After the War: The ugly global consequences.

• Author: Serfaty, Simon

Simon Serfaty is Professor and Eminent Scholar (emeritus) at Old Dominion University, and the Zbigniew Brzezinski Chair (emeritus) in Geostrategy and Global Security at the Center for Strategic & International Studies. His most recent book is America in the World from Truman to Biden: Play It Again, Sam (Palgrave MacMillan, 2021).

Whether the war in Ukraine will last several more weeks, months, or even years--and how it will end, if ever--is hard to tell. That it is still going on was widely unexpected; that absent a cease-fire to which neither side is yet willing to agree, the war is steadily escalating should be feared. Who knows what will come next? As sanctions talk increasingly loudly and weapons kill increasingly visibly, calls to do more are heard increasingly dangerously, thus deepening what is arguably the worst existential world crisis since 1945. Now the West--and especially its Euro-Atlantic core--is more united than it has been in decades, but whether that unity will last is not clear either, depending on the war's duration and outcome. What is clear, however, is that the war will have system-changing consequences, including the repositioning of Europe relative to the United States in the West, as well as a recasting of China relative to Russia, and both relative to the Rest and the West.

For one, the states of Europe, which welcomed America's restored leadership during the war, will question its pre-war reliability, as happened after the Cuban missile crisis some sixty years ago when the Gaullist challenge to the United States opened a moment of West-West obfuscation and intra-European confusion. Notwithstanding U.S. President Joe Biden's unprecedented level of consultation within NATO and with the European Union, the war exposed Europe's vulnerability--what used to be called the risks of annihilation without representation. The war over, or at least put on hold, a newly re-elected French president will enlist a newly willing post-Merkel Germany to co-lead a drive toward strategic autonomy for a postBrexit European Union. That means that the capabilities gap within NATO will narrow, which is a good thing, while the policy gaps between its members will widen, which may not be as good as the European Union engages in separate dialogues on issues over which even our interests often remain unevenly shared.

Regarding Russia specifically, as Putin is held accountable for the war and its atrocities, Western insufficiencies and...