How Vladimir Putin Brought the West Together

 At Der Speigel, "United By Danger":

The Ukraine war is uniting the West – politically, militarily, morally. But what will the world's democracies do with this newfound unity? Can they succeed in preventing further escalation?

The small Romanian town of Câmpia Turzii doesn't look like the kind of place where global political developments take place. The bed of gravel in front of the town hall is waiting for new asphalt, the "Asia” market next door has lost its "i," and the hotel on the outskirts of town bears the simple name A3. The town’s biggest attraction stands at the city limits. Once you pass the last single-family homes, you suddenly find yourself in front of a mounted aircraft. A blue, Soviet-produced MiG-21 fighter jet juts into the sky like a signpost.

Câmpia Turzii has been home to an air base for almost 70 years. During the Cold War, Warsaw Pact pilots took off and landed here. These days, though, NATO troops are stationed behind the metal gate.

People waited for precisely that for more than 50 years, says Laura Ștefan, a Romanian who works for the Expert Forum, which promotes trans-Atlantic relations. "The Americans were the salvation," she says. "When the first U.S. soldiers moved in, people greeted them with flowers."

NATO, the West – synonymous for many with freedom and prosperity back when Romania joined NATO in 2004.

Today, the country that has for so long stood in the shadow of European history is a front-line state. "We border Ukraine," Ștefan says. "If it came to an invasion of Romania, that would be the end. For many of us, but also for Putin. But I don’t think an invasion of Romania is likely. Still, we have to be prepared for anything.”

Slowly, we're running out of comparisons for grasping the magnitude of what is currently happening. Just a week ago, Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine brought to mind events like Saddam Hussein’s 1990 attack on Kuwait – a large scale and ultimately devastating military operation, but also one whose impact at first seemed limited to the region.

In the meantime, however, an open and brutal war is raging, and Putin’s threat of using nuclear weapons is evoking the darkest moments in human history: the fateful chain of events that triggered World War I in 1914 and the unleashing of World War II through the invasion of Poland on the orders of a single, megalomaniacal dictator.

.. Few spoke seriously during the Kuwait crisis about the possibility of an imminent third world war. Today, many are using that expression, from the German Green Party politician Jürgen Trittin to the British-American presidential adviser Fiona Hill, who says the global conflict began long ago – with the assassination attempts by Russian agents in the West, for example.

The same West that for so long seemed powerless in the face of Putin’s provocations has now been united by his attack on Ukraine in a way that neither the Kremlin nor Western politicians could have foreseen...

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