The Ukraine crisis is the final nail in the coffin of the Western liberal order

Divided, compromised and gormless, the West has abandoned its post-cold War guiding mission

The liberal order has effectively collapsed. This is the elephant in the room as the Ukraine crisis reaches its climax. A Western elite that was once almost puritanically profreedom – and self-confident to the point of hubris – now stands by largely divided, compromised and gormless, as Russia smashes international norms. The Anglo-american story of liberty that inspired the West for much of the 20th century is coming to a feeble end.

One would be forgiven for dismissing such a judgment as hysterical. It is still possible to glimpse some of the West’s old strength, such as in the robust rhetoric emanating from certain Nato capitals. Still, the fact remains that the Western powers have made it mortifyingly clear that they are unwilling to give Ukraine the help it really needs as Vladimir Putin confirms that he wishes to cleave off more of its territory.

Washington has been explicit that putting American troops on the ground in Ukraine is “not on the table”. It is too late to supply the country’s armed forces with the kind of surfaceto-air missiles and combat aircraft that might have levelled the playing field. The Ukrainian army could face shock-and-awe wipeout at the hands of a Russian military five times its size, if it comes to that.

For all its threats of “swift and severe” consequences, the West looks drained and compromised. Its citizens have little appetite for confrontation of any kind (53 per cent of Americans think that Washington shouldn’t even be taking sides). Neither do European leaders, given their countries’ reliance on Russian gas. Nor can the West properly punish Putin and Kremlinlinked oligarchs without incurring enormous pain itself – pain that many Nato members are evidently unwilling to bear.

The implications are not just catastrophic for Ukraine – they are seismic for the world. The West is quietly abandoning its guiding mission since the end of the Cold War: to integrate the former Soviet Union – and ultimately the whole world – into the liberal order. The romantic story that once energised it – of the world’s long march towards liberal democracy – imploded in the chaos of the Iraq war. Now all hope in that cause has been definitively lost.

But the disaster afflicting the liberal order goes much deeper than that. A euphoric belief in the power of globalisation has also ended in a crisis of faith. For years, Western thinkers have subscribed to the doctrine of “just-in-time” supply chains, whose fragility became painfully obvious during the pandemic. They also followed the logic that Europe could hoover up the natural resources of developing countries like Russia, with the latter using the windfall to turbocharge their economic progress, in a win-win for freedom. Instead, the West only reinforced a dangerous dependency on energy supplies from rogue states, while the likes of Putin shored up their positions.

Perhaps even worse, the West has lost all confidence in its own ideas. In particular, the notion that greater economic freedoms would inevitably result in greater political freedoms has been discredited. Democratic countries complacently slashed their defence budgets, thinking that economic integration and soft power would conquer conflict. And yet, when it comes to Russia, the exact opposite of what was expected has happened. Mafia capitalism has flourished in part by exploiting links with the West. Oligarchs have built billion-pound empires competing for access to state contracts from Vladimir Putin. The Kremlin laughs at the EU’S pretensions to a geopolitical role, as Russia flexes its military might.

The intent was to incorporate Russia into the global liberal economy; instead, it is Russia that has made great strides in incorporating Western countries into its own kleptocratic system. Russian cash has flooded into the West’s financial systems, most notoriously in London, often held in a shady, anonymous network of shell companies. Fraud experts fear that as a result it may be impossible to strike at Putin’s Achilles’ heel and seize the assets of his oligarchs.

It cannot be denied that this looted money has corrupted and distorted the UK. While “parasite” industries have exploded, from reputation PR forms to lawyers seasoned in anti-corruption loopholes, the middle class has been priced out of private schools and affordable property. There is no evidence that policy-making has itself been compromised by Russian money, but a perception that it has been might perhaps have emboldened Putin.

The Ukraine situation is so dangerous, because it is about more than the fate of one country. The West’s enemies are watching: indeed, this could be a dry run for an even greater confrontation with China over Taiwan. If anything, the West’s position in that scenario would be even weaker. We are even more reliant on the Chinese economy. Xi Jinping’s administration has been even more aggressive in targeting Western elite figures and institutions. In recent years it has boldly ramped up its deployment of Chinese agents to court Western politicians and carry out daring intellectual property thefts within top universities.

Moreover, bolstered by the economic success of the “Chinese model”, as well as its ability to control citizens in an emergency like Covid, the Chinese Communist Party is in a stronger position than Russia to corrode Western values from within – not least by promoting soft state authoritarianism through the West’s useful idiots on the Left.

One can only hope that the Ukraine fiasco is a wake-up call for Western elites. That they can finally accept that the old liberal order has failed and a new one must take its place. The evidence to date is that the penny has only partially dropped. The reluctance of Berlin to drop the Nord Stream 2 project is hardly a reassuring sign that it grasps the urgent need to start prioritising self-sufficiency in its energy supply. Europe’s botched net zero transition is another disaster area; our foolish attempt to ramp up renewables – rather than hedging our bets with massive and immediate investment in fracking and nuclear – will take up to 20 years to correct.

One thing we know for sure: Ukraine is not an isolated story of Russian aggression or Western impotence. It is merely the first earthquake as the world’s tectonic plates begin to shift.

‘The Ukraine situation is so dangerous because it is about more than the fate of one country’