The following is presented as part of The Columbian’s Opinion content, which offers a point of view in order to provoke thought and debate of civic issues. Opinions represent the viewpoint of the author. Unsigned editorials represent the consensus opinion of The Columbian’s editorial board, which operates independently of the news department.
In the 1950s and 1960s, revolutions started by nascent independence movements in Hungary and Czechoslovakia prompted the Soviet Union to unleash its military might to squash them.
Western countries led by the United States decried the action but did little about it. Under post-World War II agreements among the nations that defeated Nazi Germany, Eastern Europe was regarded as a Soviet sphere of influence.
But 21st century Europe differs from 20th century Europe. As a result, when President Vladimir Putin launched his effort to undermine the independence of Ukraine, President Joe Biden was able to orchestrate a broad Western response.
Indeed, about the only similarity between the current situation and the inaction of 20th century presidents is the caution Biden and NATO are showing in seeking to avoid a direct military confrontation with Russia, lest it spark a Europewide nuclear conflict.
Underlying the current situation is the fact that, when Eastern European countries broke free from Soviet domination and the Soviet Union itself collapsed in the early 1990s, its successor — Russia — lost the ability to dominate countries outside its immediate borders.
At the same time, the democracies of Western Europe spread their influence eastward into the resulting void. In the aftermath of the Soviet Union’s collapse, they admitted countries like Hungary, Poland, Slovakia and the Czech Republic and the three former Soviet Baltic republics — Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania — as members of key alliances, the military NATO alliance and the European Union.
That very loss of power is, of course, one of the major factors motivating Putin, who has called the collapse of the Soviet Union “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century.”
As was the case with his invasions of Georgia and Crimea, he seeks to restore a semblance of the Soviet empire by reestablishing Russian authority over Ukraine, however he has defined his unjustified decision to unleash the Russian army. The one-time Soviet republic, which declared its independence in 1991, has resisted Russian efforts to restore its primacy, especially over the past decade, and is doing its best to remain independent.
The underlying irony is that, in his zeal to keep the West from bringing Ukraine into NATO, something that was never going to happen, Putin has strengthened the Western alliance’s position in other countries on Russia’s periphery.
In recent weeks, the United States has moved thousands of troops, eight fighter jets and other warplanes into Poland, Slovakia, Romania and the Baltic countries, placing them far closer to Russia than they would have been before Putin launched the current crisis.
How dangerous to overall European peace the current conflict becomes will depend to a substantial degree on how far Putin goes in seeking to subdue that country and whether he launches cyber- or other attacks beyond its borders.
It also will hinge on how far Biden and the United States’ European allies go to make Putin pay “swift and severe” costs for attacking Ukraine — and how far Putin’s reaction goes.
Already, however, it is clear the Russian president is confronting a far different and more resistant Europe than the one his Soviet predecessors faced.
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