Ukraine offers us a lesson in courage and resistance

Home guard: Civilian volunteers check their guns at a Territorial Defence unit registration office in Kyiv. Picture: Getty Images

The world owes Ukraine a staggering debt.

In an age when we disparage democratic societies for their cynicism, fracturing and trivial self-absorption, the people of Ukraine are redefining freedom and what it means to fight for it.

This should resonate as much in Australia as in any other country that respects human dignity and the sovereignty of nations.

It is far too soon to tell the full and true consequences of Vladimir Putin’s invasion, though the appearance is becoming more of a madman’s last wager than anything resembling strategy.

And it’s all too easy for commentators to offer assertions from safe spaces so far from the carnage and destruction.

So every word that follows begins with respect for the millions in Ukraine who are risking everything, against a murderous threat they never invited and in circumstances they never chose.

Whether Kyiv endures or – for a time – is overwhelmed, the many lessons of February 2022 will redefine global security for decades, and not in the way the aggressor had fantasised.

This has powerful implications for Australia’s region, the Indo-Pacific, in which Chinese coercion against Taiwan and many other powers remains the primary risk to peace and security.

The first lesson is as simple as it is profound. Resistance to authoritarian aggression is not only right – it is useful.

In recent years, so much of the doom-mongering about authoritarian power, China’s as well as Russia’s, has begun with the assumption that size and ruthlessness are all that matters.

Such cold calculations that military bulk alone would let Moscow steamroller its neighbour dissipated on first contact with a determined and resourceful adversary.

It is easy enough to write the obituary for global order if we have no real will to fight for it.

Ukraine has shown instead that any self-respecting nation has agency if its people take a stand, because resistance is the first step to solidarity.

This observation will be taken to heart in democratic Taiwan.

That goes to a second lesson. In a connected and hyper-aware world, cross-border support for resistance can evolve with bewildering speed and take many consequential forms, not just frontline military alliances.

We are a long way from glimpsing even the shadow of an outcome, but the contest is no longer solely about tanks and guns – though that dimension, too, will be affected by how fast and effectively other democracies can supply weapons to willing defenders.

Instead, this is a full-spectrum contest of political will, in which there are already signs that Russians are far from united in their commitment to Putin’s gamble.

Resilience has become the new buzzword in Australia and many other nations, as we’ve faced the challenges of the 2020s: Covid-19, China, climate-induced bushfires – and now the global consequences of war in Europe.

The courage in Kyiv obliges us to reimagine what that word means.

Australian government and opposition alike can boast how they have taken a stand for our values, interests and national identity, whether against Chinese economic coercion and agents of influence or small numbers of terrorists and violent extremists.

And Australians can be proud of the way they support one another through fire and flood, as the present disaster in Queensland demonstrates.

But a lesson of Ukraine is that no nation knows its mettle until it faces a foreign state determined to subjugate it entirely.

We cannot hide from the world’s woes, and use comforting concentric circles of geography to define some problems as ours and others as belonging entirely to others.

The more solidarity Australia can show with Ukraine at this decisive time, the more claim we will have to the international community when our interests are at risk (however less existentially) from China’s expanding power.

At the same time, we need to distinguish high-sounding diplomacy from the realities of how states behave.

Most nations in our region – including the large democracies of India and Indonesia – are not stepping forward on Ukraine, and we should define our relations with them more clearly in terms of interests than vague declarations about values.

But however much Ukraine causes us to adjust our diplomacy of partnerships in the Indo-Pacific, and embrace more openly the idea of globally balancing against China and Russia alike, there will also be strains on the Beijing-Moscow axis.

That, plus timely reflection in Beijing about the self-harm of crossing a threshold to major war.

At home, we need to get real about national resilience, from fuel security to supply chains to a clearer sense of responsibilities of citizens to defend democracy.

Much has been achieved in recent years to harden our infrastructure and modernise our military, but Australia remains at an embarrassing fraction of its potential in being able to mobilise for survival in a world where war cannot be wished away.

Professor Rory Medcalf is head of the National Security College at the Australian National University and author of Contest for the Indo-Pacific.