Jeremy Kinsman, our lead foreign affairs writer, is an old Russia hand from his years as Canadian Ambassador to Moscow from 1992-96, after the end of the Cold War, the fall of the Soviet Empire and the dissolution of the Soviet Union itself. He knows first-hand what Vladimir Putin has been up to with his illegal invasion of Ukraine. “Whatever the outcome,” he writes, “we have entered changed times.”

“Come writers and critics
Who prophesize with your pen
 ………..For the times they are a-changin’….”

— Bob Dylan, 1964  

Jeremy Kinsman

The brutal Russian invasion of Ukraine shattered Western certainties.

“Times” change every generation or so. Dramatic events that overturn shared assumptions, trash agendas, and even overhaul social behaviour seem abrupt. But background realities were almost always eroding for years.

It recalls a line from Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises. “How did you go bankrupt?” Bill asked. “Two ways,” Mike said. “gradually, then suddenly.”

The Berlin Wall’s collapse in 1989 capped years of erosion of the Soviet/communist empire and belief system. But once freed from the Cold War’s grip, our imaginations – and self-discipline – didn’t anchor a genuinely one-world perspective.

Lazily celebrating that “our side” of the Cold War had prevailed over the other, we assumed the “losers” should imitate and climb aboard our way of life as it rode prosperously into a new millennium.  

But the 9/11 jihadist attacks sharply abraded our carefree ways, leading the US to obsessive border defences, and vengeful “forever wars” in Iraq and Afghanistan. Their disruptive migrations further encouraged protective nationalism in many democracies. The near-collapse of the financial system in 2009 accelerated depletion of confidence in both the fairness of the “rules-based” international order the “West” championed, and in our own social model.

Twenty years later, as the globe gropes for pandemic recovery, “Western” assumptions, norms, and systems took another seismic shock, from Putin’s brutal war of choice, and now attrition, against Ukraine (and the West) that when exhausted seems bound for negotiation. Ukraine will have survived, but in the front line in a renewed Cold War, as long as Putin retains power.

Whatever the outcome, we have entered changed times. War in Europe is no longer unthinkable, and could go global. 

While we shall rightly strengthen defences against threats from Russia, a “reckoning” is also beginning over where our thinking went astray. We certainly under-estimated Putin’s anger and malign intentions, made explicit (“They cheated us – vehemently and blatantly”) in his February 21 speech alleging the West’s indifference and deception.

The invasion’s back story lies primarily in the loose ends of the break-up of the Soviet Union that had seemed remarkably peaceful, compared to the convulsive demise of other empires in the last century. Mikhail Gorbachev’s surprising historic endeavour to free Soviet society from totalitarian communism’s traumas was greeted with euphoria. But his general project which had no precedent in depth, complexity, and sheer vastness, overturned virtually every social premise at the same time as transforming an economy from top to bottom and ending an empire. 

The concurrent story of NATO’s expansion right up to Russia’s borders is a murky and controversial narrative about relatively simple national desires of applicants for Western “normalcy” against sullen victimized reaction from Moscow, reinforced by US attachment to consolidating its now unipolar pre-eminence. Nonetheless, there was widely shared bottom line recognition of the psychological and political reality of the Ukrainian border as a Russian red line.

The ascent of Vladimir Putin was heralded as recuperative in 2000. But Russia sage Serge Schmemann of the New York Times recalls, “forces within Russia” as well as “western policies” helped turn this “low-ranking KGB officer” into a “grievance-driven tyrant obsessed with restoring an empire,” corrupted by the “allure of power and obscene wealth.”

The outcome is throwback one-man rule in Russia that aggressively projects interventionist state policy to mirror its dictator’s vengeful grievances and nationalistic world view. The Economist describes them as an “obscurantist anti-Western mixture of orthodox dogma, nationalism, conspiracy theory and security-state Stalinism.” And his rule is buttressed by his restoration of a one-source propaganda monopoly swept aside by Gorbachev’s glasnost 35 years ago. 

Now, as an expanded and reinforced NATO alliance impressively aligns against Russia’s active hostility, back-seat regrets do emerge over lost opportunities of the 1990s to support Russia’s transformative aspirations before Putin’s accession. But the war’s loud drumbeat, led by unwavering boosters of Western interests (The Economist), channels comfort in the “West’s new-found unity,” confident “that the American-led liberal order can prevail.” Unity of purpose is actually increasingly embedded in a wider ambit than NATO, including Japan, South Korea, and Australia, where outrage against Russia also runs strong. 

