{"id":1375286,"date":"2022-03-14T08:04:53","date_gmt":"2022-03-14T12:04:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1375286"},"modified":"2022-03-14T08:05:58","modified_gmt":"2022-03-14T12:05:58","slug":"ukraines-fight-is-about-europes-future","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/ukraines-fight-is-about-europes-future\/","title":{"rendered":"Ukraine\u2019s Fight Is About Europe\u2019s Future"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">12<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fukraines-fight-is-about-europes-future%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1375286&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><div><\/div>\n<p>The <a href=\"https:\/\/www.19fortyfive.com\/2022\/02\/russia-starts-special-military-operation-in-ukraine-putin-invades-ukraine\/\">unprovoked<\/a> Russian invasion of Ukraine will go down in history as <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnn.com\/2022\/02\/23\/europe\/kenya-ukraine-russia-colonialism-intl\/index.html\">colonialism<\/a> masquerading as a grand geopolitical design.\n<\/p>\n<p>We are witnessing another manifestation of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/outlook\/2022\/03\/02\/long-history-russian-imperialism-shaping-putins-war\/\">Russian imperialism<\/a> pure and simple, notwithstanding many learned explanations by so-called \u201crealists\u201d that somehow the prospect of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.19fortyfive.com\/2022\/02\/why-cant-nato-admit-ukraine-has-no-chance-of-joining-nato\/\">Ukraine\u2019s membership in NATO<\/a>, at best at some distant point in the future, provoked Putin to attack.<\/p>\n<p>In reality, this invasion has been in the works for over twenty years of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.19fortyfive.com\/2022\/03\/vladimir-putin-is-committing-genocide-in-ukraine\/\">Putin\u2019s rule<\/a>.\u00a0 In the last several months Russia amassed military forces in full view, clearly determined to invade its neighbor. Putin seemed to have believed that he would get away with it once again, for in the past the West \u2013 regardless of our insistence on the sanctity of borders and human rights \u2013 stood idly by while the tzar of the Kremlin massacred the Chechens, severed parts of Georgia\u2019s territory, occupied <a href=\"https:\/\/www.19fortyfive.com\/2021\/11\/russias-playbook-for-ukraine-another-crimea-land-grab\/\">Crimea<\/a>, started a war in Donetsk and Luhansk, entered <a href=\"https:\/\/www.19fortyfive.com\/2022\/02\/how-to-make-russia-pay-in-ukraine-study-syria\/\">Syria<\/a> and slaughtered the inhabitants of Aleppo.\n<\/p>\n<p>Today, as <a href=\"https:\/\/www.19fortyfive.com\/2022\/01\/the-russian-military-4-myths-that-need-to-die\/\">Putin\u2019s military<\/a> is <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnn.com\/2022\/03\/11\/politics\/russia-ukraine-heavy-weaponry\/index.html\">dropping bombs<\/a> and missiles on Ukrainian cities, killing civilians and creating landscapes more reminiscent of World War II that \u201cpost-modern Europe,\u201d the West is finally waking up to the reality that unless and until Russia has been decisively defeated, Europe will not know real peace, only periods of armistice.<\/p>\n<p>Ukraine\u2019s stubborn resistance to the invasion is changing Europe in yet another way. It is reminding us about the seminal importance of patriotism and a shared national identity, one that is felt viscerally and is strong enough to make men and women lay their lives on the line for people they have never met.\n<\/p>\n<p>No sentence has encapsulated this sense of patriotism and mutuality of obligation better than President Zelensky\u2019s rebuff of an offer to exfil him from Kyiv: \u201cI don\u2019t need a ride; I need ammunition.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In this one sentence lies the essence of a nation that understands what it means to be one. The Ukrainians are teaching us what those first principles truly are, i.e., love of country, national sovereignty, and national solidarity \u2013 the three concepts that have been all but exiled from Western political discourse. In this one tragic moment of Ukraine standing up to Putin, the entire baggage of post-modern Western theorizing about \u201cglobalization,\u201d \u201ctransnationalism,\u201d or \u201cpostmodernism\u201d is being exposed for what it has always been: intellectual vapors disconnected from reality.\n<\/p>\n<p>This war has also shifted the relative political influence among NATO members from Western to Central Europe. For two decades many in Central Europe, whether Estonians, Poles, or Romanians, have been warning the West about Putin, and in turn were often treated by their Western counterparts with condescension as unreconstructed \u201cRussophobes.\u201d And yet, they have understood very well what kind of a state today\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.19fortyfive.com\/2022\/03\/why-russia-hasnt-taken-over-ukraine-food-and-fuel-shortages\/\">Russia<\/a> really is.\n<\/p>\n<p>It is uncanny that for Europe to come together it took one of its poorest nations to show its determination to stand up for the first principles and the values we all talk so much about, but all too often fail to uphold. Ukraine\u2019s president, whom many used to dismiss as an upstart comedian, is showing us each day the true meaning of leadership.\n<\/p>\n<p>Make no mistake: Had Ukraine failed to resist and the state imploded in a couple of days as Putin had expected, Europe would eventually go back to business-as-usual with Russia, with the chattering class repeating old cliches about how Russia is actually entitled to its \u201csecurity zone,\u201d and how we should have worked from the start to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/news\/articles\/2022-03-09\/ukraine-open-to-neutrality-but-won-t-yield-territory-aide-says\">ensure<\/a> the \u201cneutrality\u201d of Ukraine.\n<\/p>\n<p>EU leaders would go back to talking about climate policy and green energy, and Putin would continue to make money selling Russia\u2019s gas and oil to Europe, with a large chunk of the revenue plowed into his military.\n<\/p>\n<p>Today, thanks to the courage of the Ukrainian people, that is simply no longer possible.\n<\/p>\n<p>This war is still in its early stages, but it should be clear to us all that it is a war for the future of Europe, and that there is no going back to the status quo ante. Putin\u2019s unprovoked attack on Ukraine has set in motion forces that will deconstruct the power dynamic in Eurasia that for three centuries has pushed Europe from one conflict to the next. The end-point of this war has to be not only the preservation of Ukraine\u2019s independence but also the restoration of an independent <a href=\"https:\/\/www.19fortyfive.com\/2022\/03\/the-next-russia-crisis-what-happens-to-belarus\/\">Belarusian state<\/a>.\n<\/p>\n<p>Only then will Europe free itself from the last vestiges of Russia\u2019s imperial baggage. Only then will the Russian people have a chance to start transforming their country into a genuine nation-state, stripped of its imperial ambition and poised to undergo real political and economic reform.\n<\/p>\n<p><em>A 1945 Contributing Editor, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.marshallcenter.org\/en\/directory\/andrew-michta-phd\">Dr. Andrew A. Michta<\/a> is Dean of the College of International and Security Studies at the George C. Marshall European Center for Security Studies in Garmisch, Germany.\u00a0 He is also former a Professor of National Security Affairs at USNWC and a former Senior Fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis in DC<\/em>. <em>The opinions expressed here are those of the author and do not reflect the official policy or position of the George C. Marshall European Center for Security Studies, the U.S. Department of Defense, or the U.S. government<\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The unprovoked Russian invasion of Ukraine will go down in history as colonialism masquerading as a grand geopolitical design. We are witnessing another manifestation of Russian imperialism pure and simple,<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2315279,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1375286","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1375286","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1375286"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1375286\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2315279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1375286"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1375286"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1375286"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}