Miraculously, against all odds, Russian President Vladimir Putin is winning World War Three — just not on the bloody battlefields of Ukraine.
In Ukraine, his battered military — after three-and-a-half years of his Special Military Operation and nearly 1.1 million casualties — remains mired in static trench warfare like World War One. But he is winning anyway in a variety of domains that are global in reach and nature.
First and foremost, Putin is well on his way to achieving his initial goals: ending U.S. global hegemony and destroying the post-World War II global order. Consequently, NATO is imperiled and the United Nations Security Council rendered incapable of ensuring global peace. Alarmingly, the emerging vacuum is enabling the rise of Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping’s multipolar world.
Their meeting in China on Sept. 1 gave us a chilling and eye-opening glimpse of this new world order in the making. More than 20 major global leaders met alongside them at the China- and Moscow-backed Shanghai Cooperation Organization.
Notably, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Slovakian Prime Minister Robert Fico – heads of NATO member-states — participated as guests. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi — a primary purchaser of Russian oil — was there as well. (India joined that now ten-member alliance in 2017.)
Conspicuously absent were the U.S. and its transatlantic allies.
Equally ominous was Beijing’s submission of a working concept paper titled “Global Governance Initiative.” The proposal — quickly overshadowed by the 80th Chinese Victory Day Parade in Beijing marking the end of World War II — is, in effect, the Global South’s version of the Atlantic Charter issued by President Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill on Aug. 14, 1941, off the coast of Newfoundland.
The proposed Initiative argues a new world order must be created to build “a more just and equitable global governance system and work together for a community with a shared future for humanity.” Beijing (of course) intends to be the center of this new Global South world order.
Beijing duly pays lip service to the U.N. The paper takes care to claim that “China will remain firm in safeguarding the international system with the U.N. at its core.” Yet it is also abundantly clear that Xi intends to supplant it.
Winning World War Three, however, must come first. Putin — whatever he thinks he knows about what China’s vision means for his desire for a Russia-dominated world — is actively helping Xi achieve his goals by waging a broad multi-domain war against the West that extends well beyond the battlefields of Ukraine.
It is time for Washington and Brussels to connect these increasingly perilous dots.
We have long warned that Russia and China, alongside their Axis of Evil partners, are waging an ideological war against the West. Now, as demonstrated by the Kremlin’s drone attacks in Poland and Romania — both NATO member-states — Putin and Xi’s fight to end what they perceive as Western hegemony is entering a new and more overt phase.
Putin’s primary mission is to destroy NATO’s unity. By setting drones upon Poland’s Rzeszów-Jasionka airport — a key staging ground in Eastern Europe to deliver weapons and ammunition to Ukraine — Putin is loudly warning Team Trump and Brussels to stop arming and supporting Kyiv’s war effort.
Until now, since the start of the war, Putin has largely confronted Europe using hybrid warfare. This has included assassinations, the cutting of undersea cables, arsons, election interference, bribes, cyber-attacks, GPS-jamming of civilian and military aircraft in flight, and the attempted bombings of DHL jet freighters in Poland and the U.K.
It is not enough to condemn these attacks or cower in fear in the face of Russian aggression. Real, tangible NATO action is needed. And as we have urged repeatedly, this starts with a no-fly zone over Western Ukraine. Instead, all too often, Washington and Brussels continue to let Putin put strategic wins on the board by default.
For example, Romania, a NATO-member state, inexplicably refused to shoot down a Russian military drone over its airspace, instead opting for two F-16s to escort it until it circled back into Ukraine. Rather than defend every square inch of NATO, they allowed Putin’s terror weapon to freely roam NATO airspace for nearly 50 minutes.
Washington is also guilty of giving Putin easy wins. Former President Joe Biden’s maddening “just enough” approach to defending Ukraine has been matched by unforced errors that afford Putin wins by default.
Team Trump’s scuttling U.S. tools to combat Russian disinformation campaigns is one example. As Steve Myers notes, it allows the Russians to flood social media “with fake posts, videos and entire websites that are created and spread on TikTok, Telegram, Facebook, Instagram and YouTube using increasingly effective artificial intelligence tools.”
Yet another was the misguided decision in March by the Trump administration to withdraw from programs designed to hold Putin accountable for Russian war crimes being committed in Ukraine and around the globe. Instead of actively deterring Putin’s crimes against humanity, Washington is unwittingly encouraging him to commit more.
Putin is also continuing to weaponize migrants in an effort to destabilize Eastern NATO member-states. In August, the European Commission reported that it was “track[ing] an increased number of flights between the eastern Libyan city of Benghazi and Minsk, the capital of Belarus.” It is believed that Putin’s ally, Gen. Khalifa Haftar, a Libyan warlord who rules the majority of eastern Libya, is trafficking refugees.
Haftar has been a key figure in helping Putin supply and equip his paramilitary forces across the Sahel in Africa. This is yet another domain where Moscow is actively fighting to destroy democracies and undermine American influence — a fight which has already resulted in the loss of a key U.S. military base in Niger.
Perceived Russian strength in the absence of American leadership generates momentum and followers. Especially among petty dictators and warlords.
The U.S., wittingly or not, is retreating into defeat at Putin’s hands. It is time for Washington and Brussels to hold the line. The death by a thousand self-inflicted NATO cuts must come to an immediate end.
Trump must listen to his generals, diplomats and intelligence professionals. Putin cannot be reasoned with, and he has made his demand: all of Ukraine. NATO is the solution, and Trump needs to regain the initiative by leveraging all of the instruments of national power to defeat Russia in Ukraine.
Losing World War Three to Putin means also losing to Xi. If that happens, then China will be the only true winner.
Mark Toth writes on national security and foreign policy. Col. (Ret.) Jonathan Sweet served 30 years as a military intelligence officer and led the U.S. European Command Intelligence Engagement Division from 2012 to 2014.
