The editors write:
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, a year ago today, set off a cascade of global repercussions for energy, economics, geopolitics and the role of American leadership.It also has produced a number of perhaps unintended consequences. Here are some of them:
More than 300,000 people are estimated to have been killed or wounded. Millions more have fled their homes. The war also united the West, recast global energy trade and exposed the limits of U.S. military manufacturing.
It has resurrected the Western alliance: Just when it looked as if NATO was about to atrophy into irrelevance, Russia poked it awake. NATO countries, particularly in Wedstern Europe, disabused themselves of the notion that they didn't have to spend any money to defend themselves from an attack by Russia because Russia was really just interested in doing business with Europe and being pals.
Now not only has NATO been resuscitated, but numerous other countries (Sweden, Finland, Moldova, Georgia and, of course, Ukraine) have been jolted into expressing a desire to join.
It has rejiggered the way future wars will be fought: Heavily out manned and outgunned, Ukraine resorted to the use of cheap weapons (drones), cell phone communications, and small, agile units of guerilla fighters to completely flummox and degrade the much less adroit Russians.
The U.S. military industrial base has received an economic steroid injection: Much of the money promised to Ukraine is actually going to American munitions manufacturers to build the munitions and equipment that has been promised to Ukraine. It also has been used to bolster supply chains and hire workers.
America has shown itself to be an indispensible nation whose leadership is essential: No other nation could have done for Ukraine what America has done, even if the Biden administration has often been painfully slothful about doing it.
Russia and China have strengthened their relationship: China, a nation with few, if any, moral scruples (witness its genocide of the Uyghurs and its alliance with North Korea), has cozied up to Moscow in an attempt to secure cheap Russian oil and to wear down American resolve to defend Taiwan. Russia is desperate for friends, but they're likely to learn sometime in the future that China is not really their friend.
Global antipathy toward fossil and nuclear energy has shown signs of shifting: Since the West is no longer buying Russian oil, America has become the largest exporter of natural gas and shows signs of renewing offshore oil production. There are hints, too, that our infatuation with a carbon-free energy regime may be cooling. Europe, too, is reassessing their hostility toward fossil fuels and nuclear energy.
Green energy is all very nice in the abstract, but when families can't heat their houses in the winter their disdain for coal and nuclear power will quickly subside.
