Artur Widak/NurPhoto via AP
Ukrainians living in Krakow and their supporters protest in Krakow’s Main Square, on the 218th day of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, September 29, 2022, in Krakow, Poland.
Ukraine’s ally-assisted defense against the Russian invasion is a cause worthy of Western progressives’ support. Like World War II, and unlike subsequent U.S. engagements in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan, it is a “good war” in its attempt to preserve the most basic of aspirations for national territorial integrity and self-government. Yet the longer-term prospects for democracy in Ukraine and the rest of the West depend just as much on the terms of a postwar settlement as did the conflict that ended in 1945.
Unlike other 20th-century conflicts, World War II is remembered as the “Good War.” Even if sentimentalized with a selective memory overlooking carpet-bombing, the use of atomic weapons, and failure to intervene on behalf of the Nazis’ Jewish victims, the Second World War has a rare claim to moral legitimacy in the history of bloodletting. Not only did it rid the world of Hitler and the Japanese imperial menace but it also set the terms for greater stability by refraining from recriminations against the civilian populations of the losing side.
With echoes of the Marshall Plan, the West can not only “build back better” in Ukraine but offer concrete rewards for those choosing a path of peaceful development.
Perhaps most eloquently encapsulated in the call of the Atlantic Charter signed by President Franklin Roosevelt and Prime Minister Winston Churchill in August 1941, for universal “freedom from fear and want,” the war linked mobilization for combat behind a set of ideals worthy of enduring effort. Even more important, those imperfectly applied ideals were sustained by a postwar architecture that included the United Nations, the Marshall Plan, and the Bretton Woods economic order. This in sharp contrast with the uneasy settlement after World War I, when fulfillment of U.S. President Woodrow Wilson’s Fourteen Points claiming to “make the world safe for democracy” was undermined by a revenge cycle among the victors and the continued colonial plunder of the Third World.
What makes the campaign in Ukraine a good war? For one, Vladimir Putin fulfills the role of its chief antagonist with a brutal, uncompromising streak unknown on the European stage since Adolph Hitler. A recent report of the Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights cites a genocidal pattern of destruction against the Ukrainian people, including mass killings, indiscriminate bombardment of residential areas, destruction of vital infrastructure, rape and sexual violence, and forcible transfer of civilians, including children, to Russia.
Secondly, the Western anti-Putin military alliance, albeit riddled with democratic backsliders of its own—from Hungary and Poland to the United States’ own questionable commitment to democratic norms in recent years—has held remarkably firm, including in its commitment to back the resistance of the Ukrainian people with an ever-increasing supply of effective force, and even in the face of inflation spikes and winter fuel crises. Without anyone quite realizing it, “Ukraine” has thus interrupted an extended global decline of the liberal-democratic model. Democratic governments, for once, are putting their money, their commodity chains, as well as their military might where their mouth is.
To be sure, the Ukraine War, despite its devastation of the country’s landscape and economy, will surely prove both far less destructive and decisive than World War II in its ultimate geopolitical impact. In the end, victory for Ukraine and its Western allies will likely mean a political settlement that leaves Crimea in Russian hands, while also demilitarizing a renegotiated border between the two countries, welcoming Ukraine as a permanent member of NATO as well as the EU, and offering some token reparations, in exchange for a step-by-step relaxation of sanctions on the Putin regime. There will be no VE Day, but there will still be plenty to celebrate as democratic forces prove that they can hold the line militarily, while also strengthening their internal ties in all other respects.
Might the campaign to save Ukrainian self-government create an opening for a broader global democratic counteroffensive against threats from new-age strongmen? This last point remains to be addressed by the contending parties. Even when President Zelensky can claim military victory, his country will need to rebuild from the rubble, protect itself from future incursions, and again find a successful niche within the global economy.
The second Summit for Democracy, which President Biden will co-host in March 2023, should be formally dedicated to end-of-war or postwar scenarios. Besides necessary attention to Ukraine, the summit must address the search for peacetime supports for all aspiring democratic regimes. With echoes of the Marshall Plan, the West can not only “build back better” in Ukraine but offer concrete rewards for those choosing a path of peaceful development in a reintegrated world order, including a place for a chastened Russia with or without Putin. A place to start might be the three South American countries—Brazil, Chile, and Bolivia—that recently elected democratic socialist governments in the face of authoritarian opposition. Specific trade and loan guarantees could help secure the new regimes, creating a clear, transnational democratic dividend. Already the Ukraine War is setting one of the world’s most fearsome dictatorships on the defensive. That team effort must continue. What might an updated international charter look like? Whether the Ukraine War truly goes down in history as a “good war” likely depends on the answer.
