The last decade has been a difficult time for those of us who study international politics for a living. China suddenly became uncharacteristically assertive in 2012; Russia seized and annexed Crimea in 2014; a transparently unfit and reckless Donald Trump became president of the United States in 2017; and, most recently, Russia invaded Ukraine, in violation of some of the strongest norms in international society — nonaggression, the peaceful settlement of disputes, and the sanctity of borders. We predicted none of these shocking events. Our paradigms, our theories, and our confident beliefs about how world politics worked were shattered over and over again. It was as though our scholarly toolkit, with which we were comfortably complacent, suddenly became useless to us in precisely the kinds of cases where we needed it most.

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None of this caused us to fold up our tents. We may not have had the resources to predict these things, but we confidently explained them after the fact, often in completely contradictory ways drawing upon completely incompatible assumptions, assertions, and inferences grounded in what are, at the end of the day, radically different ways of seeing the world. Balance-of-power “Realists,” Constructivists, Marxists, Postmodernists, you name it — all found ways of turning surprising geopolitical events into support for their paradigms.

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So there is no disciplinary sense of crisis as of yet. But there should be. Who would take physics seriously if physicists were unable to predict anything important and could trivially easily explain everything after the fact in utterly inconsistent ways?

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This renders my assignment in this article problematic. The editors invited me to reflect upon the medium- and long-term implications of the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukrainian. The only way for me (or anyone else) to do this is to draw upon the intellectual resources that we have at hand. I do not consider myself a doctrinaire partisan in the paradigm wars that plague my discipline, but of course my sympathies are not equally distributed among the competing camps. I could cobble together a story drawing widely from all of them in a spirit of true ecumenism, but this would be incoherent. I could throw up my hands and declare the assignment impossible on the ground that neither I nor anyone else in my field knows what we are talking about, but this would make for a dull essay, not to mention a short one. So in full acknowledgement that politics is not a genuinely predictive science, let me offer what I should probably at most call “informed speculation” rather than prediction. Please take everything with a grain of salt.

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In a spirit of complete transparency, I will begin by laying out my conceptual priors, i.e., certain convictions I hold on the basis of what is now rather a long career of observation and study marked both by analytical success and analytical failure.

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With respect specifically to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, I believe the following five propositions are particularly important to bear in mind:

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1. Personality matters. One of the great missteps in the development of International Relations as a field was the almost total neglect of personality. Multiple schools of thought were guilty of this. “Structural Realists” told us that all that really matters is state power, and once you know the configuration of power, you know all you need to know to understand how the international system will behave. Marxist told us that all that really matters is class, and once you know the particular interests and strengths of economic classes, you know all you need to know to understand how history will unfold. Constructivists told us that all that really matters is agent-structure interaction, and once you understand the relevant sociological dynamics, you know all you need to know to understand how world order evolves. None of these perspectives had any room for a personality variable, with the possible exception of those Constructivists who might be willing to concede that, on rare occasions, a single particularly influential individual (an Alexander the Great, a Genghis Khan, a Napoleon) can have a profound effect on structure.

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Is it plausible to imagine that just any Russian leader would have invaded Ukraine on February 24, 2022? Would someone like Mikhail Gorbachev, Boris Yeltsin, or Alexei Navalny (if Russia had free and fair elections of the kind that might actually have made him president today)? I submit not. This is Vladimir Putin’s war. To understand why it happened and how it may play out, we have to understand Vladimir Putin.

