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The High Price of Losing Ukraine

The High Price of Losing Ukraine

Concept image for the Russian attack on Ukraine.

(This analysis is part of a two-part series first published by the Institute for the Study of War. Their version includes detailed footnotes.)

GUEST ANALYSIS  — Allowing Russia to win its war in Ukraine would be a self-imposed strategic defeat for the United States. The United States would face the risk of a larger and costlier war in Europe. The United States would face the worst threat from Russia since the collapse of the Soviet Union, as a victorious Russia would likely emerge reconstituted and more determined to undermine the United States — and confident that it can. A Russian victory would diminish America’s deterrence around the world, emboldening others with an explicit or latent intent to harm the United States. A Russian victory would create an ugly world in which the atrocities associated with Russia’s way of war and way of ruling the populations under its control are normalized.

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