Washington Is Using the Ukraine War to Rebuild Its Global Power
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has produced a moment of unity in the West — and helped Washington reassert its leadership in NATO. With no peace in sight, the war has provided the opportunity to rebuild America’s tattered “informal empire.”
The US has used the Russian invasion of Ukraine to advance its own long-term project of maintaining global hegemony. (Samuel Corum / Getty Images)
For all the narrative — parroted by neoliberal internationalists and their neocon brothers in arms — that Ukraine is destined to fight till final victory, some basic questions have remained without compelling answers. What would winning actually look like? Which comparative advantages would enable Ukraine to triumph militarily over its larger and more powerful Russian neighbor? If the Kremlin loudly claims that Ukraine aligning with NATO is an intolerable threat to its national security, is such a proposal really an effective way of stopping Russian aggression?
Though it seems clear that Ukraine isn’t going to score an easy victory, hawks are still hoping to escalate the conflict. Bemoaning how the United States and NATO are not doing enough to help Kyiv win, they reason that if only the “allies” provide ever more sophisticated weaponry — tanks, fighter jets, long-range missiles, etc. — then Ukraine and, by implication, the West will emerge victorious.
Yet if the grinding war has brought the world closer to nuclear conflagration, calls for Washington to pressure Kyiv into making a deal with Russia (including by trading “land for peace”) have offered no realistic way of ending the deadlock. As one former US NATO ambassador has highlighted, such an outcome is simply unpalatable to the Ukrainian government:
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