At the Munich Security Conference in February 2022, mere days before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Annalena Baerbock, Germany’s newly minted foreign minister, argued that Europe faced a stark choice between “Helsinki or Yalta.” To one side was the 1975 conference in Finland, where 35 countries signed an agreement that recognized Europe’s post–World War II boundaries as final and called for the promotion of international cooperation and human rights; to the other was the 1945 summit in Crimea, where Western leaders betrayed the countries of eastern Europe by granting Stalin free rein in the region. The choice, Baerbock said, was “between a system of shared responsibility for security and peace’’ or “a system of power rivalry and spheres of influence.” By March, Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, was claiming that the West had made the right decision in refusing to discuss the issues of NATO enlargement or of Ukrainian neutrality. “Putin is trying to turn back the clock to another era—an era of brutal use of force, of power politics, of spheres of influence, and internal repression,” she argued. “I am confident he will fail.”
One year into the war, this view—that spheres of influence are a thing of the past—is more widely held than ever. The first major war on European soil since World War II is seen by manyAmericanandEuropean foreign policy elites, paradoxically, not as a sign that the realities of rivalry and international power politics are back, but rather that Western values and security cooperation can triumph over them. For many commentators in the United States, U.S. President Joe Biden’s response to the war has been his biggest foreign policy triumph and a clear sign that U.S. foreign policy is on the right track. Indeed, the National Security Strategy that the White House released in October all but took a victory lap, noting, “We are leading a united, principled, and resolute response to Russia’s invasion and we have rallied the world to support the Ukrainian people as they bravely defend their country.”
The Persistence of Great-power Politics
By Emma Ashford
Grand Strategy
Originally published in Foreign Affairs.
At the Munich Security Conference in February 2022, mere days before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Annalena Baerbock, Germany’s newly minted foreign minister, argued that Europe faced a stark choice between “Helsinki or Yalta.” To one side was the 1975 conference in Finland, where 35 countries signed an agreement that recognized Europe’s post–World War II boundaries as final and called for the promotion of international cooperation and human rights; to the other was the 1945 summit in Crimea, where Western leaders betrayed the countries of eastern Europe by granting Stalin free rein in the region. The choice, Baerbock said, was “between a system of shared responsibility for security and peace’’ or “a system of power rivalry and spheres of influence.” By March, Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, was claiming that the West had made the right decision in refusing to discuss the issues of NATO enlargement or of Ukrainian neutrality. “Putin is trying to turn back the clock to another era—an era of brutal use of force, of power politics, of spheres of influence, and internal repression,” she argued. “I am confident he will fail.”
One year into the war, this view—that spheres of influence are a thing of the past—is more widely held than ever. The first major war on European soil since World War II is seen by many American and European foreign policy elites, paradoxically, not as a sign that the realities of rivalry and international power politics are back, but rather that Western values and security cooperation can triumph over them. For many commentators in the United States, U.S. President Joe Biden’s response to the war has been his biggest foreign policy triumph and a clear sign that U.S. foreign policy is on the right track. Indeed, the National Security Strategy that the White House released in October all but took a victory lap, noting, “We are leading a united, principled, and resolute response to Russia’s invasion and we have rallied the world to support the Ukrainian people as they bravely defend their country.”
Read the full piece at Foreign Affairs.
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