A preliminary remark on method: this paper analyses structures — not guilt in the legal sense. The Russian attack on Ukraine of 24 February 2022 is a clear breach of international law. That is undisputed and must be said. But a violation of international law does not explain causality. An arsonist who sets fire to a house is guilty — regardless of whether the house was well secured, whether the insurance set bad incentives, whether the neighbourhood had been marked by tensions for years. Both are true at the same time. The Megamachine perspective asks about the structures — not in order to apportion guilt, but to understand why they could arise and why they are so hard to end.
I. The Long Roots — A Security Architecture That Was Never Built
In 1991 the Soviet Union dissolves. For a brief historical moment everything is open. Could one have built, at that time — in the spirit of Helsinki 1975, in the spirit of Gorbachev's "common European home" — a pan-European security architecture that included Russia instead of excluding it? Perhaps. Probably not in the form one would have wished for. But the question was not seriously asked. Because nobody had a strong interest in asking it.
NATO had an interest in survival: without a threat, no justification for existence. The American arms industry had an interest in growth: new members meant new markets for weapons systems. The Eastern European states — Poland, the Czech Republic, the Baltic states — had a legitimate security interest: they never again wanted to live under Russian hegemony and sought the only credible protection. And Russia under Yeltsin was too weak, too disorganised, too preoccupied with itself to negotiate seriously.
What is often discussed as a "broken promise" — Baker's "not one inch eastward" of February 1990 — was not a binding agreement. It was an oral exploratory formula in early talks, which Baker himself withdrew a few days later under pressure from the White House. It did not enter the Two Plus Four Treaty. Gorbachev himself explicitly refuted the promise legend in 2014. But: much was said, little agreed — and the gap between what various Western diplomats had hinted at in exploratory talks and what was legally binding in the end created a grey zone that served as propaganda material for decades.
The real missed opportunity lies elsewhere: after 1991 nobody seriously tried to embed Russia in a cooperative European security structure. The OSCE remained weak. The NATO-Russia Founding Act of 1997 was a fig leaf without substance. Russia was treated as a weak player, not as a partner. That was perhaps realistic — but it had consequences.
II. The Escalation Ladder 2004–2022
2004: NATO enlargement to include the Baltic states and other Eastern European states. Russia protests loudly — but without consequence. The Western conclusion: in the end Russia accepts it. That was a learning effect with fatal results.
2008: the NATO summit in Bucharest. Bush pushes for a Membership Action Plan for Ukraine and Georgia. Germany and France block it — because they fear the Russian reaction. Compromise: no MAP, but the door remains open. The result is the worst of both worlds: Russia sees the threat without the Western commitment. Ukraine has the hope without the guarantee. A few months later: the war in Georgia. Russia tests — the West reacts with indignation but without consequence. A second fatal learning effect.
2014: the Maidan, Yanukovych's flight, the Russian annexation of Crimea, the beginning of the war in the Donbas. The West imposes sanctions — Russia keeps Crimea. Minsk I and II: ceasefire agreements that nobody seriously wants to implement. Ukraine wants control back without making the political concessions. Russia wants to keep control without waging the war. The frozen conflict is, in the short term, more convenient for both sides than any real solution. Seven years of sham peace.
2021/22: Putin escalates. Why now? Several factors at once: Ukraine under Zelensky is moving noticeably towards the West. Western distraction through Trump, then COVID, then the chaotic defeat in Afghanistan has changed Putin's calculation. And Putin has — this is the bitterest insight — learned from the reactions to Georgia in 2008, to Crimea in 2014, to all earlier provocations: the West reacts with indignation. Rarely with consequence.
He was wrong. This time there were consequences — because the attack was too big, too open, too brutal to be ignored. But the miscalculation was not irrational stupidity. It was the result of a learning curve that the West itself had produced.
III. The Megamachine Actors
No war has a single cause. Wars arise where Megamachines collide — and where no structure exists to prevent collisions.
Russia as a Megamachine: a petrostate whose economic base rests on energy exports and whose political legitimacy rests on an imperial narrative. Since 2000 Putin has systematically rebuilt Russia's Megamachine — disempowering oligarchs insofar as they were politically insubordinate, bringing the media into line, expanding the security apparatus, renationalising strategic sectors. The result is an autocratic Megamachine that ties its own capacity to survive to territorial expansion. Not because Putin personally wants it — but because the logic of the system compels it. An autocratic Megamachine that cannot show progress collapses from within.
NATO as a Megamachine: a defensive alliance that lost its original purpose in 1991 and has been looking for new purposes ever since. Without a threat, no justification for existence — that is not cynicism, that is institutional logic. NATO went looking for tasks: the Balkans, Afghanistan, Libya. All moderately successful. The Ukraine war has given it back its original function. That does not mean NATO wished for the war. It means that structures which live off threats have no strong incentive to eliminate threats.
