A tectonic shock rocked the world yesterday morning, one whose shockwaves could spark a chain reaction that will change the face of the world order founded on the collapse of the former Soviet Union in 1991. If in previous crises (including Georgia in 2008 and the Crimean Peninsula and eastern Ukraine in 2014), Kremlin leader Vladimir Putin held himself somewhat in check in his attempts to challenge American hegemony in central and eastern Europe, this time he has veered from his customary tactics and is waging a full-scale invasion into a sovereign nation, much like the one the Soviets waged in Afghanistan in December 1979.
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Putin is doing all this to bring down the Kyiv government and trample Ukraine's sovereign independence. This entails a crude, violent message that sends the signal that Russia's goal is not restricted to gaining control over all of Ukraine, but is to threaten other independent nations such as Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, and Poland, which used to be part of the Soviet sphere of influence but have now cast their lots with the West.
This massive action is designed to stop these countries from settling into the western bloc and force them to adopt a neutral stance, such as the one Finland was compelled to take during the Cold War.
In other words, we are talking about a watershed moment that, in Putin's eyes, should be a catalyst to make Moscow the dominant power in Europe and travel back through time to its glory days as the hegemony of the region that wielded power far beyond the borders of Russia.
To understand the Kremlin's decision to turn away from its original operational compass, it would be appropriate to shine a light on the American superpower, whose weakness and failures in Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan gave Russia's ruler a window of opportunity to destroy the foundations on which the norms of legitimate conduct in our era were based.
Specifically, the Kremlin's aspiration to turn back the clock and challenge the world and European order gradually turned from a long-held vision to an actual achievable goal as the astonished weakness of the 46th US president became clear after he swore, from the day he was sworn in, to shelve the option of military force as an American tool of strategy.
The US turning inward and rejects its leadership role are what prompted the Russian opponent to swoop down on the prey it has long been eyeing in Ukraine.
The fact that the first round of sanctions announced by the White House was ineffectual gave the Kremlin a green light to continue its aggression and even take steps toward a broad, brutal escalation. Biden's speech on Wednesday, in which he offered Moscow a package of banking and financial sanctions, was light years away from sending a message of determination in the face of a growing threat.
Moreover, in the polar opposite of the certain leadership that American hawks displayed time and again during the Cold War, which enlisted the NATO allies for daring actions to stop the Soviets (such as the air train that eventually broke the ground siege the Soviets were waging on West Berlin in 1948), it now appears that the nominal top of the pyramid of world power is being forced to take increasingly more stringent punitive steps than its European partners like Britain under Boris Johnson or a few other EU leaders.
Therefore, even though Biden announced an addition, broader series of painful sanctions, one might ask what tools of leverage and effective enforcement the fading hegemony can still use.
Indeed, gone are the days in which the only superpower led a united coalition that operated successfully in Serbia, Bosnia, and Libya. We need to ask, now that the hawk has turned into a pet, if the Kremlin might be tempted to initiate even more ambitious moves and try to push Europe back to where it was at the start of the Cold War, when it ruled the satellite states in eastern and central Europe with an iron fist. Time will tell. In any case, it's clear that the time has come for the resident of the Oval Office to get up off the mat and show himself to be a leader before it's too late.
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