Why Old Analogies Do Not Explain the Ukrainian Precedent
Modern geopolitical thought, in trying to grasp the practicality of a new world order, increasingly resembles a person trying to find the right address in an unfamiliar metropolis using a medieval map.
Not because the map is completely wrong—but because the city is already different: different architectural solutions, a different street structure, a different logic of residential neighborhoods.
The map suggests: once, everything was like this, but it has grown into a new urban environment. The former city, depicted on the map, has been destroyed multiple times—by fires, barbarian bombings, and plundering, and the current metropolis should remember all this to avoid repeated catastrophes, as bad times have a tendency to recur. But there will be no repetition, because the city is no longer the same, and times are completely different. With them—different threats and perspectives.
The map thus says: before you lies the past, which exists only in the tragic memory of the city’s survival, and therefore, by this map, you might not find the former address. So—do not seek in the past.
It must be noted: the expert community is experiencing a deep methodological crisis in the search for civilizational prospects. Despite the multitude of forecasts, a significant portion of assessments still rely on inertial historical analogy. Analysts persistently seek relevant patterns in the past, attempting to overlay the matrix of events from past eras, centuries, and 20th-century tragedies onto the fundamentally new—unpredictably nonlinear—architecture of the 21st century.
The Trap of Yesterday’s Victories
The most commonly used models for interpreting current conflicts remain retrospective scenarios: from the eve of world wars and the war “for the future peace,” from appeasement of the aggressor (the Sudeten motif) to the reincarnation of the Cold War and even the former nationally fragmented Europe. The trauma of the USSR’s collapse still compels many to see in current events only an “unfinished cycle” from thirty years ago, so to speak, an “unfinished gestalt” that inevitably must have its “inherited” conclusion. This unfinished gestalt is increasingly heard in numerous crossed—”historically justified”—territorial claims and ambitions.
Of course, no one today would entirely ignore the fact that the current situation bears undeniable signs of a “global existential crisis” or “erosion of globalization.” However, the main trend of recent geopolitical upheavals is becoming increasingly apparent: there is a noticeable shift in focus—from a system of democratic values to a rigid system of local and global financial-economic interests, amplified by armed conflicts.
Simply put, technologies and their financial “cushion” pragmatically and with postmodern arrogance overcome the philosophy of existence and its value-idea framework. Yet the persistent paradox of modernity is that this is often done using tools that become outdated even before they can be utilized. The world attempts to solve “new speed” problems with old administrative management methods: long approvals of “management pedals,” balances, procedural substitutes for necessary “as of yesterday” concrete decisions. Alternatively, there are excessively quick and unconsidered emotional decisions based on the eloquent experience of the past without a sober look into the future (like the planless war in Iran).
The defeat of globalism today paradoxically combines with an unprecedented pan-civilizational advance of pervasive communication technologies. The world, in its farthest corners, perceives and experiences itself globally, yet thinks and acts increasingly locally. It feels as if the world is losing its temporal orientation and beginning to get lost in its own perspective.
“The Ukrainian Paradox” and Intellectual Fog
A separate—even exceptional—place in this discourse is occupied by the war in Ukraine. This is precisely the phenomenon that stubbornly eludes the framework of usual analogies. Even the American war against Iran, seemingly staged by the Russian script of “aggression for security,” with all its harshness and injustice to the civilian population, is not perceived like the Ukrainian war against Mordor. Why does this happen?
Firstly, because Ukraine has become and remains a key key to resolving the global crisis: by the very fact of its unbreakable resistance to the pressure of three world powers, Ukraine has necessarily drawn the main geopolitical blocs into a game with an uncertain finale.
Secondly, Ukraine has become a cornerstone of security not only in Europe but also in the precedent of the modern security architecture: old institutions are paralyzed, whereas Ukraine builds a new logic of sovereignty protection in real time, where network interaction, adaptability, and flexibility of cooperation often outweigh formal parity in armaments and “military might” of past centuries.
Thirdly, Ukraine convincingly demonstrates to the world that the wars of the past, the wars of all previous epochs, where “army against army, force against force, people against people,” have radically changed in the 21st century, and that modern war is primarily a confrontation between “technologies of armament and the weapon of information.”
Yet the path to understanding this truth is blocked by intellectual fog. And it is not just a surplus of informational types of weapons—it is a deliberate attack on the very category of evidence. We are dealing with a total loss of trust in “solid facts.” And this disbelief, unfortunately, is partially justified: most analytical conclusions today are based either on interpretations of political narratives or—worse still—on interpretations of others’ interpretations or fake propaganda that mimic “analysis,” but instead produce only a futile semblance of reality.
As a result, the truth of factual reality is often overshadowed by the apparent “probability” of a manipulative plot. The production of such information noise has become an integral part of the strategy of aggressive political systems interested in forming a “policy of uncertainty.”
