The Future of Democracy After Russia’s Invasion-2
By Lucan Alumad Way
Professor of political science at the University of Toronto. He is coauthor (with Steven Levitsky) of Revolution and Dictatorship: The Violent Origins of Authoritarian Durability (forthcoming).
All this changed on 24 February 2022. Two factors made Russia’s invasion a watershed moment in Europe’s battle for democracy: the stark moral clarity of Ukraine’s cause and the existential security threat presented by a newly aggressive Russia. There have been few conflicts in recent history that have been so completely black and white.
At first, in the weeks before the invasion, a number of commentators echoed Putin’s argument that aggression toward Ukraine was a product of NATO expansion.15 While the Russian occupation of Crimea had already effectively taken NATO membership off the table for Ukraine, Putin was initially successful at tapping into some international commentators’ disagreements with NATO policies and expansion.
This framing, however, did not survive the invasion. In a speech a couple of days before the attack, Putin discussed Ukraine in starkly imperialist terms, describing the country as “entirely created by Russia.” In contrast to previous endeavors, Russian involvement has been transparent and its goal—to replace a democratically elected government with a puppet regime—obviously and brutally autocratic.
Russia’s ferocious attacks on civilian targets, including a maternity hospital in Mariupol on March 9, further amplified international outrage. In the first two weeks of the war, Russia launched more than fifty missile attacks on Ukraine each day. The impact of these actions has been amplified by the fact that Russia has attacked an open society filled with Western journalists. In stark contrast to Russian military actions in Chechnya in 1999–2000 and Syria beginning in 2015, nearly every military atrocity in Ukraine has been and will be extensively covered in international media.
Finally, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky’s unparalleled bravery and masterful appeals to domestic and foreign audiences, honed by years on television, have helped to unify Ukrainians and most of the world against Russia. His courageous decision to remain in Kyiv helped to inspire European politicians and the general public to make the sacrifices necessary to punish Russia.
Russia’s disregard for norms of international sovereignty also sparked intense fears for European security. In a speech on the eve of the Russian invasion, Putin explicitly attacked “the entire system of international relations” and reminded the world that “Russia remains one of the most powerful nuclear states.” In turn, many European leaders have focused on the imminent dangers that Putin poses.
After the invasion, German chancellor Olaf Scholz argued that “in attacking Ukraine, Putin doesn’t just want to eradicate a country from the world map, he is destroying the European security structure we have had in place since Helsinki.”18 Putin’s assault struck a nerve in a part of the world that had repeatedly suffered Russian and Soviet military aggression since World War II, including invasions of Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968.
In stark contrast to the Russian actions of 2008 and 2014, there has been nothing ambiguous or particularly “hybrid” about today’s massive conventional assault on one of the largest countries in Europe. Furthermore, while previous Russian military incursions had targeted regions far from the European center, Russia’s invasion was right on NATO’s doorstep. This fact—together with the sheer scale of the invasion—has presented a much more obvious threat to European security than anything Russia has done since the end of the Soviet empire.
A United Response
The combination of moral clarity and existential peril proved a potent mix in motivating European powers to act, marking a profound shift in their policies toward Russia. Days after the invasion, an erstwhile fragmented and slow-moving EU responded with a barrage of measures that constituted the largest package of penalties ever imposed on a single country. Within a week of the invasion, the EU—together with the United States—had instituted the equivalent of financial “shock and awe.”
Numerous Russian and later Belarusian banks were denied access to the SWIFT financial-transactions tool, a move that dramatically isolated the Russian economy. The EU and the United States also banned dealings with the Russian Central Bank, which made it impossible for the Russian government to access a significant portion of the financial reserves that it had set aside to blunt the impact of international sanctions.
The United States, the EU, and Canada imposed individual sanctions against Putin, Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov, and hundreds of Belarusian and Russian elites. In turn, hundreds of foreign companies have begun to leave Russia —including firms in energy (BP, Exxon Mobil, Shell), media (Walt Disney), financial services (Citigroup, Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs, Western Union), manufacturing (Caterpillar), and travel and logistics (Hyatt, UPS, several airlines), as well as huge international chains such as Ikea, McDonalds, and Starbucks.
