Unlock Editor's Digest for free
Roula Khalaf, editor of the FT, picks her favorite stories in this weekly newsletter.
The West is toying with the idea of handing Ukraine over to Vladimir Putin. According to calculations by the Kiel Institute for the World Economy, newly promised Western aid to the country fell by almost 90 percent compared to the previous year, even before the US and EU stopped approving further funds this month. Voters, egged on by the pro-Putinist far right, are growing bored with the war in Ukraine. The West is resuming its 15-year appeasement of Putin's aggression after an 18-month hiatus. “If Russia wins” is an increasingly plausible scenario. This is what it could look like:
1. Russia demands a terrible victor's justice system from the Ukrainians. This is not speculation. This is exactly what the Russians have already done in Ukraine: mass executions, castrations, rape, torture and child abductions. Recall Russia’s pre-invasion lists of Ukrainian public figures to be “removed.”
Guerrilla attacks by Ukrainian partisans would trigger further Russian retaliation. Millions more Ukrainians would flee west, this time permanently. Remember that the arrival of 1.3 million refugees in 2015 galvanized Europe's far right.
2. A free state could survive in western Ukraine, writes former British diplomat Peter Ricketts. It could even join the EU. Putin doesn't seem to care much about the region. But it could expect repeated Russian attacks regardless of what “treaties” were signed. Russia has also consistently violated the post-2014 Minsk agreements. A rolling Russian advance would take territory whenever possible.
3. Putin would control almost a quarter of world wheat exports. He has already made the switch from gas as a weapon to food as a weapon.
4. Putin's success would embolden countries interested in invading a neighbor: China, Venezuela, Azerbaijan and, of course, Russia. Dara Massicot of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace: “Every time the Russians think they have 'won' in a conflict under Putin – Georgia in 2008, Ukraine in 2014, Syria in 2015 – they learn something about us.” . They become overconfident in their abilities and in a few years they venture into larger and more daring operations.” The likely creation of a Ukrainian army in exile to carry out operations from European countries would provide further incentive for Russian attacks on these places.
Putin has already built a war economy. His army has improved its methods by decades in less than two years. Its population has shown that it will tolerate even a major war. Why not continue to take bites from neighboring states? Putin's cheerleader Viktor Orbán should point out that Hungary borders Ukraine.
5. A discredited NATO would face its greatest test. NATO and the EU are perhaps the strongest remaining multinational alliances in a nationalist world. Putin wants to prove that they won't last.
If he attacked the Baltics, NATO would probably send troops. But how long? As soon as a few hundred Western soldiers returned dead, right-wing extremist parties would demand “peace”, i.e. unenforceable peace treaties with Putin. Western countries could withdraw on the grounds that they had fulfilled their obligation under Article 5 of the NATO treaty to fight for an ally. Nobody would want to escalate a nuclear war.
Recommended
Article 5 is not sacrosanct. Other international agreements – from the UN Convention against Torture to EU rules on budget deficits – are regularly violated with impunity. The Russian army in Ukraine, Hamas and the Israeli army in Gaza have all recently violated international law on camera. In any case, two pillars of the so-called “international community” – the British government and a future Trump administration – appear to be at their wits’ end with international treaties. Donald Trump has said (according to his former national security adviser John Bolton), “I don’t give a shit about NATO,” and often threatened to leave NATO as president.
Americans and Western Europeans feel immune: Putin won't come for them. No wonder some Eastern European officials are thinking about attacking Russia first rather than just sitting around and waiting for Russia to attack them. A more likely scenario: Many European countries are spending fortunes on defense, reintroducing conscription and investing in nuclear weapons, all while allowing themselves to be tyrannized by Putin.
One option would be to abandon Ukraine. There is an alternative. Russia has a low-tech economy about the size of Canada's. Europeans could help Ukraine stand up to Putin even if Trump withdraws. We would have to build up our defense industry quickly, but the effort required would be small compared to Russia. We would also have to replace American aid to Ukraine – 71.4 billion euros in the first 21 months of the war, according to the Kiel Institute, or 40.8 billion euros on an annual basis. That's 70 euros per year per European NATO citizen. We could find that if we wanted to.
Follow @FTMag Be the first to hear our latest stories and subscribe to our Life and Art podcast wherever you listen