The arms industry as a Megamachine profiteer: in 2024, $2.7 trillion in military spending worldwide — 37 per cent of it by the USA alone. Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, BAE Systems, Rheinmetall: quarterly reports posting record figures in the Ukraine war. That is not cynicism — that is the logic of the system. The arms industry does not produce war. But it has no structural interest in peace.
The energy industry as an inverse profiteer: LNG exporters in the USA, Norway and Qatar have made up for the loss of Russian gas supplies to Europe — at considerably higher prices. What was a cost shock for European industry is a business model for American LNG producers.
IV. Who Profits — Who Pays
The most sober of all questions deserves a sober answer.
Who profits: the American and European arms industry — record orders, record profits. The LNG exporters replacing Russian gas. The Eastern European economies booming as transit countries for weapons and relief supplies. Parts of the Ukrainian arms industry, which has developed rapidly — production value at the end of 2025 estimated at $35 billion. And — this is the bitterest part — Russia itself: the oil price stayed high, the sanctions did more harm than good but less than hoped, and the state of war has stabilised Putin's domestic position of power.
Who pays: the Ukrainians. Tens of thousands of dead soldiers — at the beginning of 2025 Zelensky spoke of at least 46,000 killed and 390,000 wounded. Millions of displaced people. An infrastructure being systematically destroyed. A country that after the war — however it ends — faces decades of reconstruction.
The European taxpayers: Germany alone provided around €9 billion in military aid in 2025 — 130 per cent more than the 2022–2024 average. The EU as a whole, through its institutions, €35 billion in financial and humanitarian aid. On top of that the energy costs, which will remain structurally higher for decades due to the loss of Russian gas.
The countries of the Global South: Russia and Ukraine together supply around 30 per cent of the world's wheat trade. The disruption of these supply chains has raised food prices in countries that already operate at the limit of food security. The war in Europe was paid for in part in the Sahel, the Horn of Africa and Yemen — by people who have nothing to do with it.
V. Why Peace Is Structurally Harder Than War
This is the question that is rarely asked.
Every ceasefire requires compromises that all sides have to sell at home as a defeat. Putin cannot accept a solution that looks like retreat without endangering his domestic base. Zelensky cannot accept a territorial concession without losing legitimacy in the eyes of the Ukrainians who have died. The West cannot accept a solution that can be interpreted as a reward for aggression — because that would set precedents.
At the same time: the war goes on. It finances itself. The arms industry delivers. The aid money flows — in 2025 Europe almost fully compensated for the US withdrawal under Trump. In 2025 Ukraine built up its own arms industry of significant size. The system has adjusted to the state of war and functions within it.
Peace would mean: arms orders fall. Energy substitution loses urgency. Political leaders have to explain compromises. Institutions that live off the threat lose their justification for existence. That makes nobody a warmonger — but it creates a structure in which the road to peace has to fight against systemic resistance that the road to war did not face.
The war in Ukraine is not the result of a Megamachine conspiracy. It is the result of the failure of all involved — over decades — to build a structure that would have prevented it. And now the Megamachine of war is running. It has its own dynamics, its own profiteers, its own inertia. There is no switch. There is no master. Only structures that keep running — until someone finds a reason to stop them that is stronger than all the reasons to carry on.
VI. What This Means for Europe — The Sorcerer's Apprentices Are Arming
The Zeitenwende (turning point) of February 2022 jolted Europe out of its security-policy half-sleep. A €500 billion special fund in Germany. NATO targets of 2 per cent that are suddenly no longer enough — 3, 4, 5 per cent are being discussed. A European arms industry being ramped up.
That is understandable. It is possibly necessary. But it is also the sorcerer's apprentice pattern: Europe summons the spirits — rearmament, militarisation, new dependencies on American hardware — without asking where this leads. A heavily armed European NATO without strategic autonomy from the USA? An arms industry that develops new interests of its own? More money for weapons at a time when the industrial base is eroding and public infrastructure is falling apart?
The question is not whether Europe must be able to defend itself. It must. The question is whether rearmament alone can replace a security architecture — or whether once again the structural work is being avoided that in the long term would be more important than numbers of tanks. We are rearming. But we are still not building a common European home. We could have built it in 1991. We could have tried again in 2008. Now it is harder — but no less necessary.
And one thing is certain: the war in Ukraine will end at some point — through exhaustion, through negotiation, through the collapse of one of the sides. What comes after needs an answer to the question that was not asked in 1991: what does a European security architecture look like that excludes nobody — and therefore makes nobody an enemy?