For some countries, a military or political defeat is so unbearable and humiliating that they will do anything to change what they consider an unjust international order. One such revisionist power was Egypt, which was determined to reverse its defeat by Israel in 1967 and regain the Sinai Peninsula. They eventually achieved this, but only after President Anwar Sadat, during his visit to Israel, accepted the peace strategy. However, the most infamous example is Germany in the 1930s, which systematically undermined the European order created after World War I.
History shows that revisionist forces can be disciplined in two ways. They can be countered with equal force, such as that which enabled Europe's conservative powers to defeat
Napoleon in 1815 and the allies to defeat Germany in World War II. Or they can reach the limits of their military and economic strength, as was the case with the USSR at the time of its collapse.
At that point, the country has a choice. It can, as Germany did, decide to accept the international order. Or it can follow the path chosen by President Putin's Russia and develop a new strategy of revanchism - in this case to change the order created after the defeat of the USSR in the Cold War.
While Putin is undoubtedly the main driver of this strategy, it has been further fueled by Ukraine's pursuit of closer ties with the EU - a move generally welcomed by Europe and the US. Putin knew that he could use divisions along ethnic and religious lines in Ukraine (the eastern region is mostly Russian and Orthodox and loyal to the Kremlin) to undermine those efforts. Europe seems to have underestimated Russia's determination to pursue what it considers its core interest in Ukraine.
In the struggle for influence in Ukraine, Putin cannot afford to lose. For the West, the principle that borders should not be drawn by force is of key political importance - and indeed it is the basis of a civilized world order. However, both the US and Europe have made it clear that Ukraine's sovereignty is not worth suffering, and the EU is not even inclined to follow the US in imposing tougher sanctions.
By annexing Crimea, Putin gained an advantage at the beginning of the crisis. Now in Ukraine's eastern Donbas region, he is deftly forcing a divided and risk-aware West to choose between war and accommodation. And although neither of those two options is particularly attractive, the dangers of a war with Russia cannot be overestimated. After all, in such a conflict, both sides would possess a large nuclear arsenal. Therefore, as Sir Adrian Bradshaw, NATO's second in command, said recently, war can only be considered if Russia attacks a NATO country - which Putin is unlikely to do, even if he steps up his provocations, including and cross-border kidnappings. Even then there would be reason for hesitation.
The aversion of the Western powers to war is risky in itself. Russia's blatant disregard for the 1994 Budapest Memorandum - in which it, the US and Britain pledged that Ukraine's territorial integrity would be respected if it surrendered its nuclear weapons - sends a dangerous message to nuclear powers like Iran, North Korea, India and Pakistan. They know that if Ukraine had nukes, it would almost certainly still have Crimea.
However, it is unlikely that the West's attitude towards the war in Ukraine will change. And the sanctions, although they hit the Russian economy, proved inadequate to break Putin's will. That leaves only accommodation - which practically means giving legitimacy to the Kremlin's claim to govern Ukraine and, perhaps, the rest of the "close neighborhood."
According to that scenario, Russia would not try to rule Ukraine directly, but would demand that Kyiv refrain from joining hostile blocs and alliances. As then-President Dmitry Medvedev said in 2008, "no country would be happy to have a military bloc approaching its borders to which it does not belong." If the West agrees to this key point, Putin will want to end the current war, which the Russian economy is losing badly. .
However, the Kremlin-instigated crisis would not be over. Putin's revisionist agenda extends far beyond Ukraine to include the "Finlandization" of other nearby states, including EU members Hungary and Romania.
To stop Putin's dangerous balancing act on the brink of war, Western leaders will have to find a way to begin strategic cooperation with Russia. They must come up with a grand peace settlement that addresses the fundamental issues of global security norms and arms control that have so far held back such cooperation.
Russia, of course, is no longer a global superpower. However, it still has the designation and characteristics of a great power: a rich culture and history, a large area, large nuclear capabilities, strong influence throughout Eurasia, and the capacity to influence many conflicts. Any realistic grand settlement would have to take this into account.
As for Ukraine, it is difficult to define the way forward - especially because of the conflicting experiences of buffer states in the past. Kaiser Wilhelm II invaded neutral Belgium to start World War II. Hitler swallowed up Austria and Czechoslovakia when it suited him, but Austria's neutrality after 1955 was enough to satisfy the two Cold War blocs, and now it is part of the EU.
Similarly, Jordan has been an informal buffer state between Israel and the rest of the Arab world since 1967. Any future Palestinian state would have to take a similar position, as Israel would never accept its accession to a hostile military alliance.
The Franco-German plan for Ukraine calls for a demilitarized zone between government forces and separatists, and granting what French President Francois Hollande described as "fairly strong" autonomy to Russian-speaking eastern regions. In other words, it fulfills Russia's vision of a federalized Ukraine, with the Russia-oriented east having a say in foreign affairs and security matters.
However, such a plan cannot be counted on to curb Putin's broader revisionist ambitions. Only a united and resolved West can do that.
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