There have been other wars in the 21st century. Some have been low-burning, drawn-out slugfests between insurgents and counterinsurgents. Some have been brief clashes over strategic objectives. Many have involved proxies and shadowy geopolitical ambition. All have been terrible. All have been tragic.
In this century, we have not seen a war like that currently waged in Ukraine.
For one, we have never had coverage like this before, with so many eyewitnesses and on-the-ground perspectives making it onto the front page. Social media is far more universal now than during the height of the Middle East wars, and Ukraine is far more interconnected with the globalized world than any prior warzone. It’s not only that we can follow the broad sweeps of the conflict – that has been possible before. Now, every bombardment, every shift in the lines, every Russian tank left abandoned in a field is documented and recorded. But this is also the only time (so far) that two highly-developed militaries have clashed in active and sustained combat. Both sides are fully-fledged countries, with their own developed economies, diplomatic infrastructure, and entrenched government apparatus. This matters, in part, because the global economic and political fallout has the potential to be far worse than that of any other war. But perhaps more perniciously, this war contradicts maybe long-held assumptions about the inherent stability of the globalized, rules-based international order.
Unsurprisingly, the West’s attention is focused almost solely on the Ukrainian question (suddenly the Pacific is looking far less scary a geopolitical arena, eh?). War has intruded into the West’s bubble unlike any other 21st century conflict. As a result, Ukraine is not just an abstract puzzle for foreign policy hawks; it is a daily concern for hundreds of millions of people across a continent. I certainly wake up every morning with a mix of dread and curiosity, wondering what has happened. I’m sure I’m not alone.
Like a great river, all this curiosity and anxiety flows towards a single question: what comes next?
Although, once asked, this question merely fragments, splitting and twisting into many other rivulets. Who is going to win the war? What will victory even look like? Will a nuclear plant explode? What about the refugees? What does Putin want in all this? Will the war spill over into Europe? Should I pack my car? Will there be some kind of palace coup? Why don’t Russians do something? Will atomic bombs be used?
Should I be afraid?
This war has produced a lot of very interesting, well-informed commentary. There are answers and predictions for all these questions if you look for them. But after a week of news reels, articles, and podcasts, I am left with a single, overwhelming conviction: no one knows what comes next.
This might seem a tautology. Of course, no one ever knows what comes next. Political and diplomatic developments are always hard to predict. Events are complicated, individuals even more so. But for most things that usually get written about – like an election result or an economic trend – it is not too difficult to think ahead of what you know. You take a snapshot of the present, look into the past a little, pull together all the context and circumstances you can muster, and make a guess. If you’re well-informed and a little lucky, you can see some things coming from a mile away.
War is different. Unlike any other area of human life, wars breeds chaos and unpredictability. More than any other area of human life, war is the harbinger of the unknown.
This is not another election or jobs report. We have no idea how Ukraine will end. There are simply too many variables in play, too many decisions and externalities to consider. And even if the immediate events of the war could be made comprehensible, it is guaranteed to trigger shifts and disruptions that will not manifest for years. Conflicts are always like that. Conflict plants seeds that you never anticipate. It scars people. It leaves behind trauma overt and concealed. It breaks assumptions and opens minds to possibilities never before conceivable. The aftershocks, more often than not, matter more than the initial battles and firefights.
Have we not learned this lesson? Do we not know that the Iraq invasion, begun with limited aims and limited scope, had knock-on effects greater than what anyone imagined? Twenty years later, the American foreign policy establishment, and the entire region for that matter, is still dealing with fallout. Or look further back to Vietnam. In that case, things quickly exceeded the limited grounds of conflict, yes, but more importantly entire generations were left thinking differently. Government, freedom, protest, military, America. After Vietnam, none of these words ever meant quite the same thing they once had.
I’m not trying to make direct comparisons here – I don’t think Ukraine will become this generation’s Vietnam. But it could still leave behind a terrible legacy all its own.
To be sure, ‘who the hell knows?’ is not a reason to foreswear analysis and observation. We should look closer at events we struggle to understand, trying to head off and predict as best we can, especially when human life and liberty is at stake. Ukraine must be studied, and I appreciate every reasonable and intelligent commentator out there trying to assuage people's concerns and answer their questions.
Yet at this stage there are limits to what we can know. And I think we should all embrace the possibility that we might not know for some time. Moreover, we may well be living through a defining moment of the 21st century, a moment that will wreck our assumptions and definitions.
There’s not much of a point to this piece. I have no succinct prescriptions.
I keep thinking about the subject of my undergraduate dissertation, though, on the July Crisis. In that lone month of 1914, Europe slept while death stirred. And all the diplomats and statesmen of grand empires and republics put together had not one iota of appreciation for all the catastrophe they were about to unleash.
And like those hazy summer days, I fear that events in Ukraine have already begun to spiral beyond anyone’s original intention or capacity for control, moving like balls of yarn unspooling into the darkness