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2. Power matters, but not exactly in the way we think it does. Superficially, it would seem that events in Ukraine today bear out the aphorism made famous by Thucydides in the Melian Dialogue, “The strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.”¹ On every material dimension of power, Ukraine is overmatched. Russia has single-handedly set the terms and conditions of the conflict, because it can. While it is true that NATO countries are supporting Ukraine diplomatically, economically, and militarily (within limits), and while this has undoubtedly evened the balance somewhat, the fact that Russia is a nuclear-armed country has thus far deterred anyone — including (with only marginal occasional exceptions) Ukraine — from taking the fight to Russian soil, as both military logic and justice would dictate. And yet Ukraine is outperforming expectations on the battlefield and Russia is underperforming them. This speaks to the importance of will, morale, and a sense of righteousness in compensating for material weakness. If Putin thought Ukraine would be awed by Russian power, he was sadly mistaken — as were the Athenians when Melos rejected their demands, prepared for siege, withstood it for months, and only succumbed after an internal betrayal.²

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3. Beliefs matter. A lot. The Russo-Ukrainian war is fundamentally about — and driven by — beliefs, and, in particular, packages of beliefs that for convenience we call “worldviews.” Foremost among these are beliefs about nationhood, status, prestige, self-respect, and justice. It would take a full essay to unpack any of these in adequate detail, but it is safe to say that while Putin may at some basic level be driven by a megalomaniacal desire for power, a quest for control, a will to dominate, and a need to compensate for personal insecurities, these are all shaped and directed by particular senses of Russian nationalism, Russia’s destiny as a great power, and no doubt also Putin’s destiny to become a World Historical Figure on the order of Peter the Great.³ In addition, Putin’s ambitions in Ukraine have rather obviously been fuelled and reinforced by third-rate philosophers such as Aleksander Dugin and by New Russia ideologues such as Aleksandr Prokhanov and the members of the Izborsk Club.⁴ Collectively, the ideas they promote feed into a worldview in which everything is the fault of a morally decadent and declining West, in which Russia can do no wrong, and in which Russia is exempt from rules that it does not like. Particularly powerful beliefs in this worldview are that Ukraine is a “fake country,” that Ukrainian nationality is a fiction, and that Ukrainian territory is rightfully Russian. Needless to say, Ukrainians disagree. Strongly.

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4. Domestic politics matter. Maybe. Putin’s worldview is not entirely exceptional. Many Russians obviously share it. Even well-educated Russians will parrot Kremlin talking points in earnest. And Soviet-era Party hacks who grew up internalizing Russian domination of Ukraine now represent a majority of the current political elite.⁵ But it is interesting to speculate what would have happened if Russia were a thriving democracy with an opposition free to contest elections (as opposed to being either in jail or in exile) and a free press giving air to all internal voices and perspectives. Certainly there would have been a raging public debate about the wisdom of Putin’s “special operation” and large, well-organized demonstrations against it. Quite possibly, the invasion never would have taken place.⁶ For many Russians — and for most Russian soldiers, it would seem — the invasion was an unwelcome surprise.

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But the invasion having taken place, I am less convinced that anything would be significantly different even if Russia were a vibrant democracy. The “rally ’round the flag effect” is a well-established phenomenon, and once a conflict is cast in both existential and nationalist terms, effective opposition tends to dry up. We saw this in the United States both with respect to the Vietnam War and the 2003 Iraq War. Despite bitter opposition to these wars at home, none of the Johnson, Nixon, or Bush administrations bent to it. The most that one can say is that President Richard Nixon hastened to wind up the Vietnam war before the 1972 elections (though he did not quite meet the timetable). But by this point the war had more or less run its natural course anyway.⁷

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As an aside, I should note that the Iraq War is particularly inconvenient for the United States just now. It is hard to maintain the moral high ground and preach against unprovoked aggression when you yourself are guilty of the very same thing.

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5. Economics don’t matter as much as we think. The early Western response to the invasion evinced a great deal of faith in economic sanctions as a tool for thwarting Russia. Certainly the speed, scale, and cooperation evident in the economic response were all impressive. But there is no sign that sanctions are moderating Putin’s ambitions, nor have they inspired either the Russian people as a whole or rich Russian oligarchs to stand up to him — or preferably overthrow him.⁸ Economic blowback in the form of reduced energy supplies and food exports have certainly hurt the West, though perhaps even more so bystander countries in the Global South, and this has predictably led to a certain degree of wavering. But, more often than not, people will put up with hardship rather than suffer humiliation or reward aggression.

