Alec Soltes
As the Ukraine war approaches its fourth year, the geopolitical consequences of Russia’s invasion continue to reverberate. Global stability, trade networks, and the prevailing liberal democratic order have been shaken. While the system holds, its future depends on whether or not it can adapt to the challenges thrust upon it by the war. The war presents several lessons at the onset of 2026: the limits of offensive realism as a theory, the fragility of shallow interdependence, the importance of an increasingly assertive Global South, and the pressing need for evolution and adaptation.
Strengths and Limits of Offensive Realism
Offensive realism is a theory in international relations that posits that the global international order is anarchic, that states are rational actors, and that states pursue a maximalist approach to secure what they consider to be their core national interests. In other words, the nature of the international system forces states to do whatever they can to ensure security, hence the ‘offensive’ qualifier, where defensive realism makes theoretical space for balancing and other status quo-maintaining behaviors.
The theory predicts the outcome of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in part. Russia’s policy toward Europe has perennially sought to expand westward and anchor itself in defensible borders. Russia’s current western border is virtually impossible to defend effectively. The Soviet Union needed Ukraine’s anchoring of the Carpathian Mountains in the west as well as a military presence in Belarus and modern-day Kaliningrad on the Baltic Sea to maximize its security. After both Belarus and Ukraine became independent, Moscow was faced with a serious geographic vulnerability. It sought to address this vulnerability specifically with Ukraine first by annexing Crimea and supporting separatist groups in the Donbas in 2014.
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