The war in Ukraine has spooked a lot of folks.
Since the Cold War ended we’ve experienced an era of unprecedented peace. Some contended this peace was durable, some disagreed. But now, with such a large land war in Europe, those who think the post-Cold War peace is flimsy have new evidence for their case. Given the amount of bloodshed, the unprovoked violation of sovereignty and the naked disrespect of international norms on display, many think we will soon enter a new era of world conflict.
I think this is a bad reading of these events. In fact, I think that this war shows that the peace of the post-Cold War era will continue to be durable.
Since the Cold War, one of the biggest changes in world politics has been the increase in democracies. The total amount of democracies has roughly doubled since 1989. Democracies have greater ability to acquire legitimacy from their populace than authoritarian governments.
What the Ukraine war shows is, that larger, more economically and militarily powerful countries will always have difficulty fighting aggressive wars against a country where its government enjoys widespread legitimacy. And democracies can more easily acquire widespread legitimacy for their governments. Therefore other most countries will not act as Russia has.
Let’s imagine two very different countries. The first is an authoritarian, feudal country. This country has a King and that King controls vast amounts of wealth and commands the loyalty of a wide swath of nobility and a well-paid army. But, his subjects do not have a very passionate loyalty to him. For the most part, the people of this country stay out of politics. They work their land, they pay their taxes and they cooperate in this system. Maybe they’ll wave to the King during a festival, but no one feels that this King is their choice.
The second country is a liberal democracy. It has a reasonably active civil society and well-developed political parties. Every few years there are national elections where a parliament and President are elected. Sometimes there are accusations of corruption or malfeasance but, more often than not, people believe that the President of this country was put in power by their hand and, roughly, represents their interests.
Now, let’s say, each of these countries are invaded by an aggressive regional power. The feudal, authoritarian country would likely only be able to fight with the troops that were already at the disposal of the King. Why would the regular people of this country care if they were ruled by one rapacious monarch or another?
The liberal democracy, however, might put up more of a fight. Because of the nature of their system, the destruction of their government and their leader’s rule would seem like a usurpation of their country’s right to self-determination. One could expect this country to resist en mass- ordinary people enlisting in various forms of armed resistance and more insurgent sabotage.
If you were an invading country and you had the choice to invade one of these countries, all things being equal, you’d pick the feudal country. With the feudal country you have to just beat the guy in charge and his various cronies. With the liberal democracy you have to fight many more people than that.
What this tells us is that the legitimacy of a country’s government matters when it comes to its defense from invasion. And we don’t have to rely on conjecture for that- the Russia-Ukraine war is showing this dynamic right out in the open. Yes, Russia has a larger fighting force than Ukraine and a more technologically superior army. But, the Ukrainians have a virtually limitless supply of personnel and vast freedom of movement. This is because their populace dislikes the Russians for usurping their right to self determination and they are willing to fight en mass to defeat Russia. And part of this is due to the fact that Ukraine’s government was elected in a democratic process.
It’s hard to have a hopeful spin on the Ukraine war. But, I think the evidence points in that direction re: world peace. Ukraine shows how even a somewhat dysfunctional and balkanized democracy can produce legitimacy for its government. And this legitimacy simply makes life living hell for an aggressive invader. Given that there are more democracies than there were before the cold war, this war is actually evidence that the peaceful period post-Cold War will, to a degree, continue.