How Ukraine Became a World War

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 was an event of global magnitude. The scale of the invasion, commensurate with its goal of eliminating Ukrainian statehood, was massive. Millions of refugees fled Ukraine into the rest of Europe. Fuel and fertilizer prices shot up, stimulating inflation worldwide. The war disrupted the production and distribution of grain, generating concerns about supply far afield from Russia and Ukraine. And as the conflict stretched into its second and third years, its international repercussions have expanded in scope.

In the war’s early stages, countries outside Europe tried mostly just to manage its effects. For those that chose not to directly back Ukraine—not to provide Kyiv with weapons or to sanction Russia—two priorities predominated. Seeing that there were deals to be made, some countries sought to benefit from Russia’s loss of European and U.S. markets for gas, oil, and other commodities. Others offered themselves as mediators in the sincere (or insincere) hope of minimizing the war’s direct and ancillary costs or even of ending it altogether. Their diplomacy was motivated in part by the prestige that comes from adjudicating a large-scale conflict.

As the war drags on, however, non-European countries are becoming more and more involved. Some are giving Russia the means to prolong the war—men and munitions. By using Ukraine as a testing ground, they hope that they will be better prepared for wars they themselves may fight in the future. North Korea’s decision to deploy thousands of troops to help Russia reclaim the embattled Kursk region is just the latest example. Other non-Western states are trying to shape the course of the war or positioning themselves to be present at the creation of a postwar Europe—that is, to be at the table for the negotiations that will end the conflict, however distant that prospect may be. Amid this terrible war, non-European states are turning Europe into an object of their foreign policy. Many commentators have said that the precedent set by a Russian victory in Ukraine—a nuclear power seizing another country’s territory at will—would transform the global order. The deep involvement of powers outside Europe adds another layer to the war’s transformative potential. Europe, having projected its power outward for centuries, is becoming a theater for the projection of non-European power. Brussels, Kyiv, and Washington will have to come to terms with this new reality.

PEACE LOVERS

Non-Western countries have noted the limits of Western policy on Ukraine. The West’s diplomatic activity, although intense, has been confined to supporting Ukraine against what Western capitals consider an unjust invasion. They have tried to persuade any country that will listen about the righteousness of the Ukrainian war effort, the inadmissibility of conceding to Russian demands, and the importance of Ukraine’s territorial integrity and sovereignty. Yet Ukraine and the West have not brought Russia to heel, and the West’s backing of Ukraine has clearly plateaued since the war’s start. Fears of escalation constrain the kinds of weapons that Western states give to Ukraine, as well as the terms of those weapons’ use. Western countries are also unwilling to compensate for acute troop shortages in Ukraine by sending in their own soldiers, even though they characterize the war as existential to the European security order.

The obvious limits of Western policy and leverage have opened the door to actors outside Europe. Diplomatically, they have the opposite problem that the West does. Any country that is neither behind Ukraine nor sanctioning Moscow can approach Russian President Vladimir Putin with diplomatic schemes for ending the war. But if it adopts a neutral or pro-Russian attitude, it will struggle to get Ukraine on board. Whether pro-Russian or pro-Ukrainian or somewhere in between, no force—no country, group of countries, or international institution—is powerful enough to impose a cease-fire in Ukraine, much less an armistice or a negotiated settlement. Yet no one wants to be seen as not trying to mediate.

Despite the obstacles, many countries have committed to mediator roles. Turkey offered its services on a variety of issues at the start of the war, lobbying for humanitarian corridors during the Russian siege of Mariupol, helping negotiate the Black Sea Grain Initiative, and facilitating exchanges on the security of Ukraine’s nuclear power plants. Turkey also hosted peace talks between Russia and Ukraine early in the war. Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have assisted with prisoner exchanges between Russia and Ukraine; Abu Dhabi recently claimed that its efforts allowed 2,200 prisoners to return home. The Saudi government convened some 40 countries (not including Russia) in Jeddah in August 2023 to discuss principles for ending the war. More recently, Qatar hosted renewed talks between Russia and Ukraine about halting strikes on each other’s energy infrastructure. Many more non-European countries, from China to Brazil to a delegation of African states, have put together peace missions or plans. This frenetic form of diplomacy is notable not only for its lack of progress so far and for its piecemeal and fragmentary nature but also for its considerable scale and scope.

These peace plans can be taken at face value, as the countries that advance them may genuinely want to help secure peace. The war in Ukraine has generated instability and exacted economic costs outside Europe, and to be at the negotiating table is to determine the postwar economic and geopolitical landscape. That was the lesson of the conferences at Versailles, Yalta, and Potsdam after the two world wars: to the negotiator go the spoils. The configuration of postwar Ukraine truly matters to China and Turkey, less so perhaps to Brazil and South Africa.

But the peace plans can also be interpreted as a stimulus to the Russian war effort. They are easy to propose and nearly impossible to implement. While paying lip service to Ukrainian sovereignty and territorial integrity, these countries offer no viable path for Kyiv. The predictably tepid response to their plans in Ukraine and the West also fits into narratives of Western intransigence, a key Russian talking point, as if the West that (allegedly) caused the war in the first place is prolonging and exploiting it to weaken Russia.

MANPOWER AND MUNITIONS

If international diplomacy related to Ukraine has been both aspirational and ephemeral, assistance to the Russian defense enterprise has been all too tangible. Western sanctions have not been geared toward regime change or even toward altering Russia’s calculus on the war, welcome as the latter would be. The point of Western sanctions has been to grind down the Russian war effort, to starve it of capital and technology and thereby give Ukraine a long-term structural advantage in the war. Out of economic self-interest, non-European countries have undercut this approach by maintaining ties with Russia; by purchasing Russian oil, gas, and fertilizer; and by facilitating its “roundabout” trade. Throwing lifelines to Russia’s economy enhances its military machine, even though bolstering Russia’s defense industry may not be Brazil’s, India’s, or Saudi Arabia’s primary objective when conducting business with the Kremlin. If these countries’ priority had been that Russia lose in Ukraine, however, they would have adopted a different set of economic policies.

