20 The View is reported by Leslie Dickstein, Mariah Espada, Nik Popli, and Simmone Shah
THE VIEW OPENER
The urgency of his questions needs
no explanation. Vladimir Putin has
decided Ukraine belongs to Russia,
and there are no boundaries, trea-
ties, or warnings that will prevent him
from waging war to make it so. At this
point, why should Ukraine’s Presi-
dent, or anyone else, have much confi-
dence that the “international commu-
nity” will stop this war?
More broadly, loss of faith in govern-
ing authorities is the defining story of
our era. The U.S., the only nation that
can project military power into every re-
gion of the world, has become its most
politically dysfunctional major power. A
third of Americans say Joe Biden is not a
legitimately elected President. Europe-
ans have lost faith too. In 2016, Britain
voted its way out of the E.U., and anti-
establishment, xenophobic parties of
the far right shifted the politics inside
many European states.
In fact, the entire international sys-
tem is increasingly in question. China
has advanced from impoverished to
powerhouse over four decades and in-
creasingly rejects the right of Western-
led institutions to make and enforce
international rules. Strongmen have
emerged in Russia, India, Turkey, and
even E.U. members Hungary and Poland
to challenge principles of freedom of the
press, democratic checks and balances,
and minority rights. Few in any country
have faith the U.N. can do much more
than help care for and feed the refugees
fleeing conflicts no one can resolve.
There’s a lot to be said for the idea
that crises create opportunities that
mustn’t be wasted. It’s true that our
world has faced a stream of shocks in
recent years: the 2008 global financial
crisis, the Arab Spring, the 2015–2016
tidal wave of migrants into Europe,
Brexit, the rise of angry populists in Eu-
rope and America, and then the worst
pandemic in 100 years. None of these
events has created a new sense of unity
and purpose.
Now Russia has invaded Ukraine.
War is killing civilians by the thou-
sands, more than 5 million refugees have
headed west in more than two months
of fighting, NATO and Russia have
moved to high alert, and fuel and food
prices around the world are surging.
It’s no one’s fault the system is
failing. Order and disorder are cyclical
forces. The U.N. and institutions like the
World Bank and IMF were built atop
the ashes of a war that ended 77 years
ago. That’s why Germany and Japan,
wealthy and dynamic free- market de-
mocracies committed to multilateral-
ism and the rule of law, had no seats at
the table for Zelensky’s speech to the
Security Council—and why Russia did.
The international system is bro-
ken. To fix it, the world needs a crisis.
It was the crisis of World War II that
created institutions and alliances that
helped keep the peace and invest in
global development for decades after.
Putin’s war on Ukraine has created
the biggest geopolitical emergency
since the Cold War’s end. The Russian
government has even threatened theuse of nuclear weapons and warned of
World War III.
Can this crisis bolster dying institu-
tions and create new ones?START WITH NATO. Since the Soviet
collapse three decades ago, NATO
has faced tough questions about its
purpose. During his presidency, Don-
ald Trump sometimes talked down
NATO’s value for U.S. national secu-
rity, and some of his former aides say
he wanted to remove the U.S. from the
alliance. In 2019, France’s President△
A war-damaged apartment in
Makariv, Ukraine, on April 19.
Residents say the building had been
attacked by Russian tanksJOHN MOORE—GETTY IMAGES