I'm increasingly seeing this attitude - that state aggression is "not our problem."
Often this comes from a calculation that the costs of responding are greater than the costs of doing nothing. There are several layers to that thinking:
- The immediate national-interest calculation - this doesn't affect us.
- The free-rider problem - hoping someone else will bear the cost.
- The geographical-distance argument - this is a regional problem.
- The fear-of-escalation argument - confronting an aggressor directly could lead to a nuclear exchange.
- The economic self-interest argument - we have more immediate domestic priorities.
There are legitimate reasons for a state to gauge its response to a particular conflict. Responsible governments weigh the consequences of intervention very carefully.
But there's a huge gap between choosing to intervene militarily and choosing to do nothing.
When doing nothing becomes the prevailing response, the greatest danger may not be that the international community fails to stop one particular war.
It may be that governments collectively establish a precedent that military aggression is tolerable provided the aggressor is sufficiently powerful, sufficiently dangerous, or sufficiently important to the economic interests of other countries.
If that becomes the operating principle of international relations, the consequences won't remain confined to Ukraine or Europe.
History has already demonstrated, with brutal clarity, the consequences of allowing this kind of thinking to prevail.
It appears to me that the world may be about to learn that lesson one more time.