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This dynamic is playing out symmetrically on all sides. Russians and Ukrainians equally see themselves as victims in the current drama and have already demonstrated a willingness to put up with deprivation. In my view, the West is unlikely to falter, too, if for no other reason than out of fear of the consequences of letting Russia win.⁹ The most that we can say, I believe, is that economic sanctions are causing Russia military difficulties now that access to Western technology has been cut off.¹⁰ But Russia is capable of fighting a low-tech war as well as a high-tech one and is obviously not averse to the greater brutality associated with the former.

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These five propositions, I submit, are intertwined and mutually reinforcing. They leave us with an image of a conflict driven fundamentally by the worldview and ambition of an unconstrained man — Vladimir Putin — who appears wholly undeterred as he seeks to indulge what are ultimately delusional beliefs and to gratify a grandiose and unrealistic vision of what Russia might become. That vision is unrealistic in part because Russia is, in fact, in decline, not ascendant, as he seems to believe. With unfavourable demographic trends,¹¹ an economy one-tenth the size of Europe’s,¹² heavy revenue dependency on fossil fuel resources whose value is bound to decline as the world decarbonizes, and a nemesis — NATO — newly energized and likely to expand as the direct result of his own adventurism in Ukraine, the future does not belong to Russia. Perhaps for this reason Putin and his likeminded fellow travelers are desperately seeking to live in the past.

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What does all of this portend over the medium- and long-term?

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It is worth distinguishing, I believe, the likely implications of the invasion for Russia, for Ukraine, for the West, for other interested countries, and for global order. I will take up each in turn.

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I believe it is safe to say that Putin is committed to achieving his goals in Ukraine. He is not the kind of leader to admit a mistake, to back down in the face of adversity, to compromise when something touches his understanding of a core national interest, or — to be blunt — to do anything that might call his masculinity into question.¹³

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The key question is: what, exactly, are Putin’s goals in Ukraine? On this, analysts are and have been divided. Among Putin’s stated aims at the time of the invasion were to neutralize and “de-Nazify” Ukraine. Early in the conflict, it seemed as though a key objective was to remove President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and replace him with a more pliant figurehead. Recent developments suggest that an alternative (or perhaps an additional) objective was to diminish Ukraine by seizing and either annexing or recognizing the sovereign independence of large areas in the east and south that would certainly include Donetsk and Luhansk as well as at least significant parts of Kharkiv, Zaporizhzhya, Kherson, and Mikolayiv Oblasts (i.e., regions of Ukraine that have significant Russian-speaking populations and/or would provide a land bridge to Crimea). Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has recently ominously hinted at more expansive aims.¹⁴ Many are convinced that Putin’s ultimate objective is to swallow Ukraine wholesale, extinguishing its sovereignty and even going so far as to destroy Ukrainian national identity in what would effectively be a sweeping cultural genocide. This certainly seemed to be what he had in mind when he published his notorious 2021 essay, “On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians.”¹⁵

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Maintaining a degree of ambiguity about war aims is, clearly, in Putin’s interest, as it would enable him at any particular point to proclaim his objectives achieved, declare victory, disengage empowered domestically, and (he no doubt imagines) enjoy elevated stature internationally. But events on the ground do not provide much basis at the moment for optimism that even minimalist objectives can be achieved. Ukraine shows no sign of being willing to compromise territorially. Early in the conflict, when Kyiv was under siege, President Zelenskiy offered guarantees against seeking NATO membership, at least for some unspecified period of time, so, if that offer is still on the table, it may be possible for Russia to disengage and claim victory by stressing the goal of neutralizing Ukraine.¹⁶ But that offer was unsatisfactory at the time and there is no reason to think that it is satisfactory now. For the foreseeable future, I believe we can reasonably expect Russia to continue to wage war no matter how well or poorly its forces perform. Most military analysts anticipate stalemate.

