A Russian invasion of Ukraine would look like the kind of war that has been largely absent in the past 80 years and that was once common. It would involve a powerful nation setting out to expand its regional dominance by taking over a neighbor. A war like this — a voluntary war of aggression — would be a sign that Putin believed that Pax Americana was over and that the U.S., the European Union and their allies had become too weak to exact painful consequences.

As Anne Applebaum has written in The Atlantic, Putin and his inner circle are part of a new breed of autocrats, along with the rulers of China, Iran and Venezuela: “people who aren’t interested in treaties and documents, people who only respect hard power.”

This is why many people in Taiwan find the situation in Ukraine to be chilling, as my colleagues Steven Lee Myers and Amy Qin have explained. “If the Western powers fail to respond to Russia, they do embolden the Chinese thinking regarding action on Taiwan,” said Lai I-chung, a Taiwanese official with ties to its leaders. If the world is entering an era in which countries again make decisions based, above all, on what their military power allows them to do, it would be a big change.