Edward Luttwak
All through European history, the intervals of peace, during which reconstruction and progress overcame the ravages of war, were secured by a temporary equilibrium between the Great Powers of the day.
It is obvious that there was no such equilibrium on 23 February 2022, when Russian columns started rolling towards Kyiv, and Russian President Vladimir Putin had just described Ukraine not merely as Russian, but as the homeland of the very first Russian state: Kievan Rus’.
That warning of an imminent invasion was quickly confirmed by satellite photographs of long columns of Russian armoured vehicles preparing to advance. It was then that the US President, the French President and the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, together with every other active European ally, had an opportunity to arrange an emergency meeting and issue a categorical warning to Russia, dovetailed with a convincing promise of maximum support to Ukraine.
There had been plenty of time to prepare for that moment — in fact eight years, given thinly disguised Russian soldiers had first infiltrated and then invaded the two Russian-speaking regions of Donetsk and Luhansk in April 2014, when Crimea was also seized.
But when the moment came, and Russian tanks rolled into Ukraine, there was no cohesive and determined power ready to respond quickly and effectively. Nato had done just that several times during the Cold War, by promptly reinforcing threatened allies with thousands of air-lifted troops from the so-called “Allied Command Europe Mobile Force”.
That, however, was the old, pre-enlargement Nato, which was still a veritable military alliance of countries capable of defending themselves, and help weaker allies in trouble, and whose chronically weak Mediterranean member states, with the most resplendent uniforms and least combat strength, had no Russian troops on their borders.
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