Ben Roy analyzes the effects of the war in Ukraine on Ukraine, Russia, Europe, and the US, arguing that the failure to stop the war strikes at the very heart of US hegemony and the current geopolitical system.
The utopia of a targetted promotion or targetted information is the same as that of the targetted missile: it knows not where it lands and perhaps its mission is not to land but, like the missile, essentially to have been launched (as its name indicates). In fact, the only impressive images of missiles, rockets or satellites are those of the launch. It is the same with promotions or five year plans: the campaign launch is what counts, the impact or the end results are so uncertain that one frequently hears no more about them.
— The Gulf War, is it really taking place?, Jean Baudrillard
Outside of a few extreme and unlikely scenarios, Ukraine is fast becoming a frozen conflict. Or, put another way: the invasion was launched, the counter-attack was launched, and now both sides can find no way to land safely.
And though we live in the Information Age, we are not immune to propaganda. Our couches are closer to the frontlines than ever before, and yet the terror hides in plain sight. War correspondents post real-time updates of the latest battlefield developments on X and Telegram. Soldiers upload body-cam footage from the day’s fighting. Refugees stream their mass migration. One would think we’d all get wise from this, but perhaps, rather than making us more attuned to the naked horror of war, being inundated with too much information has overwhelmed our hearts and desensitized us to the pain of others. We struggle to register the human cost of armed conflict. As French philosopher Jean Baudrillard put it, “[raw] information is like an unintelligent missile which never finds its target.”
For the purposes of this discussion, we may define ‘propaganda’ as the weaponization of information for political ends. Its aim is to mislead, distract, and cloud the minds of those who consume it. We can see on both sides of the war in Ukraine it is being used to justify the continuation of the war. We find that despite two years of bitter stalemate and slaughter, despite a notable lack of clear and achievable end conditions, a majority of Ukrainians and Russians still support the war, and a majority of Europeans and Americans support continuing to send military aid to Ukraine. While there are sizable numbers on both sides who think peace negotiations should begin as soon as possible, in most places they remain a minority. Pro-war narratives dominate the public discourse. Certainly, the views of those who prefer immediate peace are not represented by these countries’ current heads of state.
Evidently, Ukraine, its allies, and Russia have all succeeded in using propaganda to marshal and maintain public support for the fighting. Do you remember the Ghost of Kyiv, the fighter pilot famous for winning dogfights with Russian jets in the early days of the Russian invasion? He never existed. Or how Russia used its network of cyber trolls to obfuscate its involvement in the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 after its annexation of Crimea in 2014?
I am not trying to draw some kind of false equivalency between the two sides—I am not interested in joining that debate. Quibbling over which is the right side of the frontlines to be on distracts from the more pressing issue of how we can stop the waves of death these frontlines represent. Any argument that tries to justify death and destruction on moral grounds is morally bankrupt. Laid bare, war is a euphemism for mass murder. We get nearer to peace when we name all justifications for war as murderous propaganda.
Propaganda is nothing new to modern warfare. Neither are years of stalemate, grueling trench warfare, and the clash of huge mechanized armies. In fact, these are all things the war in Ukraine shares in common with an earlier conflict: World War One. Outside of obvious technological advances (e.g. GPS and drone warfare), the settings under which Ukrainians and Russians are fighting and dying today are not dissimilar from the conditions under which Wilfred Owen, a British soldier and poet, fought and died on the Western Front of “the War to End All Wars.” Owen famously dubbed the idea that war can be noble “the old Lie,” focusing his critique on a line from the Roman military officer and poet Horace, who infamously called dying for your country “a sweet and fitting [thing].” Those who survive war can glorify what they have seen and done, pretending that a battle is not just a series of desperate murders taking place in close succession and proximity. They must, after all, find a way to move on. But if the dead could speak, would those who died fighting tell you it was worth it in the end?
Maybe war is still occasionally necessary—war that is a last resort, that is truly defensive in nature, that is centered around the question of survival and not merely domination. But in our world today, it seems that, while amends have not been made for the previous war, every next war is supposed to be the last one. That lie can only be told so many times before people start to get wise to it. Whether we look decades, centuries, or millennia into the past, we see most years are filled with the senseless slaughter and rampage of war. Our sense of humanity begs us to ask: are we any closer to creating resilient and lasting peace? Surely there is a greater need for peace than war could ever claim.
