It has been roughly one year since hundreds of thousands of Russian soldiers poured across the Ukrainian border, sparking the largest land war in Europe since the Second World War. In that year, the modern geopolitical landscape has been, at the most, fundamentally redefined. At the very least, it has undergone several transformative shifts that will necessarily profoundly impact the international community in the near future and in the long term.
Russia has proven utterly beyond reproach, rejecting diplomatic engagement wholescale and seeking to subvert potential economic partners. In Asia, China has continued to pursue total strategic and financial dominance in what it perceives as its backyard—the South China Sea. The ongoing consolidation of the Communist Party’s power in the hands of Xi Jinping, in concert with a reaffirmation of aggressive ‘Wolf-Warrior Diplomacy,’ signals a lack of diplomatic goodwill and further rejects the rules-based international order altogether.
The Russo-Ukrainian War has demonstrated that liberal-democratic unity is a powerful force. NATO’s robust support for Kyiv has played an essential role in Ukraine’s battlefield successes. It has proven that Western arms, advisors, and assistance are vital to defeating a Russian foe once viewed as a strategic heavyweight in stark contrast to an internally weak, highly-vulnerable Ukraine. Further, NATO’s affirmation of Article Five and increased support to its easternmost members has undoubtedly checked further revanchist desires on the part of the Kremlin.
Yet, many Americans denounce Western support for Ukraine. They condemn ‘foreign intervention and involvement,’ claim we ought not interfere in wars ‘far from home,’ and claim, as some prominent foreign policy scholars have, that it was NATO expansion promoted by the United States in supposed violation of an ‘agreement’ made in the twilight of the Cold War that indeed catalyzed the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Mearsheimer and Kissinger are wrong.
Robust American support for the defense of liberal-democratic ideals abroad is both practically relevant to national security and a values-based objective fundamentally embedded within the very essence of the United States. Russia, China, and their emerging partners, whether Burma or Iran, constitute pragmatic geopolitical threats to the United States and its allies and challenge an international order teleologically directed at values of liberty and justice.
Therefore, in conjunction with existing and future allies, the United States ought to proactively and robustly strengthen the liberal-democratic international order to stymie the otherwise destabilizing and oppressive actions of its foes, strategic and ideological.
International engagement is complex, yet one could hardly fathom describing the geopolitical landscape as simple and uncomplicated. The denunciations of arms and fiscal aidflows abroad, particularly to Ukraine, miss two critical points. First, the United States can walk and chew gum at the same time. The State Department and Department of Defense are capable of coordinating complex drills with foreign powers across the Pacific at the same time that the Federal Reserve and the FDIC manage the collapse of two major banks. The same is true for defense aid; multiple agencies can operate in parallel to one another without interference, something they necessarily have done for centuries.
Second, the United States ought to spend less now to prevent having to expend more later. Recent discussion by Florida governor, potential 2024 candidate, and foreign policy amateur Ron DeSantis of the Ukraine conflict as a “territorial dispute,” a claim he later walked back, is worrying. Perhaps more importantly, DeSantis claimed the conflict was not a vital security interest for the United States.
However, funding a proxy conflict in Ukraine is preferable to allowing Russia to position its forces directly on the borders of our NATO allies in Eastern Europe. In so doing, the United States decreases the chances of incidental escalation or miscalculation by preventing direct military confrontation. While the stakes are not, by any means, low in Ukraine, turning Ukraine into a defensive bulwark for the West shields the rest of Europe from further Russian aggression.
Ultimately, peace is unlikely to be found at the negotiating table with Putin; even less likely should it be the West forcing Ukraine to the table. When Chamberlain went to Munich in 1938, he returned declaring “peace in our time.” Europe saw one year of peace; Putin’s claim to the dominance of the nominal Russosphere would not disappear. Quite simply, one ought not negotiate with despots whose power is staked upon the revanchist dreams of their people.
Much the same is true for Taiwan. While the People’s Republic of China has not yet lashed out against the island nation to attempt annexation by force, many defense analysts have concluded, rather somberly, that conflict is likely within the decade. Taiwan may seem far-flung, trivial even, to many Americans. Yet, Taiwan is a thriving democracy that, despite decades of military rule, threw off the yoke of dictatorship in favor of democracy and thereafter transformed itself into one of Asia’s most thriving democracies.
The island of Taiwan has never been a part of the People’s Republic of China. Indeed, it possesses a unique Taiwanese identity and history, one defined by embracing democracy and rejecting rule by Beijing, whether by the Dragon Throne or the CCP’s despotic ‘one nation, two systems.’ Taiwan, if a part of the People’s Republic, would suffer the same fate as Hong Kong; civil liberties repressed and arbitrary justice meted out.
The United States has not always been faithful to promoting democracy abroad. Indeed, Washington has what one might classify as a tragically pained record of anti-democratic regime change during the Cold War. However, that is not to say that the United States ought not reaffirm what are, or at the very least are supposed to be, its guiding values; to defend Taiwan’s right to self-determination, self-governance, and democracy in the face of despotism would be a resounding clarification of an American commitment to liberal-democratic values.
Furthermore, defending Taiwan means defending democracy more broadly throughout East Asia. For Beijing to seize Taiwan would enable unchecked Chinese strategic dominance in the South China Sea. Thereafter Beijing would be able to both assert control over a region far exceeding its legitimately drawn international boundaries, threatening commercial activity in other littoral states, especially the Philippines and Vietnam. Additionally, and more critically, China would possess escalation dominance in the region and, therefore, would likely further be able to exert disproportionate military leverage to exact concessions from regional actors.
Therefore, Washington would be well-served to act decisively to allow Taiwan to wholly implement an asymmetric defense method dubbed the ‘porcupine strategy’ whereby extensive defense arms usage would buy Taiwan the necessary time to enable an American-led coalition intervention. Strategic ambiguity does not provide Taiwan the guarantee essential to the embrace of this strategy that alone stands a chance of preserving Taiwan even in the face of all-out military action by Beijing. Therefore, as the façade slips, we ought to match actions with words.
The next decade will be a fraught time globally. However, the United States will not have to weather the storm alone. Indeed, the United States, in a position of global leadership, must necessarily signal to its partners a robust commitment to the defense of liberal democracy wherever threats may arise to elicit in them a similar affirmation of the principles that have bound the proverbial ‘West’ together. Moreover, the United States possesses strategic primacy; realpolitik scarcely has time to lament the wavering of less-powerful actors; decisive and transparent action is essential in a time for potentially world-shaking change.
Insofar as the United States can be confident of its allies’ dedication to fighting for values both fundamental and pragmatic, Russia, China, and the world’s other assorted state manifestations of despotism and tyranny face an unparalleled challenger, one capable of landing proper knockout blows upon the festering sores of modern authoritarianism.
To defend all that we hold dear, for both the immediate reaffirmation and eventual attainment of the essential nature of liberal democracy—the end of history, if you will— the United States, in concert with its allies, must be willing to be diligent and proactive in facing down the varied ideologies of fear that, unchecked, might spread a cloud of hate, oppression, and tyranny; in their place ought—and, in due time, will—sit liberty and justice.