Putin’s invasion of Ukraine is terrifying. It is also a chance to think about war differently.
The world cannot leave this aggression unmet. This is a first step. Russia has other bordering nations that it will think it also needs to neutralize. There couldn’t be a clearer parallel to the lead-up to WWII.
But neither can the world survive a hot war. When WWII began, there were no civilization-ending weapons. Now there are weapons that would end civilization a thousand times over.
Yet what’s also different today is the nature of interdependence. No one lives far, culturally, from anyone else anymore.
When I first traveled to the Soviet Republics in the early 1980s, the further east I went, the greater the gap, culturally. Eastern Europe knew my culture, sort of. In Ukraine, not at all. I used to give packets of gum to kids when I would travel east. By Vinnytsia, the kids didn’t even know what the packets were. Today, that’s completely different. The last time I was in Bulgaria, the students I spoke to could have been students at Harvard.
This interdependence is a lever because Putin’s power domestically is not guaranteed. The oligarchs have been neutralized. The workers too. But a growing and eager middle and upper-middle-class just want to get ahead even more. And the links and connections to the world —…
