Dr. Shadi Abdelwahab

Head of Security Studies Unit, FARAS

Russian President Vladimir Putin, in the early hours of Thursday, February 24th, announced the launch of a military offensive against Ukraine. Minutes later, powerful explosions were heard in several Ukrainian cities, and Ukraine reported an ongoing large-scale Russian invasion. The development is set to have immediate implications for the world order.

Outstanding Developments

The conflict in Ukraine broke out between Russia and the United States, because Washington refused to accommodate Mosow’s demands. Most notably, Russia does not want Ukraine to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, or NATO, on the grounds that Ukrainian accession to NATO posed threats to Russian national security. As a result, the crisis escalated to the point that the Kremlin carried out its threats and invaded Ukraine. The positions of major involved parties on the crisis can be outlined as follows:

1.   The failure of American leadership:

The United States and Britain referred to intelligence reports suggesting that Russia is planning to launch a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, and that its military forces will attempt to take over the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv.  This became evident given the Russian massive 200,000-strong military deployment around Ukraine. Moreover, Russia seized control of most of Ukraine’s airspace and Ukraine’s Black Sea coastline.

It was not supposed that these scenarios are but “cultural luxury” for telling the future, or that Washington does nothing but using them to launch a media war that it knows very well that it will not dissuade the Kremlin from serving what it believes to be legitimate security interests. Rather, these should have been employed by Washington to predict, and to try to respond to each and every move the Russians make, and use all but military tools to force Moscow to retreat.

But if US President Joe Biden is aware that no active policy can be adopted to dissuade Moscow from attacking Ukraine, then he should have sought to resolve the Ukrainian crisis through diplomacy, or even indirectly, if necessary, through putting pressure on Ukraine to declare neutrality and pledge not to join NATO, or even through identifying with France’s mediation which sought to promote the Finnish model rather than continuing to challenge Moscow.

By all measures, Ukraine’s declaration of neutrality would have produced a scenario that is much better than becoming under complete or partial Russian occupation.  Additionally, the military implications of such occupation will be massive for Washington’s allies as the Russian invasion will mean that their reliance on Washington, especially outside Europe, is questioned.

2.   Putin’s insistence on carrying out his threats:

Russia has been serious and strict about the matter of Ukraine’s accession to NATO. Moscow was not capable, at any given time, of making any kind of concessions or about this very issue. At the NATO summit held in April 2008 in Bucharest, when former US President George W. Bush pledged to keep the door open for Ukraine’s accession to NATO, Putin told him that "Ukraine is not even a country. Part of its territory is in Eastern Europe and the greater part was given to us.” Putin added that if Ukraine joins NATO, its very existence will be in question.

The then-US president seems to have wanted to test how serious Putin’s threats are. In the same year, war between Russia and Georgia broke out when the latter attempted to seize control of South Ossetia following clashes with Russian-backed rebels. Russia’s response was firm and Georgia lost half control on half of its territory, which served as a Russian confirmation to Bush that the Kremlin is serious about carrying out its threats.

It should be noted here that George F. Kennan, a leading US Cold War strategist in the 1940s and 1950s, called the expansion of NATO into Central Europe “the most fateful error of American policy in the entire post-Cold War era.”

During the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, the United States laid a naval siege on Cuba and threatened to invade the island after it found out that Moscow installed nuclear-armed ballistic missiles on there. Washington viewed that the missiles pose a threat to the US national security that cannot be tolerated.

3.   Failure of Ukraine’s Leadership:

The ongoing crisis exposed the short-sightedness of the Ukrainian leaders, and namely President Volodymyr Zelensky, is now under criticism for his management of the crisis with Russia. That is, it was evident that the United States will not rush to the defense. On several occasions, the Biden Administration reiterated this position. Most recently, in a press briefing one day before the Russian attack, Press Secretary of the White House, Jen Pskai, in answering questions about whether the US is considering military engagement with Russia, literally said: “Again, I don’t know how many more times I can say it: There’s no scenario — the President is not sending US troops to fight in Ukraine against Russia.”

That is why, one cannot understand why Zelensky would challenge Russia, which has the largest nuclear arsenal in the world that is comparable to the United States’s nuclear power, especially when it became evident that Washington and Western states will not rush to Ukraine’s defense. Even the economic sanctions announced by the US and European states against Russia in response to Putin’s recognition of the two breakaway regions in eastern Ukraine, were too meager to impact the Russian economy. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said that the sanctions were expected, and that his country is used to them. Certainly, Moscow would not start escalating with the West over Ukraine and occupy this country without considering Western reactions, including sanctions.

The fast-paced progress of the Russian military offensive which reached Ukraine’s capital Kyiv reveals that Ukraine’s army is unable to resist the Russian army.

Profound Strategic Implications

The way various parties addressed the Ukrainian crisis reveals that the current World Order is in a premature  state and even the relationship between its major players has undergone evident shifts, which can be outlined as follows:

1.   End of Unipolarity:

If there were doubts that US withdrawal from Afghanistan in mid 2021 marked the end of the unipolar world order, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has, without any doubt, revealed that the world order has now become multi-polar. This implies the need for acknowledgement of the fact that arrangements put in place across the world after the United States gained global dominance are over, that the time is now to  put them under review, where Russia now has its own “Lebensraum” that should be respected, and that this has become the new order of the day. This would mean that the West has to review the mentality of “unipolarity” that has been dominant since the 1990s up to the second decade of the 21st century.

2.   Putin’s rejection of Western hypocrisy:

A case in point for the Russian president’s criticism of the West has been the United States’ interventions in the Middle East, its disregard of international law when it occupied Iraq in 2003, as well as its illegitimate use of military power against Libya in 2011, which resulted to the complete destruction of the state in the North African country. His criticism was his answer to American and European officials who condemned the Russian military in Ukraine as a violation of the rules of international law.

3.   Evident Sino-Russian alignment:

Evidently, the Ukrainian crisis revealed that China fully understands what is called “Russia’s legitimate security concerns” and that it sees “a complex and unique historical context on the Ukraine issue.” On the other hand, Beijing rejected the word “invasion” used by international media to describe Russia’s offensive against Ukraine, and appealed to all involved parties in Ukraine to exercise self-control. What might explain the Sino-Russian alignment is that both states suffered from Washington’s policies aimed at reviving military and security alliances such as NATO and AUKUS to confront Moscow and Beijing, respectively.

4.   Casting doubts on the American ally’s credibility:

The crisis in Ukraine showed that the United States’ crisis mismanagement. Instead of trying to address and accommodate some of Russia’s security concerns, the US complicated the issue and eventually directly pushed Russia to carry out its threats to occupy all Ukraine territory.

If the United States, following the fall of the Afghan government after the Taliban took over the country, reassured that this won’t happen in other countries, especially Taiwan, it became evident that its conclusion was not a sound one. That is, the fall of Ukraine means that the US has given up another ally, which will exacerbate concerns about the credibility and reliability of the American ally.

To conclude, it can be said that the Ukrainian crisis and the way it was managed by the United States, have revealed structural shifts in the world order. In today's world, the United States is no longer the only superpower that can impose the rules of the game. Rather, there are other powers that have their own “Lebensraum” (living space) which they seek to defend against US violation attempts.