War rages in Ukraine, but it’s not merely a war of Russian forces against Ukrainians. It’s a war of two competing visions — fundamentally different concepts of what makes a nation great. One is a vision of national greatness defined by a free and peaceful society in which individual citizens can build their lives. The other is a vision of national greatness based on power and the ability to instill fear.

It’s freedom versus aggressive tyranny, and Americans have a stake in the outcome.

In August 1999, I began two and a half years of teaching masters-level economics in a Western-funded program in a university in Kyiv, Ukraine. Ukraine had only recently regained its independence eight years earlier, when the Soviet Union disbanded in late December 1991.

The Soviet legacy left economic dysfunction, tyranny and corruption in its wake. Overcoming this dark heritage was a difficult task. Our students were among the brightest young Ukrainians, and one thing that motivated many of them was a vision of making Ukraine a society of free people — a democratic, Western, prosperous nation undergirded by economic and political liberty.

Many of our graduates went to work in businesses, government and policy institutes in Ukraine and began the work of building and reforming the country. Others went to western countries and earned doctorate degrees (including at Michigan and Michigan State) and a number of these returned to teach and to work on economic policy.

Many were active in the democratic Orange Revolution of 2004 and the 2013-14 Euromaidan protests. I’m very proud of them for this.

But most of their contributions have been the everyday work of teaching, building businesses, promoting better ideas and modernizing society. I’m proud of them for this as well. As one of them said to me, “I have no illusions as to how much time the change will take. But I look at my daughters and realize it’s their future and their children’s future we are building.”

The competing vision of an altogether different kind of greatness is the vision of Russian President Vladimir Putin. A former KGB lieutenant colonel, Putin has said the greatest tragedy of the 20th century was the fall of the Soviet Union. He has frequently spoken of restoring Russian greatness by restoring the old Soviet borders and making Russia a powerful and feared authoritarian state.

While Ukraine has many problems, it is a free country, a democracy. Putin’s Russia is an autocratic state run by security bureaus. Yet if Ukrainians can make democracy and a market system work, Russians will ask why they cannot. That makes my students’ vision a threat to Putin and his regime.Create Account

Some assert Western nations have pressured Russia into invading. That’s false. Putin has claimed fears of NATO expansion as an excuse, but there was no serious effort to admit Ukraine into NATO, nor any likelihood that NATO would ever invade Russia.

Putin also refers to a 2014 “coup” — yet another fabrication of the Kremlin. This “coup” claim is a reference to the Euromaidan demonstrations in 2014. Euromaidan was a set of lengthy mass demonstrations against then-President Viktor Yanukovych’s surprise announcement he was going to have Ukraine join Russia’s trading organization COMECON after previously promising a trade and visa deal with the European Union.

This outraged Ukrainians who wanted fewer barriers to the freer and wealthier EU, rather than closer ties to the dictatorships of Russia, Belarus and central Asia.

Following these demonstrations, in February 2014, Yanukovych agreed to call early elections in the spring before vanishing suddenly. No one knew where he’d gone until he surfaced in southern Russia. Yanukovych voluntarily abandoned his office and was not forced out, yet Russians call this a “coup.” Indeed, it was Putin who helped Yanukovych flee the country.

In response, Russia immediately invaded Crimea and the Donbas region. Though the full-scale invasion of Ukraine began in late February 2022, in truth, the country has been under siege for the last eight years.

The events of 2014 also brought a darker turn in official Russian dogma. Putin began rehabilitating the image of Soviet dictator and mass murderer Joseph Stalin into that of a great leader. Russian historians began writing of a “good Hitler/bad Hitler” theory wherein Adolf Hitler’s expansionary policies were “good” so long as they were restricted to lands with German people; Hitler only became “bad” when he invaded Slavic lands.

Similarly, Putin began speaking of unifying all lands with “Russian” peoples.

He specifically identified Ukraine and the Baltic countries of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania as possible targets. He launched investigations into the “legality” of the breakup of the USSR. He also began receiving advice from Russian historian Alexander Dugin, who has visions of a Russian mission to unite Eurasia and defeat the democracies and market economies of the West.

Whether Putin really believes Dugin’s apocalyptic mysticism or this is simply window dressing isn’t clear, but Putin does talk of “reuniting” the old Soviet lands by force.

There’s yet another aspect of this. Ukraine is the only nuclear-armed country ever to give up its nuclear weapons. While it had been the third-most heavily armed country in the world, it gave up its atomic weapons in return for security guarantees from Russia, the United States and the United Kingdom.

Former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has now argued that a lesson of Russia’s invasion is that the United States should place nuclear weapons in Japan to deter similar behavior by China. Iran, Saudi Arabia and Egypt will likely follow. If Putin conquers Ukraine while the free world stands idly by, nuclear non-proliferation will be forever dead.

At home, Putin has clamped down on any opposition, closing independent newspapers and broadcast media, ordering mass arrests of protesters against the war and threatening prison for anyone referring to the invasion of Ukraine as a “war.”

I also taught economics in Russia for a short time; one of my former students now tells me that Russians are shocked and dumbfounded. Some assume Putin must know what he is doing, others are simply horrified and devastated. Their lives, too, have been turned upside down by this invasion.

Putin’s war on Ukraine is a war of a dark vision of aggressive tyranny against the vision of freedom, limited government and the rule of law. All those who value freedom have an interest in seeing Putin fail. Because the initial Russian invasion went badly — owing to fierce Ukrainian resistance, Russian incompetence and poor logistics — Russian forces have resorted to indiscriminate attacks on civilians in a brazen attempt to intimidate Ukrainians into submission.

The West must not allow this.

Americans are understandably tired of armed conflict. And the United States should not enter a ground war in Ukraine, but nothing like that is necessary to stop Putin. Instead, the West should place every possible kind of economic penalty on Russia.

Massive quantities of conventional weapons should be given to the Ukrainians, including the Polish MiG-29 fighters the Biden administration has held up. Ukrainian air space ought to be closed to Russian aircraft, especially if we can help Ukrainians do it themselves, giving them technical support and real-time surveillance and intelligence.

The West should demand Putin surrender all Ukrainian territory. Finally, we should sanction any country — including China — that supports Russia.

No sane person wants a world war. Some might imagine that by staying on the sidelines, Putin’s war will remain a “regional problem” that won’t affect us. This is wrong.

If we fail to stand up to tyranny now, we embolden it in the future. Now is the time to stop Putin, while the West is strong. Let’s not wait until we are as desperate as the Ukrainians.