Ever since Sparta defeated Athens in the age of antiquity, says Luc de Barochez in Le Point, there have been those who argue that “democracies do not make the weight on the battlefield”. Decadent, comfortable democracy is naturally “herbivorous”, whereas strongmen, in search of loot and less exposed to the whims of the people, naturally develop “carnivorous” imperial ambitions and, with those warlike aims, greater military efficiency. But recent events provide a gratifying corrective to this. Israel has brought Iran, a country nine times more populous, to its knees. Ukraine has been “resisting the Russian giant”, supposedly the world’s second-largest army, for 40 months. As in both world wars and the Cold War, assertive democracies are taking the fight to autocrats and winning.

Nowhere is this more obvious than in Ukraine, says Michael Kimmage in The New York Times. When Vladimir Putin invaded in 2022, he was clearly betting that the West would “not have the mettle” to stick up for Kyiv. After the string of failures in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria, the Kremlin wanted to “prove that the West’s golden age was over”, freeing Russia to partner with China and other rising powers and “assert itself anew on the world stage”. Safe to say, “Mr Putin’s bet has not paid off”. Russia’s brutal war “horrified and terrified” the West, jolting it into a collective effort of containment and turning Europe decisively against Russia. Germany is rapidly rearming; Finland and Sweden have joined NATO; and Brexit has been bypassed with a significant new security agreement between Britain and the EU. Putin has even managed to alienate America’s first truly “Russophile” president, who now calls him “crazy”. In classic autocratic style, the Russian president has well and truly “lost the West”.

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