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Ukraine shows no sign of compromise at the moment, either. The Ukrainian military is clearly better motivated than the Russian military, and in some crucial respects better equipped, qualitatively if not quantitatively. The key question is whether there is any prospect of Ukraine faltering. Barring a surprise, I see none. No reputable analyst does. Russia may try to engineer an internal betrayal of the kind that doomed Melos in the 5th century BCE; Russian sympathizers are clearly a problem for Ukraine, and not only in predominantly Russian speaking areas such as Donetsk and Luhansk.¹⁷ Still, given the strength of Ukrainian nationalism, in the event of a coup that decapitated the current leadership it is entirely plausible to imagine a successor regime equally committed as the present one to resistance against Russian aggression.

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For the West, the most likely outcome is a systematic economic decoupling from Russia (a geopolitical decoupling is already fait accompli). But Europe’s energy dependence upon Russia in recent decades will make that economic decoupling painful. Indeed, it already has. Eventually, however, Europe will find alternative sources of energy. Indeed, there is an opportunity at the moment to jumpstart Europe’s decarbonization. Necessity is the mother of invention, as they say, and in the long run — strictly from the perspective of energy supply and the fight against climate change — for Europe, the Russian invasion of Ukraine may turn out to be a blessing in disguise.

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An additional likely outcome for the West is, as I mentioned earlier, a reenergized and expanded NATO, assuming that Turkey does not play the role of spoiler.¹⁸ Strategically, this will improve the West’s position vis-à-vis Russia. But this is a mixed blessing to be sure. Certainly, Russian hostility to the West is something to be resisted, and, given Putin’s predations against Ukraine both in 2014 and today, it makes eminent sense for NATO to shore up its defences (particularly for the Baltic states, which may be irredentist targets in Putin’s global imaginary).¹⁹ But it is important to recognize that a reenergized, expanded NATO may pose problems of its own down the road. Even though it is certainly the case that there were no firm and clear promises not to expand NATO eastward in the early years of the post-Cold War era,²⁰ the widely shared Russian belief that there were at least tacit promises to that effect is understandable and has clearly been a major source of grievance. A further expansion will surely make any long-term reconciliation with Russia more difficult. No one, I suspect, would imagine a reconciliation possible while Putin is still in power, but at some point he will die or be replaced and the West will have every incentive to try to cultivate stable, more normal relations with a successor regime. Given the strength of the conviction in Russia that NATO is an implacable enemy, this will be a challenge.

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While Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has clearly had major consequences for many countries, not to mention for the global economy as a whole, there is one bystander country that stands to be particularly affected by it: namely, China. Putin and Chinese president Xi Jinping recently forged a “no limits” partnership of convenience grounded in their shared belief in Western hostility. Much as Germany in 1914 watched Austria-Hungary’s trials in the Balkan states with trepidation, so does China watch Russia’s in Ukraine. At stake is not only Russia’s vitality as China’s sole geopolitically relevant “ally,” but also lessons for a future possible Chinese attempt to bring Taiwan to heel militarily. Again, analysts are split. Some believe the lessons China will draw from the war render military action against Taiwan less rather than more likely.²¹ Others believe the reverse.²² Without a window into decision-making in Beijing, we cannot know. But it is clear, at least, that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has put a spotlight on a potential Taiwan Strait contingency as nothing else has done before.

