Russia Defeated?

Global instability, a disaster for Europe and a victory for China.

Let us imagine that it is 2027. Russia has been decisively defeated in Ukraine – despite its threats, it balked at using nuclear weapons and accepted that it must surrender all Ukrainian territory it seized. President Vladimir Putin has been overthrown, and a more hard-line, insular, incompetent and autarkic regime that is incapable of projecting power abroad is left standing. With terrible demographics, a collapsed economy and a defeated military, Russia cannot compete with the West for a generation, at least. What now?

Turkey, which had been fighting Russia in the Caucasus, Libya, Syria and Central Asia, is now empowered. Jihadi groups in Libya, backed by Turkey, are on the ascendant. With Libya as their haven, jihadis are pushing hard against European interests in West Africa, targeting Mali, Niger, Chad, Nigeria and other West African countries with attacks against European assets and European-backed governments. Russia is out of the Central African Republic, where jihadis are also empowered. This instability pushes even more migrants out of Africa, first into Libya and then to Italy. People smugglers and jihadi groups profit handsomely. Europe and the US find themselves needing to redouble their efforts in Africa, lick their wounds from past failures, and try again, this time with African populations and European populations that are more hostile to more interventions in Africa.

Turkey gains the initiative in Syria. Without Russian support for President Assad, the jihadist Syrian opposition defeats Syrian government forces, and expands to confront Iran in Iraq and in Lebanon. The civil wars of Iraq, Syria and Lebanon restart the streams of migrants and refugees to Europe seen in 2015. Turkey, naturally, uses that to pressure Europe, helping migrants enter Europe both through its own borders and through Libya.

In the Caucasus, chaos reigns. Bereft of Russian backing, Armenia has to depend more on Iran, or to risk being defeated decisively at the hands of Azerbaijan. Parts of Armenia’s Christian population are put to flight, massacred and subjugated. Georgia attempts to reclaim Abkhazia and South Ossetia, triggering another humanitarian disaster. Chechens, Ingush, Dagestanis and others, who suffered disproportionately large losses during the Ukraine war but got no benefits, alternate between fighting Russian forces to gain independence, fighting each other and turning to jihadi ideology. The Atlantic Council’s dreams of de-colonising Russia begin to come true. Russia, with Iranian backing, sends more forces to repress unrest in the Caucasus, while Turkey steps in to protect its ethnic and religious kin. Turkey and Iran are increasingly in competition over succeeding Russia as security guarantors in the region, risking stoking worse Sunni – Shia violence in other regions.

In Central Asia, the legacy of Stalin’s borders reignites old conflicts, with Kyrgyz, Tajiks, Uzbeks and Turkmen competing with one another. Various minor border wars break out, with China stepping in to guarantee security and prosperity. At a price: China gets unimpeded access to Central Asia’s natural resources, rerouting pipelines and supply routes to benefit its own industries. There is a worse potential case still: Central Asia becomes the scene of conflict between China, Iran and a US-backed Turkey, creating chaos, migration and more resource shortages. In either case, China makes further gains. A weakened, sanctioned and militarily crippled Russia has no choice but to offer the Chinese massive discounts for its resources, helping drive the Chinese economy. The CPC’s digital surveillance dictatorship focuses its efforts on gaining its Lebensraum, with Russian and Iranian assistance and resources.

China continues with its cyberwarfare intended to steal Western technologies, and uses the technology to promote exports that compete with European exports. As the manufacturing superpower for lithium batteries, solar panels and wind turbines, China profits handsomely from the delusions of the “Green New Deal” . China’s trade with developing countries also keeps expanding. And, to boost its economy, it follows its reversal of the one-child policy with active pro-family policies, reducing the demographic pressures it faces from a rapidly aging population.

