For globalization to survive the war in Ukraine, the United States must do better and be better. It is unclear whether the world’s greatest democracy has the wherewithal to manage this.
Unfair? It may seem so. President Joe Biden has done a creditable job of rallying the West to Ukraine’s side as it battles a brutal Russian invasion. By going public early and often with good U.S. intelligence, Biden has kept ahead of clumsy Russian propaganda and disinformation. The feared devastating cyberstrikes against the West have not (yet) materialized, reportedly thanks to preemptive work by U.S. security services. It’s leadership the likes of which we’ve not seen from Washington in recent memory.
And that’s the problem. Biden has a steady hand now. For how long? How long until Washington’s next hugely damaging strategic mistake? For the current moment did not rise from nowhere, out of the suddenly maniacal, homicidal mind of Russian President Vladimir Putin. He has been this way for some time, and this war has had two decades of runway. At critical junctures, the United States either vastly overplayed or underplayed its hand.
