Russia Defeated: A Thought Experiment | Firas Modad

Let us imagine that it is now 2025 or 2030. Russia has been defeated in Ukraine – despite its threats, it baulked at using nuclear weapons and accepted that it must surrender all Ukrainian territory it seized. 

President Vladimir Putin has been overthrown, and a more hardline, insular and autarkic regime that is incapable of projecting power abroad is left standing. 

The world is safe from the Russian threat, and Russia cannot compete with the West for a generation, at least. What now? 

Turkey, which has been fighting Russia in the Caucasus, Libya, Syria and Central Asia, is now empowered. 

Jihadi groups in Libya, backed by Turkey, are on the ascendant. With Libya as their safe haven, they are pushing hard against European interests in West Africa, using Mali, Niger, Chad and Nigeria as launching pads to attack European assets and European-backed governments throughout West Africa. 

This instability pushes even more migrants out of Africa, first into Libya and then to Italy. People smugglers and jihadi groups profit handsomely. 

Turkey is also pushing against Russia in Syria. Without Russian airpower, the Jihadist Syrian opposition is pushing against Syrian government forces, defeating them slowly but surely. 

With the civil war again in full swing, and the frontline constantly shifting, the stream of refugees is reignited. 

Turkey, naturally, uses that to put pressure on Europe, helping Syrians enter Europe both through its own borders and through Libya. 

In the Caucasus, there is chaos. 

Bereft of Russian backing, Azerbaijan defeats Armenia decisively. Armenia’s Christian population is put to flight, massacred and subjugated. 

Georgia reclaims Abkhazia and South Ossetia, again triggering a humanitarian disaster. 

Chechens, Ingush, Dagestanis and others, who suffered disproportionately large losses during the Ukraine war but got no benefits, alternate between fighting Russian forces, fighting each other and turning to jihadi ideology inspired by Turkey and by Saudi Arabia. 

In Central Asia, the legacy of Stalin’s bizarre borders comes to life, with Kyrgyz, Tajiks, Uzbeks and Turkmen competing with one another. 

Various minor border wars break out, with China stepping in to guarantee security and prosperity. 

At a price: China gets access to Central Asia’s natural resources, rerouting pipelines and supply routes to benefit its own industries. 

China makes further gains. A weakened, sanctioned and militarily crippled Russia has no choice but to offer the Chinese massive discounts for its resources, and China’s influence in Siberia expands dramatically. 

Having seen Russia’s humiliation, China resists the US’ provocations and opts not to fight for Taiwan. 

Instead, it turns its focus to a combination of cyberwarfare intended to steal Western technologies, economic colonialism intended to secure raw materials from Russia and Central Asia by land, that is, without being made vulnerable to US airpower, and exports that compete with European exports. 

As the manufacturing superpower for lithium batteries, solar panels and wind turbines, China profits handsomely from the delusions of the “Green New Deal”.

Its trade with developing countries also keeps expanding. 

Additionally, to boost its economy, it follows its reversal of the one-child policy with active pro-family policies, taking advantage of the new Lebensraum open to it in Central Asia. 

Europe, for its part, is worn down. 

The inflationary crisis it is facing now leads eventually to a banking crisis, as households and businesses fail to pay their debts. 

The European Central Bank prints more money, driving more inflation and making the crisis worse.

Germany, Europe’s economic engine, will not recover from the loss of Russian energy, which was one of the main pillars of its prosperity. 

Saddled by new debts with unfavourable demographics and a constant flow of migrants who do not integrate but, along with the ageing population, require more welfare spending, Germany and Europe keep losing competitiveness against China. 

Furthermore, with welfare taking up more and more of European budgets, the ability to provide law enforcement and basic services is eroded. 

The younger, recently arrived migrants, finding no economic opportunities, an ageing population and weakened security, turn to looting and to criminality. 

Other migrants are inspired by successful jihads in the Caucasus, Syria, Libya and sub-Saharan Africa, and embrace terrorism. 

Right-wing parties are thwarted at every turn by their own incompetence, heavily indebted economies, an ageing population and by the relics of the European Union’s bureaucracy. 

The flow of migrants, driven by conflicts that are reignited by the vacuum created by Russia’s defeat, does not stop. 

An impoverished, weakened Europe harms both British exports as well as London’s role as a financial capital. 

The flow of migrants is not limited to Europe, with record numbers of illegal migrants entering the UK year after year. Higher cost of living, faltering services and communal conflicts all enfeeble Britain and render it more dependent on the US. 

The US, for its part, refuses to offer Britain a Free Trade Agreement, and the UK is in no position to compete with China or America for new export markets. 

It becomes much harder to keep Northern Ireland and Scotland within the Union.

This may seem extreme, but this is only the third worst-case scenario that could emerge from the Russia – Ukraine conflict. The second worst-case scenario is one where Russia does use tactical nuclear weapons to ensure that it gets to keep Donetsk, Lugansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson. 

If Russia does not face massive consequences for doing so, Russia’s actions would embolden India, Pakistan, Iran and North Korea to develop and use tactical nuclear weapons against their own rivals. 

The result of that would be the normalisation of the use of nuclear weapons and a planetary disaster. 

There is a worse outcome still: Russia uses nuclear weapons and faces massive consequences and the result is a full-scale nuclear exchange with the United States. 

For Western foreign policy on the Ukraine question to be realistic, it is not enough to say that Russia is an aggressor that must be sanctioned economically and defeated militarily. 

We must appreciate the role of other countries, even hostile countries, in preserving order in parts of the world that we do not understand and cannot police. 

We must appreciate the second-order consequences of victory, not merely the consequences of defeat. 

Russia will never transgress against a NATO nation, because its military is second-rate, and it cannot defeat the United States without risking its own annihilation. 

Therefore, the consequences of Russia gaining control of Russian-speaking parts of Ukraine are much smaller than the consequences of Russia losing. 

The latter include resurgent Turkish-backed jihadism, conflicts across Asia, new migrant flows to Europe, and a China empowered by access to Russian and Central Asian resources. 

Is empowering China, Turkey and the global jihadi movement better than letting Russia control Russian-speaking territories in Ukraine? I doubt that. 

Are we able to guarantee security in Central Asia, Libya, Syria and the Caucasus if Russia is not there? 

Our experience in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Libya does not suggest that and are we confident that the effort to defeat Russia militarily would not trigger a nuclear conflict? 

I, for one, am not certain, and I do not believe the proxy war between superpowers in the Ukraine is worth escalating in a bid to find out. 

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