Differently from other conflicts, the war in Ukraine will not be decided, not entirely at least, on the sole military level. Culture, in fact, will prove to be decisive.
This is true for one simple reason. Capitalism worked, whether we like it or not. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, generations of people were born that shared the same ambitions, wore the same clothes, listened to the same music, watched the same movies, ate the same (junk) food, bought the same smartphones, employed the same technology. To put it simple, they shared the same way of life. A way of life forged by capitalism.
This process has been violently accelerated by the spread of the social media. A young person in her/his 20s in China is the same as in Italy, the US, the UK, France, Germany, Mexico, Argentina, Turkey, Russia, Israel.
Italians, Americans, British, Indians, Iranians, Chinese, South Koreans, Spanish, Germans, Swedens, French, Mexicans, Brasilians, Nigerians, etc., find themselves living together and sharing the same spaces in the major cities. Suffice it to visit one of the many university libraries in London, Milan, New York, Madrid or Beijing to appreciate the level of cultural mix that characterise these cities.
I had the privilege to directly experience this when I was a Master and PhD student at the University of London some years ago.
How could it be possible to easily convince someone from Greece to fought against and kill someone from Iran as they share the same way of living and maybe had lunch together when they were students? This is surely possible. Yet, non in the same way as it was in 1939.
This is the reason why Putin might win the war on the military level (and he did not and probably will not); but he will surely lose the war on the cultural level, increasing the segregation he sank his country into.
Antonio Desiderio