One of the hardest things for the citizens of a democracy to grasp is the mindset of a dictator. Of necessity, democratic leaders focus on getting elected. They deliver better schools, hospitals, roads and public transport; build a stronger economy so wages rise and taxes fall, and; support the police so citizens feel safe in their homes and on their streets.
By contrast, dictators don’t have to worry about losing elections, so they can seek national glory and their place in history, especially when there’s a messianic commitment to imperial or religious dominion deep in their national cultures.
Not long after a Russian missile battery shot down a civilian airliner over eastern Ukraine in 2014, killing 298 people, including 38 Australians, I had an exchange with Vladimir Putin that I’d earlier likened to a “shirtfront”, or rough tackle on the sports field.
It went something like this: because that missile battery must have had his permission to be in another country, I insisted that he, Putin, owed the families of the dead an apology plus compensation. His retort, during his first invasion of Ukraine, was that the plane was brought down by provocateurs, Ukrainians were all fascists, and Ukraine had no right to exist.
Then, as we were walking back into the conference we were attending at the time, he suddenly turned, grabbed both my elbows, and said in English: “You are not a native Australian, but I am a native Russian”, before trying to shove me away. I’m sure this extraordinary mini-assault was meant as a warning to me, the citizen of a settler society, of my utter incapacity to grasp Putin’s blood-and-soil passion for every inch of Russian land.
So, clearly, all of the Russian dictator’s previous interventions, in Georgia and Armenia, plus that initial attack on Ukraine, were just incremental steps towards remedying the greatest geopolitical disaster of the 20th century, as he saw it: the demise of the Soviet Union. Putin’s mission from God, as he sees it, is to recreate the Russia of Peter the Great.
That’s why Ukraine isn’t just fighting for its own freedom; it’s fighting for the freedom of all the countries that would be Putin’s subsequent targets: Moldova, the rest of Georgia, the Stans and ultimately the Baltic States and Poland. At the very least, the fall of Ukraine would mean a new iron curtain in Europe, and a new Cold War standoff.
As Trotsky is supposed to have said: “You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you.” What’s almost unthinkable to us is what’s constantly on the minds of the dictators, who are now on the march. Get used to the prospect of war, if we are to avoid it. War is now more likely than in nine decades.
It’s not just Moscow that’s geared up for war. Beijing burns to overcome its “century of humiliation” by seizing practically independent Taiwan, on the way to resuming its destiny as the world’s Middle Kingdom, or global hegemon. As the commissars have told us countless times, that’s their plan. And in convulsing the global economy and deranging the global order, including the potential for nuclear escalation, an attack on Taiwan would be several orders of magnitude greater than the war in Ukraine.
Then there’s Tehran, set on uniting the Muslim world under its brand of Islam, and then securing Islam’s foretold triumph by laying waste to Israel and ultimately to the US. Why else would it be desperate to acquire nuclear weapons? As the mullahs have said: that’s their plan.
Ukraine is but the first fight in a global struggle we would prefer to avoid but the dictators are determined to have. One day, they will be at each other’s throats, as in the past, but for now they’re in a self-declared “no limits” partnership: China’s thirst for Russian oil and gas is funding Putin’s war machine; Iranian drones rain down on Ukraine. They are exploiting every vulnerability to shake the Pax Americana that’s made the world more free, more fair, more safe and more rich than ever, but that’s the chief obstacle to their global ambitions.
No one votes with their feet to live in Russia, China or the Middle Eastern theocracies yet that’s what this new arc of dictatorship wants, a world that’s more like them, with people in thrall to the leader, to the party, or to a brutal version of Islam. That’s what’s at stake in Ukraine: not just the right of Ukrainians to decide their future, but the right of all people everywhere to choose their destiny.
This is not a struggle that can be abandoned, just because it’s hard; because it’s much harder on the Ukrainians than it is on us. Our best hope of keeping the global peace is not to abandon today’s struggle to prepare for tomorrow’s. It’s not to forget about Eastern Europe in order to worry about East Asia. It’s not to put America first, or Australia first, because it’s not America or Australia that’s in the most trouble. But we will be if Ukraine falls. That’s why Ukraine is the frontline for freedom and why this war should only end with the resounding lesson that aggression does not pay.
The Russian tyrant needs to know that his bid to extinguish Ukraine does not pit 140 million Russians against 35 million Ukrainians but decency versus barbarity and, ultimately, democracy versus dictatorship. Ukraine needs to be given all the weapons it needs, no longer enough not to lose but, finally, enough to win – which means driving every last Russian soldier from every inch of Ukrainian territory – and if that’s an unsurvivable humiliation for the Russian leader, so be it.
It means allowing Ukraine to mount the attacks on Russia’s infrastructure and supply lines that Russia has constantly mounted against Ukraine. And if, at some point, the Ukrainians choose to bid for peace, it should be with the guarantee that Ukraine will henceforth be in NATO so Putin can’t use any ceasefire as a pause to regroup and renew his assault.
At last the US congress has woken up to the folly of denying Ukraine the weapons it needs to help the world by helping itself. And the Europeans have finally given Ukraine access to some of the Russian wealth it deserves, after all it’s suffered. Yet it’s embarrassing, even shameful, that Australia has not done more.
We owe it to Ukrainians to help them to keep their country; but even more, we owe it to ourselves to heed this wake-up call and to win this new civilisational struggle against those wanting a darker world.
This is the edited text of a speech delivered to the Black Sea Security Forum in Odessa on Saturday.
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