(Brave?) New World

The “strategic pause” we experienced after the fall of the Berlin Wall is consigned to history and there is no going back. The events of the last twelve months are just a prelude to many different sequels

Vladimir Putin probably “only” wanted to expand and strengthen his power. Inadvertently, however, he has set in motion processes which he can clearly no longer control, and which will probably not only eventually sweep him off the Kremlin throne but also strip Russia of the remnants of its imperial status. As a side-effect, the war unleashed by the Moscow camarilla will certainly bring about a profound transformation of the entire global order. Before we can grasp its final shape, it is worth noting what has changed in the international security environment during these twelve dramatic months. It seems that the good old steam engine of history has turned into a superfast TGV.

Two Plus Two

Many experts admittedly knew it beforehand but the community was still taken by surprise. The first, fundamental lesson of the morning of 24 February 2022 is: nations are not always ruled by rational politicians. If Putin were rational, if he had been able to set adequate goals for his intelligence services, read their reports and draw conclusions, this war would never have happened.

In the weeks leading up to the attack many analysts who, after all, have much less access to information than the Russian dictator, were saying things that Putin should have known. For example, that Russia is in fact much weaker than is commonly believed, militarily and economically, and especially technologically. Furthermore, that Ukraine, on the contrary, is militarily stronger and far better prepared than in 2014, when it lost the Crimea and some of its lands in the east of the country. And finally, that the West, despite its internal disagreements and the long-standing insidious effect of Russian propaganda, is likely to react to a potential attack much more strongly than it did six years earlier. It was easy to infer, not from declarations but from actual preventive actions, and to justify: many politicians and experts in many NATO and EU countries were fed up with the Russian diversion openly practised in their backyards, from interference in electoral processes to physical attacks on civilian and military infrastructure. The conclusion was simple: with military aggression, Moscowwill definitely lose far more in many ways than it stands to gain.