One reason Ukraine’s fight has engendered such a strong emotional reaction is that there is something inherently stirring about a people defending their homeland from a would-be imperial overlord, and that’s fundamentally what’s happening on the ground in Ukraine. If anyone had any doubt that Ukraine has its own national identity, the early days of this war should have eliminated it. And another layer of national heroes and national lore is being created as we speak. Of course, Putin is appealing to nationalist sentiment and themes himself, but his case that Ukraine isn’t an independent nation is spurious, and he explicitly pines for a return to empire. His war trespasses against the norm of national self-determination established after World War II. The Latvian prime minister put the issue very well the other day, underlining how the struggle in Europe is between nation-states and a budding empire. The defense of true nationalism — i.e., self-governing peoples who don’t want to be swallowed up by countries seeking a return to supposed imperial grandeur — is going to be a key element of the West’s pushback against the Russia-China challenge in the years ahead.