The geopolitical implications of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine

Background

The eminent Harvard University professor of Ukrainian history, Serhii Plokhy, observed that Russia’s occupation of Crimea, Donetsk and Luhansk in 2014 raised fundamental questions about Ukraine’s continuing existence as a unified state, its independence as a nation, and the democratic foundations of its political institutions.¹ This created a new and dangerous situation not only in Ukraine but also in Europe as a whole. For the first time since the end of World War II, a major European power made war on a weaker neighbour and annexed part of the territory of a sovereign state. This unprovoked Russian aggression against Ukraine threatened the foundations of international order—a threat to which, he said, the EU and most of the world weren’t prepared to respond.

Two years later, Plokhy published a book called Lost kingdom: a history of Russian nationalism from Ivan the Great to Vladimir Putin ² in which he observed—correctly, in my view—that the question of where Russia begins and ends, and who constitutes the Russian people, has preoccupied Russian thinkers for centuries. He might have added that Russia has no obvious or clear-cut geographical borders. Plokhy also stated that the current Russo-Ukrainian conflict is only the latest turn of Russian policy resulting from the Russian elite’s thinking about itself and its East Slavic neighbours as part of their joint historical and cultural space, and ultimately as the same nation. He asserts that the current conflict reprises many of the themes that have been central to political and cultural relations in the region for the previous five centuries. Those include Russia’s great-power status and influence beyond its borders; the continued relevance of religion, especially Orthodox Christianity, as defined in Russian identity and the conduct of Russian policy abroad; and, last but not least, the importance of language and culture as tools of Russian state policy in the region. Moreover, the conflict reminds the world that the formation of the modern Russian nation is still far from complete. Plokhy concludes that this threat is no less serious than the one posed in the 19th and early 20th centuries by the German question—the idea of uniting all the German lands to forge a mighty German Empire.

Since those words, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 has already become the worst international crisis since the end of the Cold War. Plokhy worried that a new and terrible stage in the shaping of European borders and populations was emerging. He said that it all depends on the ability and readiness of the Russian elites to accept the post-Soviet political realities and adjust Russia’s own identity to the demands of the post-imperial world. The alternative, he concluded, might be a new Cold War—or worse.

For many of us today, we face the spectre of not only a new Cold War but the prospects of a wider general war in Europe erupting if Russia persists with its post-imperial expansion objectives at the same time as an increasingly authoritarian China is working with its strategic partner in Moscow to remake the international order. This deeply disturbing picture is made all the worse by Putin’s now frequent references to the potential use of nuclear weapons.

I have deliberately begun these introductory words with reference to the deeply entrenched historical context of Russia’s relations with Ukraine, which extend over more than nine centuries. For much of that time—and particularly throughout the more than 70 years of Bolshevik power—Russia’s long history has been consistently reinvented.

As the Soviet-era quip goes: ‘The future is certain. It’s only the past that is unpredictable’, which is applicable to history as remade and retold by Russia’s leadership. And for the Russian President, Vladimir Putin, today’s past is being continually reinvented, along with his reasons for his ‘special military operation’ in Ukraine. Fake news and fake facts are the key tools of his huge propaganda offensive to reinforce Russian popular support for his ‘limited military operation’.

The structure of this paper is as follows:

1. Why did Putin decide to attack Ukraine?
2. Why have Russia’s military forces performed so woefully?
3. What are the geopolitical implications for the world order, including for Australia?
4. Key policy and intelligence recommendations.

The policy background to this assessment is that Russia’s outright invasion of Ukraine is an extremely dangerous moment for global security because Europe’s security order is now being fundamentally challenged with the real risk of escalation into a major war involving Russia and the US. The ugliest days of this war are in front of us, not behind us.

Moreover, the war is occurring at a time in world history when relations between Moscow and Washington have never been so fraught, and the Moscow–Beijing relationship has never been so close in the past half-century. In comparison, throughout much of the Cold War, senior Soviet and American defence, foreign policy and intelligence officials and nuclear arms control experts engaged in prolonged and deeply informed discussions about each other’s nuclear weapons capabilities and the risks of nuclear war. That involved mutual on-site inspections to confirm the numbers and characteristics of each side’s most advanced strategic nuclear weapons, as well as what the late Professor Coral Bell described as a comprehensive array of measures to signal to each other and engage more closely in times of tension.

Certainly, that wasn’t a foolproof method of avoiding—let alone managing—global nuclear conflict. But the fact remains that the outright use of nuclear weapons (as distinct from their threatened use) was avoided even when towards the end of the Cold War both sides possessed more than 12,000 strategic nuclear warheads on high alert. These days, there are no such confidence-building measures or frequent high-level meetings to signal concerns to each other. That should be a matter of grave strategic worry, given the current state of high tension between Russia and the US.

1. Serhii Plokhy, The gates of Europe: a history of Ukraine, Basic Books, London, 2015. ↩︎
2. Serhii Plokhy, Lost kingdom: a history of Russian nationalism from Ivan the Great to Vladimir Putin, Penguin, London, 2017. ↩︎