an “America First” policy.

And though his successor, U.S. President Joe Biden, had declared that “America is back,” the shoddy, unilateral withdrawal from Afghanistan had left even the country’s oldest friends worried about its strength and stamina.

So, Russian President Vladimir Putin launched his war of conquest convinced that Ukraine was incapable and unwilling to resist Russia, and that the West was too weak to respond beyond hand-wringing. Plus, Beijing would have his back.

How wrong he was.

Far from failing to resist, Ukrainians — though outmanned and outgunned — united to defend their country, and Russia’s much vaunted military proved disastrously ill-prepared for a real fight. According to some estimates, over 200,000 Russians have since been killed or wounded; half the country’s tanks and armor has been destroyed or captured; Russia’s Air Force has yet to gain control over the skies; and its inventory of precision-guided missiles, bombs and ammunition is depleting fast.

In the coming year, Russia’s military will find it difficult to hold on to the gains it has, let alone make any more.

Putin had viewed his military adventure as a way of not only controlling Ukraine’s future but also dividing the West. Instead, shocked by the return of full-scale war to the Continent, Western countries acted in unison, cutting Russia off from the global economy, rapidly weaning themselves off Russian energy, and both arming and training Ukraine’s military. They committed to strengthening their own defenses by bolstering deterrence in Eastern Europe, and massively increasing spending over the remainder of the decade.

Finland and Sweden even abandoned centuries of neutrality and applied to join NATO, while the European Union committed to accelerating Ukraine’s membership application.

In short, the West has emerged stronger in response to Putin’s aggression and is now totally committed to ensuring Russia’s strategic defeat.

Indeed, if Putin was counting on China’s support for his war effort, he’s been disappointed. Apparently caught off guard by the extent of Russia’s military ambition, Chinese leader Xi Jinping has provided only tepid rhetorical support for Moscow by blaming the West for Putin’s need to act. Beijing has abstained on most U.N. votes relating to Ukraine and has notably refused to provide any substantial material support for Putin’s war efforts.

All this adds up to a grand strategic failure for Russia. But the consequences of Putin’s war go beyond its implications for his country alone.

Since the war began, the balance of power between the erstwhile declining West and the supposedly rising East has been decisively tilted in the former’s favor. And this has profound implications for the relative equilibrium between geopolitics and geoeconomics too.

If the post-Cold War era was characterized by rapid globalization in which economic considerations were prioritized — growing markets through expanding trade, setting up just-in-time supply chains and finding the cheapest sources of production — that’s no longer true today.

Whether it’s pulling away from Russian energy, cutting off Chinese firms from advanced computing technology, reshoring or establishing resilient supply chains, it’s political considerations that are now increasingly driving economic decisions — and the keys to sustaining these trends lie in maintaining Western unity.

Most immediately, the West needs to remain firm in its commitment to help Ukraine defeat Russia. But over the longer term, it’s vital that all Western countries — from North America through Europe to Asia — cooperate and recognize the primacy of geopolitics over geoeconomics in order to win the geopolitical competition with China.

Whether the West succeeds in these endeavors will, undoubtedly, be the most important topic in Munich next year.