Some, like Anne-Marie Slaughter, caution against the reflexive rush to meet the Russian threat just by reinforcing old-fashioned heavy military counter-force as a kind of Cold War muscle memory, warning that “all the pronouncements about the re-invigoration of NATO and the return of the “free world” versus autocracies focus us once again on great power politics as the currency of international relations.”

Many in the world’s wider “silent majority” see the Ukraine war as sort of a cyclical NATO vs. Russia thing that doesn’t directly concern them. They have been factoring in the decline of US gobal influence, especially relative to the pervasive economic reach of China which hopes to emerge from the Ukraine debacle unscathed, with its position as emerging global decider enhanced. Most don’t wish to have to wear the team colours of one or the other (and certainly not Putin’s), but they are nervous. While still hoping the US can marshall deterrence, they’re also ramping up national military preparedness.

It is hard to envisage any kind of “normal” relationships soon between any G7 country and Russia as long as Putin is in power (though calls to cut all Canada’s contacts with Russia are juvenile – the Arctic Council, for example, is vital). Increasingly severe sanctions on Russia for the invasion have been cemented by the evidence of a mass crime scene whose repercussions will last for a generation. The notion of Russia now participating in G20 discussions of international management of the world economy, after violating basic world rules by a gratuitous war against a neighbour whose costs will be a trillion dollars, is absurd.

Russia will emerge severely weakened. Despite old-style declarations by US national security advisor Jake Sullivan that it suits US purposes (including political) to see Russia so diminished, echoed on NATO’s Eastern flank, thought needs to be given to ways to encourage post-conflict rehabilitation – of Russia, but more importantly, of confidence in the international rules-based order, increasingly undermined by a corrosive culture of disinformation facilitated by communications platforms.

Thus, the “times” again change. Gideon Rachman of the Financial Times writes that “patriots versus globalists” is the new “battlefield.”

Where should Canada be focused? 

Obviously, as a core member of NATO and as a mentor and benefactor of Ukraine since 1990, we must contribute as best we can to Ukraine’s defence, and to its reconstruction and democratic development. 

Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland has shown for decades unusually significant personal commitment to Ukraine’s national democratic development. Sometimes lampooned unfairly as being anti-Russian in consequence, Freeland actually knew both countries objectively and well. Because potential contagion to Russia of the increasingly successful example of the reformist movement in Ukraine is a threat Putin must profoundly fear, Freeland’s advice and influence count in Kiev and internationally, including Washington.

Our influence in Washington will always be a precious Canadian foreign policy currency in defence of bilateral interests, especially given the unpredictable American trajectory in an increasingly polarized landscape.

Canadian democracy has resisted the political polarization and nationalist populism gaining traction elsewhere. The compromises that make democracy work still live here in the wide arc formed by median voters (though some copycat right-wing commentary proposes Saskatchewan populism as a better way!)

Canada’s DNA is, if not “globalist,” distinctly internationalist, arguably “post-nationalist”. Canada identifies with an international rules-based order that works for all. The current one, still hobbled by ossified UN privileges for claimant victors of WW2, does not, when we need it most. Solutions apt to win universal support are elusive, calling for coalitions of middle and smaller powers to drive their construction and radiate marketing. 

Canadians and Germans are engaged in a bilateral like-minded effort (“Renewing our Democratic Alliance”) to build a solidarity network among willing North and South governments and civil society, aimed at effective inclusive multilateralism that selectively pools sovereignty, defends human rights, and pursues initiatives on such as corruption and refugees. It is timely now to nurture a more constructive global mindset that looks beyond preoccupations with Putin, or the China-US rivalry for “number one” bragging rights.

While we pay acute attention to the US, commit to NATO and to Ukrainian defence and reconstruction, and partner the EU, Canada should also re-connect our marginalized foreign service and inward-looking government to the much wider world in Asia, Africa, and our own hemisphere, the “silent majority” of countries recent governments frankly dropped, including many who remember Canadians as among their early friends. They need to hear that a rules-based world is the best friend of all.   

Contributing Writer Jeremy Kinsman served as Canadian Ambassador to Moscow from 1992-96, as well as Ambassador to Rome, High Commissioner to London and Ambassador to the EU. He is currently a Distinguished Fellow of the Canadian International Council.