Vladimir Putin may have failed to take Ukraine in a swift military strike, but in one regard his war has already been a success. The global economy is splintering, and the West’s conflicting imperatives—as well as those of the developing world—are slowly revealing themselves.
Putin has a long record of trying to sow discord, using misinformation to power sock puppets in the Brexit referendum and political campaigns of Donald Trump, among other examples. And though his latest gambit has backfired spectacularly in terms of weakening NATO, from the standpoint of economic division, the war on Ukraine may prove his crowning achievement. The fault lines are emerging.
