For the second time in our lives Russia has invaded Ukraine. This was to the surprise of only the naïve and the oblivious. As Joe Biden quipped on January 20th , with two- thirds of the Russian military machine surrounding Ukrainian territory from the north (Belarus), east, and south (Crimea), Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin “Has to do something”. His long list of untenable demands from Ukraine and NATO along with his uncompromising style of diplomacy in negotiating these demands could not be understood as anything but a pretext for war.
On February 9th , before the wailing of the sirens but after the Russian Tsar’s intentions were plainly shared for all to see, historian and anthropologist Yuval Noah Hariri wrote in an opinion piece for ‘The Economist’ that "Unlike gravity, war isn’t a fundamental force of nature” and that the decline of war in the last seventy years has been the result of “Humans making better choices.” Unsurprisingly for anyone who has read his book ‘Sapiens’, Hariri believes that humanity can maintain its impressive streak of relative peace by continuing to make these “good choices”. Perhaps this state of relative peace could continue if the countries of the world agreed to abide by a set of international rules which bound them all with clear punishments and consequences for violators. Indeed, this has been the state of affairs since at least the closing of the Cold War, with institutions such as the United Nations and the World Trade Organisation acting as judicial bodies in disputes concerning international law. But some actors have now dubbed this international rules-based order ‘Western hegemony’ and have set themselves upon its destruction.
I do not claim to know whether the human condition will remain forever as it is today. Perhaps in some distant future all our kind will live together peacefully as part of some global body politic. Whether or not such a future is feasible cannot be known at this time. But what can be known is that if this future does exist, then it is distant. So distant in fact that it has no bearing on the reality of our lives today. As Hariri admits “To enjoy peace, we need almost everyone to make good choices. By contrast, a poor choice by just one side can lead to war.” But herein lies the ruin of his hopes for a peaceful world since, as Niccolò Machiavelli observed five-hundred years ago, “The way men live is so far removed from the way they ought to live that anyone who abandons what is for what should be pursues his downfall rather than his preservation; for a man who strives after goodness in all his acts is sure to come to ruin, since there are so many men who are not good.” That is to say, that the appearance of challengers to this peaceful and prosperous global order was inevitable, and the only way to preserve or restore it is by way of force.
Unfortunately, as the situation in Ukraine illustrates, the Western world is prohibitively limited in its recourse to force, due primarily to the threat of nuclear escalation. Nuclear weapons make use of the nuclear option impossible. To enable institutions such as NATO to preserve the global rules-based order, they must have the option of waging war on those powers which are large enough to challenge this hegemony. Since such entities will almost always be nuclear powers, a rules-based world order will not be possible for as long as the threat of nuclear strikes remains a realistic means of retribution in case of war. In other words, countermeasures must be developed to render intercontinental ballistic missiles and other methods of nuclear warhead delivery obsolete, and this is the one and only path towards lasting peace across the globe. This is so, not because such countermeasures would make the prospect of war somehow less terrible, but because they would make war possible again.
The weapon of choice for the West against aggressive states has been economic sanctions. These have been effective in a number of cases, as in when they brought Iran to the negotiating table over its nuclear program, leading to the Joint Plan of Action in 2013 and later to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) in 2015 signed by Iran and the permanent members of the United Nations Security Council. In 2018 Donald Trump unilaterally pulled the United States out of the JCPOA, reimposing severe sanctions on Iran. This was an unforced blunder; not the only one President Trump made in office. However, what has unfolded since serves as an important case study of the limits of economic warfare.
Iran’s economy was in poor shape even before the renewed sanctions of 2018. Annual inflation stood at ten percent and the first few weeks of the year were marked by protests linked to poor economic conditions, including a sharp rise in the price of eggs (I am not joking). Once the sanctions hit, inflation quickly spiked to forty percent, eventually peaking at fifty percent. Hyperinflation was predicted, of the kind that crippled Nicolas Maduro’s regime in Venezuela. But this did not come to pass. The economy has since stabilized. Inflation has been on a downward trend since the beginning of 2021. It now hovers around thirty-five percent. This would still be unacceptable for a developed economy, but the people of Iran are not used to the stability and security that we take for granted (nor for that matter, are the Russian people). Iran’s economy withstood the initial shock in 2018. So did its leaders. The sanctions have failed on two fronts. They have failed to weaken the political elite’s support of Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei. They have also failed in inspiring meaningful popular opposition towards the regime. Khamenei has installed Hussein Rouhani, a loyalist, as President. The parliament is also full of hardliners and sycophants. Not only has Khamenei’s position not been compromised since 2018, regionally he is more powerful today than he ever has been. Having decisively won its cold war against Saudi Arabia (again, despite the sanctions) Iran backs several militant groups throughout the Middle East, including the Houthis in Yemen and Hezbollah in Lebanon. Worse, Iran is closer than it has ever been to developing an atomic weapon.
The situation in Russia will likely develop in much the same way. Putin will retain the loyalty of those he needs to stay in power. Popular dissent will only trouble him for a time before people come to terms with this war. Why will the people come to terms with the war? And why will they not continue in their activism and resort to civil disobedience as has happened in the past in that same country? This is a critical question, but one that we cannot tackle here. I ask the reader to be content for the moment with the justification provided by the analogy with Iran.
Once the shock of the initial affair has worn off, Vladimir Vladimirovich will be firmly in charge again. He will have a much weaker economy, but he had prepared for this. He has spent some time decoupling Russia’s economy from the West, and he has had some success. The Russian treasury holds $600 billion in foreign reserves. Although Russia has no suitable alternative to the SWIFT interbank payment system, it has successful alternatives to Western retail payment systems. History is also on Putin’s side. The economic crisis of 1998, when the Russian Federation defaulted on its debt, was arguably an even more difficult moment financially, but the country endured. Moreover, having borne the brunt of Western sanctions, he will have a much easier time justifying further “Special military operations” since his country will have much less to lose. This will be especially true if the operation in Ukraine is a success. No one will want to invest in Russia for a very long time. But if that was the price to pay for unrestrained use of his military machine, then Putin will probably not regret his purchase. Indeed, if his ambition is to rebuild the USSR, then this was a purchase he had to make.
So, what are we, the West, to do? Surely, we cannot allow Putin or anyone else to break down the peaceful order that is the crowning jewel of human achievement in the twentieth century. But economic warfare is not enough. There are those who cannot be dissuaded from the dismantling of this order unless by force. But we cannot bring force to bear upon them as long as the threat of nuclear retaliation persists. Global peace can only be maintained if it can be defended by force, but use of force is not permitted if the adversary is armed with nukes. This makes clear the necessity of physical or diplomatic countermeasures to nuclear weapons. Physical countermeasures include missile shields, diplomatic countermeasures include nuclear disarmament. Any successful approach will probably include a mixture of these two approaches. These safeguards must be effective enough to bring the expected damage from a possible nuclear war to within acceptable bounds. Of course, what is acceptable must first be clarified. But as the Ukrainian people know far too well, wars are not won by righteousness, but by sacrifice.