What a Difference a week can make

The direction of history may have shifted.

In one week of war, life within the boundaries of Ukraine has been upended, but the brutal assault Russian President Vladimir Putin launched last Thursday has also reverberated around the globe, steering history in a new direction and switching up 75 years of relations among some of the world’s most powerful and wealthy countries.

In Germany, hundreds of thousands marched in support of the NATO alliance’s firm stance against Russia’s aggression. Berlin decided to send military aid to Ukraine — a dramatic about-face in a country that for more than seven decades has shied away from military involvements as a kind of penance for the Nazi genocide and World War II

Throughout Europe — even in staunchly neutral Switzerland — countries that depend heavily on Russia to heat people’s homes and power their economies banded together to isolate and punish the Russians for their aggression. Countries that just a few years ago rose up in protest over the arrival of migrants fleeing wars and extremism in the Middle East and North Africa are suddenly welcoming hundreds of thousands of refugees.

“In the battle between democracy and autocracies, democracies are rising to the moment, and the world is clearly choosing the side of peace and security,” President Biden declared Tuesday night in his State of the Union address

 the war in Ukraine has almost instantly restructured global power dynamics, in part because of Putin’s nuclear saber-rattling and in part because the world has become so much more interconnected in recent years — in trade, technology, media and politics.

None of the concerted actions against Moscow has so far dislodged Putin from his goal of overthrowing Ukraine’s democratically elected government and forcing the former Soviet republic state back into the Russian orbit. But in addition to isolating Russia from the world community and delivering an economic and geopolitical wallop to one of the planet’s three primary nuclear powers, the swift avalanche of nonmilitary actions against Putin has convinced many world leaders that global power dynamics have entered a phase of startling and, perhaps, enduring change.

Just a couple of weeks after German politicians who supported sending a supply of helmets to Ukraine found themselves denounced as warmongers, 78 percent of Germans in a poll published Tuesday said they now support the massive increase in defense spending — a startling number given the German public’s decades-long allergy to the use of military force abroad

On the streets of Berlin, a crowd estimated at a half-million people demonstrated Sunday on behalf of Ukrainians, carrying signs such as “I’m ready to freeze for peace,” a reference to Germany’s reliance on Russian oil and gas for home heating. The German foreign minister, Annalena Baerbock of the Green party, which has strong pacifist roots, concluded that “perhaps on this day, Germany is leaving behind a form of special and unique restraint in foreign and security policy.”

But if Russia’s war on Ukraine heralds a new time, “what is this new era?” asked Jackson Janes, president emeritus of the American Institute for Contemporary German Studies at Johns Hopkins University. “Is this Cold War 2.0? There’s been a huge change in large parts of the world in one week, but is it sustainable? What if the gas gets turned off in Berlin? How long does this unity last?”

Whatever policy flips Germany makes now, “they still have to deal with the Russians,” Janes said. “The geography doesn’t change.”