Interview

ABEL RIU

POLITICAL SCIENTIST AND SPECIALIST IN POST-SOVIET AFFAIRS

“The EU is one of the losers of the war in Ukraine”

On February 24 it will be a year since Russia invaded Ukraine. Here, political scientist and specialist in post-Soviet affairs Abel Riu analyses the political impact of the conflict

“The war has led to an increase in pre-existing global geopolitical uncertainties” “IT’S HARD TO IMAGINE A PEACE AGREEMENT THAT WOULD BE ACCEPTABLE TO BOTH SIDES”
What’s going on?
The Russ­ian mil­i­tary ag­gres­sion against Ukraine has led to a con­flict that has caused a his­toric split in the heart of Eu­rope, with Rus­sia and Be­larus on the one side and the EU states and NATO on the other, which in turn has gen­er­ated greater de­pen­dence of Rus­sia on China and of the EU on the US. Other con­se­quences have been changes in en­ergy mar­kets due to the dras­tic re­duc­tion in gas and oil ex­ports from one of the world’s main pro­duc­ers (Rus­sia) to one of the largest mar­kets (EU). This has se­ri­ously af­fected prices and global flows, with new op­por­tu­ni­ties emerg­ing for other pro­duc­ing coun­tries, such as Al­ge­ria, Nor­way, Qatar, Azer­bai­jan, and the US it­self, and for large im­porters, such as China, India or Turkey. The ag­gra­va­tion of the food cri­sis has been an­other con­se­quence, lead­ing to an in­crease in food prices around the world.
And in geopo­lit­i­cal terms?
The war has led to an in­crease in pre-ex­ist­ing global geopo­lit­i­cal un­cer­tain­ties that were al­ready ev­i­dent dur­ing the Covid-19 pan­demic, ac­cel­er­at­ing processes of de­glob­al­i­sa­tion, as well as a re­turn to a cer­tain eco­nomic pro­tec­tion­ism, and a re­newed com­mit­ment to in­dus­trial pro­duc­tion at na­tional level. Also, multi-po­lar­is­ing trends have ac­cel­er­ated, with the con­sol­i­da­tion of new pow­ers, such as India, Turkey, Mex­ico, In­done­sia and Brazil, which are in­creas­ingly act­ing in­de­pen­dently of the US and China and which have avoided tak­ing sides in the war in Ukraine. In the con­text of in­creas­ing re­gion­al­i­sa­tion of the global order, a stalled and un­re­solved con­flict be­tween Rus­sia and Ukraine, and great hos­til­ity be­tween Rus­sia and West­ern coun­tries, could be­come one of the main fault lines that will dic­tate out­comes in Eu­rope and the world for years.
How long do you see the war last­ing?
There are sev­eral fac­tors that point to a pro­lon­ga­tion of the con­flict in 2023 and be­yond. At the mil­i­tary level, there’s a cer­tain bal­ance of power, and as his­to­rian Lawrence Freed­man has said, the Ukraini­ans are win­ning on the bat­tle­field but they can­not com­pete with the Rus­sians at a strate­gic level. Moscow is fo­cus­ing its ef­forts on the de­struc­tion of a large part of Ukraine’s ca­pac­ity to pro­duce and dis­trib­ute en­ergy, with sys­tem­atic mis­sile and drone at­tacks, which in the long run could threaten the func­tion­ing of the Ukrain­ian state it­self. Also, so-called “Ukraine fa­tigue” is grow­ing, with the pos­si­bil­ity that at some point West­ern coun­tries could stop pro­vid­ing mil­i­tary and fi­nan­cial sup­port. For its part, Kyiv is try­ing to take back ter­ri­tory in the short and medium term and pre­vent Russ­ian forces from con­sol­i­dat­ing the cur­rent front­lines and prepar­ing for new of­fen­sives in the spring.
Is peace with Putin pos­si­ble?
It’s hard to imag­ine a peace agree­ment that would be ac­cept­able to both sides, and less so when both sides think their mil­i­tary sit­u­a­tion can im­prove in the fu­ture. As for ter­ri­to­r­ial con­ces­sions, polls show that over 80% of Ukraini­ans are un­will­ing to cede ter­ri­tory in ex­change for peace, while it’s un­think­able that Putin will re­turn any part of the ter­ri­to­ries an­nexed on Sep­tem­ber 30, and which are now of­fi­cially part of the Russ­ian Fed­er­a­tion. These an­nex­a­tions make it very dif­fi­cult to reach ne­go­ti­ated agree­ments to end the con­flict. It’s worth not­ing, how­ever, that an un­re­solved and stalled con­flict could be the lesser of two evils for Rus­sia rather than a deal that does not sat­isfy its core in­ter­ests, which is re­tain­ing con­trol over part of south­ern and east­ern Ukraine and try­ing to pre­vent it from being vi­able as a coun­try.
Is the US keep­ing the EU and Rus­sia apart?