Europe, for its part, is worn down. The inflationary crisis it is facing eventually leads to a banking crisis, as households and businesses fail to pay their debts. It becomes clear that Italy, Spain, Greece and others have no hope of managing down their debts except through inflating them away. The European Central Bank prints more money, driving more inflation, making the crisis worse. That makes energy even more unaffordable, and with Russian energy still inaccessible, Germany and its industry suffer greatly, pulling the rest of Europe downwards with them. The demand destruction that ensues from prolonged high energy prices raises unemployment even further. Policymakers are paralysed: inflation and rising unemployment mean that all policy choices make at least one of them worse. Saddled by enormous debts, unfavourable demographics, higher unemployment, lower exports, more expensive energy and a constant flow of migrants who do not integrate but, along with the aging population, require more welfare, Germany and Europe keep losing competitiveness against China and the United States. Furthermore, with welfare taking up more and more of European budgets, the ability to provide law enforcement and basic services is reduced. The younger, recently arrived migrants, finding no economic opportunities, an ageing population and weakened security, do what most young men in their situation do: they turn to criminality, drugs and extremism. Some migrants are inspired by successful jihads in the Caucasus, Syria, Libya and sub-Saharan Africa, and embrace terrorism. Right wing parties become more popular, but are thwarted at every turn by their own incompetence, by heavily indebted economies, by an ageing population and by the relics of the European Union’s bureaucracy. The reconstruction of Ukraine is forgotten. The Balkans are out of control, again. Moldova tries to regain control of Transnistria. Romania’s Hungarian minority clamours to re-join the homeland. The EU tries to centralise decisionmaking to deal with these crises, but to the extent it succeeds it creates more resentment, and in any case it mostly fails.

A poorer, weaker and preoccupied Europe harms both British exports as well as London’s role as a financial centre. The flow of migrants is not limited to continental Europe, with record numbers of illegal migrants entering the UK year after year. Higher cost of living, faltering services and communal conflicts all enfeeble Britain and render it more dependent on the US. The US, for its part, refuses to offer Britain a Free Trade Agreement, and the UK, with its problems as bad as Europe’s and in some cases worse, is in no position to compete with China or America for new export markets. It becomes much harder to keep Northern Ireland and Scotland within the Union.

This may seem extreme, but this is only the third worst case scenario for Europe and the world that could emerge from the Russia – Ukraine conflict. The second worst case scenario is one where Russia does use tactical nuclear weapons to ensure that it retains the annexed Ukrainian provinces of Donetsk, Lugansk, Zaporozhye and Kherson. If Russia does not face massive consequences for doing so, Russia’s actions would embolden China, India, Pakistan, Iran and North Korea to use tactical nuclear weapons against their own rivals. The result would be the normalisation of the use of nuclear weapons, and a planetary disaster. And there is a worse possible outcome still: Russia uses nuclear weapons, faces massive consequences and the result is a full scale nuclear exchange with the United States. And remember, Russia could still win this war and keep the provinces it has annexed without resorting to nuclear weapons.

For Western foreign policy on the Ukraine question to be realistic, it is not enough to say that Russia is an aggressor that must be sanctioned economically and defeated militarily. Moralistic bombast is useless here. Rather, we must have an appreciation of the role of other countries, even hostile countries, in preserving order in parts of the world that we do not understand and cannot police. We must appreciate balance, the interests of other powers, and the need to remain engaged with them. We must appreciate the second order consequences of a Western victory, not merely the potential consequences of Ukraine’s defeat. We should be aware that weakening Russia only strengthens Iran, Turkey and China, and creates more instability, not less. We should remember that while Russia most certainly has many grudges against the West, they are nothing compared to those held by China, or Iran, or Turkey.

A realistic appreciation of the failures of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine would lead to the following conclusions: Russia will never transgress against a NATO nation, because its conventional military is third rate, and it cannot directly confront the United States without risking its own annihilation. Therefore, the consequences of Russia gaining control of Russian-speaking parts of Ukraine are much smaller than the consequences of Russia losing. The latter include a resurgent, global, Turkish-backed jihadism, conflicts across Asia and Africa, new migrant flows to Europe, and a China empowered by access to Russian and Central Asian resources. Is empowering China, Turkey, Iran and the global jihadi movement better than letting Russia control Russian speaking territories in Ukraine? I doubt that. Is the West able to guarantee security in Central Asia, Africa the Middle East and the Caucasus if the delicate balance in those regions is upset by Russia’s absence? The West’s experience in Afghanistan, Iraq, the Sahel and Libya does not suggest that. Are we certain that attempting to defeat Russia militarily would not trigger a nuclear conflict? I, for one, am not certain, and Ukraine is not worth finding out.