Europe will pay a heavy price, as we are already seeing happen, because it had much more to lose in the first place.
That is, it had much more invested in trade with and overall engagement with Russia, most notably in terms of energy. But the U.S. in particular has much less to lose (aside from the pressure of inflation and potential nuclear annihilation), because we had already fundamentally alienated Russia over the last two decades, pushing it firmly into the arms of our top rival, China. And we have no significant trade or energy relations with Russia; in fact Russia is mostly just a competitor to American energy and agriculture exports. Instead, the U.S. has a chance to potentially gain quite significantly – not just in terms of the energy and defense exports that will now go to Europe, but in terms of being able to consolidate the foreign policy approach of the Trans-Atlantic countries behind Washington in a single bloc unified in its opposition to Russia and, crucially, China as well.
How do you see the significance and stakes of this devastating war in a wider perspective?
As I sought to explain in detail in a recent essay, “The World Order Reset,” I think this war has very significant global stakes, extending well beyond Europe. The very short version of that argument is that, if Washington can succeed in seeing Russia successfully weakened in Ukraine, at the same time as Europe is pushed into American arms, creating a single unified Trans-Atlantic bloc, then this leaves China in a very serious geostrategic predicament. The United States, Europe, and allied Asian state like Japan, South Korea, and Australia together comprise some 60% of global GDP, whereas China and Russia together only represent about 20%. A unified Trans-Atlantic bloc would therefore have the weight to be able to largely set the rules governing the future of the world order by threatening to exclude those who won’t play along from access to its collectively dominant economic market. Meanwhile a weakened Russia would no longer pose a serious military threat in the European theater, allowing the U.S. to focus on Asia alone. Not only would this serve to significantly contain China’s influence (limiting it to the peripheral developing world, which includes most of the world’s countries and population but not significant material power), but Trans-Atlantic dominance could allow for the creation of new institutions and rules that would serve to further cement that dominance for decades, such as a new monetary order based on the inter-operability of Trans-Atlantic central bank digital currencies. Or harmonized rules for digital commerce and information control, etc. I believe an awareness of the critical importance of Europe to deciding the broader U.S.-China strategic contest is thus, broadly, a key factor in the determination
Washington seems to have shown so far in acting to maximize Russia’s losses in Ukraine, even if that means prolonging the war.