This is a high-stakes strategy — efforts to degrade another country’s power by military and economic means usually don’t end well — and I asked the White House to elaborate on the comments. “We want Ukraine to win,” a National Security Council spokesman responded. “We intend to make this invasion a strategic failure for Russia. One of our goals has been to limit Russia’s ability to do something like this again.”…

Russia’s global power is waning in other ways. Moscow’s candidates were defeated this month in elections for four United Nations bodies. Russia was suspended from the U.N. Human Rights Council. The International Telecommunication Union rejected Russian candidates for four study groups assessing communication issues. Kremlin dreams of technology leadership are dying on the plains of Ukraine, along with its soldiers.

What are the dangers as Russian casualties mount, the economic squeeze tightens, and Moscow gradually loses the power to invade its neighbors? Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov warned Monday that “NATO is, in essence, going to war with Russia through a proxy,” and he invoked the danger of nuclear conflict. “The risk is serious,” he said. “It should not be underestimated.” Austin dismissed Lavrov’s rhetoric as “very dangerous and unhelpful.”