The region has already lost.
The latest estimate is that a total of around one million people have been killed or wounded in the war in Ukraine. That is a staggering number and certainly constitutes a major tragedy for both Ukraine and Russia. The slaughter of hundreds of thousands of human beings is a crime against humanity, and so is manipulating public opinion to support its continuation. My critique applies to the Western powers and Russia alike, who I will show are both complicit in damaging the region and its peoples for their own geopolitical aims.
In his speech announcing the invasion of Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin laid out several reasons he believed it was necessary to initiate what he termed a “special military operation” in Ukraine: (1) to “demilitarize and denazify” Ukraine; (2) to prevent a genocide of Russian-speakers in Ukraine’s eastern regions; (3) to check NATO expansion along Russia’s borders. I will show, however, that these justifications have no standing, and that Russia’s efforts have actually backfired in several key ways, all to the detriment of the Russians and Russian-speaking people in the region.
(1) The fastest way to “denazify” Ukraine and force it into a position of military neutrality vis-à-vis Russia was, as Putin saw it, to initiate regime change as quickly as possible. In order to deal a quick and decisive blow to the Ukrainian government, Russian forces rushed to take Kyiv in the initial assault. But their attempt was unsuccessful, and they were quickly driven back to the Russian and Belarussian border in the north by a Ukrainian counter-offensive. Now that the conflict has settled into a stalemate, there is little hope that Russia will be able to achieve anything quickly. In addition, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s success in rallying Ukrainian-allied armed forces to repel the Russian incursion outside of Kyiv bolstered his public image early in the war, and has proven a major accomplishment that has allowed him to remain in power, despite the loss of control over other Ukrainian territory. In this way, Russian plans for regime change in Kyiv have backfired.
(2) As a result of the failure of the initial assault on Kyiv, Russia diverted resources to the south and east of Ukraine and settled on a strategy of seizing territory in and around majority Russian-speaking areas inside Ukraine. Putin stated that the purpose of this move was to protect these Russian-speakers from a genocide, and yet, what do we see? These regions—Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia, Kherson, and Crimea Oblasts—are some of the hardest hit by the war, and have seen as much death and destruction as anywhere in Ukraine. Russian-speaking civilians have been displaced, their homes and possessions have been destroyed, and many have been killed or have suffered life-long injury as a result of either fighting in the conflict or simply being caught in the crosshairs of this war. If Putin was trying to protect the Russian-speakers in Ukraine’s borders, he has certainly failed in that objective.
(3) Finally, Russia’s actions to prevent Ukraine from joining NATO have completely backfired. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine pushed long-time NATO holdouts Sweden and Finland to join the alliance. Thus, Putin’s attempts to prevent NATO from extending its land border with Russia have now resulted in a massive NATO border pressing on three Russian territories (namely the Karelian Republic, Leningrad Oblast and Murmansk Oblast) via Finland. As a result, if part of why Russia is attempting to prevent Ukraine from joining NATO is to protect Russia’s naval access to the Black Sea, the result has been that Russia’s access to its northwestern waters (the Baltic, White, and Barents Seas, respectively) could now also be threatened by NATO in the event of a conflict. The Baltic Sea is now essentially a NATO lake. If Russia’s goal was to retard the expansion of NATO, it has certainly failed in that objective.
Despite these strategic miscalculations, Putin’s grasp on power has not faltered. Western hopes that Putin’s invasion would result in popular unrest in Russia (and Putin’s swift fall from power thereafter) have proven nothing more than wishful thinking. Pro-war propaganda has been effective in Russia, and the war remains popular as a result. Putin can brag that he has brought more Russian-speakers under the protection of the Russian Federation. But as the ruble continues to slump, progress is hard to come by on the battlefield, and Russia plans to hike military spending to 40% of its budget in 2025, a case could easily be made that the Russian people are worse off as a result of this war. This is especially easy to see when we stop thinking about justifications and just look at the costs. One estimate has Russia spending over $200 billion on the war in Ukraine so far. In addition, Western sanctions have taken their toll on the economy, and hundreds of thousands of Russians have already been killed or wounded in the fighting. It is important to remember there is an opportunity cost to bad leadership and the mismanagement of resources. What could those wasted Russian lives and resources have achieved if they were directed towards helping the Russian people instead of destroying Ukraine? What could the lives of those who died in battle have amounted to if they had been spent supporting Russian schools and hospitals, Russian fire departments and subways, renewable energy? Perhaps we will never know, but the memory of the missing young men across the country will always be a reminder of what their lives could have meant to their communities. Defeat in a distant contest of arms is a bad trade for a lifetime that could have been spent fruitfully at home.
