Russia's war in Ukraine signals USSR's death throes
By Hal Brands / Bloomberg Opinion
Wars that are caused by people can also be caused by deep historical processes. For proof, look at the fighting in Ukraine. That conflict is the doing of Russian President Vladimir Putin, a ruler determined to reassert Russia’s greatness by destroying an independent Ukraine. Yet it is also part of a bigger story about what happens when empires break up.
The fighting in Ukraine is the latest and worst of the wars fought over the remnants of the Soviet Union, an empire whose death throes continue some 30 years after the union itself ceased to exist. It will not, unfortunately, be the last.
The 20th century saw the breaking of the great Eurasian empires that once dominated global affairs. World War I destroyed the Russian, Austro-Hungarian, Ottoman and German empires. World War II brought down empires ruled by Tokyo, Rome and (once again) Berlin. Decolonization subsequently finished off the British, French and Portuguese empires. And the end of the Cold War killed the Soviet Union, which first lost its satrapies in Eastern Europe and then disintegrated into 15 independent states.
Yet empires don’t die quickly: Their collapse, historian Serhii Plokhy wrote, is a “process rather than an event.” When a vast entity once held together by the iron discipline of the metropole gives way, don’t expect a new, stable status quo overnight.
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