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Finally, what of global order? Here is where we venture into the greatest of all realms of uncertainty. Has Russian aggression mortally wounded postwar norms, or bolstered them? Has the world fractured in two — a liberal democratic world versus a world of predatory autocracies — or has Putin delegitimized the autocratic model? Obviously, only time will tell. But I am inclined to suspect that, in the long run, Putin’s violation of postwar norms will end up reinforcing them (though perhaps not the institutions tasked with defending them who have failed to do so time and again). It is, at any rate, difficult to imagine third parties watching from afar and concluding that, all things considered, it is a good idea to abandon diplomacy, to use force to resolve disputes, to invade a neighbouring country, or to go back to the kind of chaotic, unstable world that Russia’s claims to exceptionalism would invite if those claims became general. In short, I anticipate an order-reinforcing backlash.

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Even if I am correct about this, however, I would not necessarily predict peace across the Taiwan Strait. China sees Taiwan as a domestic issue, not an international one. Norms against the use of force to solve interstate disputes, or norms upholding the integrity and inviolability of sovereign borders, would not impress Beijing when it does not see Taiwan as a separate sovereign state. The fact that most other countries in the world do see Taiwan as a separate sovereign state, at least secretly, is one of the things that makes the Taiwan Strait such a dangerous flashpoint.

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I would like to conclude by echoing what I said at the outset about International Relations not being a predictive science. Neither I nor any of my colleagues has a crystal ball. But I flatter myself that I have an understanding of human nature, and that that understanding draws our attention to the emotional, ideational, and idiosyncratic drivers of high politics. My field has been overly enamoured of cold, calculating, rational-actor models that presume a particular slate of national interests and insist that leaders are effectively substitutable without loss. This is manifestly not the case. This is first and foremost Vladimir Putin’s war. It will play out in a way that reflects Vladimir Putin’s beliefs, wants, needs, and fears. At present, he appears completely inflexible and unreservedly determined. But so also do his adversaries. This is a recipe for stalemate and for suffering. I would not be surprised if a resolution of that stalemate depended upon the kind of black swan event that thwarts prediction in academic International Relations in the first place. We can only hope that the black swan, if and when she comes, chooses to favour democracy, order, and self-determination over autocracy, chaos, and domination.

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¹ Robert B. Strassler and Richard Crawley, eds., The Landmark Thucydides: A Comprehensive Guide to the Peloponnesian War (New York: Free Press, 1996), 5.89.

² Ibid., 5.116.

³ Alessandro Nai and Emre Toros, “The Peculiar Personality of Strongmen: Comparing the Big Five and Dark Triad Traits of Autocrats and Non-Autocrats,” Political Research Exchange, Vol. 2, No. 1 (2020), p. 1707697, doi 10.1080/2474736X.2019.1707697; A. Immelman and J.V. Trenzeluk, The Political Personality of Russian Federation President Vladimir Putin, Working Paper No. 1.4 Collegeville and St. Joseph, MN: St. John’s University and the College of St. Benedict, Unit for the Study of Personality in Politics), January 2017,
http://digitalcommons.csbsju.edu/psychology_pubs/104/; Gulnaz Sharafutdinova, The Red Mirror: Putin's Leadership and Russia's Insecure Identity (New York: Oxford University Press, 2020); Andrew Roth, “Putin Compares Himself to Peter the Great in Quest to Take Back Russian Lands,” The Guardian (Manchester: 10 June 2022), https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jun/10/putin-compares-himself-to-peter-the-great-in-quest-to-take-back-russian-lands.

⁴ Juliette Faure, “The Deep Ideological Roots of Russia's War,” Le Monde Diplomatique (Paris: 3 April 2022), https://mondediplo.com/2022/04/03ideology.

⁵ Maria Snegovaya and Kirill Petrov, “Long Soviet Shadows: The Nomenklatura Ties of Putin Elites,” Post-Soviet Affairs, Vol. 38, No. 4 (2022/07/04 2022), pp. 329-348, doi 10.1080/1060586X.2022.2062657.

⁶ Michael McFaul, “Putin, Putinism, and the Domestic Determinants of Russian Foreign Policy,” International Security, Vol. 45, No. 2 (2020), pp. 95-139.

⁷ David A. Welch, Painful Choices: A Theory of Foreign Policy Change (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005), p. 157.

