Ukraine: genesis of the new globalisation

The war in Ukraine has left glob­al­i­sa­tion in the dust­bin of his­tory. The per­pet­ual hap­pi­ness that the West as­so­ci­ated with the glob­al­i­sa­tion that began with the end of the Cold War in 1991 is now over. That era that we thought had no pro­duc­tive lim­its and noth­ing to con­test the hege­mony of the USA no longer ex­ists.

Eco­nomic and po­lit­i­cal lib­er­al­i­sa­tion was the magic recipe for glob­al­i­sa­tion until Feb­ru­ary 2022. The open­ing of new mar­kets even reached for­mer com­mu­nist coun­tries, such as China, which em­braced a cap­i­tal­ist model so as not to be left be­hind. In this time, the US has man­aged glob­al­i­sa­tion with uni­lat­eral ar­ro­gance and with con­tempt for the loser of the Cold War.

The first cracks ap­peared in 2007, when at the Mu­nich Se­cu­rity Con­fer­ence Vladimir Putin called for Rus­sia to get a piece of the glob­al­i­sa­tion pie. It was not out of any dream of restor­ing So­viet great­ness, Putin wants noth­ing to do with that, and in fact he ac­cuses Lenin and the Bol­she­viks of boost­ing Ukrain­ian na­tion­al­ism, which led to the cre­ation of an in­de­pen­dent Ukraine and the ero­sion of the his­tor­i­cal ties be­tween Rus­sians and Ukraini­ans that ex­isted under the tsars.

The US re­ac­tion to Putin’s re­quest was to tighten the noose and fur­ther ex­pand NATO’s bor­ders as far as Rus­sia it­self. This vi­o­lated ver­bal agree­ments be­tween Mikhail Gor­bachev – the last So­viet pres­i­dent – and James Baker – US Sec­re­tary of State – not to ex­pand NATO’s bor­ders be­yond the re­uni­fied Ger­many. It was a show of un­nec­es­sary dis­dain for a coun­try with wounded pride and with the world’s largest nu­clear ar­se­nal. In 1994, Kyiv handed over the nu­clear weapons it in­her­ited from the So­viet era to Moscow in ex­change for guar­an­tees that Ukraine’s bor­ders would be re­spected. But every­one went on to do what­ever they liked and since Feb­ru­ary 2022 we have seen the con­se­quences.

More than one side is re­spon­si­ble for this war, al­though ob­vi­ously the de­gree of re­spon­si­bil­ity is not equal. The new glob­al­i­sa­tion that began in Feb­ru­ary 2022 places us in a sce­nario of per­ma­nent global com­pet­i­tive­ness and ten­sion. This af­fects, firstly, the econ­omy, and sec­ondly, global geopo­lit­i­cal sta­bil­ity. As we see in Ukraine, the US will do every­thing it takes to main­tain its global unipo­lar hege­mony in the po­lit­i­cal, eco­nomic, so­cial, cul­tural and mil­i­tary spheres that it gained in 1991.

For its part, Rus­sia has shed the back­seat role it was given dur­ing glob­al­i­sa­tion. Russ­ian oil, gas and other re­sources, added to the strength­en­ing of its mil­i­tary – al­though not its qual­ity, as we are see­ing in this war – and the adop­tion of a pro­found na­tion­al­ism to help it over­come the be­wil­der­ing loss of iden­tity that came with the dis­ap­pear­ance of the So­viet Union are the foun­da­tions of Putin’s Rus­sia. At the same time, Rus­sia has con­sol­i­dated its in­flu­ence over neigh­bour­ing east­ern states that were for­mer mem­bers of the So­viet Union, some­times through diplo­macy and some­times through force. It also has Be­larus on its side and has se­cured China as a major trad­ing and po­lit­i­cal part­ner, with­out ne­glect­ing its in­flu­ence in North Africa and places like Syria. How things de­velop re­mains to be seen, but for now it has man­aged to bury glob­al­i­sa­tion.

China as­pires to be the real coun­ter­weight to US power in the new global order, but this is an am­bi­tion that is be­yond the Russ­ian Fed­er­a­tion. It will emerge from this war with its abil­ity to es­tab­lish al­liances with other states re­duced by US ef­forts to iso­late it, while it has shown that tech­no­log­i­cally it is not up to the re­quired level. Rus­sia’s forces have not been able to carry out the quick and ef­fec­tive of­fen­sive that was ex­pected, while huge mil­i­tary aid from the US and its Eu­ro­pean part­ners has al­lowed Ukraine to re­sist. In short, the war in Ukraine has begun a new phase of glob­al­i­sa­tion char­ac­terised by the com­pet­i­tive­ness and per­ma­nent ag­gres­sion be­tween the US and its favoured part­ners to­wards those who as­pire to chal­lenge its world hege­mony head-on, such as the Russ­ian Fed­er­a­tion and China.

We have not gone back to the Cold War (1945-1991) be­cause there is no face-off be­tween two op­pos­ing ide­olo­gies, com­mu­nism ver­sus cap­i­tal­ism, as al­most no one ques­tions the ne­olib­eral cap­i­tal­ist model as the main dri­ver of today’s world. But we are im­mersed in a cli­mate of cold war. We have re­gained mu­tual dis­trust on a global scale. Since Feb­ru­ary 2022, the cul­ture of con­fronta­tion has been steadily re­turn­ing.

An­other re­al­ity we have to get used to under the new glob­al­i­sa­tion is the con­trac­tion of mar­kets, with ve­toes on the pur­chase and sale of prod­ucts de­pend­ing on their ori­gin. Ini­tially this means per­ma­nent in­fla­tion, al­though ex­empt will of course be the large en­ergy and ar­ma­ments in­dus­tries. For them, the sit­u­a­tion is win-win.

Most clearly af­fected by all this is the re­la­tion­ship be­tween Rus­sia and Ukraine. The his­tor­i­cal, cul­tural and ter­ri­to­r­ial ties be­tween the two have been bro­ken. Russ­ian mil­i­tary ag­gres­sion has shaped a Ukraine that only looks to­wards Cen­tral and West­ern Eu­rope. West­ern Ukraine, the part his­tor­i­cally most deeply anti-Russ­ian and pro-West­ern, has won the game, with most Ukraini­ans de­cid­ing to cut ties with Rus­sia.

fea­ture In­ter­na­tional

fea­ture In­ter­na­tional