This war is testing the international order, and the West can’t flinch in the face of it

This is part of a Globe and Mail series marking the anniversary of Russia’s invasion, in which authors from Ukraine, Canada and beyond imagine what could come next.

Ebenezer Obadare is Douglas Dillon Senior Fellow for Africa Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) in Washington, D.C.

As a great conflict unfolds and the scale of the attendant carnage comes into view, it is normal for people to second-guess themselves. Was one’s obduracy at the start really warranted? Was there an easy off-ramp to peace that one unwisely spurned in the haste to throw down the moral gauntlet?

Confronted with so much human suffering, who wouldn’t succumb to such equivocations?

A year into the Russia-Ukraine conflict, with the bodies piling up on both sides (60,000 and 100,000 fatalities respectively, according to some accounts) and with the prospect for peace no less remote than when Russia launched its full-scale invasion, skepticism about Western involvement in the conflict on the side of the Ukrainians has grown. While many wonder whether these countries can be expected to keep up the level of financial and military support to Kyiv, others point to the lingering risk of nuclear disaster from a ruthless autocrat who is deterred by few scruples in the pursuit of a strategic objective.

That these are legitimate fears goes without saying. To be sure, the financial brunt has, once more, been borne by the United States, which has continued to pick up the tab even as major European countries shilly-shally. But this is precisely the price of global leadership, and for helping Ukraine stand up to an aggrandizing neighbour. President Biden, who has been clear from the beginning that the United States will back Ukraine to the bitter end (and who repeated the promise last week during a surprise visit to Kyiv) should calmly explain to both allies and critics in Washington the moral and strategic imperative of staying the course.

Anxieties about Russia going nuclear are not irrational, but they do raise the question, which ultimately goes beyond the current conflict, of how much bending over backward we are willing to do in order not to poke the tiger. If we are willing to give up Ukraine, or whatever slice of a sovereign neighbour it will require to keep Mr. Putin away from the nuclear button, what else are we willing to give up, and what should we tell Russia’s other neighbours who might understandably be looking over their shoulders?

Perhaps it’s time to start posing the nuclear question differently: What are the obligations of owning such weapons?

This line of questioning should instigate a broader conversation about what is at stake in this war. From where I stand, it is nothing less than the future of a rights-based international order, an order that is still worth committing to, the countless past infidelities of the Western allies currently trumpeting it notwithstanding.

The African region has been implicated in the conflict in unexpected ways; the division among its leading nations and the outright hostility of others has definitely caught many in the West off guard. Insofar as this appears to have induced key Western countries to dismount from their accustomed moral high horse – witness, for example, the uncharacteristic note of contrition in the new U.S. strategy toward Africa – the Russian invasion might have facilitated the opportunity to reset the terms of engagement with a region rightly resentful about legitimate grievances previously brushed off.

A much-needed rapprochement should emphasize the mutual benefits to the strong and the weak of an international rights-based system in which all are subject to the same rules. Russia has not been shy about its disdain for that system.

Something changed this time last year when, following weeks of a massive military buildup, Russian forces finally entered Ukrainian territory. It seems clear in retrospect that Mr. Putin probably calculated that the West, distracted by domestic economic woes and bogged down in political division, would be unable to muster diplomatic unanimity.

So far, he has been proved wrong. Now is the time to double down. If we can’t do it in the name of democracy, we should do it in defence of ordinary Ukrainians. The path to peace lies in staying the course and staring Mr. Putin down.