Now let’s turn to the West. Several Western media outlets (e.g. the New Yorker, Foreign Policy, CNN) have argued in favor of the Ukraine war from a number of angles, notably: (1) that it is a war to decolonize Ukraine; (2) that it is a war to prevent the genocide of the Ukrainian people; (3) that it is a war to check the neo-imperial expansion of Vladimir Putin’s Russia. As I will show, these justifications miss the mark, and intend to provide a smokescreen to disguise the fact that Ukraine is being used as a proxy by the United States and its allies to bog down one of their geopolitical rivals, Russia.
(1) The West is not trying to decolonize Ukraine. Whether or not Ukraine can be considered a former colony of Russia is another debate which I think distracts from the issue at hand. The crux of that issue is whether the Soviet Union should be considered an empire, which is hardly a straightforward topic. Even if we allow that Ukraine is a former colony of the Russian Empire, it is true now that both Ukraine and Russia are liberal democracies after the Western model. Russia has invaded Ukraine, and Ukraine has accepted the help of the United States and its allies to support their war effort. Viewed another way, Ukraine made a deal with the West, and has allowed itself to become a proxy in a larger geopolitical conflict. If one says, Putin’s Russia is an imperial power, should we not stop and ask, “Is America not?” If we define imperialism as one state infringing on the independence of others, the answer should be clear. The United States has overseas colonies (such as Puerto Rico, Hawaii, and Guam) and former colonies (such as Cuba and the Philippines), not to mention all the native lands on the North American continent the United States has stolen and colonized. In addition, examples of American interventionism span the globe, such as in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, and several nations in Central and South America. Thus, the United States is most certainly an imperial power. Ukraine is caught between two global powers fighting a contest over its future. This is not a righteous war of national liberation, it is another tragic and regrettable chapter in the long history of wars that did not need to be fought. In addition, calling the war in Ukraine a war of decolonization implies that all Russian-speaking people in Ukraine are colonists. This is deeply problematic, as there are many bilingual Russian-Ukrainian speakers in Ukraine, along with monolingual Russian-speaking Ukrainian citizens. Such claims not only empower Ukrainian far-right nationalists who claim Ukrainian is the only true language of Ukraine, they also play right into the hands of Putin’s claim that war is acceptable when it is used as a tool to expand Russia’s borders to include more Russian-speakers.
(2) The war is not an attempt by Russia to carry out a genocide of the Ukrainian people. Although Putin has tried to justify Russia’s involvement in Ukraine’s internal affairs by citing the historical ties between the Russian and Ukrainian peoples, I believe his aims were not the erasure of the Ukrainian people or their language. Putin seems to be primarily interested in annexing Ukraine’s majority Russian-speaking territories and installing a pro-Russian government in Kyiv to prevent Ukraine from allying with the United States and its allies. As we have already discussed, the Russians also accused the Ukrainians of plotting a genocide. Either way, this is best viewed as a proxy war between the United States and Russia. We can spend our time quibbling over how to define the kinds of mass killing going on, or we can focus on trying to bring them to an end. The death of a million is hardly of less moral severity than a genocide, even if they are different things per se.
