STRATEGIC AND GEOPOLITICAL CONSEQUENCES OF PUTIN’S WAR

If Putin were to succeed in gaining full control of Ukraine, there would be significant strategic and geopolitical consequences. The first would be a new front line of conflict in Central Europe. Russian forces would be able to station forces — land, air and missile — in bases in western Ukraine as well as Belarus. Russian forces would thus be arrayed along Poland’s entire 650-mile eastern border, as well as along the eastern borders of Slovakia and Hungary and the northern border of Romania. Moldova would likely be brought under Russian control, too, when Russian troops are able to form a land bridge from Crimea to Moldova’s breakaway province of Transnistria.

The most immediate threat would be to the Baltic states. Russia already borders Estonia and Latvia directly and touches Lithuania through Belarus and through its outpost in Kaliningrad. Once Russia did complete its conquest of Ukraine, that question would acquire new urgency. One likely flash point would  be Kaliningrad.  Up until now Russians have been able to access Kaliningrad only through Poland and Lithuania. Russia would most likely demand for a direct corridor that would put strips of the countries under Russian control. But even that would be just one piece of what would sure be a new Russian strategy to delink the Baltics from NATO by demonstrating that the alliance cannot any longer hope to protect those countries.

Indeed, with Poland, Hungary and five other NATO members sharing a border with a new, expanded Russia, the ability of the United States and NATO to defend the alliance’s eastern flank would be seriously diminished.

The new situation could force a significant adjustment in the meaning and purpose of the alliance.

Ukraine would likely cease to exist as an independent entity. Setting history and sentiment aside, it would be bad strategy for Putin to allow Ukraine to continue to exist as a nation after all the trouble and expense of an invasion. That is a recipe for endless conflict. After Russia installs a government, Ukraine’s new Moscow-directed rulers would seek the eventual legal incorporation of Ukraine into Russia, a process already underway in Belarus. Perhaps, a Ukrainian insurgency would sprout up against Russian domination. But the Ukrainian people cannot be expected to fight a full-spectrum war with whatever they have in their homes. To have any hope against Russian occupation forces, an insurgency would  need to be supplied and supported from neighboring countries. Would Poland play that role, with Russian forces directly across the border? Would the Baltics? Or Hungary? And if they do, would the Russians not feel justified in attacking the insurgents’ supply routes, even if they happen to lie in the territory of neighboring NATO members? It is wishful thinking to imagine that this conflict stops with Ukraine.

The map of Europe has experienced many changes over the centuries. Its current shape reflects the expansion of U.S. power and the collapse of Russian power from the 1980s until now; the next one will likely reflect the revival of Russian military power and the retraction of U.S. influence. If combined with Chinese gains in East Asia and the Western Pacific, it will herald the end of the present order and the beginning of an era of global disorder and conflict as every region in the world shakily adjusts to a new configuration of power.