Sooner or later, imperial metropoles lose their hold over other entities. Some do not try to resurrect a fallen structure, such as Vienna, which became the capital of a core Austria with no pretension to head the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Similarly, the Ottoman Empire disintegrated and Ankara became the capital of a much more manageable Turkey.
Some, however, do try to retake their former borderlands and colonies, as did Nazi Germany. Hitler’s Drang nach Osten for Lebensraum failed in less than a decade.
Soviet Russia in 1918 immediately worked to regain its lost borderlands. By 1922, Russia conquered the Caucasus, Central Asia, Ukraine, and Belarus and made them parts of an expanding Soviet Union. The Red Army tried but could not defeat independent Finland, the Baltic republics, or Poland.
The Great Patriotic War saw Stalin extend Soviet rule to Berlin. The Kremlin under Leonid Brezhnev aspired to control distant places from Somalia to Grenada. But the eight-year struggle to control Afghanistan exhausted Soviet resources and eroded Russia’s imperial will.
By 1991-1992, Russia’s Communist regime was gone and leaders in Moscow, Kyiv, Minsk and Almaty purported to establish a Commonwealth of Independent States, though it was never more than a chimera.
The empires of Britain, the Netherlands, France and Portugal perished between 1945 and 1976, but London, Amsterdam, Paris and Lisbon did not try to reconquer their former holdings. They tried instead to maintain harmonious ties and influence in their old colonies.
The United States, meanwhile, built a globe-encircling empire based mainly on economic clout but reinforced by hundreds of overseas military bases.
Russia’s latest efforts to retake the former vassal states of its “near abroad” will probably fail. Having analyzed more than 1,000 years of earlier cases, Alexander Motyl has projected “The Inevitable Fall of Putin’s New RussianEmpire” (Foreign Policy, November 5) that if Russia does not conquer Ukraine, Putin and his regime could perish.
From Chechnya to Vladivostok, so-called republics within the Russian Federation may secede. Already just a fraction of the former Soviet Union in population and territory, Russia could lose much more of the domain it has absorbed since the 14th century.
The shrunken domain, like post-imperial Austria, could become more prosperous than ever, but it might also follow Turkey — still dreaming of an empire but ill-equipped for the challenges and opportunities of the 21st century.
Without Ukraine, Russia has no empire. And without an empire, Russia as most people know it may not be Russia.
The Red Army vanquished independent Ukraine in the chaos of 1918-1921. Stalin’s agricultural policies killed several million Ukrainians in the 1930s. So loathed was Soviet rule that some Ukrainians fought with the Germans against Stalin’s regime. Not surprisingly, in 1991 most Ukrainians voted for independence from the Kremlin.
Russian strategists in the 1990s claimed the Kremlin had the right and duty to assist “compatriots” in the “near-abroad” of former Soviet borderlands such as Ukraine. This imperial outlook became stronger as the “Orange Revolution” Ukrainians worked to remove Soviet-style leaders and to join the West.
Alarmed, in 2014 Russian President Vladimir Putin sent forces, with and without military uniforms, to stage plebiscites in Crimea and Donbas to justify Russian annexation of the peninsula and four Donbas territories.
It has not been cheap for David to fight Goliath. Ukrainians lost 22,000 fighting the Russians in the Donbas from 2014 to 2022. Resisting Putin’s efforts to take Kyiv and the rest of Ukraine has probably cost the lives of at least another 100,000 Ukrainians in 2022-2023 (both civilian and military) and, most likely. an even larger number of Russians — US estimates in August suggested at least 120,000 dead.
Some 16 million Ukrainian lives have been shattered as they were compelled to pick up and move within Ukraine, or seek shelter in Poland and elsewhere. In just two years the average age of a Ukrainian fighter rose from the low 30s to low 40s — grandfathers as well as fathers are at the front. The damage to human lives in dead, wounded, and displaced can be valued at $2 trillion.
Besides damage to human lives, there has been great destruction to property and to the natural environment. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has estimated it will cost $1 trillion to reconstruct buildings and infrastructure crippled by the war.
Damage to the land, waterways, air, and wildlife is beyond calculation but could readily cost another $1 trillion to mitigate.
The bottom line is that Russia probably owes Ukraine some $4 trillion for damage to lives, property, and the environment, and since Russia’s GDP is just over one trillion dollars, war reparations would impose a huge burden. There are less than half a trillion dollars in Russian assets frozen in the West, though Russia has a substantial income from oil and gas.
If Goliath slays David, Russia will pay no reparations and Putin will not be forced to face the International Criminal Court. The West will mount some kind of Marshall Plan, but the amounts donated will probably be too small to foster a Ukrainian miracle like the European recovery of the 1950s.
CEPA has analyzed the possible results if the US and Europe stop supporting Ukraine, and the consequences would be global.
Imagine if crucial congressional votes fail. Out of ammunition, money, time and options, the pressure would be on President Zelenskyy or his replacement to accept a China-brokered ceasefire.
Ukrainians would be traumatized and furious at Western betrayal, and, without external security guarantees, Ukraine would be uninvestable for the private sector. Dreams of post-war rebuilding would wither and anti-corruption reforms and institution-building fall victim to internal divisions.
The United States in 2023 is still the world’s major superpower — still with the world’s largest and most creative economy and finest armed forces, it’s also the leader in hard science and popular culture.
It remains easily the largest military contributor to Ukraine’s defense and while Europe has now overtaken it in total pledged funds, which include financial and humanitarian commitments, it’s questionable whether the continent would hold together for Ukraine if Washington pulls back. It seems entirely possible that Europe would splinter, with Hungary and other NATO members seeking deals with Russia. The trust would fray and old rivalries re-emerge.
Europe would become easy prey for Beijing’s divide-and-rule tactics and the Chinese Navy would be given the green light to blockade Taiwan. Without strong US support, Taiwan would then risk crumbling without a serious fight.
The US would go from being the leader of a globe-spanning web of alliances, with a dominant position in international rule-based organizations, to being vulnerable even in its own hemisphere. It would lose allies, clout and the credibility needed to remain the indispensable nation for world order.
None of these outcomes is inevitable, but each becomes more likely if US efforts to sustain Ukraine and other democracies against powerful aggressors are torpedoed.
Walter Clemens is an Associate at Harvard’s Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies and Professor Emeritus of Political Science, at Boston University His most recent book is Blood Debts: ‘What Do Putin and Xi Owe Their Victims?’ (Washington DC: Westphalia Press, 2023).
Europe’s Edge is CEPA’s online journal covering critical topics on the foreign policy docket across Europe and North America. All opinions expressed on Europe’s Edge are those of the author alone and may not represent those of the institutions they represent or the Center for European Policy Analysis. CEPA maintains a strict intellectual independence policy across all its projects and publications.
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