When clarity is blurred, making strategic decisions becomes either impossible or random. And randomness in geopolitics is always someone’s advantage, particularly for those who produce this randomness as controlled “unpredictability.”
Vectors of Time: Who is Heading Where?
My analytical position suggests stepping beyond this noise, using the coordinate of time as a basic guide. We consider the development of civilizations through the lens of the principle of expediency, inherent in any living system: every system exists not just as is – it strives to preserve itself, reproduce itself, and justify itself over time (today, this is no longer a speculative hypothesis: in the modern scientific paradigm, the expediency of the existence of any systems – from the simplest to the most complex, including social ones – has been proven as a basic feature of life and development).
When looking at the geopolitical map along the timeline, the global system splits into four unequal groups or subsystems:
1. Conservatives (Western Democracies): those who – consciously or not – strive to “slow down time,” preserving existing values and very slowly adapting military-security practices to new conditions. This is not always a weakness – sometimes it is a form of caution. But the problem is different: the world has accelerated, and excessive and unjustified caution often becomes lateness. And this is primarily Europe.
2. Regressive Totalitarian Regimes and Regressive Political Projects: states and movements whose expediency lies in the restoration of the past. This is a paradoxical attempt to build the future by returning backward. The most vivid example is Russia with its idea of restoring the imperial format (in various versions – from “USSR-2” to revising borders and security rules). In a broader sense, a similar impulse is seen in the rhetoric of “again” in different countries: the desire to “make great again” appeals to a time that no longer exists. Both vectors are directed not forward, but backward, justified by nostalgia but actually based on fear of an inaccessible and incomprehensible future. (It is no coincidence that modern geopolitics is dictated by leaders of “great” countries whose age exceeds 70 years and more – USA, Russia, China, India, Iran, Pakistan, etc.)
3. Traditionalists: countries that develop – though gradually and slowly – based on long-standing historical traditions (India, Israel, Japan, Australia, Turkey, partially China). For them, time is evolutionary continuity: they change, but they try to do so in a way that the change looks like a continuation – albeit a qualitative one, but controlled and predictable.
4. Transformers (specifically the Ukrainian path): a small group of states and societies that see merit in the future, attempting to weaken – and sometimes break – the connection with a burdensome past. This group, perhaps, includes modern Canada and – partially – Germany. Ukraine belongs here as well. The Ukrainian experience is not an “eternal victim of history” but an attempt to rewrite the trajectory: not redrawing old maps, but changing the method of movement itself. For Ukraine, the experience of history is not a “trauma of analogies” nor a “vicious circle of mistakes and defeats,” but rather an effort to leave this experience in the past – albeit tragic or unfortunate, but “gone with the wind.” We cannot allow ourselves to forever fight with the past when time and circumstances demand finding ways to confront present challenges. Nor can we forbid ourselves from thinking about the future. Because the justification for existence is only in the perspective of time.
New formula of freedom
Perhaps it is not by chance that Ukraine declared the justification for its existence through the phenomenon of two Maidans. The Revolution of Dignity especially demonstrated: the old slogan of the democratic world – Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité (Liberty, Equality, Fraternity) – is losing its energetic and moral sense.
The modern world asserts: there is no equality and there should not be, as in inequality lies the resource of a diversity of opportunities. Fraternity as an idea of coexistence is completely compromised. The current wars, especially Ukraine’s war against the aggression of the “brotherly” nightmare, and recently the “Yugoslav” war, are the ugliest confirmation of this. Thus, neither Equality nor Fraternity are supports or guarantees of Freedom – the highest metaphysical value of Humanity and social justice. In the 21st century, it is not enough to proclaim freedom – new conditions and principles of its stability must be created.
The Ukrainian Maidan, and hence the real experience of Ukrainian resistance, quietly yet persistently proposed a different formula for modernity:
Libertas, Fides, Jus – Freedom, Trust, Justice.
Freedom without trust becomes defenseless and turns into an existence without support and constantly at risk of being deceived and disrespected.
Trust without justice is doomed to clan-based structures and freedom for the chosen with the enslavement of others.
Justice without freedom turns into dictatorship and “discipline” without dignity.
The Ukrainian experience painfully yet convincingly shows that these three elements work only together in harmony with each other, like three pillars of a secure bridge.
In conclusion, I would like to emphasize once more our basic analytical tool: understanding what rationale and with what time vector modern states are forming their strategies for the near future. From these perspectives, Ukraine, in my (subjective) opinion, undeniably occupies a precedent-setting position as the epicenter and at the same time a pivotal focus where nearly all modern geopolitical trends intersect.
Therefore, Ukraine’s current experience of fighting for its independence from the past and its direction towards the future is an experience that needs to be meticulously analyzed and studied, not just commented on and interpreted. Because here, in the area of greatest tension, new rules are being born today that might be called a new “international order” tomorrow.
March 19, the day the storks arrive in Lviv from their migration.
