A group of Harvard Law School experts agreed that the prospects for a quick resolution to the conflict look bleak.

“We’re still in day six of this war, and it’s going to get a lot worse,” said Mark Wu, Henry L. Stimson Professor of Law, at an online panel Tuesday sponsored by Harvard Law School. “We can chat about economic sanctions, but as we have seen over the past decade, they don’t have a good track record of getting authoritarian rulers to change their minds. At best, they do inject a lot of suffering on those populations that are governed by these types of authoritarian rulers.”

The response against Russia has been unprecedented and unified, said Anu Bradford, Henry L. Shattuck Visiting Professor of Law. In the absence of a military response, the Western alliance, including NATO countries, has engaged in “financial warfare” to isolate Russia from the international financial system and force Putin to back down. What is remarkable is the response from Europe, which has long relied on diplomacy and engagement in dealing with Russia, she said.

“What we have normally come to expect from Europe is a response of weakness when it comes to foreign and security policies,” said Bradford. “We now see a massive shift in Europe facing the new geopolitical reality… This is a war not just in Europe, but a war against Europe.”

Gabriella Blum, Rita E. Hauser Professor of Human Rights and Humanitarian Law, called Putin’s arguments for invading Ukraine weak and baseless. In justifying the Russian assault, Putin has called Ukraine “an existential threat” and its government a “neo-Nazi regime.” He has also falsely claimed that ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine were facing “genocide.”

“There is no question that the extent of the war in Ukraine wouldn’t pass muster on any plausible necessity and proportionality principle that governs the use of force,” said Blum.

For Naz Modirzadeh, professor of practice, one of the biggest concerns in the conflict is the legal situation of Ukrainian civilians who might be described as terrorists for taking up arms to defend their country or possibly for acting as so-called voluntary human shields.

“I think one way in which this will be tragic,” said Modirzadeh, “but also really difficult area for particularly the United States and its Western allies will be to what extent might Russia and Putin utilize justifications or even legal arguments that were road tested, if you will, in the war on terror.”

In the end, said Sarotte at the Kennedy School event, Putin’s mind probably can’t be changed. He sees himself as a martyr, so the best diplomatic efforts will be to persuade his inner circle and other Russian elites.

“It’s hard to know where this ends,” she said. “This is probably unlikely, but my hope is that the people around Putin realize they’re increasingly becoming a much bigger version of North Korea, and they don’t want to live in North Korea. So, if there’s some way to make the people around him see a better future without him … that would be one resolution that would be better than a lot of bad options.”

The close cooperation of the E.U., U.S., and NATO represents one positive development over the last 10 days. “What we are seeing is a major shift in geopolitics right now,” said Sarotte. “The consequences are profound.”

What Russia’s attack on Ukraine portends for the global order is unclear, the Kennedy School panelists agreed.

“What is clear is we have definitively ended the post-Cold war order, which rested on an assumption that there would no longer be major European land wars,” said Sarotte. “I was studying abroad in West Berlin in 1989. That’s what inspired me to become a history professor — I regret deeply the passing of that order.”