The war in Ukraine is not just a regional conflict – it’s a warning. The lessons it offers, if understood and acted upon, could be the difference between a secure West and a wider European or even global war.
Background to the conflict
The United States (US) emerged from the Second World War the most powerful nation on earth. The US Navy had one hundred aircraft carriers. Robert Oppenheimer had given the Pentagon the atomic bomb. Ford’s Willow Run aircraft factory could produce a four-engine B24 Liberator bomber every 63 minutes. The United States’ military-industrial complex – crafted by President Franklin D. Roosevelt – could produce vast quantities of cutting-edge warfighting matériel to order. During the second half of the Twentieth Century, the US used its power to create a new world order – the Pax Americana – governed by a moral code that specified, amongst other things, that international borders should not be changed by force.
In the 1994 Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances, the US, Britain, and Russia agreed that Ukraine’s borders were sacrosanct. The Memorandum stated that Ukraine could expect diplomatic and military support from the United Nations in the event it found its sovereignty threatened. Events have shown the Budapest Memorandum’s security guarantees to be worthless. In 2014, a colonialist Russian president seized Crimea with impunity. In 2022, the West, which, following Putin’s illegal annexation of Crimea, could have stationed troops in Ukraine as a deterrent, stood and watched as Putin invaded the country from the north, east, and south. Appeasement never works. It failed to deter Hitler in the 1930s. It failed to deter Putin in the 2000s.
Lessons from the conflict
The Russia-Ukraine War holds important lessons for the West that, if actioned, could save Europe from a rampant, colonialist Russia. I describe what I consider to be the most important lessons in my new book, “The Russia-Ukraine War – security lessons.” Here are some of those lessons:
- As demonstrated by Ukraine’s innovative drone manufacturing sector, a strong indigenous defence industrial base, supported by relevant university teaching and research, is a prerequisite for success on the battlefield
- Critical national infrastructure and manufacturing capacity must be protected through layered air defense, electronic warfare, hardening, dynamic camouflage techniques, and dispersal. Hardening might involve moving production facilities underground (as Britain and Germany did during the Second World War). Dispersal involves scattering the elements of a production facility across as large an area as possible, reducing the chances of an air barrage triggering a chain reaction. Dispersed – loosely coupled – production facilities are more resilient than concentrated – tightly coupled – production facilities
- Under wartime conditions, where a country finds itself under sustained air barrage, a national power generation system built around a small number of monolithic power generation units – for example, large nuclear and coal-fired power stations – is less resilient than a national power generation system built around a large number of small power generation units – for example, neighbourhood waste-to-power stations, community wind and solar farms, civic hydro-electric schemes and tidal barrages and compact coal, gas, oil, wood and peat-burning power stations. The more granular and diversified a country’s power generation system, the more resilient it is
- In time of war, the inter-state dependencies created by globalization render participating states vulnerable. While globalization delivers economic benefits under peacetime conditions, with, for example, states able to source the cheapest components, under wartime conditions, trading partners may be unable or, because their loyalties lie elsewhere, unwilling to supply such matériel. Under these conditions, a country’s advanced weapons systems may be rendered unserviceable – inert junk sitting on a runway, parade ground or marshalling area. Conscious of the vulnerabilities created by globalization, Trump, like his predecessor, is determined to re-shore critical industries such as microchip manufacture
- Technophilia – an obsession with complex, high-technology weapons systems – is a dysfunction. While advanced systems are an essential component of any arsenal, so too are cheap, simple-to-use systems that can be produced at volume by semi or unskilled workers in improvised factories and quickly deployed to the line of contact. The simple drones used by Ukrainian troops during the early stages of the conflict to gather intelligence and attack troops and soft-skinned vehicles are a case in point
- Military mindfulness – a capacity for creative thinking across ranks – is a force multiplier. Witness, for example, how the Ukrainian military’s revival of Jagdkampf – the doctrine of irregular warfare centred on small, mobile and autonomous fighting units – helped the army repel Russia’s 2022 assault on Kyiv
- Allies are wont to switch sides out of self-interest. In June 1940, Italy allied itself with Nazi Germany. In September 1943, Italy surrendered to the Allies. In August 2025, Trump applauded Putin as he sauntered down a red carpet in Alaska to shake the President’s hand. Former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson described the Alaska summit as “The most vomit-inducing episode in all the tawdry history of international diplomacy”
- The West’s refusal to deploy troops to Ukraine following Putin’s illegal annexation of Crimea was likely read by the Russian president as a sign of weakness and, indeed, an invitation to attack Kyiv. Had Western nations used strategic empathy – a foundational tool of diplomacy – to gameplay how Putin might read the West’s surrender over Crimea, it is possible they would have dispatched troops to Ukraine to deter further aggression. Had this been done, the current bloody Donbas quagmire might have been averted
- If we understand the Cold War as an ideological conflict between authoritarianism and liberalism, then it did not end with the collapse of the Soviet Union. The ideological conflict that fuelled the Cold War continues with the same protagonists pushing the same agendas. In light of this realpolitik and of serial warnings of unrest – for example, Russia’s invasion of Georgia and brutal conquest of Chechnya – Western disarmament and pacifism seem, in hindsight, suicidal
- Putin is resolved to recreate the Soviet empire. Europe will only survive if it stops talking about security guarantees – which, in the context of Putin’s duplicitous and colonialist regime and Trump’s isolationism, are worthless – and rearms at pace. In 1938 in Munich, Hitler stated in writing he had no unmet territorial ambitions. In 1939 he walked into Czechoslovakia. In 1994, Boris Yeltsin signed the Budapest Memorandum that, ostensibly, guaranteed Ukraine’s borders. In 2014 Vladimir Putin walked into Crimea. Weapons and the will to use them are the only effective security guarantees. Appeasement never works.
In my book I talk about the importance of not just learning from past events but of actioning lessons learned, something sociologists call active learning or active foresight. It is clear from his observation “Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it” that Churchill understood the importance of active learning and active foresight. Churchill also understood the reality of human existence: the fact that our survival depends on our capacity and willingness to fight for the things we hold dear, such as freedom of speech. Churchill observed: “The story of the human race is War. Except for brief and precarious interludes, there has never been peace in the world; and before history began, murderous strife was universal and unending.” If we want peace we must prepare for war. That is the realpolitik of today’s chaotic world.