TWO YEARS ago who had heard of Fallujah? Twelve years ago what resonance did Srebrenica have? Two weeks ago how many of us had a view on the relative merits of Viktor Yushchenko or Viktor Yanukovych?

Its in the nature of international crises that they tend to occur in parts of the globe that have escaped the world’s close attention. A hundred years ago crises in Fashoda and Port Arthur, flashpoints on the fringes of empire, dominated the thoughts of statesmen. Today, our sleeves are tugged by an insistent media, anxious that we should take an interest in the historic events unfolding between Lviv and Donetsk.

It is, however, in the nature of the busy newspaper reader to wonder just which crisis in distant lands really is momentous enough to demand close attention. Who now remembers Nagorno-Karabakh? With each new story, the pundits bark and then the camera crews move on.

The drama in Ukraine does, however, deserve even closer attention than it has enjoyed so far. For the conflict between the two Viktors is more than just a regional power struggle. It is a contest between two visions for the world. And a grim reminder that foreign policy is, underneath everything, still a Darwinian struggle for power.

The battle between the Western- inclined, democratically-conscious Mr Yushchenko and the Eastern-backed, authoritarian Mr Yanukovych matters hugely for the fifty million people of the Ukraine. But it also matters to us because it reflects the broader battle going on across the former Soviet Union. Russia’s leadership has been following an increasingly anti-democratic course over the past few years, a choice which poses a particular challenge for the West. Internally, President Putin has been moving towards the establishment of a secret police state. Externally, he has been conducting a campaign against liberal nationalist movements, designed to consolidate and extend the reach of Moscow’s power. Both threaten Western interests and values.

Within Russia, Putin has rigged elections, using puppet parties, just as the communists did, to mask the extent of his effective dictatorship. He has closed independent media, driven opponents into exile and imprisoned those, such as the businessman Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who might organise effective opposition. Some of these manoeuvres have undoubtedly been popular, and the anti-Semitic flavour of Putin’s campaign against the oligarchs has certainly been calculated to play to street prejudice. But, however much public support some of Putin’s acts may have won, his intention has been decisively anti-democratic. His authoritarian populism is intended to be an alternative to democracy, as it is in a different way in China, not a path to democracy, as it was in, say, Chile.

Putin’s distaste for democracy does not end at Russia’s borders. Indeed, his borders don’t even end at Russia’s borders. Russia’s leadership has consistently tried to forestall, undermine and crush democratic movements in its near-abroad. It has troops on the far western border of Ukraine, “policing” the gangster state of Trans-Dniester, a breakaway territory which has consistently undermined the integrity of the Romanian-speaking republic of Moldova. Russia has also supported secessionist movements in Georgia and Azerbaijan, in an effort to undermine the independence of those former Soviet republics. Additionally, Putin has provided backing for those former communist leaderships, such as Alexander Lukashenko’s in Belarus, which have been happy to reject democratisation and cluster under Moscow’s umbrella.

In Ukraine, Putin is trying all his old tricks. He has signalled his backing for the anti-democratic strongman, Yanukovych, even campaigning for him during the election. Russia’s military strength in the region has been not-so-subtly advertised. And, unsurprisingly for any student of the Putin manual of state subversion, secession of one half of the country has been floated.

These manoeuvres reflect Putin’s background and ideology. Although raised in the Soviet system, and using tactics to destabilise and control neighbours which were familiar to Stalin, it would be wrong to think of Putin as a born-again communist. He is instead heir to an older, continuing, tradition in Russian politics. As a former KGB man, who has surrounded himself with other old comrades from the bureau, he is a believer in the rule of an enlightened elite of grimly efficient patriots who will safeguard Russia from the corruption of Western thought and the consequent risk of disintegration. From the Tsarist Okhrana through Lenin’s Cheka to the KGB and today’s FSB, there has existed among Russia’s secret police elite a determination to maintain Great Power status by ensuring the state is not debilitated by liberalism.

The battle in the Ukraine is therefore crucial for the prestige, power and above all, ideology, of Putin’s leadership. If Western liberalism can be beaten back, or contained, there, then he will be strengthened not just in his influence over a key neighbour but also in his belief that Russia can maintain a viable, non-Western, alternative path of development.

In Europe it has become fashionable to believe that, in the EU, we have developed a new, collaborative, model of international relations that supersedes the old power politics. But the reality of foreign policy is that our security cannot be defended by international law and conventions alone. For Moscow, and for that matter Beijing, Pyongyang and Tehran, Western liberalism is certainly a threat to their systems, if it ever takes root in their soil — but it is also a weakness to be exploited. While we place our faith in treaties, they regard them as evidence of our unwillingness to risk confrontation, and therefore a licence to cheat, subvert and undermine.

The outward forms of diplomacy will be respected, negotiations entertained, but all the time there will be a drive to acquire new influence over neighbours, new military strength, new opportunities to destabilise and new openings to reclaim “lost” territories. Unless we realise what is at stake in Lviv and Donetsk, then we will continue to live in a world where there will, inevitably, be more Fallujahs and Srebrenicas.

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