⁸ Robin Wright, “Why Sanctions Too Often Fail,” The New Yorker, 7 March 2022.

⁹ Seth Cropsey, “Why US-NATO Can’t Let Russia Win,” Asia Times (28 June 2022), https://asiatimes.com/2022/06/why-us-nato-cant-let-russia-win/.

¹⁰ Ana Swanson, John Ismay, and Edward Wong, “U.S. Technology, a Longtime Tool for Russia, Becomes a Vulnerability,” The New York Times (2 June 2022), https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/02/business/economy/russia-weapons-american-technology.html.

¹¹ World Population Review, "Russia Population (2022), https://worldpopulationreview.com/countries/russia-population.

¹² Paul De Grauwe, “Russia is Too Small to Win,” Project Syndicate (17 March 2022), https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/russia-economy-too-small-to-sustain-war-in-ukraine-by-paul-de-grauwe-2022-03.

¹³ Valerie Sperling, Sex, Politics, and Putin: Political Legitimacy in Russia (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015).

¹⁴ Ben Tobias, “Ukraine War: Russia's Lavrov Says Ready to Expand War Aims,” BBC News (21 July 2022), https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-62231936.

¹⁵ Peter Dickinson, “Putin’s New Ukraine Essay Reveals Imperial Ambitions,” The Atlantic (15 July 2021), https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/ukrainealert/putins-new-ukraine-essay-reflects-imperial-ambitions/.

¹⁶ Isobel Koshiw, Jon Henley, and Julian Borger, “Ukraine Will Not Join Nato, Says Zelenskiy, as Shelling of Kyiv Continues,” The Guardian (Manchester: 15 March 2022), https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/mar/15/kyiv-facing-dangerous-moment-amid-signs-of-russias-tightening-grip.

¹⁷ Andrew E. Kramer and Valerie Hopkins, “Zelensky Takes Aim at Hidden Enemy: Ukrainians Aiding Russia,” The New York Times (18 July 2022), https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/18/world/europe/zelensky-ukraine-russian-spies.html.

¹⁸ Selcan Hacaoglu and Niclas Rolander, “Turkey Renews Threat to Veto Sweden and Finland’s NATO Bids,” Bloomberg News (18 July 2022), https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-07-05/turkey-threatens-to-veto-sweden-and-finland-s-nato-bids/. In my opinion, it is Turkey that does not belong in NATO: David A. Welch, “It's Time to Drum Increasingly Authoritarian Turkey out of NATO,” The Globe and Mail (Toronto: The Globe and Mail, 22 April 2018), https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-its-time-to-drum-increasingly-authoritarian-turkey-out-of-nato/ (paywalled); https://davidwelch.ca/2018/its-time-to-drum-turkey-out-of-nato/ (open, corrected, with modified title).

¹⁹ Krista Viksnins, “The Baltics Should Be Worried,” (Washington, DC: Center for European Policy Analysis, 3 March 2022), https://cepa.org/the-baltics-should-be-worried/.

²⁰ Stephen Pifer, “Did NATO Promise Not to Enlarge? Gorbachev Says ‘No’,” Up Front (Washington, DC: Brookings, 6 November 2014), https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2014/11/06/did-nato-promise-not-to-enlarge-gorbachev-says-no/.

²¹ David Sacks, “Putin’s Aggression against Ukraine Deals a Blow to China’s Hopes for Taiwan,” (New York: Council on Foreign Relations, 23 February 2022), https://www.cfr.org/blog/putins-aggression-against-ukraine-deals-blow-chinas-hopes-taiwan.

²² Joseph Bosco, “Russia’s War on Ukraine Makes China’s Attack on Taiwan More Likely,” The Hill (Washington, DC: 26 April 2022), https://thehill.com/opinion/international/3462914-russias-war-on-ukraine-makes-chinas-attack-on-taiwan-more-likely/.