The US has al­ways sought to pre­vent any rap­proche­ment be­tween Rus­sia and Eu­ro­pean coun­tries. Back in the sev­en­ties, the Amer­i­cans tried to pre­vent the con­struc­tion of gas pipelines from the USSR to West­ern Eu­rope. At the end of the Cold War, they im­posed the con­ti­nu­ity of NATO as a se­cu­rity or­gan­i­sa­tion in Eu­rope in the face of doubts ex­pressed by the Ger­mans, French, Ital­ians, and even the British. After the War­saw Pact dis­solved, they opened NATO’s doors to al­most all Cen­tral and East­ern Eu­rope states but keep­ing them closed to Rus­sia, both dur­ing Yeltsin’s time and dur­ing Putin’s first term when the pos­si­bil­ity of mem­ber­ship was raised. The Amer­i­cans have al­ways be­lieved that a closer re­la­tion­ship be­tween Rus­sians and Eu­ro­peans would re­duce its mil­i­tary and po­lit­i­cal lever­age over them.
The transat­lantic link has new life.
The war has led to greater unity be­tween Eu­rope and the US, in terms of sanc­tions and in mil­i­tary sup­port to Ukraine. US arms ex­ports to the con­ti­nent have soared, and the At­lantic al­liance has re­in­forced its role as a se­cu­rity um­brella for nu­mer­ous Eu­ro­pean states. Fin­land and Swe­den are in the process of join­ing NATO, while the ar­gu­ment for the EU to achieve “strate­gic au­ton­omy” has lost ground in the short term.
What does the war mean for the EU?
The EU is one of the losers of this war, while the US is one of the win­ners. The Amer­i­cans have taken ad­van­tage of Putin’s mis­take in at­tack­ing Ukraine in the way he has in order to weaken Rus­sia both mil­i­tar­ily and eco­nom­i­cally at min­i­mal cost and with­out tak­ing any ca­su­al­ties. At the same time, the US has suc­ceeded in deep­en­ing Eu­ro­pean mil­i­tary de­pen­dence. The break­ing of the EU’s en­ergy ties with Rus­sia has meant look­ing for al­ter­na­tive sources of gas and oil and strength­en­ing ex­ist­ing ones, both liq­ue­fied nat­ural gas (LNG) and gas from other coun­tries, such as Nor­way, Al­ge­ria, Qatar, Azer­bai­jan, and the US. In the case of LNG es­pe­cially, these sources are more ex­pen­sive than gas from Rus­sia, and this has con­tributed to a rise in in­fla­tion and pro­duc­tion costs. This has al­ready af­fected the com­pet­i­tive­ness of Eu­ro­pean in­dus­try – es­pe­cially in Ger­many – and could po­ten­tially erode its ca­pac­ity as a major eco­nomic power. In re­cent years, there have been ever more voices ar­gu­ing for “Eu­ro­pean sov­er­eignty” in the medium to long term, and for the EU to de­velop its own geopo­lit­i­cal mus­cle. De­spite the grow­ing de­pen­dence caused by the war in Ukraine, this may make more sense in the face of a pro­tec­tion­ist US and with grow­ing con­fronta­tion be­tween Wash­ing­ton and Bei­jing at a time when the global focus is shift­ing to­wards the Asia-Pa­cific. A main chal­lenge for the EU will be to main­tain a non-sub­or­di­nate role to the US while still re­main­ing its ally.
And Cat­alo­nia’s role?
The main chal­lenge is to pro­ject it­self abroad as a re­spon­si­ble po­lit­i­cal actor with the ca­pac­ity to think and op­er­ate with the logic of a state. In other words, to do what Scot­land has done in terms of the po­si­tions and lan­guage adopted when ad­dress­ing in­ter­na­tional is­sues. We need to find ways to con­nect Cat­alo­nia with the de­bates on Eu­ro­pean de­fence, the chal­lenges posed by China’s rise, the con­flicts and en­ergy op­por­tu­ni­ties in the Mediter­ranean, not as a re­gion, but as a po­lit­i­cal actor that as­pires to be a state. Sadly, our gov­er­nors don’t seem to have the will to move in this di­rec­tion, and with some ex­cep­tions Cata­lan for­eign ac­tion is not too far from that of any Au­tonomous Re­gion.

In­ter­view In­ter­na­tional

Vision of a state

President of the international affairs analysis centre, Catalonia Global Institute, Abel Riu argues for the need to be aware of Catalonia’s economic, industrial, logistical, agricultural and technological capacities to use them in a strategy of internationalisation. Also “to explain that Catalonia has elements and characteristics that would make it a viable independent state”. In terms of regional priorities, the CGI argues that Catalonia can play an active role in the Mediterranean region, which is its natural area of influence. “We seek to contribute to the debate on how Catalonia should focus on existing challenges and opportunities and on the geopolitical trends and changes that are taking place,” he says.

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