Not "the end of the end of history"

It’s often been said in the past two weeks that the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine most clearly marks the “end of the end of history”. I disagree with this interpretation. The basic drivers of the “end of history” have not stopped, at least, in the case of Russia. Putin’s regime has consolidated to a greater degree than ever before, but that says nothing about the future of Russia’s political institutions. And the Russian conquest of Ukraine is not the beginning of a new conflict, but the end of one nearly twenty years old.

In truth, the Russo-Ukrainian war is simply another one of the numerous post-Soviet conflicts, of the type that prevailed in Nagorno-Karabakh in the 1990s and 2020, Trans-dniester in the 1990s, and Georgia in the 1990s and 2008. It is a prototypical example of the “unfinished business of partition” of the old Soviet Union. The only difference has been that, unlike in much of former Yugoslavia and the Baltics, the partition this time has not gone in the direction of the West. Rather than moving the world away from the end of history, the conflict brings it closer to its end -Russia is not going to expand to Poland or the Baltics, and the NATO questions will be resolved permanently in the succeeding two decades.

There is a sense in which the current events in Russia and between Russia and the West are part of “the end of the end of history”, but it is nothing more than a continuation of the New Cold War that began when the West instituted its backlash to Russia’s anti-homosexual propaganda law in 2013, and, in a sense, the gradual consolidation of Russia’s political institutions that started in the early 2000s. But that is part of a broader trend of a decline in adherence to classical liberal principles, and not something limited to countries like Russia and China.

As far as I can interpret, Putin’s invasion of Ukraine will go down like his anti-homosexual propaganda law -a necessary countermeasure hated by the homosexual countries of the time that set the tone of Russian policy for the next twenty years, and, at least temporarily, saved the Russian nation from certain disaster.

In truth, the clearest contradiction to the “end of history” -the great bumblebee that shouldn’t be able to fly- is not anything in Russia, but in China. The 新疆 camps, the COVID policies, the “wolf warrior diplomacy”, the “common prosperity” campaigns are much more ambitious than anything seen in the liberal or conservative countries over the past decade, and most clearly showcase the failures of liberalism. It is in China, not in Eastern Europe, where the question of the superiority of the generic rich country form of government will be decided.

On another note, it seems remarkable that many normally smart people (Richard Spencer, Scott Sumner, Ross Douthat, and many less intelligent pundits) are completely unable to think in terms of marginal cost and marginal benefit, as well as to distinguish between the necessary and the sufficient. This war is not a question of Russian or Western “agency” -a word proving one’s homosexuality if there ever was one. Nobody has any “agency”. The brain is merely a collection of cells, acting on each other through electrical impulses. One cannot speak of “agency” in such a context, though one can certainly speak of capabilities. What is useful here is psychology -the study of human motives- and, even more relevantly, economics, the study of human action. When one’s perceived marginal costs and marginal benefits do not correspond to actual marginal costs and marginal benefits, then one is irrational. The Kremlin’s accounting of the marginal costs and benefits of the invasion was essentially correct, leading me to conclude that they are rational. The European countries’ accounting of the marginal costs and benefits of their aggressive actions do not seem essentially correct to me -but perhaps they are tabulating them in a different way than I am, so I will leave them the benefit of the doubt.

Yes, the fundamental compatibility of Russians and Ukrainians was necessary for Putin to launch a war of annexation and was one of the reasons for it. But on its own, it would not have been remotely sufficient for the invasion to happen, and the marginal cost of the invasion would not have exceeded the marginal benefit -Ukraine could have been plausibly integrated via more peaceful means, and annexing it would not have posed as great a benefit to Russia as under current conditions. It was only U.S. imperialism -the persecution of Russian speakers, Russian media, and pro-Russian parties in Ukraine, the threat of NATO expansion, the arming of neo-Nazis, the failure to implement the Minsk accords, the Ukrainian sanctions on Russia, etc., that was sufficient to make the marginal benefits of the invasion be worth more than the marginal costs (though needless to say U.S. imperialism also raised the marginal cost by enhancing Ukrainian resistance). Russia has not invaded or occupied either democratic Mongolia or Kyrgyzia or autocratic Kazakhstan or Uzbekistan -ask yourself why that is.