(3) This is best viewed as a proxy war, not a one-sided war of imperialist expansion. We have already discussed how both the United States and Russia have been using imperialism to expand their geopolitical standing. So why does Putin fear Ukrainian accession to the European Union and NATO? This is best explained comparatively. Putin likely fears that the United States and its allies will do to Russia with Ukraine what they have done to China with Taiwan—turn the smaller country into a weapons depot that would be extremely costly to invade and could serve to effectively cut off the larger country’s access to key strategic areas (in Russia’s case, the Black Sea and the Mediterranean). This strategic goal is essentially the same issue that was at the heart of the Cuban Missile Crisis, which was kicked off in 1961 when the United States moved nuclear missiles to Turkey (in range of Moscow) to project its power over the Black Sea. In response, the Soviet Union began to transport nuclear weapons to Cuba (within striking distance of Washington) and turn Cuba into an island weapons cache. These actions were unacceptable to both nations then, and such actions remain unacceptable to these nations now. The United States has shown in Taiwan that it is willing to say one thing (adopt the “One China” policy) and do another (support Taiwan’s military capabilities and use it to keep China from projecting its power into the Pacific). How would Ukraine be any different?
Moreover, these justifications do not excuse the continued death and destruction of thousands of Russians and Ukrainians. They do succeed in demonstrating just how thoroughly the United States has politicized and endangered Ukraine. Much to the chagrin of France, Germany, and Russia, and against the advice of one of his top advisors on the region, US President George W. Bush made a strong push in favor of Ukraine and Georgia joining NATO in 2008. Thus, while Ukraine was not yet part of NATO and was still officially a “neutral state,” President Bush essentially stripped Ukraine of its neutrality, thus making the country a target for Russian aggression. In addition, since Ukraine did not end up joining NATO afterwards, the Ukrainian people received essentially nothing in return in the way of protection against this threat. Nothing, that is, until the conflict had already broken out. Now that Russia has invaded Ukraine, it has paid an even greater price. How could more death and destruction possibly compensate the Ukrainian people now?
Europe has no plan for peace.
As we have established, the war in Ukraine is best viewed as a proxy war between the United States and Russia. So, it’s worth asking what the United States’ European allies have to gain from this conflict, and why they’ve followed their North American ally’s lead thus far. It is natural that American and European security concerns should differ. The United States has a vast ocean separating it from the frontlines. Europe does not have this luxury. And while it appears EU and NATO accession would go hand in hand, it is not clear that Europe would benefit from either of these outcomes in the long term if relations with Russia are not normalized. If Ukraine were somehow able to drive Russia from its borders, the threat of renewed conflict with Russia would not simply subside. If Ukraine were to join the European Union, it would always be a source of conflict between Europe and Putin’s Russia. The same can be said concerning Ukraine’s potential NATO accession.
In addition, the economies of Europe have borne a disproportionately heavier share of the burden of punitive sanctions on Russia as compared to the United States. The United States is energy independent, while the European Union relied heavily on Russian gas and oil imports before the war. It also seems possible that, should former President Donald Trump win in the November elections, the United States, which currently provides about 40% of total foreign aid to Ukraine, may stop sending aid. This would saddle Europe with the burden of making up the difference, if they continued their current policy of supporting Ukraine against Russia. Doubly so if the United States were to abandon its promises of mutual defense for NATO allies under a Trump presidency.
Whether the European Union could successfully oppose Russian aggression without American funding and military support remains an open question. Ultimately, until Europe and Russia can find grounds for peaceful cooperation and coexistence, the divisions that have emerged will continue to widen. The resources that would need to be poured into maintaining a militarized border between Norway, Finland, the Baltic States, Poland, and Ukraine on one side, and Russia and Belarus on the other would certainly be a major drain to the economies of all involved. It should be obvious that those resources are better spent on more productive enterprises for the nations in question. As such, merely following the lead of the United States will not suffice for a Europe that is interested in creating an enduring peace for the region. A diplomatic end to the war in Ukraine is the only viable step towards this end. Without it, relations will not be able to return to a place where strong economic and political ties between Russia and Europe are possible. Diplomacy is the only chance for a lasting peace in Europe.
The United States wants victory without victory.