Western companies that had long been an integral part of Russian middle-class life suddenly halted their operations. Before the invasion, Moscow looked like a prosperous European city. In the span of just a few weeks, the invasion has threatened to erase decades of economic progress.
The shift in the EU’s stance reflected rapid changes within individual European countries sparked by the invasion. The most important and radical transformation occurred in Germany, which had historically close ties to Russia and a longstanding commitment to pacifism since World War II.
At first, the German government seemed reluctant to provide significant support to Ukraine. In the run-up to the invasion, Berlin offered to send five-thousand helmets—a move that provoked Kyiv’s mayor to ask if the German government would also provide pillows. Germany subsequently halted the Nord Stream 2 pipeline between Russia and Germany on February 22.
Then, three days after the invasion began, the German Bundestag met in an extraordinary Sunday session to inaugurate a fundamental transformation of Germany’s role in the world. With Ukrainian flags flying outside the Reichstag, Chancellor Scholz announced that Germany would impose severe sanctions on Russia and provide lethal military assistance to Ukraine.
Citing the “unscrupulousness of Putin, the blatant injustice, the pain of the Ukrainians,” as well as Putin’s efforts “to create a new order in Europe,” Scholz’s government agreed to send Ukraine a thousand antitank weapons and five-hundred surface-to-air missiles from German military stocks as soon as possible and to increase military spending by 100 billion euros, which would make Germany the world’s third-biggest defence spender.
Similar shifts rippled across Europe. Traditionally neutral Finland and Sweden decided to provide lethal weapons to Ukraine and announced plans to increase defense spending. Italy, which is heavily dependent on Russian energy, came out in support of sanctions despite the fact that three of the ruling coalition’s parties had earlier pursued closer ties to Moscow.
Shortly after the invasion, the Italian government seized villas and yachts worth 143 million euros from five sanctioned Russian oligarchs. Meanwhile, British prime minister Boris Johnson has frozen the assets of numerous Russian oligarchs and fast-tracked legislation to target Russian money laundering. Finally, Switzerland, which remained neutral during World War II, adopted EU sanctions and froze Russian assets in the country.
Such a unified Western response has had an important impact on the trajectory of the war. The Ukrainian military has benefited significantly from weapons supplied by Europe and the United States. Ukrainians’ brave and effective resistance and Western military support have allowed the country to stand its ground against a much larger and better-equipped army for much longer than anyone expected.
Simultaneously, the unprecedented sanctions have had a swift and severe impact on the Russian economy. The Russian stock market shut down for fear of a massive selloff. As of mid-March, the value of the Russian ruble had dropped by 50 percent. Overall, the sanctions were expected to cause a “gigantic, transformational downturn” in the Russian economy, with a projected contraction of 15 percent in 2022—a decline that would wipe out about a third of the economic growth since Putin took power in 1999.
This could undercut a critical source of public support for Putin, whose enormously high approval ratings have been grounded in his perceived ability to turn the Russian country around after the economic collapse of the 1990s.
A word of caution is in order. If the war drags on, the West will face challenges in sustaining a unified response over the long haul. This will be a marathon, not a sprint. Maintaining a united front will not be easy. After the shock of Russian aggression wears off, Europeans are likely to become less patient with economic sacrifices.
Furthermore, the massive influx of fleeing Ukrainians is certain to disrupt Europe’s political landscape. Overstretched budgets and popular fears of Ukrainian competition for jobs and welfare benefits will eventually test European generosity toward the refugees. Nevertheless, the Western response to the invasion has been far more unified and significant than anyone expected. This united front could be sustained by continued Russian atrocities in Ukraine as well as the endemic security threat posed by an aggressive Russian military.
Courtesy: Journal of Democracy