Most consequential are the countries directly assisting the Russian military. China has provided dual-use goods, from machine tools to microchips, that are highly coveted by Russian arms manufacturers. Its control over the supplies of these products gives Beijing significant leverage in Russia’s war. Western officials have also accused China of aiding the Russian military more fundamentally—by supplying it with attack drones, for instance. Iran’s support of Russia has been versatile, with Tehran providing combat drones (and related production technology), ammunition, and short-range ballistic missiles. Iran is building up its defense relationship with Russia even as its escalating conflict with Israel may temporarily curtail its weapons shipments. Although Iranian missiles have yet to enter the Ukrainian battlefield, Russia has been deploying North Korean missiles since the beginning of this year. By some estimates, Pyongyang has also supplied half the shells Russia is using in Ukraine. Ridiculed in the early phase of the war as fellow “pariahs” that Russia had resorted to working with, Iran and North Korea are now actively shaping the conflict’s trajectory.

Given the importance of manpower in a war of attrition, the first battlefield employment of thousands of North Korean troops recently deployed to Russia marks another escalation in non-European involvement. Although Russia has manpower advantages over Ukraine, it has lost an enormous number of soldiers in the war. Putin is reluctant to order another large-scale mobilization that might sour Russians on the war. Over the past two years, there have been episodic reports of Cuban, Indian, and Nepalese soldiers and volunteers lured to fight for Russia. But the North Korean deployments are of an altogether different magnitude, and the West has few tools to change North Korea’s calculus, as the country is already isolated and heavily sanctioned.

Europe’s war is slowly becoming the world’s war, an expansion that is not to Europe’s advantage. For China, Iran, and North Korea, deeper involvement in Ukraine might help prepare them for the wars they could fight in the future. At issue is not just Russia’s tangible contributions to these countries’ defense capacities to pay them back for the support Moscow has received; there is also the question of what they will learn from the battlefield. Chinese strategists are said to have been studying the performance of capabilities used in Ukraine—such as drones and HIMARS—that they might encounter in a war over Taiwan. Iran has obtained Western technology captured in Ukraine, including antitank and antiaircraft missiles, that it can study for reverse engineering or for developing countermeasures. North Korea may have decided to send troops to Russia not just to honor the two countries’ new defense treaty but also to afford the North Korean military firsthand combat experience. (North Korea has not fought a war since the 1950–53 Korean War.) Ukraine has become a laboratory for non-European powers contemplating future wars.

THE WORLD COMES TO EUROPE

Since the sixteenth century, if not earlier, Europe has been waging war beyond its continental borders. In just the past few decades, European countries fought in Afghanistan and Iraq. Until recently, France had a pronounced military presence in the Sahel. Europe is a military factor, although a modest one, in the Indo-Pacific, and European countries provide substantial military aid to Israel, which is fighting multiple wars in the Middle East. For U.S. and European architects of the post–World War II transatlantic relationship, the use of European power beyond Europe was not anomalous. It was a Cold War necessity. European forces joined American ones in both the Korean and Vietnam Wars. Even the NATO alliance, tasked with defending its member states, has operated outside its members’ borders, most recently in Libya in 2011. The United States has welcomed an expeditionary Europe, whether the challenge has been counterterrorism or managing the revisionist activities of China or Russia.

Europe’s long history of power projection has conditioned worldviews in Western capitals, making it nearly impossible to imagine that countries such as Iran or North Korea could be determinants of European security. But what was once hard to fathom is now an obvious reality. If the United States and Europe are to counter the various interventions in Ukraine originating outside the continent, they must understand what local and national agendas each effort serves, what its potential impact may be, and where its vulnerabilities lie. The role of non-European countries in the war will only grow, and these states will not be absent from the diplomacy that concludes the war. Many of them will also jump into the reconstruction of Ukraine. The opportunity to gain a foothold in Europe will be too good (and too low cost) to pass up.

Non-European involvement in the war does not promise a Ukrainian defeat. Nor is it an unequivocal boon to Russia. Forced to turn to partners to try to sustain its progress on the battlefield, Russia must now balance a kaleidoscopic array of economic, military, and diplomatic relationships. And the motivations and interests of the countries contributing to Russia’s military capacity vary widely. Some may genuinely want the war to be over; some want Russia to win. Some want Russia not to fail—a nuanced but important difference—and some simply want to exploit Russia’s reliance on their money and materiel. Countries such as Iran and North Korea share Russia’s virulent anti-Westernism. Others, such as Brazil and India, work with Russia as members of BRICS but want to reform rather than renounce the existing global order. These disparities in attitude will intensify as the war gets closer to an end and as Ukraine’s postwar status comes into sharper focus.

Countless countries have a vested interest in the war in Ukraine, and many of them have the tools to act on that interest. Were Russia to falter in the war and start seeking an exit, countries outside Europe could be vital to the ensuing diplomacy. If negotiations yielded arrangements suitable to Ukraine, to Europe, and to the United States, then it would not particularly matter which country hosted the talks or which plan was their catalyst. As for the military help that China, Iran, and North Korea are lending, there may be ways to limit it on the margins or to raise the costs of providing it. But the best defense against the possible erosion of European security via an advancing Russia is still the intelligent and patient support of Ukraine, especially as the United States’ financial (and possibly military) commitment to Ukraine is likely to diminish in Donald Trump’s second term. The whole world is watching.

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