The United States government is, among all parties involved, the closest to walking away victorious from this situation. As I will show, however, American victory lies in making sure neither Ukraine nor Russia is able to decisively defeat the other any time soon. The United States benefits from protracting the war in Ukraine in several ways. Firstly, the United States has used Russia’s invasion of Ukraine to give renewed purpose to NATO and has acceded two new members, Sweden and Finland, to the alliance. The longer there is an outside threat to the alliance, the easier it will be for the United States to get European states to rally around it. Secondly, American weapons manufacturers have made a fortune off the military aid packages approved for Ukraine. Around 60% of that aid money is actually spent in the United States. Rather than bringing us closer to peace, this money boosts the United States’ gargantuan military-industrial complex. Finally, the United States has succeeded in bogging down one of its largest geopolitical rivals without deploying any of its own troops. In terms of American foreign policy, this is a great value: all the geopolitical advantages for almost none of the blowback that mobilizing troops would invite from the public.
For those in Washington, victory lies in dragging the conflict out as long as possible, allowing the war of attrition to exhaust Russia even if it destroys Ukraine in the process. Paradoxically, the United States’ path to victory does not involve victory on the battlefield at all, but rather, the projection of a global image of the United States as the rightful, generous, and unstoppable lone world superpower. Victory lies in the possibility of victory, in its symbolism and trappings, rather than in its realization. How unfortunate for those whose lives are being ripped apart by this war.
So, the war in Ukraine serves Washington’s interests. But what about the American people? Americans are watching as huge sums of money flow into the military-industrial complex (currently accounting for almost half of discretionary spending each year) and out of their borders in the form of military aid to American allies such as Ukraine and Israel. Meanwhile domestic issues go under-addressed, such as the homelessness crisis, crumbling infrastructure, and damage from natural disasters (like Hurricane Helene), just to name a few. When Americans are suffering needlessly at home, it is hard to argue that so much money belongs in the creation, transportation, use, and maintenance of killing machines.
In addition, neither candidate for president in the upcoming election on November 7th has an anti-war ticket. While Trump has signaled he intends to end the war “in one day,” it is not clear that he could bring either side to agree to any kind of deal, and he has reveled before in the American military’s destructive capacity for “fire and fury.” According to the Brookings Institution, Harris seems likely to “continue Biden’s policy of providing Ukraine with enough support so that it does not lose, but not with the wherewithal to win and eject Russia from Ukrainian territory.” What the United States needs is clear popular support for a negotiated end to the conflict, and politicians who are willing to work towards that end. Without this, American resources will continue to support the killing of hundreds of thousands across the globe in the name of American global hegemony, while the American people are left to poverty and neglect back home.
An end to victory?
We listen to talking heads promote wars that are good, or at least, necessary; wars that are just, or at least, explainable; wars that are quick and easy, or at least, intended to be so. The war in Ukraine is going nowhere fast. People on both sides are being sent to die for nothing more than the prolongation of a stalemate. The war has turned many civilians into refugees, victims, and ghosts. And yet, this remains popular? The people of no nation are served by continuing the conflict in Ukraine. As such, it must end. A chapter in a different conflict that once engulfed much of Eastern Europe would set us on the right path if we study it: the refusal of the multi-ethnic Russian Imperial army (which included Russians and Ukrainians alike) to fight the grueling battles of World War One any longer. If the soldiers themselves refuse to fight (and both the Ukrainian and Russian forces have been plagued by desertion, especially among recent conscripts), war reaches an immediate end.
When someone says they support the war in Ukraine, what they mean is that they support a particular vision of Ukraine’s future. But the idea that any of these visions required war is laughable; that the war in its current state will bring any of them about, pitiable; and that all this bloodshed could amount to anything worthwhile, lamentable. The failure to avert the preventable disaster that is the war in Ukraine strikes at the very heart of the current global geopolitical system.
An antidote: our humanity. Regardless of the outcome of the war in Ukraine, one thing is abundantly clear: Ukraine will be a war without victors. But when we center the people of each nation and our common humanity when discussing the narrative of the war in Ukraine, it becomes much harder for governments to divide us with propaganda and justify the murder of other human beings. The war must end, and we must demand it as the price for our tranquility. We need to organize around the principle of respect for human life if we are to be effective. If people are going to rebuild their homes and communities, to restore order to what remains of their former lives, we need an end to the chaos. If we are ever going to abolish war on this planet, we need to get used to organizing around the principles of peace, not the statues of dead victors and lonely conquerors. We need peace now, and a peace that stands the test of time. Peace must do more than just serve as an interlude between this conflict and the next. Peace must abide.
