Aspasia Fatsiadou
The war in Ukraine, now in its third year, has from the beginning been framed as a moral confrontation — the dominant narrative being that of a sovereign democracy resisting the revisionism of an authoritarian Russian state seeking to reclaim the lost grandeur of its former empire. A crisis that might have been contained has turned into a prolonged war, with devastating consequences for Ukraine and corrosive effects on European cohesion. As the conflict drags on, what increasingly comes to light is a blend of ideological inertia, strategic deficit, and political avoidance — once again masked by emphatic declarations that only deepen the impasse.
The question was never whether Ukraine had the right to choose its alliances. The real issue was whether that right could be exercised, secured, and sustained without triggering a war that the West could neither enter directly nor bring to a decisive end. As early as 2022, Ukraine’s NATO accession was politically unfeasible — a fact acknowledged by Western leaders themselves. Yet the discourse of “freedom of choice” persisted, as though the invocation of rights alone could dictate political decisions, rather than a realistic assessment of the situation.
As Noam Chomsky rightly observed, great powers invoke a rules-based order while resorting to force wherever their interests demand it. The case of the Solomon Islands is indicative: in 2022, when this small Pacific state signed a security agreement with China, U.S. officials expressed concern over its strategic implications — a vocabulary never applied to Ukraine’s far more consequential efforts at integration.
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