Will the West commit to cooperative security after Ukraine?
Ethan Brown
Western, liberal policy has long touted cooperative security and deepened integration as a pillar of grand strategy. But Russia’s year-long special military operation proves that the West has yet to commit—truly commit by way of resources, unified vision, and long-term cohesive strategy—to building those partnerships for the purpose of deterring aggression from malicious actors. Short-sightedness, wavering commitment, and a lack of cohesive policy and long-term strategic goals has long been the hallmark of how the West aligns its resources to contend with great powers and strategic competitors.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine more than a year ago resulted from a variety of circumstances, which could have been avoided, were it not for a perpetual short-sightedness of global policy by the rules-based international order. First, revanchist ambitions by realist actors, whose power brokers enjoy political stability which democratically-elected leaders do not, remain a powerful motivator which Western leaders fail to appreciate. Second, a failure to incentivize those bad actors from upsetting the delicate rules-based order—prosperity from cooperative engagement and increased human rights, or credible consequences which deter aggression—plays a part in actors like Moscow and Beijing choosing realist policies over liberalism. Third, particular to Ukraine, is an end state that is both achievable, reasonable, and prevents escalation through clearly articulated ways and means to resolve this conflict. Absent such an objectified endstate, the West has aligned behind unclear goals, leaving far too much open-endedness in grand strategy.
The liberal order has emphasized the importance of shared security, knowing full well that no single nation can reasonably stand against authoritarian aggression alone. From revised NATO Strategic Concepts to the evolution of the American national security strategies by the Trump and Biden administrations, the need to confront competitors who would undermine the rules-based order has spilled ink aplenty in declaring its necessity.
How something like the Ukraine crisis could still occur, is explained by the slow, laborious, and disjointed actions subject to those strategies. Realist actors are indifferent to declarations of preventative policies, however compelling or appealing they may be to citizens of democratic states within the prose of the global polity machine. Actions alone are the language which authoritarians and autocrats speak. Actions, meaning visible activities to execute those well-meaning strategic plans and concepts—expanded security assistance and cooperation, security-based diplomacy, and widening the cooperation between liberal states—these are necessary vectors which and too slow in actualization. Without actions, resources, and visible commitment to cooperative security, policies are meaningless, and so too are grand strategies meant to achieve them.
Other factors certainly impacted or contributed to the Ukraine invasion, though at much more tangential avenues. The COVID pandemic certainly upended the worlds idea of societal integration, as a new virus with deadly potential eroded the idea of physical and tangible connection between states. Resuming integration and exchange between cooperating states was a slow and halting affair which surely contributed to the breakdown in shared security. Further, the world remains in recovery from the two-decades of investment in the war in Afghanistan, which ended a scarce few months before Ukraine’s crisis. Those two decades drove policy which made the idea of grand strategic competitors second-tier as the defense enterprises of the world grappled with violent extremism.
But perhaps those factors are less tangential than it would seem, and indeed something the Wests competitors understand all too well: that the liberal order is effective, even exemplary, at reacting to the crisis of the moment. An incredible amount of security aid has flowed into Ukraine in an incredibly short amount of time, though such reactionary assistance comes with risks to readiness. This portrays the West as slow, even incompetent, at seeing the global arena through a long-term lens and organizing its considerable resources and policy apparatus to plan for threats and vulnerabilities—emerging arenas which authoritarian competitors exploit apace.
One global crisis after another is a paradigm which benefits authoritarian actors in pursuing their own security interests. Instability offers the chance for such actors to consolidate domestic power, and from there align their national resources to further foment discord, erode international institutions, and undermine the delicate global peace. These crises are factors which the liberal order has taken upon itself to address as they happen. This simply means that rules-based order is perpetually at a disadvantage when contending with threats to international stability. But this reality is made worse when the liberal order consistently fails to adjust its strategic positioning, strength, and resources to preemptively stabilize crisis locales where security vulnerabilities exist.
Ukraine was not an unexpected crisis or phenomena; the West knew months in advance that Russia was preparing for this event. This crisis was telegraphed by Moscow’s actions in Georgia, Crimea, and across the wide-ranging disinformation campaigns which it used to undermined public faith in institutions to respond to these kinds of actions. It is no coincidence of timing that Russia invaded Ukraine because Western attention was largely elsewhere despite the crisis on Europe’s doorstep—domestic unrest, the economic impacts of a global pandemic, and the Afghanistan withdrawal. Such circumstances made the decision for Vladimir Putin to commit to this bloody conflict seem to have few, if any significant consequences.
Failure to create those consequences through deepened security ties, clear strategic objectives and cohesive security policy by the West contributed to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Failure to learn from this crisis, failure to act on the standing policy of deterring aggression through broadened, collaborative integration with an eye to the future—not just today’s crisis—will embolden other authoritarians who have observed the Ukraine war and its consequences.
The West does not view the international arena in the same logos as realist actors in Moscow, Beijing, Pyongyang, Tehran, or other un-democratic states. The West knows the benefits of peace and stability achieved through collaborative action. Those authoritarian and autocratic regimes see their need to consolidate and retain power. They have (and will) embody that philosophy to continue to undermine the international order in the manner which suits their security interests, regardless of the domestic impact of their policies. The only means by which the rules-based, liberal order can deter such activities in the future is through deepened security cooperation.
This is the lesson Ukraine offers: failure to integrate more partners within the liberal order by substantive action will embolden malicious actors in another crisis. The only question that remains is whether the rules-based international order will truly commit to cooperative security through constructive efforts after Ukraine shows the alternative.
