Joe Hildebrand: Russia's invasion of Ukraine could be the West’s salvation

World War II shaped global societies, but as a new conflict continues in Europe many in the West appear to have lost the values that formed and sustained us, writes Joe Hildebrand.

Vladimir Putin’s shameless invasion of Ukraine is the most brutal and bloody proof in a generation of how gormless and formless the West has become.

And yet it might also prove the salvation of the West itself.

More than three decades after the supposed end of the Cold War — indeed, since the “end of history”, as Francis Fukuyama so famously put it — we are belatedly discovering that the war never actually ended and that history is still going strong.

The only question is how it will judge us.

Even before the conflict, a horde of commentators were saying this could be the most significant European battlefront since World War II.

Servicemen of pro-Russian militia walk next to a military convoy of armed forces in Luhansk People's Republic. Picture: Reuters/Alexander Ermochenko

A Ukrainian service member at a check point in the city of Zhytomyr, Ukraine. Picture: Reuters/Viacheslav Ratynskyi

This was a bold call given that it was that war and its aftermath which defined the role and values of the West and shaped almost the entire modern world.

This is no exaggeration. WWII not only enabled the wholesale Russian takeover of eastern Europe, but also sparked the British decolonisation of India and the Far East and the French decolonisation of Africa — despite the reluctance of wartime heroes Winston Churchill and Charles de Gaulle.

It also set in motion the chain of events that would enable Chinese communists (who played a minimal role in the fighting) to overrun their Nationalist enemies (who did the lion’s share) and send the latter packing to Taiwan.

The victory over the Nazis and the subsequent hostilities with Stalin and Mao gave the West something to define itself by — a little thing called liberal democracy. It stood between fascism and communism, proudly, clearly and fearlessly denouncing both.

Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow on Sunday. Picture: Sergei Guneyev/Sputnik/AFP

A demonstrator holds a sign depicting Russian President Vladimir Putin during a protest against Russia's invasion of Ukraine, in Madrid. Picture: Gabriel Bouys/AFP

But ever since the fall of the Iron Curtain that pride, clarity and courage has been diminished, corrupted and discouraged. And not by our erstwhile enemies, but from within.

There has been a deliberate and concerted effort within our political and cultural institutions to view the West not as a set of nations espousing the values of liberty and democracy but as agents of imperialism and oppression — a throwback to Georgian and Victorian times which, ironically enough, seems to assume that WWII and the events that followed simply never occurred.

We are rightly taught to be mortified and ashamed by the West’s sins of 18th century colonists and 19th century slave-owners but often without the accompanying celebration of its accomplishments:

The great post-war reconstruction efforts of the Marshall Plan, the federal push to end segregation in America’s south, the reunification of Germany and fall of the Berlin Wall, the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the rise of India as the world’s largest democracy and the economic liberalisation of China.

That is the story of the second half of the 20th century and yet if you listened to the nouveau Marxists of the early 21st you’d think that none of it had ever happened and Queen Victoria was still on the throne.

Ukrainian refugees arrive from the Medyka pedestrian border crossing, in Przemsyl, eastern Poland. Picture: Wojtek Radwanski/AFP

Or that none of it mattered given the injustices still being faced by trans activists at the hands of a boy wizard.

Little wonder that faced with actual aggression by similar ideological throwbacks like Putin and Xi Jinping the West has struggled to comprehend it, let alone formulate a response.

Surely they would be all peace, love and mung beans? Surely they would hate to end up being shamed on Twitter?

As it turns out, they don’t particularly care — about whether or not they are trending or human life.

All they care about is extending their empires, and yet this quite literal form of imperialism gets either completely ignored or validated by the lunar left — and, in the case of Putin, also the lunar right.

The appeasement of China can be seen even among some luminaries of the Labor Right (whom I otherwise like) but more worryingly among some activists of the Socialist Left, who should be sent to re-education camp

The appeasement of Putin has an even broader spectrum, ranging from the ideological Neanderthal Jeremy Corbyn to politically homeless Trumpists who have gone from denouncing claims of Russian collusion to being shameless apologists for the Russians.

And so the West has become captive to either PC peacenik rhetoric or populist tough-talk, neither of which has produced anything resembling a real plan to deal with Putin or China.

Why? Because in an age in which words are judged more highly than deeds there is no political reward for strategy or strength.

And so what is happening in Ukraine is the horrible product of an age in which words mean nothing. An age in which it is more important to say the right thing than to do it.

In the streets of Kyiv people are fighting to the death. Meanwhile people in the once almighty West are struggling to articulate in their boardrooms or their bedrooms the very thing they even fought for in the first place.

Maybe now we can finally see what we stand for.

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